Citizenship: South Korea
My life is a voyage. Beginning in South Korea, I had the privilege of traveling to about 30 countries. Moreover, as a culinary specialist at a South Korean naval diplomatic facility, I had the opportunity to serve Korean cuisine to foreign VIP guests, experiencing how a country’s food culture can impact international relations. While studying Political Science for my bachelor’s degree at Columbia, I learned that the main actors are “states.” My voyage, nevertheless, revealed to me how small, hardly visible agencies, incidents, and particularities can significantly impact the trajectories of global interactions. Thus, I plan to refine a less state-centric view and methodology through the Global Thought program. In so doing, I would like to take the innovative steps of becoming a scholar and field expert who can mediate transnational security conflicts, especially those involving North Korea and other East Asian nations, by unconventional but more effective strategies.