This article was published in the Spring 2023 issue of Litterae Populi. The full issue can be found here.

Ambassadors play an important role in diplomacy, representing their own country and communicating its intentions to their host country. I believe my responsibility as a Hokkaido University Ambassador is to lead the internationalization of Hokkaido University; I encourage many young Korean people to pursue their dreams at Hokkaido University by promoting it in South Korea. I feel truly honored to be able to serve as an Ambassador because I want to do all I can for the development of Hokkaido University, where I worked from 1987 to earn my Ph.D.

I have given the students at Chungbuk National University, where I work, promotional materials about Hokkaido University that I receive from the Hokkaido University Seoul Office. In interviews, I have also told them what a wonderful place the University is. I have taught Japanese to students in my spare time for about 10 years. Some of my students have since gone on to study or enroll in short-term programs in Japan, and are now teaching at Japanese language schools. Increased interest in the Japanese language and short-term programs in Japan among Korean students will motivate more students to study in Japan. The goal of Korean students studying abroad is to become university professors or researchers at research institutes when they return to Korea. To get a job at a university or research institute, they need to publish many papers in world-class academic journals and accumulate various research results. I hope Hokkaido University will provide more support for international students so that they can accumulate and publish many research results while studying in Japan.

I believe that the successful internationalization of Hokkaido University will require more robust people-to-people exchanges. It will be easier to solve problems by communicating in-person than by phone or e-mail. My meeting in Seoul with President Kiyohiro Houkin and Atsushi Yokota, Executive Vice President in charge of international affairs management, in November 2022, was truly instructive for me to help to internationalize the University as an Ambassador. In my opinion, arranging regular meetings for Hokkaido University Ambassadors in different countries to engage in dialogue would solidify the collaborative framework for the development of the University.

I live in Cheongju City, an inland city located in central South Korea, where snow rarely falls. As the capital of North Chungcheong Province, the city has long been known as a city of education. The popular Korean dish of samgyeopsal is said to have originated in Cheongju’s Seomun Market in the 1950s.

There are two adages that come to mind: “All things under the sun eventually converge like flowing rivers” and “While one can change one’s nationality, the history of one’s alma mater can never be changed.” I hope that international students who studied at Hokkaido University will remember the University, where they pursued their dreams, forever. I urge everyone at Hokkaido University to unite with me in pursuit of its enduring development.

This article was published in the Spring 2023 issue of Litterae Populi. The full issue can be found here.