Jina Kim, PhD Candidate, South Korea
With North Korea’s recent nuclear test, Ms. Jina Kim’s arrival at The Fletcher School’s PhD program couldn’t be timelier. Ms. Kim has published widely on the topic of security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Her journal article titles include: “An Endless Game: North Korea’s Psychological Warfare,” “Foreign Policy of the Second Bush Administration and its Policy Toward North Korea,” and “Scenarios to Solve North Korean Nuclear Crisis after the Second Six Party Talk.” At Fletcher, she will be pursuing a dissertation on the security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region with Professor Robert Pfaltzgraff as her PhD advisor.
Previously based in South Korea, this is Ms. Kim’s first time in the United States. In 2003, she received her MA in International Studies from Seoul’s Yonsei Graduate School of International Studies, where she wrote her thesis on the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments in managing North Korea’s refugee crisis. During this time she worked closely with a human rights NGO focusing on North Korean issues and conducted numerous interviews with refugees. In her study, she recommends a “bi-track” approach to… having identified the lack of collaboration and coordination between… as the main impediments towards a sustained intervention in the refugee crisis.
During her two-year MA program, Ms. Kim also worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Seoul Bureau. In this position, she was responsible for covering domestic affairs, which required substantial field research on topics including the North and South naval clash, history textbook controversies between Korea and Japan, spy operations of the South Korean Army Intelligence Unit, and 2002 World Cup fever.
After completing her graduate work, Ms. Kim joined UNESCO’s Asia Pacific Center on Education for International Understanding (APCEIU) in Seoul. There she worked on developing a national curriculum and textbook on international studies for middle and high school programs. Ms. Kim participated in publishing journals and organizing a series of workshops to accomplish this goal. She found the project an invaluable opportunity to deepen her knowledge of the literature on….
In 2004, Jina Kim joined the Korean Institute for Defense Analysis, a government-funded think-tank in Seoul. At the Institute, she carried out policy-oriented research on the Republic of Korea’s military alliance with the US. In addition, she assessed South Korea’s human rights policy towards North Korea and authored several reports on the subject. Ms. Kim also participated in a high-level political-military game: an experience she says she found particularly enlightening. She is therefore interested in joining Fletcher’s SIMULEX military game that takes place on a yearly basis.
Until then, Jina Kim will pursue her three fields of study at Fletcher in International Security Studies, Political Systems and Theories, and International Organizations. “As my primary concern is security cooperation partnership in the Asia Pacific region, I will look at sociopolitical and geographical factors that motivate states in this region in comparison with other security regimes in Europe, for example,” says Kim. “I am really happy with the fact that Fletcher offers so many seminars and lectures on this issue. Thus, in the coming year, I am going to participate in the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund Program (SYLFF) East Coast conference and Nourth - South regional conference. In particular, the SYLFF N-S regional conference will be hosted at Fletcher and I will present my paper on the human rights and global governance.”
Patrick Meier, PhD Candidate