The Faculty of Arts recently held a special event to thank the Korean government for its generous support of the University over the past two decades.
The Korean Government provides two major sources of funding to the University of Auckland.
The first is the Korea Foundation, which established the Centre of Korean Studies in 1995 and continues to fund the Centre to the present day.
The second is the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). This provides a five year $1.1 million Core University Programme in Korean Studies (CUPKS) grant to fund education and research initiatives in Korean studies and support postgraduate students at both MA and PhD levels. The grant was first offered in October 2012.
The event hosted several guests from the Korean Consulate: the Consul General, Mr. Yilho Pak; the Consul, Mr. Sunghyo Kim (in charge of Politics and the Economy); Senior Advisor, Ms. Rebecca Kim and the Executive Officer, Arum Jung. The latter two guests are both alumna of the University of Auckland.
Representatives of the University included the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon; the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor John Morrow; the Dean of Arts, Professor Robert Greenberg; and as academic staff and students from Asian Studies. Patrick Flamm, a PhD student from Germany whose work in New Zealand is supported by a scholarship from the CUPKS grant, made a brief presentation about his ongoing research.
Patrick says “the evening was a good opportunity to express my gratitude to the AKS and the Korean government for supporting my research in particular and Korean Studies at the University of Auckland in general. Moreover, I enjoyed talking about my PhD project with South Korean diplomats and the University members in attendance.”
Patrick’s PhD project looks at the relationship between national identity and the foreign policy of a "rising South Korea”, a once war-torn recipient of developmental aid that turned into a considerable global economic and political power. As a German political scientist, Patrick chose to come to Auckland to study because of “the strong profile of the University of Auckland in both Political Science and Asian Studies”. In his speech, he acknowledged that his study here was “only possible due to the generous support of the AKS and the South Korean government respectively”.
For more information about CUPKS grants
For more information about about Asian Studies.
