Professor Yoon Young-kwan’s famous course International Political Economy classroom in 2010

On November 25, Professor YOON Young-kwan (Department of International Relations) gave a special lecture titled"Intellectual Power and Personality: My Educational Experiment at SNU." The 90 minute lecture was Professor Yoon's acceptance speech regarding this year's Seoul National University Education Award, which he received along with three other professors on November 17.

In his speech, the recipient of the award shared his teaching experience and educational philosophy throughout 25 years of teaching courses such as Introduction to International Relations, International Political Economy, South-North Korean Relations, and Environment and World Politics at SNU. Although he spoke from an educator's point of view, Professor Yoon expressed his hopes that the content of his lecture would also be relevant to students studying international relations.

Professor Yoon Young-kwan, who served as the 32nd Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade under President ROH Moo-hyun, explained that studying international relations from Korea's perspective has a unique meaning. As the only divided country in the world, Korea's current circumstances are deeply interrelated with important historical events of the 19th to 20th century, such as Japanese colonization and the Korean War. Therefore, Western theories of international relations cannot be fully applied to Korea's reality."Students should interpret international relations with a sense of subjectivity," emphasized the speaker,"by recognizing Korea's challenges as their own problems." The underlying purpose of his courses at SNU was to cultivate leaders who would guide the 21st century of Korea, as well as the rest of the international community. Such leaders, as the title of the lecture suggests, should have both intellectual power and moral personality.

Intellectual power, according to Professor Yoon, is an essential component of independent thought needed to resolve various problems encountered by Korea and the rest of the world. In order to understand and analyze today's fast-paced world, students must be equipped with intellectual imagination and autonomous thinking. As much as the professor believes SNU students should aim to gain a sufficient level of intellectual capacity required to lead an economically advanced country like Korea, he has high expectations of students who take his courses."This is perhaps why my courses are well known for their heavy amount of reading and rigorous assignments," he admitted.

Professor Yoon is receiving the SNU Education Award (Nov. 17, 2015)

Regarding personality, Professor Yoon emphasized having a public mind as well as moral power, saying that intellectual power should be balanced with moral character. In Korea, most educational environments place a much higher value on academic achievement, so the professor's twofold educational philosophy was an experiment to offer an alternative to Korea's current one-sided curriculum."Maybe my experiment will turn out to be not successful at all, but I will try to continue this educational experiment to the best of my ability. I will be able to determine whether or not my experiment was successful when my students from the past 25 years become leaders of Korean society."

In order to pursue his teaching objective, Professor Yoon sought to help students see that international relations is a living field of study. In his classes, international relations was much more than a theory that only existed in textbooks – it was directly related to students' everyday lives. To reflect a wide range of interests that students had about various regions around the world, the second half of the course syllabus dealt with topics from an individual's point of view. In addition, Professor Yoon organized special lectures given by well-known individuals actively working in the real world, such as American diplomat Henry Kissinger and"homeless billionaire" Nicolas Berggruen. The lecturer further stressed the importance of maintaining a balance between theory and reality, because only a few students actually become scholars while the rest move on to the real world. To enable students to connect theoretical concepts with actual events happening in the world, his courses require news assignments in which students must read and analyze relevant news articles every week. The professor's hope was that students would make a habit of reading newspapers regularly, as it is what will provide them with an awareness of up-to-date events of contemporary society.

Another educational method that Professor Yoon employed throughout his courses was assigning team projects to enhance collaboration skills and provide an opportunity for students to communicate and interact with other people. He also created a website for each course, which served as a forum where students could share each of their outstanding academic knowledge.

Finally, the lecturer spoke about the Freshman Seminars course that he teaches every fall semester."Years ago, I decided to take part in teaching Freshman Seminars after meeting so many SNU students who were not living much of a self-directed life. Many of them appeared to be already tired due to the excessive amount of competition they had to endure prior to entering university." As the students strived harder to achieve higher grades, they began comparing themselves to others and feeling inferior should they fall behind. The main priority of these students was to focus on their own, personal achievements, and as a result, they lacked a sense of community."Why should we care to think about other members of our community? Because if we do not think about others, we can only be short-sighted," the professor clarified."We must expand the scope of our identity so that it can also embrace the lives of other people."

The ultimate goal of the Freshman Seminars course is to encourage students to discover not only what makes them passionate, but also what enriches other people's lives. During this process, students should focus on their honest convictions, regardless of others' standards.

"Don't give up on your dreams, despite the harsh reality," Professor Yoon Young-kwan emphasized,"aim to enrich your own life, as well as those of others around you."

Written by YOON Jiwon, SNU English Editor, jiwonyoon@snu.ac.kr
Reviewed by Eli Park Sorensen, SNU Professor of Liberal Studies, eps7257@snu.ac.kr