**THE 14th GLOBAL ISSUES COLLOQUIUM **

Institute for International Trade and Cooperation and International for Development and Human Security would like to invite you to our fourteenth faculty colloquium

Monday, March 24, 2014

5:00pm-6:30pm (Dinner will be provided)

#1002 Seminar Room, International Education Building

“Governance in Korea’s Foreign Aid: Continuity and

Changes after the Institutional Reforms for its Aid

Policymaking and Practice"

Speaker: Seung-Kwang (Jeffrey) Choi

(PhD candidate, Australian National University)

Seung-Kwang (Jeffrey) Choi is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University and an Endeavour Award Scholar of the Australian Government. His main research interests include Korea’s foreign aid strategy and policy, middle-power diplomacy, sea power and maritime strategy in Northeast Asia, and Japanese political economy. As a visiting scholar at the Institute of Development and Human Security, Seung-Kwang is currently conducting a fieldwork for his PhD thesis, titled “Governance in Korea’s Foreign Aid: Continuity and Changes after the Institutional Reforms for its Aid Policymaking and Practice.”

Before commencing his PhD studies in Australia, Seung-Kwang served the ROK Navy as an officer. He was an interpreter and liaison officer (LNO) to the US Seventh Fleet (C7F) and war-game exercise officer (N7). In universities, he taught courses on global development, American government and politics, and professional writings. He was a regular contributor to the Sisa-Journal, one of the major weekly newsmagazines in Korea and a political assistant to a member of the ROK National Assembly. Besides his PhD research, Seung-Kwang runs his own company, which specializes in export of LED lights, solar power generation, and energy storage system.

Seung-Kwang received his master’s degree in International Relations from the International University of Japan with a full Japanese Government scholarship and holds a bachelor’s degree in International Studies and English from Handong Global University.

Abstract

The proposed research examines post-2005 aid politics and governance in Korea. Recently, Korea’s foreign aid has gained increasing and renewed attention from outside following institutional reforms in its aid governance and a rapid expansion of the ODA volume. While Korea’s stated national strategy and objectives for its ODA policies and practices are to follow and incorporate global norms on aid taught by International Organisations such as the OECD DAC (Development Assistance Committee), actual policy choice outcomes appear to have been significantly affected by domestic processes and conditions.

The proposed research will investigate how Korea adapts to challenges from both

dynamic domestic conditions and the changes in the global institutional

normative framework in its policy choice outcomes and practices in aid governance.

Through a detailed investigation and elaboration of key domestic actors and

their interactions in aid policymaking and practices, it will examine the extent to which

aid governance in Korea depends on both the degree of institutionalization of new

norms on aid within a domestic structure and with existing norms held by key domestic actors.

The proposed research will employ and combine historical institutionalism and

constructivism as an analytical framework. It will involve qualitative methods including

case studies and analytic narratives.

* This colloquium is supported by the Ewha Global Top 5 Grant 2013 of Ewha Womans University and Ewha GSIS

* RSVP BY March 20 (Thr) FOR DINNER PREPARATION