fdfd 경희대 학교

Greetings, Kyung Hee class of 2020. Unfortunately, we cannot hold the commencement ceremony due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Also regrettable is that your parents and other family members miss the chance to celebrate your achievements alongside you. I would like to ask for your understanding and deliver my congratulatory remarks by video. We now stand on the verge of great transition, where we cannot return to the old normal and should commit ourselves to creating a new future. Be proud as a graduate of Kyung Hee University and venture into the wider world to fly high.

“Towards a Bigger, Brighter Future with Kyung Hee!”    President’s Welcome Message to New Faculty Members Distinguished new faculty members: I am pleased to extend a heartfelt welcome to you all. It’s a long-overdue welcome, which should have been delivered in person months ago. Regrettably, the President’s annual welcome meeting with new faculty members, normally held in late February, was canceled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the pandemic still ongoing, I have chosen to convey my greetings to you in this written message. Those of you who joined the University last year have already been with us for one or two semesters. I hope the time has been productive and valuable in preparing you for a successful voyage into the future with us. On that note, I welcome you aboard Kyung Hee University again. As you are already familiar, our University was founded 71 years ago with a vision of “Creating a Civilized World.” Ever since then, our University has been highly successful in fulfilling its social responsibility as an institution of higher learning anchored by its core values of “Academe and Peace.” The 1970s and 1980s saw Kyung Hee gaining a firm foothold as a time-honored leading university in Korea. The year 2009, the landmark 60th anniversary of its founding, sounded the beginning of another remarkable leap forward. The progress Kyung Hee has achieved over the past ten years is unprecedented among universities in the world. This rapid rise in our global status is undoubtedly attributable to the tireless efforts we have made to reinforce the core competencies of the University. As we celebrated the 70th anniversary last year, we set a new goal for the next 100 years, which is to emerge as “a top-tier global university transcending Asia’s boundaries.” This requires us to reinvent ourselves as a “future university worthy of its name” that can lead humanity into a sustainable society. The notion of a future university here is not abstract but very concrete. Future universities will be those that make key contributions to building a “civilized world” by creatively merging scholarship and practice. The vision of a “civilized world” is not nebulous, either. It is a global community in which all nations and people transcend their differences to share peace and prosperity. Yet, transforming ourselves into a global university leading the world’s progress toward a sustainable cultural world takes effort. More than anything else, it calls on us to adapt ourselves to the ongoing seismic shifts in human civilization. The challenges ahead of us are indeed daunting and complex. Among them are climate change, depleting natural resources, population explosions, mounting inequality, and exacerbating bipolarization. The fact that these problems are intertwined with one another adds to global uncertainty. Furthermore, the global environment surrounding universities is not favorable. Big changes are underway in the way knowledge and information are produced, distributed, and consumed. Today’s universities are often accused of being locked in the 19th century mentality and their faculties of hanging onto 20th century ideas, while the students are living in the 21st century. It is warned that universities will perish in the near future if they fail to bridge these gaps quickly. That does not mean societies will not need universities. To the contrary, their importance will increase. There is a saying that goes, “Education is the best solution ever invented to enable humanity to overcome their limits.” The role education plays becomes manifest when compared with politics and market economies. Political and economic reasoning is near-sighted. They seldom embrace long-term perspectives. In contrast, education thrives on fundamental, comprehensive, and long-term perspectives. Here is the raison d'？tre of universities. Universities as education and research communities should rise to the challenge of mapping out a better future for humanity. Distinguished new faculty members: Our University has striven hard to become a place that allows its professors to teach and research and its students to learn and dream to “their hearts’ content.” Diverse programs have been instituted to enhance the faculty’s research capabilities and to better protect the student’s right to receive quality education. Along these lines, our University will do its best to help you grow into outstanding researchers and revered educators. Again, it is quite regrettable that I cannot meet you face to face to tell you about our University and listen to what you have to say about making it better. I hope we will have such an opportunity soon. Being a member of the Kyung Hee family is a great thing to be proud of. I hope your hearts are filled with such pride. Once again, welcome aboard. Our university has high expectations for you all to lead Kyung Hee and the world into a better future. Thank you.

A Message to the Community for the New Semester Our new semester has just begun. However, our campus looks different as in-person classes have been replaced with online classes due to the unexpected outbreak and spread of COVID-19. We have been taking a wide range of preventive measures including creating a task force for COVID-19 to respond to the urgent situation and to help our community members pursue their dreams with passion in a safe environment. This is a video message from president explaining the current situation and supporting our community members.

“Beyond Uncertainty, A Greater Future Awaits You”   President’s Congratulatory Message to the Class of 2020 Class of 2020! It is with great delight and pride that I welcome you all to Kyung Hee University. I would also like to take this opportunity to recognize the great efforts your parents and teachers made to support and guide you so that we can welcome you into the Kyung Hee community today. It is regrettable that I cannot deliver this welcome message in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the first time in the history of Korean universities that a global epidemic has canceled formal matriculation ceremonies and postponed the beginning of a new semester. Without a doubt, March of 2020 will be long remembered as a truly memorable moment in your lives. Among other things, the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus must have inspired you to reflect upon how humanity, societies, model civilization, and Earth’s ecosystems are inextricably linked. This makes the start of your university life today very special, and I believe this in turn adds fresh significance to the dreams and aspirations that you bring and your resolve to achieve them. From today on, you will be part of the Kyung Hee community. For the next four years of enrolment, you will be called “Kyung Hee University students.” After your graduation and through your careers, you will be “graduates of Kyung Hee University.” Which university you belong to is as important as “yourselves” as individuals because that is the school you will breathe and grow together with. Sadly, most students are not well informed about the universities they belong to. Such ignorance sometimes stems from apathy. Yet, I would like stress that a university is not like a bridge that is crossed and forgotten. Class of 2020: Kyung Hee University is far bigger and greater than you might have imagined. As can be seen in the information provided on its website or from other sources, since the middle of the last century, our University has been unwaveringly committed to combining education and peace, and scholarship and practice in pursuit of world peace as part and parcel of its efforts to carve out its identity as an education and social institution. The motto of “Academe and Peace,” along with the University’s founding vision of “Creating a Civilized World,” are its prized core values that each and every one of you should keep in mind. Kyung Hee was founded in 1949, 71 years ago. The outbreak of the Korean War in the following year compelled it to be evacuated to Busan. At the height of the war in 1951, the University announced its ambitious vision of “Creating a Civilized World” at its temporary campus. A “Civilized World” is a sustainable global community that allows humanity to co-exist and co-prosper through the harmony of spiritual and material civilizations. Creating democratic societies rooted in liberty, equality, and co-prosperity is key to brining this vision into reality. The declaration of this vision in the dark days of a war whose end was not in sight was a truly remarkable thing. It embodied our aspirations for a peaceful future, not just for the Korean people and the Korean peninsula but for the entire world. Since the mid-1950s, our University spearheaded various social reform movements for the enlightenment of rural communities, the protection of nature, and economic prosperity as a way of pursuing its public values. In 1965, Kyung Hee led the global efforts to establish the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP), which was officially launched in its inaugural meeting at Oxford University in Great Britain. In 1981, our University filed a petition to the United Nations to designate a day for world peace in a bid to ease the escalating Cold War confrontation between the East and West, which paved the way for the UN to eventually proclaim September 21 as the World Peace Day. Ever since, the day has been celebrated around the world annually with a variety of events. In tandem with its efforts for global peace, Kyung Hee has dedicated a great deal of energy to improving itself as a leading institution for higher learning. In the 1970s, it expanded by launching a full-fledged college of medicine. The opening in the 1980s of the Global Campus in Yongin and Gwangneung Campus in Namyangju, both in Gyeonggi Province, reinforced its status as a leading university in Korea. Coming into the 21st century, our University celebrated another landmark of its 60th anniversary in 2009. The take-off took the form of sweeping innovation across all sectors of its management, which was designed to effectively support its drive to re-establish scholarly authority and its role in creating a harmonious and creative future society. These reforms have resulted in a rapid rise in our University’s status within and without the nation. Our steady emphasis on strengthening the core competencies in education, research, globalization, and campus infrastructure improvement over the past decade has led Kyung Hee to be ranked 5th among domestic universities and join the ranks of the top 300 global universities. Last year, THE University Impact Rankings placed our University as the 1st in the nation and 27th in the world. These achievements reflect recognition of the emphasis we have placed on civic education and our contributions to Korean and global societies for decades. Another proud indicator of our success is our second place ranking among domestic universities in the National Customer Satisfaction Index. Class of 2020. Every one of you is a designer building a better future for yourselves. Our University never rests on its laurels. As embodied in our official slogan of “The Future of Universities, the Future of Humanity: Towards Global Eminence,” Kyung Hee never ceases its efforts to forge ahead toward a greater and brighter future. Dr. Young Seek Choue (1921~2012), the founder of our University, once said, “Lift up your eyes: gaze at the sky and look upon the ground.” What this message says is that we should never lose sight of the sky, which represents our ideals, and the earth, which represents our reality. With this message in mind, we should embark upon the task of designing a sustainable future for ourselves and the world by developing fresh perspectives about how theory and practice, parts and whole, and humanity and universe are interconnected. This is the first step towards building “a future university worthy of its name” in contributing to the betterment of the global society. And it is with a great pleasure I now call on each of you to join the rest of us in our march toward this grand vision. I call on every one of you to be at the forefront of shaping a better future for all. As you may have realized recently, our future is full of uncertainties. The door to the future will not open easily. As the Wall Street guru Nassim Nicholas Taleb has pointed out, a series of black swan events have brought about big disruptions in the world over the years. A black swan is an unpredictable event beyond what is normally expected of a situation, which unleashes radical changes once it occurs. A case in point is the September 11 terrorist attack. The novel coronavirus outbreak sweeping across the world is another example of a black swan event. The problem is that such black swan events are occurring with greater frequency than ever before. The future you are heading into may be defined by how you cope with black swan events. Climate change, nuclear weapons, depletion of energy and resources, religious conflicts, economic bipolarization and inequality, population explosion, novel epidemics―the list of global challenges we are facing, which are worthy of being called black swans, seems limitless. They threaten to annihilate the world as we know. These threats to humanity bring into focus the role education can play in fending them off. Unlike education, politics and market economies are not as far-sighted in tackling intractable problems. They tend to be dictated by short-term interests. In 2015, a survey was conducted on the members of our University. The report containing the results of the survey was titled “Building a New Future Begins with Reshaping of Universities.” As the report emphasizes, universities should step forward to lead civilizational transitions. In the same vein, Chancellor Inwon Choue of the Kyung Hee University System once stressed, “Education aspiring to a better human society should take on a new scale where it can infuse the learners with the passion and imaginative power required to understand the past, to lead the future, and to nourish leadership in them. Such an education should begin with holistic introspection about the universe, humanity, and the global community.” Likewise, reinventing ourselves as a university committed to creating a better human society for all is dependent on each of you letting your dreams soar and allowing yourself to be fully immersed in learning. College life is a crucial period in anyone’s life. The college life you are embarking on today will be a defining time for you. The four years ahead of you will determine what kind of future you will have down the road. Seth Godin, a world-renowned writer and businessman, exhorts young people to become artists. He said something along the lines of “one needs to break out of his comfort zone and fly high in order to reinvent himself and achieve success, particularly so as we are living in an era that requires bravery, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.” By this definition, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, Joonho Bong, director of the Academy Award winning movie, Parasite, and the K-pop superstars, BTS, are artists. Such artists are also found among us as well. Donghoon Lee, a Kyung Hee student, who benefited many people by developing a Coronavirus warning app, is also an artist. A key objective of our University is to create an environment that allows our students to learn and dream to their heart’s content, so that they can be proud of being members of the university. Kyung Hee is committed to assisting you to the best of its abilities in carving out a greater and better future for yourself. You can benefit from the innovative liberal arts courses offered by Humanitas College, the core courses taught by a competent faculty, the independent student research program, the broad spectrum of international exchanges with foreign universities, the long tradition of volunteer programs, and the highly successful career-preparation programs. All these are waiting for you to tap into. As I said earlier, it will take artists to triumph over “black swans.” We already have a strong tradition of nourishing artists, which is rooted in the spirit of Humanitas. Humanitas defines human nature in future-oriented terms. In other words, Humanitas people are those who keep reinventing themselves and contribute to the invention of future civilizations. Today, you are ready to take flight. As you gear up for a take-off, keep in mind the spirit of Humanitas and the name of Kyung Hee. Aim high and keep your eyes on the horizon. Then, you will be able to ascend with enough strength and vigor and soar long and far. You have 1,400 faculty members, 500 staff members, 29,000 senior students, and 320,000 alumni rooting for you. The end of the COVID-19 pandemic still is not in sight, but I am confident that things will return to normal in due course. In the meantime, our University is doing everything it can to protect your right to receive the highest quality of education we can provide while preparing to welcome you back into a safe learning environment. I wish you all healthy and happy days until we can meet face to face on campus. Thank you.

2020 Commencement Speech    Graduates of 2020. Let me first say congratulations to you all. Today, 4,176 students are graduating with a bachelor’s degree, 1,584 students with a master’s degree, and 224 students with a doctoral degree. Today, you are transiting from being our students to our alumni, with Kyung Hee University being your alma mater. This is a relationship in which the University’s progress will be your pride, and your growth will be the glory of Kyung Hee. While you are the guests of honor today, I also would like to recognize your parents and family members who have enabled and encouraged you to succeed. I wish them health and good luck. It is regrettable that we were unable to hold an actual commencement ceremony as was scheduled for February 19, 2020, due to COVID-19. I was sorry to miss my first opportunity as the President to personally confer degrees on our graduates. However, we are looking into the possibility of holding another ceremony for degree conferment when things have settled down, and we will keep you informed. I appreciate your understanding on this matter. Futurists predict that in the future society lifetime jobs would be a thing of the past, that there would be fewer jobs, while the absolute amount of work that needs to be done would not diminish, and that a person would likely go through three different jobs on average throughout their careers. Choice carries responsibility. This requires you to have a professional mindset and work ethics that will inspire you to give your best in whatever field and job you choose to work in accordance with your specialization and interests. Futurists also stress that in the future society the values you cherish and pursue will be as important as your professional abilities. Whether the jobs you choose are aligned with the values you consider worth pursuing throughout your lifetime, and whether those values lead to positive contributions to the development of yourself, your neighborhood, and your society, will matter the most. In this respect, I urge you to have confidence and pride in the choices you make in your future careers. In the Future University Report 2015, our students named the following four as universal values that the world needs to embrace and practice. First, we will participate in constructing a peaceful human society. Second, we will dedicate ourselves to creating a society free of discrimination. Third, we will forge ahead toward a world in which no child goes to bed hungry. And lastly, we will be part of global efforts to fight climate change. This shows that there is a new educational philosophy and university culture taking root in Kyung Hee, which encourages its students to lead their lives with confidence and pride in themselves no matter what kind of jobs they land and however many jobs they go through. The vision of “Creating a Civilized World” our University has pursued over the past 70 years and its time-honored tradition of “Academe and Peace” are part and parcel of the new philosophy and culture, which you have contributed greatly to establishing during your years with us. With your support, Kyung Hee University, your alma mater, will keep marching forward toward our goal of becoming a “Future University Worthy of its Name,” and “Towards Global Eminence.” Graduates of 2020! I am immensely proud of you. And I encourage you to have pride in yourselves as you are taking flight into the world. Kyung Hee will root for you as you move ahead towards greater possibilities.I wish you all a bright future filled with hope and promise.

"Embarking on an Old, yet New Path for ‘Creating a Civilized World’"  Inaugural Address: 16th President of Kyung Hee University I am pleased to greet you all as the 16th President of Kyung Hee University. I took office as the new President of Kyung Hee University on February 14 following a decision by the Board of Directors of the Kyung Hee University System. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff and faculty who took part in the election process that preceded the Board’s decision. As the new President, I feel a strong sense of responsibility for leading the University toward a greater future; the enormous sense of duty certainly weighs on my shoulder. But I envision myself as a bird taking flight, flapping both wings vigorously, with Kyung Hee’s proud past and our shared vision of a glorious future being the wind that bears my endeavor as I gear up to soar. Since its founding in 1949, Kyung Hee University has built a strong tradition of ‘Academe and Peace’ and pursued a vision of ‘Creating a Civilized World,’ based on intellectual introspection on the history of human civilization. Its founding spirit, proud history, and illustrious heritage have been the unwavering foundation upon which the University has remained while being fully committed to its fundamental responsibilities of education, research, and practice under the key principles of autonomy and accountability. This has enabled us to achieve great success, which in turn has resulted in an impressive rise in the University’s standing as an institution of higher learning over the last decade. All this has greatly boosted our pride in Kyung Hee. A university’s history and heritage as well as its social status and pride shared by its members is the fertile ground in which its culture takes root and grows. Now is the time for our ‘university culture’ to blossom. Today, we are undergoing an earth-shattering shift in the history of human civilization. This presents many challenges. On the one hand, we are facing a host of intractable global problems including climate change, environment destruction, disease and poverty, and inequality and conflict. On the other hand, the rapid development of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence is making the future of humanity increasingly unpredictable. This requires us to reflect once again on the University’s founding principles, history, and heritage and to build a sustainable global community by establishing and practicing universal public values. This is the duty we must take on as an educational institution. As a global leader among world universities, Kyung Hee is again called upon to pool its resources and energy to reinvent itself into a new university worth its name, a university that the future awaits. This requires all of us to step up in fulfilling our public accountability and forging a new, brighter future for the world as an educational establishment and social institution. This cannot be done without financial stability. A strong foundation in finance is critical for a university to fulfill its responsibility of education and research and its social obligations. I will do my utmost to establish a virtuous cycle in which financial stability enhances the University’s status and vice versa. My respected, beloved members of Kyung Hee Community: The University will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2049. As I said earlier, the top priority during my term will be strengthening our financial foundation and elevating the University’s standing in the global community so that that the centennial will be a truly meaningful landmark. I am committed to creating a university that allows all its members to actively tap into their imagination in pursuing their dreams. This will involve designing innovative curricula, developing diverse career-preparation programs for the students, securing sustainable revenue streams, and ensuring fairness and transparency in personnel and administrative management. Ultimately, the university culture we are aspiring towards is one that inspires every member to be involved in cultivating a thriving community of learning. I cannot emphasize sufficiently the importance of us all pulling together and getting involved in advancing Kyung Hee so that it will emerge as an outstanding future-oriented learning institution in the years to come. As President, I will stay firmly committed to the vision of ‘Creating a Civilized World’ and work together with you every step of the way toward that vision on the basis of ‘open’ leadership. I shall never lose sight of these resolutions that I am making in front of you. We have begun the new semester amid the COVID-19 global pandemic which continues to be a grave concern for everyone. In response, we postponed the beginning of the semester by two weeks and have taken every precaution to protect our community from the threat of the epidemic. Guided by what we learned from successfully fighting the MERS outbreak five years ago, the University will do everything in its power to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. I urge all of you, faculty, staff and students, to stay vigilant and to practice personal hygiene and preventive measures to protect yourself against the virus. I wish you all a healthy and bountiful semester. Today is Valentine’s Day. So, I would like to conclude my message by saying, “I love you all.”