John Duncan, director of the UCLA Center for Korean Studies, doubts he would have become a scholar at all if it hadn’t been for his experiences along the Korean demilitarized zone in the late sixties. Stationed there as a 19-year-old American G.I., he remained after his military discharge and was admitted to Korea University in Seoul as the school’s first and — at that time — only U.S. student. He completed a degree in history at a historic time for South Korea: the height of student mobilization against military rule.
Duncan will be honored at the Korean Foundation Award ceremony for painstaking historical scholarship and for a range of activities he refers to as "field-building." He helped to found and he currently chairs the Worldwide Consortium of Korean Studies Centers, a key vehicle for global expansion of the field. In addition, the UCLA Center for Korean Studies is leading an effort to strengthen Korean studies in Latin America. And viewing Korea's past as part of East Asia’s, Duncan collaborates with historians of China, Japan and Vietnam on topics such as regional intellectuals' responses to Confucianism.
Read more at UCLA Today.
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