Refugee and Migrant Youth Education and Legacies of War – 2025

Overview

During two months of engagement work in South Korea, students will work in several educational facilities for migrant/refugee communities. The work will focus on various issues such as education, adjustment, and other well-being concerns of the community members. This program engages with both the challenges and opportunities arising from shifting demographics and the changing fabric of South Korean society, and the impact on refugees and migrants from Russia, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, North Korea and elsewhere. The program focuses on engaging with the everyday realities of a rapidly changing social dynamic, recognizing and understanding the complexity of the situation and working towards building friendships and lasting relationships of mutual transformation for Duke students and community members.

The program was established from the program directors’ community networks in South Korea over decades of living and working in the country. The program was created with the recognition that mutual understanding and benefits could be achieved through building lasting connections between local communities and Duke students by sharing curriculum and programmatic resources and interests.

Community Partnerships

Students will devote most of their time to serving as a group in two main sites, both located in the capital city of Seoul:

• Jiguchon School, a school for immigrant children (3-4 weeks)
  Activities: designing and running an English immersion program for elementary school children; after-school tutoring of middle school students. Dates: June 11-July 10 (subject to change). In Jiguchon School, students will spend approximately 3-4 hours for class preparation and 4-5 classroom contact hours each day, contributing to the school’s teaching and extracurricular activities – sports, language and arts, computer skills, and so on – conducted in English.
• Haneulkkum School and Banseok School (3-4 weeks)
  Activities: helping prepare for GED (General Education Diploma) test, participating and developing activities for engaging with North Korean refugee communities. Dates: July10-Aug 11 (subject to change).

Program Requirements

Language: Students from diverse backgrounds, interests, and linguistic competence will be considered.

Pre-departure meetings: All students selected as finalists are required to attend meetings in person during the spring semester and a one-day workshop prior to departure.

Coursework:All students are required to take the course AMES 372 Two Koreas in the spring semester before the summer engagement. Students are also encouraged to take a related course such as relevant languages after the progam (see a list of sample courses below). A statement of such intent is expected in the application.

Skills: Ability to excite young children, teenagers and young adults and work with others. Ability to engage in creative, cultural and social activities such as music, performance, arts and sports; generating digital film and media content; basic camera operation; blogging; and photo editing/layout.

Personal qualities: Enthusiasm, empathy, and open-mindedness toward understanding new communities and cultural and social inequalities and differences.

Logistics

Housing meals, and transportation: Students will live in an extended stay hotel, with two people per room. The hotel is close to a public transportation hub for easy commuting to service sites. Subway trains run very frequently and a one-way trip (with transfer) takes approximately an hour. The hotel is equipped with essential amenities including electricity, internet access, and a bathroom with a shower in each room.

Local safety, security, and cultural norms: We encourage students who have questions or concerns about health or safety in international programs to check Duke’s International SOS (ISOS) portal for relevant information. If you have special needs related to health, culture, disability, or religious practices, please contact the program director(s) or the DukeEngage office to discuss whether your needs can be accommodated in this program.

For guidance on how race, religion, sexual/gender identity, ability, or other aspects of identity might impact your travels, we suggest exploring the Diversity, Identity and Global Travel section of the DukeEngage website.

Academic Connections

This program is open to all, and might be of particular interest to students studying migration, multilingualism, education of minoritized groups, and human rights issues and/or the histories and contemporary societies of Asia broadly defined and U.S.-Asia relations. Students interested in careers in education, language planning and ideology, public policy, government, human rights, and social services may benefit from this program. Our alumni have successfully entered many of these career paths.

Suggested courses to take before or after participating in this program include the following. Many courses are cross-listed in various departments. Consult program leaders with questions about other relevant courses.

• Migration and Human Rights in Korea (AMES)
• Two Koreas (AMES)
• Archiving and Visualizing Asia (AMES)
• Interethnic Intimacies (AMES)
• World of Korean Cinema (AMES)
• Rethinking Asia and Middle East (AMES 195)
• Bilingualism (AMES)
• Korean Sociolinguistics (AMES)
• Second Language Pedagogy (AMES)
• Languages, Margins, Borders: Representations, Practices, and Policies (LINGUIST 125FS)
• Racial Attitudes, Racial Prejudice, and Racial Politics (POLSCI 238)
• Refugees, Rights, Resettlement (ETHICS 199)
• Family Rights/Human Rights (HISTORY 389)
• Children, Schools and Society (PUBPOL 243)
• Global Inequality and Research (ECON 436)
• Korean or Chinese language courses