Meet Our 2021 Feminist Korea Peace Fellows
April 7, 2021
Posted in: News
We’re excited to announce the recipients of Women Cross DMZ’s inaugural Feminist Korea Peace Fellowship!
We were floored by the number of people (171!) who applied from all over the world. While there were many qualified applicants, unfortunately we could only select 11 fellows. As you’ll read below, they are an exceptional group of young people dedicated to creating peace on the Korean Peninsula.
For the next six months, the fellows will learn about various issues pertaining to the Korea peace movement from longtime organizers, scholars, and advocates. We’ll be sharing more about them and their work in the coming months.
Julie Sunyoung Chung (she/hers) was born and raised in Los Angeles, California before attending schools in New England. She grew up frequenting her grandparents’ acupuncture and Korean herbal medicine clinic in Koreatown, and she is now passionate about healing. She seeks to hold conversations about the intersections between health, food sovereignty, decolonization, anti-militarism, and environmentalism. She loves writing, exploring tide pools, eating seasonally, learning medicine, watching queer shows, and attempting to learn the guitar every year.
Stella Soyoung Chung (she/hers) is a diasporic Korean who was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Southern California and received the U.S. Fulbright Award in 2017 to teach at Wonkwang Girls’ High School in Iksan, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea. She currently works at the Durfee Foundation, supporting extraordinary leaders in Los Angeles. She also serves as co-chair of the LA API Giving Circle and on the steering committee of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy-LA. She is interested in the role that storytelling, language, and imagination can play in building mass power and change, especially in the movement for peace on the Korean Peninsula. In her free time, she sings karaoke (alone), cries (a lot) while learning about the Korean War, translates articles for the feminist journal Ilda, and plays with her dog Ruby.
Oscar Escobar is the Director of Events & Advocacy at Re’Generation Movement where he has helped organize programming featuring various Korea peace advocates, experts, professors, and North Korean defectors. He is a graduate of Emory University, previously spending a semester abroad in Seoul where he learned about the Korea Peace Now! campaign, and was a participant in last year’s Virtual Advocacy Week. As a fellow, Oscar is looking forward to bringing in these experiences to advocate for peace-building initiatives on the Korean peninsula and beyond.
drawn between silence/sound, d. haejin bang’s interdisciplinary and community work is currently based within tongva land (los angeles) and korea. a current recipient of the fulbright research grant, d. haejin’s focus is on ‘embodied silences,’ a cartography of collective intergenerational trauma, by exploring the affects of sound tied to voice/body/silence. through the practice, performance, and archiving of 판소리/ p’ansori, their goal is to both explore and create multidisciplinary resources with and for other diasporic/korean folks looking to learn more about indigenous corean music, histories, and philosophies. their main focus underlines gaps and the interjacent: How can we better listen?
[dhaejinbang.com]
Ben Kim is a 2nd gen queerean from LA currently based in the pacific northwest. They are an artist, musician, organizer, and educator who dreams every day for peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula and around the world. They are a member of @han_soom on Instagram and can be found on twitter at @hommegranate.
Hannah Lee is a Benjamin Franklin Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania from the greater Seattle area, planning to double major in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) and Psychology with minors in Music and Asian American Studies. Her research interests include equity in public education and institutions of global governance, but when she isn’t engaged with either, you can find her in her community, organizing for various activism and justice oriented groups on campus and at home (…or in a practice room, recording for the various virtual ensembles she is a part of). In addition to being a part of the Feminist Korea Peace Fellowship, she is a member of the Korea Peace Now! Generation Peace affinity group.
Carol Li was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii with ancestral ties to China and Korea. She uses she/her pronouns. In 2017 she graduated from Willamette University with a BA in Civic Communications & Media and minors in Sociology and American Ethnic Studies. It was during her time in university where she developed her passion for social justice and co-founded the campus’s Asian Coalition for Equality. After graduation, she went onto teaching English abroad in China, Hong Kong, and South Korea to learn more about where her family came from. During her time abroad, she was a Co-Host and Communications Associate for #impact Podcast and a tutor for Freedom Speakers International. After learning more about different geopolitical conflicts in Asia, Carol is now back in her hometown as an East-West Center Graduate Degree Fellow pursuing a Master’s in Asian International Affairs and Graduate Certificate in Conflict Resolution. Her interests center around transnational bridgebuilding and peacebuilding efforts in the Asia-Pacifc region and hopes to contribute to a better world for us all.
Instagram: @sweetcarolli YouTube: @iamcarol
Jae Hwan Lim is a politically driven artist-activist focusing on human rights and the struggles for democracy in the Korean Peninsula. Researching history and current issues in the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Lim creates social practices, installations, and performances that illuminate violence and inequality in society and politics. Lim is currently working on (Co)-rea, a long-term social practice project that experiences the physical and ideological borders between states and people of and from the Korean Peninsula. Collaborating with Koreans internationally, he works to find the political meaning of being Korean in contemporary society. With his dissertation “Collaborating Society: Art-Activism for Divided Korea,” Lim holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Area from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Giboom Park is a published author, activist, and editor currently triple majoring in political science, international studies, and history at Northwestern University. Park is a strong feminist with a desire to elevate the status of AAPI women past the narrow constraints of prejudice and stereotype. Her work explores the influence of journalism on societal change, the impact of grassroots organizations in creating support and organization for AAPI communities, and the conscious deconstruction of the impacts of Asian fetishization. Aside from her passion for writing and advocacy, Giboom can be found watercolor painting, practicing her five languages, or taking intermittent naps with her cat. Instagram: @notyouryellowfantasy
Eju Ro is a freshman at Stanford from Seoul hoping to pursue sociology. As a Korean woman from an international school background, she is passionate about how a feminist approach can reshape our understanding of the (ongoing) war and transgenerational trauma on the peninsula. In her free time, Eju loves to have picnics with friends, explore Seoul’s best food spots, and rewatch BoJack Horseman. She is looking forward to finding community through this opportunity! (Instagram: @eju.ro)
Beka Yang is a second/third-generation diasporic Korean who will be graduating this spring with a B.A. in Ethnic Studies and Psychology. Since 2018, she has been involved in organizing mental health and community care resources with the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (@amornetwork), and she is active member of the feminist Asian/American student group Brown Asian Sisters Empowered (@asiansistersempowered). In her free time, she enjoys sharing meals with friends, trying to reach her annual goodreads challenge, and bothering her cat Ginger. Beka lives in Providence, Rhode Island and will be entering the field of mental health care upon graduation.
