When Georgia State University President Mark Becker and Geo Suk Suh, then-president of Chonbuk National University based in Jeonju, Korea, signed on Oct. 17, 2013, a memorandum of cooperation to promote education and research there was no mention of flash mobs.
The agreement was pretty straightforward: “to establish and encourage mutually beneficial scientific, technological, educational and other relations…” between the two research institutions each with more than 30,000 students.
In keeping with the agreement, the 100 Korean students who arrived on the GSU campus in January at the beginning of the semester for the 4-week program did attend non-credit seminars taught on campus by Georgia State professors and Chonbuk faculty.
They were divided into three groups according to their academic concentrations at home: international development, social policy and culture.
Seminars for the students enrolled in the cultural category attended lectures on history, culture and media, while those in international development and social policy attended lectures on development, political science, economics, non-governmental organizations and social policy.
With Korean pop culture cascading around the world, however, there was no way that the culture students were going to be limited to classroom activities.
A Korea festival, also known as the Hangul Festival, provided the cultural students an opportunity to expose their GSU counterparts to a wide variety of Korean arts and crafts, and several Korean movies were shown on campus.
For the wider Atlanta public, the students organized several flash mobs on campus and nearby Hurt Park performing a variety of dances including those in the “gangnam style” that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam District of Seoul. The song and its accompanying music video went viral in August 2012 and has been viewed on YouTube more tthan 2 billion times.
Besides experiencing GSU and Atlanta, the students traveled to Plains where they attended a service at the Maranatha Baptist Church and met with former President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter.
During a farewell ceremony held at GSU’s Rialto Center for the Arts, Bok-ryeol Rhyou, Korea’s deputy consul general based in Atlanta, praised the students for their activities outside as well as inside of the classrooms.
“The opportunities presented to all participants in programs such as this cannot be found in the ordinary classroom,” she said.
“The exposure to new ideas and innovation as seen through the eyes of participants from many backgrounds and differing cultures allows all participants a broader view of the world around them. The exchange of ideas within a classroom setting further develops each student’s potential as a future community leader.”
At the ceremony, You Tae Pueong Yang, one of the students, performed a solo Pansori song, a genre of Korean musical storytelling in appreciation of their stay at the university.
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