James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies
We are proud to announce that Matthew Kelemen, an active member of the undergraduate Korean Studies community at Penn, has been awarded an extremely competitive Fulbright grant to pursue a graduate degree in Korean Studies from a Korean university. To learn more about this grant, visit the Fulbright website here.
Matthew Kelemen is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences from Ridgefield, Connecticut majoring in East Asian Area Studies and minoring in Political Science. He is writing his senior honor's thesis on the rupture in how early Modern Korean historiography considers women's agency. He has spent considerable time at Penn studying and working on Korea-related issues, studying at Sogang University in Seoul this past summer and previously working as the Vice-President of Penn for Liberty in North Korea. Outside of the classroom, he works as a Penn Anti-Violence Educator (PAVE) and was formerly the Editor in Chief of Under the Button and on the Board of Directors for The Daily Pennsylvanian. With his grant, he plans to attend Yonsei University, where he will study the contemporary US-ROK alliance and how it has adapted to growing security threats in the region. He applied to this special Fulbright grant to increase his Korean language skills and to learn the Korean perspective on the alliance by working with Korean academics. After his Fulbright grant, he plans to enroll in law school in the States and pursue a career in Korea-focused foreign policy.