LLM Student Spends Summer Working for Korea Green Foundation's Climate Change Center

Ji Yeon Seo, a prospective December 2009 LLM graduate, had an amazing experience this past summer working for a South Korean NGO focusing on climate change.

Ms. Seo, who studied law in South Korea before coming to DU in 2008 to pursue her LLM degree, worked for the Climate Change Center, which is part of the country's most well known environmental NGO Korea Green Foundation.

I'll let Ms. Seo tell her story...

This past summer, I had an internship in Korea for five weeks. It was a really great opportunity to explore how Korean society deals with climate change, the most urgent environmental challenge that the world faces.

On the first day of my internship a graduation ceremony of the 3rd Climate Change Leadership Program was held. About 50 people had completed their course work and received certificates from the Climate Change Leadership Program. It was a 10-week course, where leading scholars and experts from Korea and abroad provided a high quality education about climate change. Most participants were members of the National Assembly, ministers of the government, professors, CEOs of companies and state-sponsored institutions, and legal experts. To date, about 180 people have completed this program and are now working as climate leaders in their fields. On September, the 4th Program began.

On my third day, the opening ceremony of the climate change exhibition was held. The Korea Green Foundation held the exhibition in collaboration with American Museum of Natural History in New York. This is the most ambitious project of this year aimed at educating people, especially children and students, and to make people aware of the seriousness of climate change. I also worked at the Science Museum, where the exhibition is being held. I enjoyed this experience, interacting with others who were visiting the exhibition, instead of staying in an office. So far, more than 170,000 people have visited the exhibition.

I was also actively involved in the Strategic Programme Fund during my internship. The UK Department of Foreign Affairs provided funding to educate Korean business leaders. The Climate Change Center is the main body carrying out the project. We introduced the program to business leaders and encouraged them to join this program. On June 25, the opening ceremony of the SPF was held and the British Ambassador to South Korea delivered the keynote speech in Korean. (I was so impressed and his Korean was so beautiful). The first meeting will be 14 September. There will be four forums per year (in total eight meetings over two years), where climate experts and government officials will discuss climate change in depth. We have published the first monthly-newsletters in May for the participants and my article about U.S. efforts to combat climate change (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) was reported in the newsletter.

Finally, I had a really great opportunity to attend the 2009 Global Environmental Forum in Songdo, Korea. It was held August 11-12, and the theme was Global Environmental Outlook and Low-Carbon Green Growth toward Sustainable Development in the 21th Century. Many climate experts provided their insight and advice.

The most impressive aspect of my internship involved the people I worked with. They care passionately about the natural environment. For instance, they do not use paper cups, plastic plates and wooden chopsticks; they use public transportation to travel to work; they use environment-friendly and energy-saving products even though those products are not cheap. They are on the very front line in the battle over climate change and many other environmental problems that we face. I was very impressed with their efforts, and as a consequence I have tried to change my attitude and life-style.

In closing, I am so lucky to have had the chance to meet these people and work together with them this past summer. It was a really great opportunity to explore how Korean society is dealing with climate change, which is the most urgent environmental challenge the world faces.

Ji Yeon Yeon Seo
September 9, 2009