My teaching and research center on Korea's ICT sector and its role in national development (ICT4D) and include executive training as well as work with both undergraduates and graduate students. From 2012 through mid-2014 I taught at KAIST in Daejon and during the 2013-14 academic year was a Visiting Scholar (nonresident) at the University of Southern California's Korean Studies Institute.
This blog originated in late 2007 in connection with my work as Deputy Director of the Fulbright Commission, responsible for the organization's networks and technology and to serve as an "electronic scrapbook" in connection with a new book I was writing with Dr. Myung Oh on the role of ICT in Korea's socioeconomic development. With this nation's continued digital development and global engagement over the years, it has become much more than the "scrapbook" I envisioned. To maximize your benefit from perusal of this blog, I strongly encourage you to follow my own practice: use the "Search this blog" feature in the right hand column, and also the chronological blog archive, to find the topics or posts you're looking for!
Many of the interests and activities reflected in this blog date from my first experience here as an American Peace Corps Volunteer in 1971 and 1972. I taught English at Kangwon National University and through the experience learned something new about Korea and its culture every day. The Peace Corps experience strongly influenced my choice of a graduate school and overall career path. After completing my Ph.D. in Communication at Stanford University I returned to Korea as a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 1985-86, teaching in Yonsei University's Mass Communication Department. By that time the 1988 Olympics were approaching and revolutionary developments were underway in South Korea's ICT sector. Research on the role of television in the Olympics and later on Korea's telecommunications development led to several publications, including those listed below.
TO CONTACT ME, please use the web form at this link and for more detail about my background and current activity see www.jamesflarson.com.) Sincerely, Jim Larson.
(With Heung-Soo Park) Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympics. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993.
The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea (Oxford University Press, 1995). At the time this book was published I was involved in designing and directing a major executive training program for Korea Mobile Telecom (which became SK Telecom) at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Thanks to another special grant from the Fulbright Commission in 1995 I co-authored (with Mel Gurtov and Robert R. Swartout, Jr.) Korea's Amazing Century: From Kings to Satellites. Seoul: Korea Fulbright Foundation and the Korean-American Educational Commission, 1996. I wrote Part Three of the book, "Korea Enters the Information Age," p. 127 ff. In the Fall of 1996 I returned to Korea, and to Fulbright, where I would serve for the next fourteen years as Associate and later Deputy Director of the Fulbright Commission in Seoul.
In recent years I have gotten back in touch with a number of scholars, researchers and policymakers in Korea's ICT sector, most notably Dr. Oh Myung, with whom I co-authored Digital Development in Korea: Building an Information Society. (Routledge, 2011) My work with him on that book, more than any other single factor, motivated me to start this blog in late 2007.
In January of 2012 just before moving to KAIST, I wrote and published a short e-book entitled Telecommunications and Transformation in Korea: A Personal Perspective. Unlike my scholarly publications, this is a personal account and was not peer-reviewed. It is a work-in-progress and gave me an interesting insight into publishing with Kindle.