IPE Summer Research Grant awarded to Kyungin Kim

Congratulations to Kyungin Kim (IPE ’18) for being awarded a 2017 IPE Summer Research Grant! Kim is an international student who grew up in Seoul, Korea, and Shanghai, China. She decided to come to the US for college to explore and broaden her education, and she specifically chose to study International Political Economy at UPS because “I believe that all global events result from combinations of economic, political, and social forces, and therefore, these subjects should be studied in relation to one another.” Her region of interest is China, and some of her favorite scholars in academia are Atul Kohli, Ha-Joon Chang, and Edward Said. Her long-term goal is to eventually become a professor in the field of international relations or public health.

For her summer research project, she will be traveling to Jeju Island in Korea, where a skyrocketing number of Chinese investors have been pouring money into the local real estate market. This trend has been apparent since February 2010, when the local Jeju government’s immigration policy changed to allow foreign investors who maintain 500 million or more won’s worth of real estate for five years to personally qualify for a green card. Through ethnographic and textual research, Kim will assess the socioeconomic consequences of the property-purchasing trends among Chinese investors in Jeju Island, and determine whether the locals’ claims that the Chinese are launching a “modern-day territorial invasion” is legitimate or based or their constructed fear.