2010 FIFA World CUP in Korea

Because we study in South Korea, we all cheered for South Korea. People from all over the world, were cheering for South Korea, when they had to play. When your own country had to play, you would cheer for your own country.

I remember the day that South Korea had to play again Greece. 12th of June 2010. It was the day that I celebrated my Birthday. Ofcourse it was full of people, everyone was dressed in red and cheered for Korea. At the end of the match, the people in the bar went crazy. 2-0 for South korea…This was one of the most amazing moments I have seen in my life.
It was quite an experience to be here in South Korea during the World Cup and see the citizens of South Korea being a really active supporter of their country ☺.

When the Netherlands played in the World Cup, I start organizing events to cheer for the Dutch team. It was amazing, almost everyone came in the color Orange. The Koreans were sooo excited to see the Netherlands playing. Ofcourse they have good memories of the Dutch with soccer…if you think about Guus Hiddink ☺





Some background
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010. The bidding process for hosting the tournament finals was open only to African nations; in 2004, the international football federation, FIFA, selected South Africa over Egypt and Morocco to become the first African nation to host the finals.
The matches were played in ten stadiums in nine host cities around the country, with the final played at the Soccer City stadium in South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg. Thirty-two teams were selected for participation via a worldwide qualification tournament that began in August 2007. In the first round of the tournament finals, the teams competed in round-robin groups of four teams for points, with the top two teams in each group proceeding. These sixteen teams advanced to the knockout stage, where three rounds of play decided which teams would participate in the final.
In the final, Spain, the European champions, defeated third-time finalists the Netherlands 1–0 after extra time, with Andrés Iniesta's goal in the 116th minute giving Spain their first world title, the first time that a European nation has won the tournament outside its home continent. Host nation South Africa, 2006 world champions Italy and 2006 runners-up France were eliminated in the first round of the tournament.

SKKU Summer School G20

SKKU Summer School 2010 G20

In a previous post (http://anathuong.blogspot.com/2010/05/g20-in-korea-2010.html) I have written about the G20 in Korea. SKKU Summer School organized a Global Student Forum about the G20, where students can state their opinion and facts about their topic that will be discussed during the G20 Korea.

Topic introduction:
The G-20 was created as a response both to the financial crisis of the late 1990s.,and to a growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion, and the organization had been criticized – often heavily – by several other international interest groups, organizations, and governments. With this in mind, the ISS 2010 Global Student Forum aims to address topics that are important for today’s globalised society, and in relation to the roles of organizations like the G20.


The program of the Global Student Forum was;
1. Welcome by the Vice President Jun Young Kim of SKKU
2. Opening remarks by 3 professors;
a. Professor Charles Hampden Turner on Current dilemmas facing global society
b. Professor Caecilia van Peski on Human rights and democraxy support
c. Prodessor Andrea Insch on Learning from the crisis

3. Student Presentations topics
a. Regulating the global financial system; defining the role for the IMF, World Bank, and Bretton Woods, post crisis
b. Corporate social responsibility and future stability
c. The emergence of global-local governance strategies – it there a future for the Nation State?
d. Unsafe at home and unwanted anywhere else – the challenges faced by minorities, the marginalised, and the displaced
e. Defining your generation. Growing up in a globalised era.
4. Professors evaluation of the student presentations
5. Closing mark byProfessor Thomas Christiansen

Sungkyunkwan University Summer School 2010

Sorry for the late blog. I have been busy with Summer School

This is 2nd time I am joining Sungkyunkwan University Summer School. 2 years ago was the first one and now 2010 it was the 3rd one. The program that SKKU offers is very good. The courses are interesting, the program is educative but also a lot of fun. There are many different nationalities, Dutch, German, Chinese, Korean, Americans, French and many more.

Hereby about my University, the Summer School

http://summer.skku.edu/



The theme of our 2008 SKKU International Summer Semester focused on the synergy of ¡®Culture, Business and Technology in East Asia¡¯. This was followed by our 2009 SKKU International Summer Semester which involved defining the fundamental issues around ¡®Sustainable GlobalProsperity¡¯. Future International Summer Semesters will build on these foundations while continuing on the path of becoming a center of thought-leadership and diversity within both East Asia and globally.
The 2009 SKKU International Summer Semester on ¡®Sustainable Global Prosperity¡¯ enrolled over 600 students from 41 countries and 96 universities. Our professors were recruited from world-class universities. Faculty and students had the opportunity to debate and define currentissues of this theme. Overall, our program was highly successful.
Ironically, the 2009 SKKU International Summer Semester theme of ¡®Sustainable Global Prosperity¡¯ was chosen a year in advance of the worst economic crisis since the ¡®Great Depression¡¯ of the 1930¡¯s. Certainly, the very idea of sustainable prosperity became an important one for our students who were confronted with the reality of diminished traditional opportunities. In spite of this, what emerged across this diverse and global student group was a sense of hopefulness, passion and quality of intellect.
We are beginning to see signs of economic recovery albeit weak. However, given the severity of the economic downturn and the predicted slow pace of recovery, this issue is likely to remain an area of great concern for the near to medium-term. This is mostly related to the need for global society to find alternative paths to prosperity, as we should not repeat past mistakes. Therefore, we have decided to pursue the timely and important theme of ¡®Recovery and Prosperity: Post Crisis and New Future¡¯ for our 2010 SKKU International Summer Semester.

The 2010 International Summer Semester at Sungkyunkwan University is unique in that this is the only summer program in Korea to focus on the theme of ¡®Recovery and Prosperity: Post Crisis and New Future.¡¯ We will offer participating students the chance to understand the local, regional, and global interplay involved in shaping the problems and opportunities that confront global society in the post crisis era. Our ultimate intent is to deliver to our students a world class program which is recognized as being internationally competitive.
Of course, presenting an integrated perspective remains a core goal of our program as it did in our previous summer semesters. This will be achieved through our professors¡¯ commitment to approaching problems from an interdisciplinary perspective and context based analysis on the main theme ¡®Recovery and Prosperity: Post Crisis and New Future,¡¯ and the 5 sub-themes: ¡®Recovery,¡¯ ¡®Post Crisis,¡¯ ¡®Prosperity,¡¯ ¡®The Future,¡¯ and ¡®East Asia.¡¯ Such a perspective is necessary given the fact that the post crisis¡¯ dilemmas severely threatening the prosperity of global society do not fit within the confines any one discipline.
In both the 2008 and 2009 International Summer Semesters, we actively sought to encourage diversity amongst our students and faculty. In doing so we created a learning context that allowed students to understand first hand how diversity can lead to new ideas if harnessed properly. Given the cultural dimension of problems facing global society, we will again seek to increase the level of diversity both to enhance cultural awareness and to understand its role in shaping the various dilemmas we face.