Education

Doctoral Fellow, History, Graduate School of East Asian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, October 2021 – present.

• DAAD-GSSP Fellow (until September 2025).
• Current Research Project: “Self-reliance Internationalism: North Korean ‘Non-Aligned’ Diplomacy and Cooperation with Tanzania in the Postcolonial Cold War (1965–1991),” supervised by Prof. Dr. Jessica Gienow-Hecht (John F. Kennedy Institute) and Prof. Dr. Eun-Jeung Lee (Institute of Korean Studies, Freie Universität Berlin).

Master of Arts, Global Studies, Erasmus Mundus Master in “Global Studies – A European Perspective”, Leipzig University (Germany) and the University of Vienna (Austria), October 2019 – September 2021.

• Master’s Thesis: “Provincializing “1968”: The Emergence of New Political Subjects and Social Movements in South Korea (1988–1997).” (Awarded the Best Master’s Thesis 2021)
• Honors: Best EMGS Graduate 2021

Bachelor of Arts and Economics, History and Economics (Double degree), Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea, February 2014 – August 2019.

• Honors: Summa Cum Laude

Grants and Scholarships:

• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Graduate School Scholarship Programme. October 2021 – September 2025.
• Erasmus Mundus Scholarship. October 2019 – September 2021.
• Sogang University, Sogang Research Grant, c. 850 €, November 2018.

Research Experience:

• Visiting Research Fellow, Critical Global Studies Institute, Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea, April 2023 – June 2023.
• Visiting Research Student, King’s College London, January – March 2023.
• Research Assistant, Critical Global Studies Institute, Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea, August 2018 – August 2019.

2024/25 Winter Semester, Co-teaching Assistant, Freie Unversität Berlin, Research Practice in Global East Asia, Tutorial for first-year master’s students.

2024 Korean Studies Summer School, Teaching Assistant, Korea-Europe Center, Institute of Korean Studies, Freie Unversität Berlin, Fieldtrip in South Korea (Gangwon Province, August 19–27, 2024).

Seung Hwan’s research, “Self-reliance Internationalism: North Korean ‘Non-Aligned’ Diplomacy and Cooperation with Tanzania in the Postcolonial Cold War (1965–1991),” explores how and why North Korea established diplomatic relations and maintained economic cooperation with Tanzania in the context of the Cold War and decolonization. This study revisits the two countries’ friendship and collaboration as an attempt to survive confrontations between and engagements of the Cold War patrons like the US, the Soviet Union, and the PRC. Unlike previous studies on North Korea-Third World relations that highlighted inter-Korean competition for legitimacy in the United Nations and the instrumentalization of the personality cult, this research sheds light on different aspects, such as their search for “recognition” in diplomacy and international organizations, visualization of modernized agriculture to promote development, and on-site cooperation to realize the idea of self-reliance. To illustrate the idea behind their cooperation, this study introduces the concept of “Self-reliance Internationalism,” which describes the efforts of postcolonial nations to survive in the Cold War confrontation without relying on the foreign aid provided by the superpowers. Their diplomatic, cultural, and economic exchanges shaped a foundation to seek collective self-reliance, which was a significant objective of the Global South to compete with neoliberal globalization and the growing dominance of transnational organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Research Experience

Visiting Scholar, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington D.C., the United States of America, September 2024 – November 2024.

 Visiting Research Fellow, Critical Global Studies Institute, Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea, April 2023 – June 2023.

 Visiting Research Student, King’s College London, the United Kingdom, January 2023 – March 2023.

Research Interests

• Cold War History
• History of the Global South and South-South Cooperation
• North Korea’s Cultural Diplomacy
• Korea-Africa Relations
• Development and Modernity

• “Using Public Spaces to Forge National Unity in North Korea.” In History in Public Space, edited by Joanna Wojdon, Dorota Wiśniewska (New York: Routledge, 2024), 64–81. DOI: 10.4324/9781003366348-5.
• “Between Second and Third World: North Korean Use of “Imagined Affinity” in the Socialist Globalization Project with Regard to Tanzania.” Comparativ 33, no. 3 (2023): 359–376. https://www.comparativ.net/v2/article/view/3390.
• “North Korean Engagement in Africa during the Cold War: A Survey of Recent Historiographical Analyses.” Korea Europe Review 2 (June 2022). DOI: 10.48770/ker.2022.no2.13.