PSPD in English Archive 2001-04-03   1693

Introduction to Sungkonghoe University NGO programme

Introduction to Sungkonghoe University NGO programme


Short History

The Department of NGO Studies at Sungkonghoe University was founded in 1998 to offer postgraduate training in the NGO field. The first entrants to this accredited postgraduate course were received in the spring of 1999. The instant success of the program both in terms of the number of registered students and of publicity that it has garnered is testimony to the fact that there had been a reservoir of needs for retraining volunteer activists in the NGO sector.

Many observers agree that the year 1987 was a watershed in the history of civil society in Korea; it was in that year that the military dictatorship that had ruled the country since the early 1960s started to give way, over a period, to civilian rule based on democratic principles. The explosive expansion of civil society in terms of size and variety that ensued is remarkable by any standard. According to statistics the majority of voluntary organizations in the third sector existing today in Korea have been created since the late 1980s.

Remarkable though it was, the sudden growth of the sector has made the need for providing activists and practitioners with more structured training urgent. During the decade of this expansion, apart from some in-house training organized by established civil society groups and some adult-continuing education courses open to the public, there were few places providing such education in a more systematic way, to say nothing of formal education in a university setting.


It was to this opportunity and need that the Sungkonghoe University has responded by establishing the Department of NGO Studies. The title of the department itself is an indicator of the degree to which such efforts were taken seriously: while respecting the long tradition of grass-roots’ struggle for democracy, the course was also seen as a way of ‘rationalizing’ diverse forms of voluntary activities. It is worth mentioning that the major credit for establishing a departmental base for NGO studies should go to the pioneering works of the staff members from the Faculty of Social Sciences.



The department is a unique academic institution in many ways. Not only is it the first university institution of its kind in Korea, but it has been at the forefront of bridging the world of practitioners with that of scholars. In some way the department was a product of the collective endeavor on the part of civil society. From the planning stage onwards advice of the voluntary sector has been actively sought, and every effort has been made to ensure that the actual need of activists and practitioners would be reflected in the curriculum and running of the department. In fact many prominent figures within the sector have agreed to serve as governors and external advisers for the department. The result is a unique collaboration of academia and the voluntary sector in creating an academic course whose raison d’etre was to singularly promote and facilitate the development of civil society.

Since its inception the Department has generated keen interest from both academia and the public alike. Inquiries about the course have been made from as far afield as America. Numerous news stories have covered the birth of the department under a positive light; for example, the Hankyoreh Daily described it as being “one of the most significant academic innovations in recent years”. Applications for the course have consistently outnumbered the number of places offered. Not only have students been drawn from voluntary organizations, but some have directly sought a place in it as a postgraduate study program in its own right. In time other universities in Korea have followed suit by establishing courses related to civil society activities. Situated as it is within the Graduate School of Civil Society and Welfare, the focal point of the department is a Masters’ course in NGO studies.

Aims of the Course

The aim of the degree course is as follows:

1) to make students familiar with the current debates on NGO activities around the world, which include the globalizing world, development, and empowerment;

2) to help students theorize, in a social scientific manner, about what they may already have acquired in their own NGO activities; and

3) to equip students with necessary skills in the NGO field which will place them ahead for today’s radically changing world.

The course has been designed so as to strike a balance between theory and practice. Every subject taught in the course is carefully vetted by a panel of experts comprising social scientists and NGO activists in their relevant field. While accepting that the degree course is mainly for providing practitioners with some advanced practical techniques of the sector, we aim to make sure that the student will be appropriately versed in theoretical analysis as well, using up-to-date frameworks and analytical tools.

Furthermore the system of Teaching Quality Assurance (TQA) is applied to various aspects of the course to safeguard the quality of teaching and learning. In every term all of the students have a chance to talk to their individual tutors over issues such as courses taken, progress of study, overseas internship, and the schedule for writing their dissertation.

In addition, the wide-ranging representation of NGOs among the student body will enable students to establish a powerful network of contacts which would be hard to achieve elsewhere. A wide variety of NGOs of different issue areas and working methods are represented in the student body, whose number is currently over sixty. Past experience shows that the very fact that activists of various NGOs get together in one place tends to create an intellectually challenging and constructive environment. The students are actively encouraged to hold an annual workshop of their own choice during the winter vacation. There are some private study groups of students who have organized themselves around a particular issue area or an academic interest. In a nutshell, our students are expected to become knowledgeable and forward-looking leaders of the NGO community in the future.

Masters’ Degree in NGO Studies



The Masters’ program, as in the case of most other vocational-type postgraduate degree programs, requires strenuous full-time study for five academic terms. The terms can be taken straight without interruption or, if necessary, be taken with an interlude between the terms. Part-time studies are not provided for in this course. There is a ceiling of credits the student can take at any one term; students are able to take up to ten points, beyond which extra points are not added up to the final sum of required credits, which is currently 28. Upon successful completion of the program an MA Degree in NGO Studies may be awarded.

The degree program normally consists of course work and submission of a dissertation. But the student, if they so choose, may be able to earn the degree by submitting a research report instead of a dissertation, a shorter version of the latter. In this case, an extra six points must be taken up before the student is given permission to submit the report. Both the dissertation and the research report are examined by external as well as internal examiners. The course work elements are in turn divided into two parts: compulsory and optional. 

Compulsory subjects in the course work include social theory & social movement, and international NGOs. 

Optional courses include:

NGO management, volunteer work, fund raising, NPO management, and policy process for voluntary organization;
contemporary labor issues, social economy, and co-operative movement; human rights and society, international human rights law, peace and conflict resolution, environment and policy, modern feminist theory, and ecology; and
dissertation writing seminar.

Internship abroad program

On top of the above the student may opt for an internship at a voluntary organization abroad for one term. This is called an ‘internship term’ where the student is affiliated with an international NGO to learn the workings of an overseas NGO. The internship program has been envisaged as an integral part of the postgraduate degree program. 


The purpose of the program is three-fold: 

1) to expose the participating students to an international setting in order to broaden their perspectives in inter-cultural & inter-social affairs;

2) to give students an opportunity to work in an overseas organization and to work on networking with grass-roots activists in the host country; and

3) to train students in using English language as a way of preparing them for future collaboration with international civil society.

The Department is in discussions at the moment with the LOCOA, a Filipino NGO, with a view to organizing an arrangement for an internship program in the Philippines. The students taking part in this program will come from the department, and currently be pursuing an MA degree. Most of them are staff members of Korean NGOs who are willing to spend a few months abroad in order to observe and experience the workings of NGOs in another country. They are mature postgraduate students whose ages span the range of late twenties and thirties. The internship program has been devised to provide for academic credits equivalent to those for a full term in the Korean higher education calendar. The minimum length for one term amounts to sixteen weeks, which is exactly the proposed span of this program. It may be necessary, in addition to the full-term program, to have a kind of half-term version for those who wish to take part in it for a shorter period. The internship program will proceed in parallel with the formal term, i.e. either March to June, or September to December. It is not clear at this stage whether the program can be run twice a year because the number of participants cannot be predicted in advance, but it is expected to commence in September 2001.

Who are the Students

The following are groups of students who are either represented in the program already or who may benefit from taking the degree course:
activists and practitioners with some prior experience in the field;
trade unionists and co-operative workers;
teachers and caring professionals; and those who want to understand NGOs from an academic perspective.

The variety of students’ backgrounds means that the discussion in the classes and seminars tends to address such wide issues as the future of democracy in Korea, the role of NGOs in a rapidly globalizing world, and accountability in this trend toward privatization, to name only a few. Many such discussions have been followed by extensive on-line debate, which is now a well-known feature characteristic to this department. The students are also engaged in student academic activities. For example a compilation of academic essays on NGOs has been published in 2001, written and edited by the students themselves.

Teaching & Research

The main body of teaching is undertaken by a group of experienced professors who are specialists in their own area, as well as being engaged in civic activism themselves. Some of the NGOs the teaching staff are actively engaged with are, among others, the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, and Amnesty International. Some of the recent book publications by the teaching staff include:

What is the NGO? (Dong-chun Kim and Hee-yeon Cho, Arche, 2001);

War and Society (Dong-chun Kim, Dolbege, 2000); and

The Age of NGOs (Hyo-Je Cho, Changbi, 2000).

The department publishes the NGO Discussion Papers, a series dealing with ongoing debates about civil society and NGOs. The titles of the series include: 


Ethics of Engagement: A Case for NGOs (Hee-yeon Cho)

Conflict Resolution Skills Manual (Young-jin Kang)


Social Welfare and NGOs (Hyo-Je Cho)

Peace and American NMD Policy: Response from Civil Society (Sinn Kim)

The department also has a publishing arrangement with Arche, the specialist publisher in NGOs and NPOs. The NGO department acts as a convener for a group of specialists who examine and review book proposals, and discuss manuscripts for consideration for publication by the Arche. A distinguished panel of academician-activists in this country are represented on the editorial board, another proof of the wide ranging intellectual activities this Department has been engaging in. At the time of writing, the “NGO Series” has either published or finalized publication arrangements of some books. It is expected that about half-a-dozen books will appear under the imprint of the Arche NGO Series by the summer 2001. These are mainly academic monographs concerned with

such issues as women, ecology, human rights commissions, and social movements. 


Academic collaboration has also been maintained between the department and the Korea Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Both bodies have successfully held some high-profile public seminars, including “Roundtable for Human Rights and Peace” in 2000. The occasion was attended by academics from Germany and Korea, and papers such as “The Third Ways of Social Democracy into the 21st Century in Germany and Europe” (Wolfgang Merkel) and “NGOs, Social Movements, and Democracy” (Ernst Hillebrand) were presented. The NGO Department has been fortunate to be able to forge an exchange relationship with some overseas academic departments. It has indeed either established, or is set to have discussions to find ways of collaboration with foreign academic institutions. Chingwha University in Beijing and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) are just two institutions which we have been in discussion with about exchange programs with the Department. As has been explained above, the Leaders and Organizers of Community Organization in Asia (LOCOA) will be an important partner in Asia through jointly running an internship program for the students of the degree program. The American Friends Service Committee based in Tokyo has played an important role for developing teachings on peace and conflict resolution. The AFSC and the Department are holding a summer workshop on the subject at Sungkonghoe University. The European Institute of Asian Studies in Brussels has helped the Department establish a class dealing with global labor and transnational issues.

The following are selected teaching staff who regularly contribute to the degree course. 


Mi-kyong Chang (Feminism)

Hee-yeon Cho (Political sociology, social movement)

Hyo-je Cho (Policy process for NGOs, human rights)

Dong-chun Kim (Justice in transition, labor and globalization)

Jin-up Kim (History of social theory, Marxism)

Young-shik Kim (Information technology and voluntary action)

Jun-hyong Lee (International human rights law)

Sun-hong Moon (Ecology and environment)

Kyung-seo Park (Human Rights Ambassador of Korean government, International NGOs)

Kyung-tae Park (Migratory workers, research methodology)

Seong-jun Park (Peace and conflict resolution)


Young-bok Shin (Political economy)

Seok-in Yoon (Volunteer management)

Study Resource for Students

The university library has a special section on NGOs to which new stocks are increasingly added. The section is particularly strong in the collection on social movement, trade unionism, and democratization. The degree students can get unlimited access to an unparallelled range of rare documents housed in the Korea Democracy Movement Archives for their research purposes. The archive is the first and only such collection in this country, and has gathered, classified, and documented materials related  to the democratic struggle from the 1960s onwards. The archival material is taken in the widest possible sense of the word; it includes not only written documents such as books, pamphlets, fliers, diaries, letters, manuscripts, and periodicals, but also some non-documentary material, such as placards, personal belongings, paintings, and oriental calligraphy. Work to put the material stored in computerized format is underway; upon completion it will be open to public use. The department also works closely with the Center for Human Rights and Peace, which is home to the Korean Journal of Human Rights and Peace (KJHP). The center’s main activity is focused on the publishing of the journal and holding regular colloquia where prominent human rights activists and academics are invited for talks. The center is well known for its human rights seminar where most current problems of human rights are identified and discussed. Recent seminars have dealt with such timely issues as minority rights and justice in transition.

Resource Center for Asian NGOs

The Resource Center for Asian NGOs (RCAN) was established in 2000 with a view to promoting research into the NGO sector in Asia. The aims of the RCAN are fourfold:

to conduct systematic research into the activities of NGOs in Asia;

to collect and disseminate relevant information about NGOs to the public, researchers, and the media;

to act as a point of contact between NGOs and academia; and

to provide NGO activists in the Asian region with the training necessary for development and empowerment.

In practice, the RCAN is the research arm of the Department of NGO Studies, the latter being the teaching arm of the former. The Center’s main activity revolves around the theme of civil society participation in good governance and the practical contribution that civil society can have on society. The center has been holding a series of programs for immigrant workers based in Korea and for activists working in the labor migration area. The Leadership Program for Asian Civil Society is the only academic program run by a university in Korea in which migrant workers themselves take part and try to make sense of the socio-economic conditions they are working in.

The RCAN has a close working relationship with the prominent civic group, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD). They jointly publish a journal, the Asian Solidarity Quarterly (ASQ). The Quarterly, through a network of regional civic groups, deals with important contributions NGOs are making in societies across Asia.

Sungkonghoe University

Established in 1914 as a Christian seminary, Sungkonghoe University was granted full university status in 1994. The university is big enough to provide high quality education in liberal arts, languages, theology, social sciences, management, and information technology. However, it is small enough to retain a friendly collegiate atmosphere rarely found in large scale universities.

The university is renowned for its open educational attitude, i.e. emphasis on humanity, democracy, and social values. Based on these principles it has been a pioneer in the teaching of human rights, peace, environment, and feminism, to name but a few. It is particularly well placed to provide NGO programs, since many teaching staff are not only specialists in their field, but also active practitioners in the third sector. Our effort has been recognized by a recent major grant, from the Education Ministry starting in 2000. It designated the university as the top educational institution specializing in NGO studies.

Contact Details



Department of NGO Studies

Sungkonghoe University

1-1 Hang-dong, Kuro-ku

Seoul, 152-716, Korea

Tel: +82 2 2610 4246

Fax: +82 2 2610 4298

E-mail: ngo@mail.skhu.ac.kr

Hyo-Je Cho (Department of NGO Studies, Sungkongho)

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