Park Young-kyun, a professor in the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), was born in 1985 and is also among the younger faculty at KAIST. He graduated from KAIST, worked at the Friedrich-Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, and joined KAIST as a professor in September 2020.
When I met Professor Park on the KAIST campus in Daejeon on the 10th, he said he joined KAIST with the goal of doing research that had not been done anywhere in the world. He said he wanted to "take a path no one has taken." One of the first things Professor Park did to achieve this goal was to find student researchers to work with him abroad.
Professor Park is conducting research that analyzes the brain's neural signal transmission networks at the level of individual cells. The goal is to find new treatments to overcome brain disorders such as depression and dementia. Professor Park said, "To do good research, you start by recruiting the best talent," noting "this is why we did not limit recruitment to Korea and expanded it globally."
Since Professor Park came to KAIST in 2020, many foreign students have passed through his lab. Their nationalities have been diverse, including Thailand, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, India, Finland, Israel and France. Professor Park's lab has already been selected as the "KAIST Globalization Excellence Lab (Internationalization excellence lab)."
He said, "The first student I selected in 2020 was from Finland, and now that student has graduated from the lab and works at the domestic bio corporation SillaJen," adding, "When I said I would choose my first student to be a foreign student, senior professors tried to dissuade me, but now I think it was the right choice."
There are currently 15 student researchers working in Professor Park's lab. Two of them are foreigners. Ela li Maizel, a master's student, earned bachelor's degrees in biology and psychology from the prestigious Hebrew University in Israel and has been pursuing a master's degree at KAIST since Sept. 2023. She is scheduled to graduate from the master's program this August and continue into the doctoral program.
Researcher Ela li said, "My mother had a job that always dealt with patients with brain disorders, so I always had an interest in neuroscience," and added, "Israel is good, but I think Korea is also competitive in the bio field, including neuroscience."
Ela li said there is largely no problem with life in the lab or on the KAIST campus. Professor Park's lab uses English exclusively. Although there are more Korean students, they believe operating the lab in English is right for strengthening international competitiveness.
Professor Park said, "I was at MIT too, but I think the students' intellectual level at KAIST is actually better than at MIT," and added, "However, unlike MIT students, Korean students' English speaking and writing skills were lacking, so they inevitably fell behind in global competition." He added that this is the reason for recruiting foreign students and running the lab in English to create an international environment at KAIST.
Despite these efforts, there are still many unresolved issues. Ela li said her biggest hardship is that there are many places in everyday life where English does not work, and there is nowhere to help with things like bank transactions or housing contracts.
She said, "Korea's monthly rent and jeonse systems are so different from Israel's that there are many times when I don't know how to handle them," adding, "There are many cases where places like hospitals and banks do not use English, and when I asked something of a place like ISSS that supports foreign students, the reply came in Korean, which surprised me."
ISSS is the English abbreviation for International Student and Scholar Services, an organization that helps foreign students adapt well. It is ironic that a place meant to help foreigners would use Korean.
Professor Park said Korea, a country with a low birthrate, must actively recruit overseas talent to survive. He believes now is an opportunity to actively bring in overseas talent because perceptions of Korea have improved due to the K-pop and K-drama waves. He said, "A lab with no foreigners and a lab with at least one foreigner look worlds apart to foreigners."
He emphasized that to recruit overseas talent, at least in science and engineering fields, government project planning and evaluation should all be conducted in English, and new support measures not previously tried should be found, such as offering foreign professors or talent extraordinary relocation allowances.
Ela li said, "To advance Korean science, we need to bring in many students from more diverse countries," adding, "Only then can we find ideas that break stereotypes." But when asked whether she would settle in Korea after earning her doctorate, she did not give a definitive answer. She said the research level is high but it still does not fully meet her quality-of-life needs. Everyday life issues may be among the first things to consider when recruiting overseas talent.