Korea Institute Endowment Reaches $4.2 Million Matching Fund Pledge to Korea Foundation Fulfilled

Professor Carter Eckert with Professor Bill Kirby, Director of the Asia Center

Following nearly a decade of strenuous fund-raising that overlapped with Harvard's university-wide campaign, the Korea Institute's current endowment has now reached approximately $4.2 Million. In addition to hundreds of private donations from individuals seeking to support and promote Korean studies at Harvard, including many former Harvard students, the Asia Center at Harvard recently voted unanimously to re-allocate its existing East Asia endowments, giving the Institute a substantial financial boost. The combination of generous private donations and the new re-allocation of Asia Center funds have also allowed the Institute to fulfill its longstanding matching pledge to the Korea Foundation in Seoul. According to this agreement, signed in 1993, the Korea Foundation provided the Faculty of Arts and Sciences with $3.5 Million for a new chair in Korean literature , now held by Professor David McCann, in exchange for a promise by the Institute and the university to raise an equivalent amount of money for the Institute's endowment.

In a letter to Dr. In-ho Lee, the president of the Korea Foundation, the Institute's director, Professor Carter J. Eckert, informed the Foundation of the Institute's fulfillment of the matching pledge, noting that the Asia Center's decision to re-allocate its funds was "the fruit of the Institute's past eight years of vibrant growth, during which we have developed into an integral and dynamic intellectual component of the Asia program at Harvard." Eckert also thanked the Foundation for its "farsighted and unwavering commitment to building up Korean studies at Harvard, even, most remarkably and admirably, in the midst of an economic crisis in Korea of historic proportions." "Our achievement here," Eckert emphasized, has therefore also been yours, and in that sense the fulfillment of the matching pledge is much more than a mere settling of accounts; it is the achievement of a splendid partnership."

Although the Korea Institute's endowment is still considerably lower than either that of the Fairbank Center (China) or Reischauer Institute (Japan), it provides the Institute with a basic and permanent financial stability and independence that was previously lacking. According to Eckert: "When we began our campaign back in 1993, we had only a few thousand dollars of endowment on which to draw. Not only were our activities severely circumscribed as a result, but we also had to devote an enormous amount of personal and Institute time and effort to raising funds simply to keep afloat on a yearly basis. Of course the enhanced endowment doesn’t mean we can now relax on that score. With our students, faculty, courses, and library resources growing as never before, we will certainly continue to need additional funding, and I hope someday we will even be able to ‘name’ the Institute through the gift of a particularly generous donor. What we do have now that we didn’t have before, however, is a certain fundamental financial stability. This has in turn increased our administrative efficiency by allowing us to add new staff. Even more importantly, it has allowed us to step back a bit from the fund-raising effort, and to focus on supporting our students and faculty and formulating long-term intellectual goals. It's all very exciting. Already we’ve begun to expand our fellowship programs for undergraduates and graduates, but this is only the first step in a evolving new landscape of academic programs and projects."

Fall Welcoming Reception, September 24, 2001 (left to right): Prof. Sung Yoon Lee, Mr. Edward Baker, Prof. Alice Amsden, Prof. David McCann, Prof. Sun Joo Kim, Prof. Jang-Rok Kim, Prof. Keun Sool Kwon, Ms. Ellie Choi, Prof. Yong Wook Chung, and Prof. Jin-Soo Doh