2025 UW Study Abroad Program
Smart Cities South Korea: Communities, Technologies, and Climate Resiliency
This UW Study Abroad to South Korea Smart City program provided students with a critical reflection on the possibilities and challenges of smart urbanism
in the context of the modern cities in South Korea: Busan, Sejong, and Seoul. How are innovations bounded, produced, and organized by individuals, communities,
and institutions in the cities? How does the production of new digital technology and new forms of innovation economic activity blend into the existing urban fabrics?
What would be forms of collaborative democracy and inclusive citizen participation in smart city planning? To what extent can smart urbanism respond and address
inequality, justice, and the social and digital divide? How can we create community-based climate-resilient smart cities? We aimed to answer these questions
by re-imagining the connections between cities, innovation and technologies, and new visions and practices for enabling smart urbanism grounded in community-based
resources and priorities.
With these goals in mind, the fifteen amazing participating students and co-directors explored cities in Korea during four weeks of the hot & humid summer of 2025. We are proudly presenting our students' Undergraduate
Research project here--digital storymaps. Each storymap presents students' learning, challenges, and growth, and their reflection on smart cities in Korea.
Click an image card below. It will open a storymap on a new page. We hope you enjoy reading them.
We appreciate
the organizations and professionals who supported us. They deepened and broadened our understandings and
thinkings on Smart Cities. Special thanks to Drs. Jung Eun Kang and Jihyun Kim @ our host institute, Dept. of Urban Planning
and Engineering, Pusan National University (PNU); Drs. Dong Keun Yoon and Meen Chel Jung @ Yonsei University; Dr. Jungyeop Shin and Sae Chang Kim @ Seoul National University;
Drs. Hee Sun Choi, Sunghoon Kim, and Jiyoon Song @ Korea Environment Institute (KEI); Sejong Automatic Waste Collection Center;
Dr. Jaerock Park @ GI & LID Center; Dr. Whanhee Lee, Yejin Kim, Minjung Song @ Environmental Health Center for Climate Change, PNU;
K-Water Eco-Delta City; Drs. Cholyoung Lee, Hak Soo Lim, Won Kyoung Baek, and Myoung Hee Han @ Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology (KIOST);
Dr. In Sik Hwang and Jihyeon Kim @ Changwon Research Institute (CRI);
Katherine Kroeger @ UW Study Abroad and Natalia Dyba and Ludmilla Kortchak @ UWB Office of Connected Learning.
Stanley Xiao
Sanida Nicole Keomanivong
Jeremy Anderson Setiono
Nick Babak
Aleph Girmaye
Howard Cheng
Hawi Samuel
Thank you all for making this summer so enriched, memorable, and emotionally aspiring! We will always remember your proud smiles (& tears). :) Cheers for your next journey! (Profs. Gunwha Oh & Jin-Kyu Jung)
