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Hanseul Kang

Biography

 

Hanseul Kang was only seven months old when she arrived in this country. Her parents always planned to return to Korea but belatedly applied for permanent residence after seeing how attached Hanseul and her younger sister were to the United States. Years later, Hanseul approached college still ineligible for most financial aid and could not afford to accept a coveted spot at Georgetown University. Instead, she attended St. Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, on a full scholarship, and transferred to Georgetown's School of Foreign Service as a junior.

She immersed herself in international relations studies and one of today's key legal issues: the tradeoff between traditional definitions of state sovereignty and the emerging view about a "responsibility to protect," as in the humanitarian intervention missions in East Timor, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. She sees a potential for international law to be used by foreign policy practitioners to address issues "from humanitarian intervention and non-proliferation to terrorism, global warming and many others."

After Georgetown, Hanseul joined Teach For America and taught high school social studies on the Navajo reservation in Thoreau, New Mexico. "I want to remember the two years of teaching for all that it was: at various times, overwhelming, wonderful, messy, lonely, disheartening, and inspiring." Although she left the classroom, her students continue to motivate her to advocate for the voices that are not always heard. "My students inspire me to hammer away at complacency, whether it involves relegating Native American history as a tragedy of long ago or insisting that human rights have no value against the hard reality of a sovereign state's control over its citizens."

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