Summer Intern: Youngsu Kim

By Youngsu Kim, Senior at Amity High School | July 2023

I have had two previous summer internships at East Rock Institute, in 2021 and in the fall of 2022. Since this was now my third time interning at East Rock Institute especially due to the short, two-week internship program required by the school this June, I did not have many expectations of what I would experience as new.

However, the internship was one of the most valuable experiences I have ever had this year. As a graduating senior, my outlook toward the future is becoming more concrete than before. Although there is still a lot ahead to learn, being aware of my potential focus in college and beyond has allowed me to have a more concentration at ERI. Looking through East Asian Law and Culture project archives, Drs. Kwang Lim Koh and Dr. Hesung Chun Koh, co-founders’ (1) captured my keen interest. Although most of my work was scanning and organizing documents from the box labeled “East Asian Law and Culture,” reading through various texts on the laws and the underlying cultural norms helped me understand the value of this field.

For example, the traditional succession rules and laws of East Asian nations allowed me to grasp the similarities and differences between each country’s sociocultural structure. I have noticed East Asian criminal laws are different from that of the West. What really intrigued me was how Korea adopted the Chinese Ming law but retained its indigenous kin relations reckoning system. Primarily I recognized that geographically, Korea is located between China and Japan, so influences came from both sides of the nation. Then these laws and practices were adopted and changed to make them fit Korea’s norms. Korea’s inheritance and criminal laws treated male and female relatives equally. There were only generational differences.* Thus, hierarchy existed but unlike China and Japan, there was no difference between mothers’ and fathers’ or the wife’s and husband’s family of the same generation. East Asian Law and Culture project materials at the Koh and East Rock Institute collection not only was valuable to know about East Asian culture but its comparative methodology lead me to a broader interest in the world. Reading through the East Asian Law and Culture projects made me realize how crucial it is to understand the different aspects of cultures and set norms in each nation.

Each of three different internship I did at ERI has taught me a valuable lesson: to have a greater understanding of those around me and others worldwide, and to appreciate the differences and similarities that each culture shares and represents

*See: 1998, Hesung Chun Koh “The Persistence of Korean Family Norms in a Confucian State: An Analysis of 18th Century Criminal Cases” in Anthropology of Korea: East Asian Perspective, edited by Mutsuhiko Shima, Rober L. Janelli, National Museum of Ethnology, Senri Ethnological Studies no. 49, Pp 7-36.

Summer Intern: Julian Rodriguez