Kyung hee university

Dr. Inwon Choue,
the 13th President of Kyung Hee University

Dr. Inwon Choue, the 13th President of Kyung Hee University, is a political scientist who has pioneered the study of what he calls the "Esthetic Space in Life and Politics." He has sought after social discourse to find the ways to realize the esthetic space. He wishes to reconstitute the " Real Politik " through creative union of reason and emotions, humans and institution, the reality and the romance. The future society he envisages is centered on humans and to be achieved through discourses on "transcendental engagement." He seeks to transcend today's real politics where ideological confrontations and struggles prevail. Throughout his works, he believes that we must rediscover the transformative episteme for the betterment of human life.

He has published his views and arguments through a number of books. State and Choice, Politics Beyond Trammels: Political Discourse for Transcendental Engagement, The Dusk of Modern Civilization: Clashes and Beyond, Dialogues Off the 20th Century are the representative ones. His views have been also summarized in such works as “The Myth of Causal Necessity,” “Rehumanizing Dialectics,” and “Underneath Globalization: Lingering Life Politics and Its Future in Korea.”

As a scholar cum social practitioner, Dr. Choue has provided numerous agendas and proposals to the government, mass media, civil society, and international organizations. He has also played many roles in the academia and the society in general. For example, he served as a board member of the Korean Political Science Association (2002), Member of the Transition Committee of the President of the Republic of Korea to Establish National Visions(1997), Head of the Planning Committee of the 1999 Seoul International Conference of NGOs(1999), and Chairman of the Committee for the Global NGO Complex(2000-). He has also published numerous articles on the subjects of "Politics of the Future" and "the Alternative Civilization" which were appeared in major newspapers and weeklies in Korea. He is a man committed to the search of new ways for human societies in the 21st century.

Dr. Inwon Choue is a 1977 graduate of Kyung Hee University's Political Science Department. He continued his study at the University of Pennsylvania where he acquired his Ph.D. His dissertation was on “The Politics of Industrial Restructuring” which analyzed the process of industrial revolution of Korea in the 1960s and 1970s that made Korea's prosperity possible. Since then he has served as Professor of Political Science, Professor in the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Dean of the Graduate School of NGO Studies, Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Executive Director of the Board of Trustees of Kyung Hee University System.

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