[Lecture] RAS Korea Student Presentation

RAS Korea Student Presentations . SPEAKERS: Kelly (Hyojeong) Lee; Turpin Mathilde Emma; Dahee Go Henny & Shylby Zhaniya; Do Ngoc Bao Anh; Lavanya Sharma; Ngoc Linh Bui & Tran Thu Ha . DATE: Wednesday, October 28, 2026. 7:20PM (Seoul) . VENUE: [Seoul Public Activities Center (SPAC, 서울시공익활동지원센터)](https://www.google.com/maps/place/%EC%84%9C%EC%9A%B8%EC%8B%9C%EA%B3%B5%EC%9D%B5%ED%99%9C%EB%8F%99%EC%A7%80%EC%9B%90%EC%84%BC%ED%84%B0/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x357ca3000866fe55:0xa40d4bd64f001690!8m2!3d37.5361448!4d126.9716213!16s%2Fg%2F11vr0g6fss?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D). ‘다목적홀’ (For more information, see below.) . DESCRIPTION: . KELLY (HYOJEONG) LEE: *‘China’s Forcible Repatriation of North Korean Escapees: International Legal Obligations, Strategic Interests, and the Limits of External Pressure’* . Delving deeply into the human rights of the displaced, this presentation covers the status quo that North Korean refugees face when attempting to flee their nation to China – one of their largest neighboring countries. After compiling information from existing research and past observations, the presentation provides insight into existing concerns about the status quo and potential solutions to effectively protect these individuals suffering in a human rights crisis. . TURPIN MATHILDE EMMA: *‘Creolization Interrupted: The Structural Roots of Réunion Island’s Identity Crisis’* . This paper argues that contemporary struggles over Réunionese identity are rooted not in the island’s cultural diversity itself but in the unequal historical and institutional conditions under which creolization was produced, incorporated into the French Republic, and subsequently represented. Colonial labor systems fragmented populations while generating new forms of cultural solidarity; departmentalization institutionalized French political and cultural norms; and French-dominant educational and media institutions continued to assign unequal social value to French and Creole. At the same time, maloya and other vernacular practices preserve an alternative model of belonging based on mixture rather than fixed origin, but they are themselves threatened to disappear. . DAHEE GO HENNY & SHYLBY ZHANIYA: *‘The Impact of Remote Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic on Hermeneutic Understanding and Contextual Interpretation in Humanities Education Among University Students’* . This study explores how remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic may have influenced undergraduate students’ hermeneutic understanding and literary interpretation. It examines students’ experiences of remote humanities education and patterns in their interpretation of a literary passage. . DO NGOC BAO ANH: *‘Gifticons, Digital Gifting, and Informal Financial Behavior in Korea: How ‘Platforms Blur Social Exchange and Consumer Finance’* . This presentation explores how digital gift-giving platforms in South Korea blur the boundary between social exchange and consumer finance. Using KakaoTalk Gift and mobile gifticons as a case study, it examines how platforms transform expressions of care into prepaid financial claims, encourage informal reciprocity, and enable users to store and manage value. It also discusses the effects of self-purchasing, refund policies, platform lock-in, and consumer-protection regulations. The presentation argues that gifticons are best understood as socially wrapped prepaid instruments that combine genuine relational meaning withmeasurable financial value. . LAVANYA SHARMA: *‘The Ethical Limits of Human Enhancement: Ethical Considerations in CRISPR-Based Human Genome Editing’* . CRISPR-Cas9 allows scientists to modify human DNA, but does the ability to do so justify doing it? This presentation examines the ethical limits of using CRISPR for human enhancement, drawing on bioethical principles and the 2018 He Jiankui case. It argues that scientific capability is not ethical permission, and proposes conditions that should be met before any human…