• Date:  November 7th, Thursday, 2019  9:30-17:30
• Place: SNUAC (Bldg.101)

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HIGHER EDUCATION, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, AND GARMENT INDUSTRY IN BANGLADESH AND KOREA

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SNU Asia Center visited the Chittagong region, the second-largest city in Bangladesh and where a large-scale industrial complex is situated, with SNU College of Social Sciences in February 2019. The visit was to construct the basis for local South Asian research as the New Southern Policy is expanded across the country.

During the visit, we carried out a field exploration on the local production base of Korean companies and the Bangladeshi industry located in the CEPZ (Chittagong Export Processing Zone) and the KEPZ (Korean Export Processing Zone). Also, we visited Chittagong Independent University which started out in 1999 as a branch campus of Bangladesh’s top university, Independent University of Bangladesh, and was relaunched as an independent university in 2013, following the revision of domestic law in Bangladesh, and carried out a conference with the president and faculty to start joint research projects that reflect the interests of both parties.

After visiting Chittagong, SNUAC has kept in touch with Chittagong Independent University and signed an agreement on academic exchange between SNUAC and Chittagong Independent University Institute of Governance, Development, and International Studies on April 22nd, 2019. Following the agreement, we checked in detail the research interests of both parties and held the first international joint workshop on November 7th, 2019 at SNUAC for the purpose of future joint research and the expansion of cooperation and exchange.

The international joint workshop was organized into three sessions comparing the higher education, economic development, and garment industry of Bangladesh and Korea, with the main objective of examining the wide research interests of both institutions in three themes. In the higher education session, there were presentations on the overall situation of Bangladesh’s higher education and creative learning of which the importance is gradually increasing in university education. In the economic development session, the participants discussed the past and the current situation of the Korean economy, as well as the measures for the two countries’ cooperation for sustainable development. The last session included interesting and heated discussions on the present and future tasks of the garment industry in Korea, Bangladesh and Asia in general.

The event was joined by Kihak Sung, the CEO of Youngone Corporation, which is building a local production base in Chittagong, Bangladesh. He gave a congratulatory speech and carried out a discussion based on his hands-on experience of corporate management. With this international joint workshop as a starting point, SNUAC plans to pursue a bigger goal of setting the basis for local research to expand South Asian research and to continuously unfold cooperation and joint projects in the course of pursuit.