Associate Professor Kyong Yoon is one of the recent recipients awarded funding through the SSHRC 2020-2021 Partnership Engage Grants COVID-19 Special Initiative.
Dr. Yoon has partnered with the Okanagan Korean Culture and Knowledge Society (OKCK), for this project which examines Korean Canadians’ collective responses to socio-cultural challenges caused by the pandemic. The project is titled, Developing Korean Canadians’ Civic Engagement Strategies in the COVID-19 Era.
Socio-cultural challenges that racialized people are facing in the COVID-19 era call for collaborative projects between academics and community organizations. Considering the urgent need to support and empower racialized people during the pandemic crisis, this partnership project explores how a Korean Canadian community organization copes with socio-cultural challenges during the pandemic and how the organization can facilitate and support racialized people’s civic engagement beyond ethnic attachments.
Drawing on community-engaged research methods, this 12-month project will examine how the OKCK copes with the pandemic crisis and develops strategies for Korean Canadians in the Okanagan to connect with other community organizations and residents beyond their ethnic bubble in the post-pandemic world.
The project serves to facilitate racialized people’s inclusion in the process of the post-pandemic transformation of their local community, while also addressing a larger question of how the COVID-19 pandemic affects social integration, inclusion, diversity, and equity.
Find out more about the SSHRC funded projects at UBC.
Dr. Kyong Yoon
About Kyong Yoon
Kyong Yoon is a Seoul-born media researcher. Dr. Yoon’s research focuses on digital media, migration, and youth culture. He has published nearly 50 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. His publications also include two research monographs on transnational Korean media– Digital Mediascapes of Transnational Korean Youth Culture (2020) and Transnational Hallyu: The Globalization of Korean Digital and Popular Culture (forthcoming in 2021). His has recently been working on a new book project titled The Korean Wave in Korean-Canadian Youth Culture. Dr. Yoon teaches in the Cultural Studies program in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan.
About the Okanagan Korean Culture and Knowledge Society (OKCK)
OKCK is a non-profit, grassroots community organization, which was incorporated by six Korean Canadians in Kelowna in 2012. It is the first and only Korean community organization in the Okanagan region.