KOICA chief seeks to train aid professionals

By Kang Hyun-kyung

A festive mood in South Korea, which followed the dramatic shift in its developmental status from a recipient to a donor in November 2009 by joining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) donors’ club, has ended.

The aid agency chief is now dealing with a new challenge that his department has never confronted before: the shortages of aid professionals.

In an interview with The Korea Times last Wednesday, Park Dae-won, president of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), said the nation’s lack of a pool of aid specialists posed a challenge to his agency.

“We had received aid and grants from foreign nations for five decades in the wake of the Korean War (1950-53). We have lots of experts who know how to wisely use foreign assistance,” he said.

“But there are few who can help us design our aid packages for the nations that are anxious to know the secret of how we came to rise as a donor. We are facing a shortage of aid professionals.”

After realizing this, KOICA came up with scholarship programs to train aspiring development professionals with an academic background.

To be eligible for the financial assistance program, there is one critical condition for all candidates to meet: they must complete KOICA’s two-year overseas volunteer program.

Last December, the aid agency announced 26 scholarship winners. Shin Jong-hyon, a former overseas volunteer dispatched to the Dominican Republic back in 1996 for a two-year mission as an environmentalist, was among them.

Shin, 39, who is now a first-year student in a master’s degree program at the Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, received scholarships worth 10-million won (approximately $9,000).

“For two years, these young people worked to make a difference in rain forests or remote areas or least developed regions in Africa, Asia or Latin America. I think there should be decent jobs available for these dedicated people when they return to Korea,” Park said.

His remarks came against the backdrop of less-appreciated volunteerism in Korea than other nations, such as the United States where volunteerism is active and considered as an asset in employment.

After completing their two-year mission in emerging nations, many KOICA volunteers find it difficult to find a job requiring them to use their expertise in the region of their service and language skills.

A former KOICA volunteer told The Korea Times that some employers’ stereotyping of overseas volunteers appeared to play a role in shaping the atmosphere.

“Some employers believe that college graduates applied for overseas volunteer opportunities because they are unemployed and have no other choice but to go for the unpaid job in foreign nations. I think this is insult to KOICA volunteers like me,” she said, asking not to be named.

KOICA President Park was aware of the atmosphere. He said it will take time for society to raise awareness of volunteerism.

‘Green’ ODA

Park noted by any standards Korea is now counted as an advanced country, especially after it joined the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

The agency is now looking to a tailored aid model to help the nations whose socio-economic circumstances are similar to how Korea was five decades ago.

He said the “green” Official Development Assistance (ODA) is the guiding principle to the strategy. The term refers to the aid agency’s primary focus on sustainable development assistance to help emerging nations achieve environmentally-friendly growth in an era of climate change.

The aid agency will help emerging nations better adapt to climate change by upgrading their industry infrastructure in order to use less energy and manage water resources more effectively. It will also help them build capacity in toxic waste management and forestry.

KOICA plans to dramatically scale up the green ODA portion from 11 percent of the entire development assistance budget in 2007 to 30 percent in 2020.

It was widely reported that the nation is the first country that has transformed to a donor from a recipient.

Park noted there is another encouraging fact, which is little known to the public, with regard to the shift in Korea’s developmental status. The country rewrote development history by undercutting the years needed for a poor nation to rise to an economic power.

“I overheard that Europeans said African nations will be rich if they endure a century more from now as Europeans learned that it usually took 150 years for them to rise to economic power. After hearing this, Africans were discouraged because they thought they have to wait 100 years more to be rich,” he said.

“After Korea joined the donors’ club, however, I heard that Africans were excited as they learned that they can undercut the years, just like Korea.”