Hun Shik Kim

Former South Korean broadcast reporter Hun Shik Kim joined the SJMC faculty this fall as an assistant professor.

Kim is teaching "NewsTeam Boulder"with instructor Paul Daugherty and the NewsTeam lab in his first semester at SJMC. Before coming to Boulder, Kim taught in Seoul, South Korea, as an adjunct while reporting for the Korean Broadcasting System. (KBS)

He said he began his career in journalism in 1987 while getting his master's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri. After two years, he said he went back to South Korea to serve in the military for four years as a public affairs officer.

Kim joined the Korean Broadcasting System in 1992. He said he has covered several national and international stories, including the war in Iraq, the Kashmir conflict and the Sri Lankan civil war.

"Hun Shik brings a combination of media practitioner and media research skills we want our students to have," said Professor Bella Mody, the School's de Castro chair in Global Media Studies. "Until recently, he did international television reporting from the front lines of Iraq and Silicon Valley in India."

Associate Dean Meg Mortiz, who chaired the search committee for the appointment, agreed.

"He has top-level, international experience as a reporter. He's covered Afghanistan, Iraq, the tsunami and dozens of other major stories, and at the same time he's a media scholar with a doctorate. That's a rare combination," she said.

"When we were doing the search, he taught my reporting students, and they were all saying, 'Wow. He's great.' We discussed the fact that he is from Korea and brings that perspective to his work, and the students clearly saw that as a big plus for them and for the School. I couldn't agree more."

Kim said he changed careers from reporter to professor in order to use his doctorate degree, which he received from Missouri in 2001. "I had a lot of fun in the newsroom, but there's no way my doctorate degree is used; there's no stimulus in the intellectual part," he said.

He said another reason he resigned from the KBS this year was to be closer to his wife, Seow Ting Lee, who teaches media ethics and communication theory at Illinois State University. Kim said he and his wife had an international marriage before they decided to move to the United States, where they both got teaching jobs. "I would call my change of profession a kind of exile looking for academic stimulus and love," Kim said.

Kim was offered positions in other states, but Colorado was his first choice. "I came to Colorado in 1987 for a ski trip and fell in love with it," he said.

His teaching experience in the United States has been different from teaching in Asia. "Students are more voluntary and interact more. You can feel less hierarchy compared to the classrooms in Asia," he said.

Kim said he is interested in broadcast journalism as well as emerging communication technology and international communication.

He wants to teach a class sometime in the next year that deals with international reporting on war and disaster.