The 1970s
Fulbright During Korea’s Rapid Industrialization
East-West Center
At the meeting of November 10-11, 1973, there was discussion of affiliation and support of the East-West Center. Early the previous spring, KAEC had reassessed the demands of the EWC program on its staff and concluded that a larger budget was needed from EWC for functions performed. In April 1973, the commission requested additional funds from EWC, but no answer was received until deputy director Jai-Ho Yoo visited EWC in August. After some discussion, the commission voted to reduce service levels, in effect providing only student grantee services for the remainder of the fiscal year, ending June 30, 1974.26 At the board meeting of August 29, 1977, the commission considered a cable received from the East-West Center informing it of a decrease of over 50% in the amount of commission salaries paid by EWC for FY78. It was unanimously decided that chairman James Hoyt and executive director Edward Wright would be empowered to draft a response to the EWC cable, to be transmitted through the U.S. embassy in Seoul, expressing the consensus of the KAEC board members that only EWC activities commensurate with the EWC budget allocation would be performed. The commission went on record as deploring the proposed budget cut as a step that would give EWC less professional servicing than other exchange programs between the two countries.27
The Start of Student Counseling at Fulbright
The Fulbright Student Advisory Service was launched in 1970 with a half-time counselor, Catalog and reference collections were also initiated. 28 From the beginning, the U.S. government showed its ambivalence about whether counseling was a proper role for the Fulbright Commission. Marita Houlihan, director of the Non-Sponsored Foreign Student Programs Staff, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State, was a guest at the board meeting of February 26, 1971. In her remarks, she mentioned that she hoped the commission would, in the future, expand its non-grant programs and solicit support from other organizations and foundations. She noted that the vast majority of foreign students in the United States were unsponsored and that the expertise and prestige of the commissions could be used in providing counseling support for these students.29 At a mid-year board meeting the following year, Sol Schindler, cultural affairs officer at the U.S. embassy, reported that a visiting team of counseling experts sent by the U.S. State Department had recommended that the commission’s counseling service be abolished. It was indicated that the support funds for this service might be given to the AmericanKorean Foundation to help support that organization’s counseling program. After a short
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