Who Is...?
Prof. Gi-Woong Son

Who is Son Gi-Woong?

Gi-Woong Son, president of the Korea Institute for Peace and Cooperation, a partner institute of Hanns-Seidel-Foundation in the field of unification research and education, completed a doctoral course at the University of Munich and received a doctorate in political science from the Free University of Berlin in 1992. After personally experiencing the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, he decided to devote himself to the unification of the Korean Peninsula. He served at the Korea Institute for National Unification under the Prime Minister's Office, the only national unification-related research institute in Korea, until his retirement as president of the institute in 2018. During that time, he served as a policy advisory member in the President's Office, the Prime Minister's Office, the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, the Ministry of Unification, the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Environment, Gangwon State, and Gyeonggi Do. He also served as vice president of the Korean Political Science Association, vice president of the Korean Association of International Studies, adjunct professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, visiting professor at Free University of Berlin and at Ritsumeikan University in Japan, as well as advisor to the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement and the Green Korea United movement, the two large environmental movements of the country.

In particular, he became the foremost expert on the former inner-German border area, the so-called “Grünes Band” (Green Belt) and the inner-Korean border area, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). He travelled all of the 1300 kilometers of the inner-German border. His work is designed to overcome division of the Korean Peninsula, among others by organizing international seminars in cooperation with Hanns Seidel Foundation Korea, in which North and South Korean participants could meet and interact. Inter-Korean relations are wildly fluctuating, but he never lost hope for unification of the country divided since 1945. Professor Son is currently serving as the co-president of the Korea-Germany Unification Forum jointly operated with the Hanns Seidel Foundation, as well as the president of the Korean Association of DMZ Studies, and a professor at Tianjin University of Foreign Studies in China.