Professor David William Kim of the College of Liberal Arts at Kookmin University gave a guest lecture at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, a world-leading university for Korean studies, and engaged in academic exchanges with local scholars.

The university was founded in 1907, and the Korean Studies Institute was established in 1972, making it the oldest and largest Korean studies institute in the world.

In particular, the University of Hawai'i Press specializes in publishing world-renowned A&HCI, SSCI, SCI(E), and SCOPUS journals. In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Korean War in 2025, the lecture analyzed and disclosed the non-military medical support policies of the Scandinavian Alliance, which is a UN member state in Europe, through a humanitarian approach.

The Korean War (1950–1953) was one of the most calamitous and brutal wars in modern history. It was fought by the post-colonial people of the peninsula, and it culminated in the creation of two ideologically opposed states, but the three years’ military clash in East Asia (or the Far East) is often labelled simply as a “Forgotten War” in the West including North America. The ensuing ethnic division has been interpreted through the various geopolitical lenses of military strategy, politics, international relations, and power games. What about the situation of casualties? Which particular nations in the United Nations (UN) dispatched medical aid for the treatment of war victims? How did the Scandinavian allies participate in the non-European war? What were their unique characteristics among non-military supporting nations? What legacy did they leave for the post-war Koreans? This lecture explores the military-historical backgrounds by which each of the following Northern European nations, namely, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, decided to send unarmed skilled personnel to aid South Korea. The lecture focuses on the social voluntarism of the neutral group in the critical insight that the field activities of Swedish Seojeon Byungwon, Danish Jutlandia, and Norwegian NORMASH individually promoted the Red Cross spirit of advanced humanitarianism on the top of mandatory duty, in giving special attention on children (orphans), women, civilians, POWs, and medical education, as well as the post-war collaboration for the initial Korean public health system in the 1960s.

For further details, see: 
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/koreanstudies/2025/01/16/voluntary-humanitarianism-in-medical-policy-uns-scandinavian-allies-at-the-korean-war-and-beyond-1950s-1960s-1033/