President Moon Si-yeun says university aims to grow international enrollment to 3,000-5,000 while building distinct strengths in K-culture, women in STEM and global research
Behind each university’s global ambitions are choices about what to preserve, what to develop and where to go next. In “World Class,” The Korea Herald interviews leaders of Korean universities about the strengths they are cultivating and the futures they envision
Sookmyung Women’s University is betting that the next stage of Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, will not be another hit song or streaming drama, but a field of study.
When the university launched its Hallyu International College in March, President Moon Si-yeun wanted it to do more than teach international students about K-pop, K-content, K-beauty and K-food. She wants the college to examine why Korean culture travels, train the people who will carry it forward and ultimately establish Sookmyung as a destination for studying Korea.
“If we look at Hallyu only as the popularity of K-pop or dramas, it will be difficult for it to be sustainable,” Moon said in an interview with The Korea Herald. “It needs to be theorized.”
The university also signed a memorandum of understanding with SM Universe, the education arm of K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment, in November 2025 to help develop K-pop-related curricula.
Sookmyung says the Hallyu International College is designed to go beyond consumption of Korean pop culture. It combines K-content and K-pop with K-beauty, K-food and global business, while examining the cultural and industrial ecosystem behind their global spread.
For Moon, the project is part of a broader effort to answer a question facing the 120-year-old women’s university: What can Sookmyung offer the world that larger comprehensive universities cannot?
Her answer combines two seemingly different assets: the university’s long experience educating women and Korea’s newer strengths in Hallyu, artificial intelligence and technology.
“Every university has to have a different color,” Moon said. “I don’t think there is competitiveness in opening everything like a department store.”
The philosophy is captured in “Outthinkers Sookmyung,” a vision unveiled for the university’s 120th anniversary. For Moon, the term describes people who do not simply follow established answers but pose different questions and produce solutions others have not considered.
“Unless you are different, you cannot be competitive,” she said.
Beyond international student admissions
The Hallyu International College is also central to Sookmyung’s strategy to expand and deepen its international student body.
The number of new international degree students increased from 104 in 2023 to 665 in 2026, while around 2,000 international students in degree and nondegree programs are studying on campus this semester, according to the university.
Moon wants the number to rise further.
“My minimum target during my term is 3,000, and if possible, as many as 5,000,” she said.
But she stressed that simply filling classrooms with more foreign students cannot be the end goal.
“We have moved beyond the stage of talking about internationalization simply in terms of numbers,” Moon said, pointing to Sookmyung’s expanding internship links with multinational companies and business groups including Renault, Nestle and the German and French chambers of commerce in Korea.
The university is therefore seeking to shift its international student policy from “admissions” to “growth.”
It plans to support international students through Korean-language and academic foundation programs, AI-based learning support and tutoring, while encouraging more collaboration between Korean and international students in classes, projects, research and entrepreneurship.
Sookmyung also plans to assess internationalization using indicators such as academic performance, dropout rates and participation in joint projects and employment or further study, rather than simply enrollment figures.
As Korea becomes increasingly diverse, Moon said, understanding and respecting cultural differences should be treated as part of basic civic education.
“Awareness of different cultures is an attitude that I think a global citizen should have,” she said.
She acknowledged, however, that increasing diversity on campus does not automatically translate to integration.
“True integration comes with understanding different backgrounds,” she said.
Sookmyung already has academic reate programs and related research through its Asian Women’s Research Institute. The challenge, Moon said, is not simply preparing foreign students to adapt to Korea, but preparing Korean institutions and communities to live with greater diversity
Moon sees the Hallyu International College as an attempt to transform Korean cultural influence into a durable field of study.
K-beauty, for example, cannot be understood only as cosmetics, she argues, but as a convergence of biotechnology, chemistry, consumer behavior, branding, global marketing and distribution. Likewise, K-content sits at the intersection of culture, media, technology, platform business and intellectual property.
The faster the industry grows, Moon said, the greater the need for academic infrastructure capable of analyzing it and training specialists.
She also argues that the Hallyu requires theory if it is to remain globally influential.
In the interview, Moon said the Hallyu has benefited enormously from digital platforms that allow Korean content to reach audiences without relying on older distribution systems. Social media has gone further by turning fans into distributors.
For that reason, she describes the Hallyu as a form of “digital culture” whose global spread should itself become an object of academic inquiry.
Sookmyung intends to combine that research ambition with practical education involving entertainment and production professionals. Moon said students should not only discuss content in classrooms but also gain exposure to how it is produced and commercialized.
Over time, she hopes the fledgling college can add graduate-level education and develop a deeper research base.
Seoul itself, she said, gives Sookmyung another advantage.
“Seoul as a city has enormous attractiveness and strength,” Moon said, noting that international students can study in the same city where dramas are filmed, entertainment companies operate and cultural trends emerge.
The university’s ultimate ambition is to create a reputation that makes it the go-to destination for studying and researching the Hallyu.
Taking women’s education beyond Korea
If the Hallyu represents one of Sookmyung’s newest institutional assets, women’s education is its oldest.
Founded in 1906, the university marks its 120th anniversary this year. Moon said that an institution created when educational opportunities for Korean women were severely restricted must now reinterpret that mission for a world in which female university attendance is no longer unusual.
“Women’s universities also have to newly prove their reason for existing,” she said.
The task, she said, has shifted from simply opening the door to education toward equipping women to make decisions, lead research projects, build businesses and shape technology.
Particularly in AI, engineering and science, women should not remain merely users of technology but participate as researchers, developers, policymakers and entrepreneurs, Moon said.
She sees women’s universities as uniquely positioned to normalize that experience. At Sookmyung, she noted, women lead student organizations, research teams, startups and engineering projects without first having to overcome assumptions about who should occupy those roles.
Moon wants to take that model abroad, particularly to parts of the Middle East and Africa where education remains more gender-segregated or where women’s leadership is still an emerging priority.
The university already has exchanges with Senegal and had been exploring scholarship and women’s education initiatives with Rwanda, although some planned programs have been delayed amid instability in the Middle East, Moon said.
“What ‘global Sookmyung’ means is taking this history and tradition of cultivating female leaders, sharing it around the world and studying it together,” she said.
Women in STEM — and AI with a purpose
Sookmyung’s engineering college is only about 11 years old, and Moon said one of her priorities for the next decade is to overturn the perception that women’s universities are comparatively weak in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM fields.
She pointed to the university’s recent technology-transfer performance as evidence of emerging strength. Sookmyung’s technology-transfer income rose from 510 million won ($380,000) in 2023 to 1.75 billion won in 2024, the highest among women’s universities in Korea, according to the university.
Going forward, Moon again wants Sookmyung to specialize rather than imitate larger institutions.
This semester, the university introduced a microdegree focused on information protection, cybersecurity and white-hat hacking, areas Moon believes could become niches where Sookmyung can build a distinctive AI-related strength.
The university also operates a BK21 research team focused on developing “empathetic AI women engineers,” studying not only algorithmic performance but also potential gender and racial biases in AI.
Sookmyung has pursued women-in-STEM initiatives with the European Union delegation in Korea and the Korea Foundation for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, while collaborating with companies in pharmaceutical, biotechnology and AI fields.
For Moon, increasing the number of women in STEM fields is only part of the mission. The larger question is what perspectives women bring to how technology is designed and used.
The university, she said, should cultivate women capable not only of asking what a technology can do, but what it should be used for.
From individual networks to a global system
Moon’s internationalization agenda also seeks to strengthen international research.
International joint research at Sookmyung has often depended on professors’ personal networks, she said. The university now needs systems that turn those individual connections into institution-level partnerships.
Sookmyung’s written plans call for support extending from networking with overseas researchers to planning joint studies and winning international research projects. The university is also considering “Global Joint Lab”-style models linking researchers and students across institutions.
Moon wants overseas university partnerships to move beyond exchange agreements and ceremonial memorandums of understanding.
Sookmyung has recently been building ties with the University of British Columbia. Moon said she hoped collaborations with the Canadian university could develop into models such as dual-degree or shared-degree programs, in which students spend meaningful periods studying at both institutions.
“Studying is something you can do sitting down anywhere, but seeing society and meeting people is also part of learning,” she said.
Ultimately, Moon wants Sookmyung to connect its Hallyu programs, women’s education, STEM initiatives and international research through a single global network.
“The new global women’s university that I envision is an open platform that is actively connected with the world and can intensively nurture the possibilities for women,” Moon said.
“I want to create a structure where a student is connected to a global network of women leaders, researchers and entrepreneurs starting with the moment they enroll at Sookmyung.”
