We are delighted to welcome Daeun Kim, an undergraduate student at George Mason University majoring in Business with a concentration in Marketing, to IIR’s team. Daeun came to the United States in January 2026 from South Korea as part of the student exchange program with Mason Korea. Through her work at the IIR, she is looking forward to hearing genuine stories, learning from people around her, and creating meaningful content.
When she was in South Korea, Daeun participated in the Korean Oral History Project, interviewing older Korean adults who experienced the war. She translated, transcribed, and edited videos to be archived to preserve personal stories. Building on this experience, Daeun is excited to join IIR’s Leaving & Belonging team to develop her interviewing, storytelling and video-editing skills. Daeun has a background in content creation and social media. She strives to engage digital audiences through compelling, concise, and short videos. She explains, “I'm good at making people watch what I want to deliver through digestible short-form content. For my personal social media accounts, I have been able to generate videos that make views, sometimes millions. Now, I want to balance views with value-driven content.”
Coming from South Korea, Daeun found a lot of diversity in the United States. She says, “Everywhere I go, I hear different languages around me. People are here from all over the world and it’s great to meet people from different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds.”
Reflecting upon IIR’s Leaving & Belonging project, she says, “People leave places and belong to places all the time. The project captures such an important part of history,” and she wants to be part of making these stories accessible to a broad audience to better educate them about immigration and immigrants. Daeun elaborates on the current social media landscape, “If there is a dark side [of social media], there is a bright side. I want to focus on the bright side. I want to make IIR’s social media account and content a home they can belong to.” Referring to a line in the movie, Nomad, she says, “House is a physical place. Home is in mind and heart.”
Daeun shared that she is excited to work with such a diverse group of staff at the IIR, seeing how the different fields – folklore, ethnomusicology, data analytics – connect to (im)migration research. She shares, “iDod is so amazing and organized. I want to combine everything [that we do] and let everyone know about the amazing [projects happening] at the IIR. Stories always appeal to people.”
Upon encountering IIR’s content on social media, Daeun shared, “I hope people watch because our content invokes a sense of home, warmth, and positivity. I hope people feel connected.” Daeun aims to create content that captures the breadth and impact of IIR’s work, producing meaningful stories that the entire team can feel proud of.
Three words that Daeun uses to describe her work at the IIR are “integrative”, “listening”, and “joyful”. We welcome Daeun to the team!