Mon, 18th July 2022 Keynote Manuscript

Can you give a brief account of your SD journey (what you studied during your university/higher education career, what was your first job, subsequent and current)?

Ten years ago, a historic meeting marked a turning point in my life. On the recommendation of a professor, I attended the SD/ST conference for K-12 educators held every two years in Babson College, Massachusetts, USA. It was like a teacher workshop, but I could meet people I had seen in textbooks of System Dynamics. Jay Forrester, Peter Senge, Dennis Meadows, and so on.
I was shocked by many things, but if I had to introduce one thing to you, it was the game. Dennis Meadows taught me the essence of SD/ST with simple games.  Thanks to that, I understood the fundamental nature of SD correctly, and the following year I earned my Ph.D. in Business Administration. And games became my competitive edge. I ended up translating this book too. The Climate Change Playbook. In the SD academic structure, I think of games like this. I am famous as the best facilitator for SD/ST games in Korea. I would pride myself on being the best person in the world without the language barrier.

Can you tell us about your current organization and what your role there entails? How are you applying SD to your current role/or prospects for a future role?

My mission is to infuse SD/ST into K-12 education. For this mission, I quit my job as a professor and established a non-profit organization specializing in systems thinking education in 2017. I have introduced SD/ST to thousands of K-12 students and teachers until now. Even in the Covid-19 era, my mission never stops. 

How does your work relate to the SOC 2022 theme, ‘Diversity, Dynamics, and Dialogues’?

When a big outsider shock hits the system, diversity is essential for the maintenance and resilience of a system, whether it be an ecological or socio-economic system. The same is true of Korea's education system. As in other countries, Korea's education system is facing significant changes. However, like any other country in the world, the Korean education system is difficult to change because of the balancing feedback loop.  I think SD/ST is important because it can foster diversity in Korean education. SD/ST respects and encourages diverse ideas of students. And I believe that SD/ST can save K-12 students who are driven into the endless competition.  Let's think about dialogue.
Let's play a simple game with me.
Please hold one of your thumbs up in the air above your head and keep your thumbs always pointing up. Always keep your thumb pointing up. Please do not stop the rotation once it starts, and do not change the direction.
Now, continuing to draw the circle clockwise, slowly bring your hand down a few inches at a time until it is in front of your face.
Please continue to circle your thumb and slowly bring it down to the level below your chin until you are looking down on top of it. Continue to trace out the circle while looking down on it. What direction is your thumb moving? Counterclockwise! Right?
Don’t you remember your goal is to move your hand clockwise?  What do you think is the implication? Please keep in mind that the system is value-free. The point is that, depending on the point of view, the system can be interpreted entirely differently. Do you want to change your system? Then you have to understand people who interpret the system differently. You need to talk to someone who interprets the system differently. The more diverse the system, the more dialogue is required.
So is my case.  I am not a teacher, so I am an outsider to the education system. That's why I struggle to talk to people in the education system.

From a global south/north, east/west perspective, what are the similarities when comparing your specialization and that of the other 3 keynote panelists? See short bios FYI. Your answer to this question will probably become more nuanced as the interview-like discussion progresses, and we get to learn more about your work and how it relates to the SOC2022 theme.

The similarity of the panelists is that they approach the problem.  Each panelist has a problem to solve. My problem to be addressed is K-12 education. SD is used to solve those problems. However, the way SD is used is slightly different. I am using the game. Others use community-based and community-engaged SD, participatory SD, and system engineering.

Looking back, what do you wish you had known as a student or early career researcher in SD, and consequently, what advice would you give students entering the SD field?  

I would recommend you to model your own life. I am doing what I am talking about too. More specifically, design your reinforcing feedback. The book, The Limits To Growth and many other books of SD use the water lily pond story to inform the danger of exponential growth. How many of you know the water lily pond story? It is a story that one water lily in the pond on the first day becomes 530 million after a month because the water lily pond has a reinforcing feedback structure.  
The water lily pond story gives us an indirect experience of exponential growth and how scary linear thinking is.