Haeok Kim, Doctoral Student, Department of Tourism at Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea (Academic Year 2018-2019)

I am glad to join St. John’s University as a Visiting Scholar under the guidance of Professor Seunghyun Brian Park, College of Professional Studies.

During my early career, I worked in the service field as a guest relations officer at hotels and cabin crew at Gulf Airlines. Then, I worked in hotels as a training manager. I was interested in the hospitality industry, especially in protocol affairs. Also, this lead me to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, Protocol Division, facilitating official visits of States’ dignitaries, at Cheongwadae (Office of the President of South Korea). Through these experiences, I developed interest in hospitality and tourism.

I have studied the human resources management part of the hotel and airline industry in the fields of tourism and hospitality. In addition, I am interested in social media marketing and consumer behavior in hospitality industry, and I am studying the effective use of SNS (social network service) and managing co-creation in the tourism industry. I am also studying the methods of service failure and recovery by applying theories to the airline customer’s emotion and behavior.

A recent article is related to customer engagement behaviors (CEB) and customer brand co-creation behavior (CBCB) in social media. I would like to focus on the research of the progress of social media research in hospitality and tourism management.

For my master’s degree, I majored in International Relations at Sogang University Graduate School of International Studies. Studying at the graduate school of international studies was a very valuable academic experience. Studies in my master’s degree helped me in understanding other nations and the international society.

I continued to study international tourism at Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea in Tourism Doctoral Program. Recently, Korean peninsula has been preparing a lot for reunification. I have keen interest to study the field of tourism convergence between South and North Korea in preparation for the unification of the peninsula.

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Naver blog: https://blog.naver.com/lette0704