Personal Statement for Law School Admission

Personal Statement

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work." -- H.L. Hunt immigrated to the United States when I was seventeen from Seoul, South Korea. I came not only with a keen interest in bettering myself but also the desire to observe, study and learn the legal and moral tenets that govern United States society. I wished to become fluent not only in English but also the cultural and legal intricacies dictating Western society and the Western economy.

The transition from Korean society to American was not an easy one. I found myself at times not only in need of the aid of translators from my fellow scholars and peers in the schools I attended. I often found myself in the position of becoming a translator myself, a translator of Korean culture, tradition, and values into the language of American norms to new friends and teachers. Later, I was to go on to work as a teaching assistant in my native language, and these early experiences gave me a compassionate perspective upon the struggles of other students with beginning study of my first language and culture.

Still, my transition from one land and one culture into another's has not been as arduous as some individuals' struggles through life and to foster the American dream within themselves. I had the good fortune to be raised in a prominent family of medical professionals in Korea. Our social status gave us a comfortable lifestyle that afforded me the opportunity to further my studies in the United States as an undergraduate. The personal privilege of education my family was able to bestow upon me is one of the many reason I feel a sense of obligation and desire to reciprocate with similar opportunity to the benefit of the Korean community.

During my undergraduate education at the University of Southern California, I felt driven to be participant in many community service endeavors, including Habitat for Humanity (HFH), a global organization that sends volunteers to impoverished global communities to build homes. I participated in Habitat for Humanity -- Korea. Suddenly, I was immersed in a social situation where people had never experienced any frivolous comforts. The life for the beneficiaries of HFH was always simply about survival.

After my experience at HFH, I decided concentrate my studies on International Relations.

Although I always had the goal of going to law school, I decided to study subsequently at a master program in public policy, rather than to immediately attend law school. I wished to add further depth to my education in the public policy of the international sphere. Thus, for the past two years, I have studied the Public Policy Analysis at Pepperdine University. Over the course of one of my classes entitled "Roots of American Order," the Professor not only asked the class to read the "Federalists Papers" in their entirety, but to memorize the whole U.S. Constitution.

I am proud to add this accomplishment to a resume that also includes a recent summer internship aiding reporters at Maeil Business TV News Seoul, a Korean television financial news stations and financial companies and an internship with HIMC, a Hyundai Investment Trust Management Company in South Korea. Through this work I was able to glean a better understanding of the integral relationship of international law, the media, and the international economy, particularly the role of Korea within the Asian financial sector, specifically.

Recently, I took a course at Pepperdine entitled "Legal Frame Works," which mainly involved analyzing legal case studies. This course provided additional resonance with my summer work at the television station involving a special research team that issued a report on "SARS- Influence on the Asian Economy," that also showed the complex intersection between the economy, individual rights, and public media perceptions of biologically related issues.

By studying law in the United States I hope to become an active participant in the dialogue of international politics and relations on the human relief sector, and to be an instrumental contributor to the edification of Korea as a nation. Living and studying in the United States has taught me that the law is more than a mere social construction. It can be a solution and a tool to remedy injustice and to foster freedom and democracy, not simply within an American nation that helped initially foster such concepts for Americans, but across the international sphere.