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 In spring of 2005, economics scholar Eui-Gak Hwang will retire from his professorship at Korea University after more than thirty years in academia. For someone whose life has often changed at a moment’s notice, and whose path has traversed the world, it’s difficult for Hwang to predict what retirement has in store.
“I often want to relax, but things have not been working in that way,” Hwang said. “Frankly, I have no word about tomorrow.”
It seems Hwang has spent his life never knowing what is in store for him. The first step of Hwang’s unpredictable career journey was a teaching job in Seoul, South Korea. His wife Young-Ya and their two young children stayed behind and continued to live at Amazon student housing until the family could afford the airfare to South Korea.
When Hwang returned to Eugene at the end of the year to prepare his family for the move to Seoul, he found another opportunity waiting for him. Hwang was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago and the long-awaited flight to bring his family home was momentarily suspended. The Hwang family packed their 1962 Dodge Lance and drove to Illinois.
Hwang eventually moved back to South Korea, where he taught at Korea University for five years, but returned to the UO in 1986 for a one-year visiting professorship, where he taught graduate and undergraduate economics. He came back to the states again in 1990 to conduct independent studies on the North and South Korean economies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
In addition to U.S. institutions, Hwang has held professorships in China, South Africa and Germany.
In 1997, just before departing for the University of Auckland in New Zealand, Hwang was diagnosed with stomach cancer and says he has since gained new focus and appreciation for the work of “breathing and remaining healthy.”
“It feels like being reborn a stronger person in my faith as well as in my daily philosophy,” Hwang said. “I think that my priorities have changed from my personal-purpose-driven life to the purpose-driven life.”
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