With the beginning of the fall semester, a sensuous, heady aroma of fresh coffee and baked bread suffused the air at the new Dunkin’ Donuts, constructed during the summer vacation on the ground floor of the Information and Electronics Building. While the majority of KAIST students are simply elated about the addition, it was one of the university’s professors, rather than any students or student organizations, who was in charge of introducing the franchise store into campus. Professor Joungho Kim, Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and bringer of Dunkin’ Donuts to KAIST, generously gave his time to The KAIST Herald to explain his decision.

Could you please briefly introduce yourself?

My name is Joungho Kim. I was appointed as the Department Chair of Electrical Engineering six months ago. It has been 15 years since I first came to KAIST, and my research specialty is in electromagnetic radiation. To be more specific, I work with electromagnetic radiation that is emitted from computers, semiconductors and automobiles, and I try to find ways to suppress them through research.

Typically, projects like attracting franchise stores into KAIST is a task pursued by the Undergraduate Student Council. Yet you personally undertook this project on your own. Was there a special reason for it?

I believe that I probably care about the students as much as the Undergraduate Student Council. I am also fortunately equipped with the necessary labor force, which is the department office, and the budget to make certain things easily achievable. To be honest, Dunkin’ Donuts was only a small part of my much bigger vision which involves attracting ten or more such stores into KAIST and create a kind of cultural center along the space near the KI Building.

Could you describe your intentions for making this happen?

The first and foremost reason was that the faces of the students always look so depressed. I wanted to create a happy and delightful atmosphere for them. If you look at the interior of the store, everything is very bright. Though not exactly luxurious, the lights and the furniture all contribute to making a heart-lifting ambiance.

Another reason was that nowadays too many students sit in front of their computers. With the Internet now so heavily established, many students are busy sending e-mails and playing online games rather than spending time to meet people. It is true that studying from books is important, but even so, we belong to a society where people live together. Students should go out more often, form study groups where they could discuss and meet friends, and all of these experiences could eventually amount to forming groundbreaking ideas. As we all know, KAIST is essentially a research-oriented university. However, great research does not come from only reading textbooks and research papers. I wanted to change this atmosphere, starting with making changes to the school culture.

Were there any difficulties during the process?

There was a major problem of persuading different kinds of people. Firstly, Dunkin’ Donuts has a rule that it does not open stores at locations where the expected revenue per day is less than 1.2 million Korean Won. When I told them that that the expected revenue at KAIST was about 0.7 million Korean Won, they initially said no. But when I directly contacted the President of Dunkin’ Donuts and talked to him about it, the company made special arrangements to allow for an exception.

Then I also had to persuade KAIST’s administrative officials. They would throw me questions like, “Why should Dunkin’ Donuts come into KAIST?” or “Why would you construct a café at a research facility?” And because the location was officially designated as a research and education facility, I had to request the sanction of the Yuseong District Office for the running of businesses in the area. Furthermore, construction involves a lot of noise. So, although the place is nice now, I had to negotiate the agreement of many different people to make this possible.

Finally, do you have any other comments you wish to make to the students?

It is most important to always keep true to one’s own dream about the future. Although many students nowadays opt to take the civil service exam or go to law school, the important thing is to not force oneself to fit into the standards already established by society. I think that this kind of courage is necessary, but in reality many students cannot take that extra step because of the insecurity they have towards the future. Only those with enough courage and dreams are able to grasp a better tomorrow. Some students may be sensitive towards monetary issues, but problems like that eventually resolve themselves when one follows his true dream. So, why not dream on and take up the challenge?