Leaders of all four groups participated in planning the merger. "The idea emerged through informal discussions among members of the groups last summer," says Sang S. Park '98, one founding member of KA and former board member of Yisei and KSA.

"All active board members met in weekly meetings throughout the fall to discuss, design and vote on every aspect of the new organization." Park says. "Everyone involved in the process had different visions of the role of Korean organizations at Harvard and the reasons for the merger," Park said.

Early in the spring, KA elected the new board. In addition to Nam and Ryou, Jason A. Hwang '00, Diana M. Kim '00 and Yoon-Ho Lee '00 were elected.

In order to accommodate the diversity of interests coming together under KA, the newly drafted constitution specifies that four of the five positions on the KA board are chairs of committees, each a parallel focus to one of the former groups: culture, education/politics, social events and Yisei.

"I think everyone pretty much was for the merger," Choi says. "The only objection would be that we weren't quite sure how the merger would synthesize the consituency, leadership and vision of the two separate groups," he says.

The merger became official on April 8 when Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III signed the KA constitution.

The Next Generation

While the current Korean student body seems to be reacting positively to the merger, Ryou says some of the leaders of KACC and KSA--who have graduated--were against the change. "The people who were involved in KSA and KACC were really committed to their respective groups; some devoted their whole college careers to their respective organization," Ryou says.

But Nam says she believes that ultimately the merger represents a fulfillment of the goals of both organizations. "The merger is beneficial for the Koreans here as well as the rest of the Harvard community. Something like the Spring Cultural Show would have been much more difficult to put on [because of a lack of resources] without the merger," Nam says.

Since the Cultural Show, KA has hosted several other events--most notably a discussion on the experiences of Koreans and Korean-Americans at Harvard--which have all had record turnouts. "Things have been working out better than we had thought," says Jason A. Hwang '00. "We're having more people involved."

Ryou says the change is particularly noticeable in the interactions of the Korean first-years with each other. "They're all friends--I can see who would fall under the [former] KSA or KACC categories, but they're all friends," Ryou said. "I'm not saying the formation of KA is solely responsible for this. But I do know there would have been some splits among the freshman without KA."

For all those involved in the formation of KA, the large turnouts at recent events seem to represent the end of a transitory period and offer reasons for optimism about the future. "As KA, we can better help Koreans and the Harvard community to learn more about the Korean culture," Nam says.

But Ryou says he believes that more than increasing the degree of cultural or political awareness on campus, the most important thing for KA to do, is what its predecessors could not fully achieve: a sense of community amongst the Korean student body. "What college comes down to is friendships," he says.