SEULGI JUNG

Hello and 안녕하세요! I'm a freelance data journalist hailing from Seoul, South Korea. I use data and graphics to tell stories about complex, often misunderstood issues in our society. I got started writing community dispatches for immigrants and marginalized groups in New York, authoring realtime updates on COVID-19 data and protocols in the early months of the pandemic. I continued my journey at Columbia University's LEDE program for professional data journalists, graduating in 2023.

Before journalism I worked at a civil engineering company and the MinKwon Center for Community Action, a non-profit organization in NYC serving Asian-American immigrants and advocating for the civil rights of all immigrant communities.

I'm passionate about social issues across borders, from Seoul to Staten Island. I'm drawn to issues affecting immigrant communities which too often remain lost in the shadows. I also work as the Seoul Coordinator for the Korean American Peace Fund, where I've built and managed our organization's web and social media channels.

I covered a soaring xenophobic phenomenon in Korea, singularly targeting Korean Chinese, called joseon-jok. I used Selenium to scrape data and Python to refine it. The graph was created with free Javascript source, and ai2html & Scrollama were used for the other graphic Korean translation is available for this piece.

I got a hint for this project from a presentaion by Mr. Suh Jae-jeong, a professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at International Christian University, clearing the North's true intention amid the current security crisis on the Korean peninsula. I used Mapbox Scrollytelling template and added some structural changes using Javascript. Satelite images were gained from Google Earth.

In the night of December 3rd of 2024, Yoon Seok-yeol, now impeached, imposed a martial law in an attempt to wrestle the power out of the congress dominated by a majority of the opposition party. The martial law, enforced for the frist time in 45 years, was foiled in two hours by hundreds of citizens who immediately came to the National Assembly Building and protected it from being occupied by the military. I focused on how Korea's bloody past has helped its people save democracy again, even inspiring and empowering beyond the nation.