At KDI School, students are encouraged to take conversation beyond the classroom. With school support, students organize themselves into various fora of interests, such as international affairs and African development, in which students sit to deliberate on and interact regarding challenging, hopeful global developments. In the same vein, Vu Minh Tan - Vietnamese Master of Public Management Student (now graduate) - with her friends created a new forum: KDI School’s Banking and Finance Forum. This forum will serve to extend the conversations concerning banking and financial issues beyond the classroom.

The KDIS new forum’s vision is to empower the development, stability and growth of the banking and financial system of KDI School students’ home countries. In addition, it hopes to support the KDI alumni network to spread the word about the school - to attract more excellent potential students. Furthermore, the forum’s mission is to become a global network of KDI students and it hopes to support the students involved in banking and finance by facilitating financial policy discussion and information sharing about the international banking and financial system.

In furtherance of the forum’s objectives, an open session was held on the 20th July 2019 at KDI School. During the session, there were two headline presentations given by members of the forum. Mr Adesh Sueraj from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, instructed participants about “Stock Trading Tips” in which he discussed the basics of trading securities and its advantages. Second, Maruf Mirzamahmudov from the Republic of Uzbekistan held a presentation titled “Fintech and Regulatory Sandbox” in which he spoke from the perspective of a regulator serving as staff of the Uzbek Ministry of Finance.

The forum followed up on the success of the open session and organized a movie session for the following day, 21 July 2019. The forum screened “The Big Short” for the attending members. The movie is a 2015 comedy-drama that attempts to detail the events leading up to the global financial crisis in 2008. The movie’s plot is relevant to the forum’s mission and is especially apt, given the presentations from the open session it held the previous day.

In the fall semester, The KDIS Banking and Finance Forum is planning a study tour to the Daejon Currency Museum to further deepen members’ knowledge about Korea’s financial history.