I am a senior at Surabaya Intercultural School. I am Korean American, I grew up in Indonesia, and I move between English, Korean and Bahasa Indonesia every day. After school I teach ten younger kids how to arrange flowers in a class I started, and on weekends I help Korean-Indonesian children read and write hangul at our church in Surabaya. I also started a club at school to push for AED access.

A survey study at the Surabaya Korean Church
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I asked a simple question: does a weekly Korean heritage language class change how Korean-Indonesian kids feel about being Korean? I measured cultural identity with an adapted Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure-Revised (MEIM-R) and set it against how long each student had been in the program.

The longer a student stayed in the program, the stronger their cultural identity, with a correlation of .748 (p = .008). Speaking Korean at home was not significantly linked to it. Belonging seemed to grow in the classroom, not just the kitchen.

Eleven students is a small sample, so I cannot say the program causes the result. Next up: a larger sample, a second city, and a follow-up over time.

It depends on interest rates
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I wanted to know whether immigrants add more to a country's budget than they take out. My research partner and I modeled the lifetime fiscal contribution of people on three South Korean visa types: short-term work, long-term work, and marriage.

The answer changed with the interest rate. When we raised the discount rate from 0 to 10%, the present value for long-term visa holders fell about 75%, compared with about 50% for short-term visa holders. We built an interactive policy dashboard so people can explore the results themselves.

This project earned the Korea Science and Engineering Fair international gold medal and national bronze medal, a gold medal at the Youth International Science Fair, and a gold medal and the Semi Grand Award at the World Science, Environment and Engineering Competition. I also finished the Conrad Challenge with a team project on the Water Challenge, and in 2026 I was selected to attend the Harvard Science Research Conference.