Ryunah Kang ’26 has been selected as the 2025 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow for Swarthmore, and will return home to South Korea to report on female labor organizers.

The fellowship is awarded to one student each summer as part of Swarthmore’s partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The program provides funding, mentoring, and support for student journalists to report on global issues under-covered by the national media.

Kang will examine “how structural gender inequality manifests in [South Korea’s] workplaces, organizing spaces, and family dynamics.” She plans to take an ethnographic approach, with in-depth interviews with members of the Korean Workers Association, Korean Women’s Trade Union, and participants of International Women’s Day actions.

“I want to hear from labor organizers who put themselves out there to advocate for working women,” says Kang, who watched her mother face difficulties at home and in the workplace.

“I'm expecting to meet more moms living with the layered joys and burdens of being a mom and a worker and an organizer.”

Kang is also excited to share news from the nationwide protests that led to the recent impeachment of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, following a martial law crisis. She will explore “how people bridged what they cared about with broader struggles.”

Kang had been eyeing the Pulitzer Fellowship since first arriving at Swarthmore. She says she read the congratulatory email several times to confirm that it was real.

“I see the fellowship as a stepping stone to lasting relationships with organizers in South Korea,” says Kang, adding that she’s eager to apply the academic lessons learned at the College to the real world.

She lauds the classmates and professors who helped stoke those lessons, and Environmental Services (EVS) staff members who deepened her understanding of the various challenges encountered by women in the workforce.

“We were thrilled to learn that the Pulitzer Center selected Ryunah for this prestigious fellowship,” says Katie Price, director of community engaged learning and special projects at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. “Over the past six years, this partnership has not only impacted the fellows but our entire campus, as we lift up the important role that quality journalism plays in our world.”

The Pulitzer Fellowship announcement coincides with a special event on campus: a special visit this Tuesday, April 15 from Pulitzer Reporting Fellow Kadia Goba. The acclaimed political reporter will offer a lecture titled, “The Shift of the Republican Party: Race and New Voting Blocs, Reimagining Congress, and the View from Democrats,” with an introduction by Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change Ted Gup. The event is open to the public and begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Singer Hall flexible classroom (034 and 035).

Goba will also have lunch with a group of students and pay a visit to the Great Issues in Public Policy course.