As the host of Seoul Model United Nations (SEOMUN) this year, SIS Model United Nations (MUN) began working in advance to make sure the conference is run successfully. The conference, held from Nov. 6-8, involved the gathering of students from 25 different international schools at the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) in Seoul.

Under this conference’s theme of fostering transparency, students debated over issues such as South China Sea conflict, worldwide nuclear energy and protection of coral reefs. Students were divided into 12 committees where they put effort into finding a solution to three issues that were given to each of the committees. After the conference, many SIS students such as Jiwhan Moon (10) from the Special Conference and Grace Lee (10) from the Human Rights Council II were awarded the Best Delegate Award for their hard work, participation and skills.

According to Albert Kim, Secretary General, in order to run the conference smoothly as possible, MUN officers had to attend two student officer meetings over the summer and one student officer meeting the day before the conference. As the host of this year’s SEOMUN, SIS made other preparations as well.

“Basically [as a host], we had to contact all the schools that were coming both from Korea and overseas,” Albert said. “We also had to choose all the chairs that would lead the conference. Other than that, we picked our conference rooms, planned the layout, bought snacks for about 500 delegates and trained the chairs.”

SEOMUN also featured various publication systems such as Seoulite, which covers the conference in a newspaper format, and SEOTV led by Korea International School, which covers it in a video format. The Seoulite branch at SIS, led by Celine Hwang (12) and Yasmin Yoon (12), worked with one another to create a newspaper that is dedicated just to the three-day event.

“Seoulite is definitely a rewarding experience especially because of the hectic and stressful work that goes into it,” Yasmin said. “Because it’s Celine and my last year as a Seoulite member, we are trying hard to publish the newspaper perfectly. For this year, our layout editor, [Hyewon Kim (12)] made an entirely new layout. It’s more appealing to the audience as the layout is a lot less stiff and rigid [compared to those of the previous years].”

All in all, the conference was deemed successful for both MUN and Seoulite members. Although Seoulite is done for the year, MUN students will be preparing for their next conference, The Hague International Model United Nations in Hague which will be occuring in January.