My name is Edi Studer, I am 24 years old and born and raised in Lucerne, central Switzerland. A holder of a bachelor’s degree?from the University of Berne in Switzerland in Business Administration, Economics and Psychology, I am currently taking a break from studying before I will continue on my educational path to get my Master’s degree, which I will be completing in International Management at the Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada. An active, curious and dedicated person in nature, I was able to visit 49 countries in my life, study in six and work in four, which widened my horizon in many aspects, enhanced my cultural openness and sensitivity.?I am a person with a strong sense for justice, which I partly inherited from the way I was brought up and further developed during my travelling where I witnessed a lot of injustice and poverty. Having had work experiences in the private sector in diverse industries such as automotive, pharmaceutical and consulting as well as in the governmental sector, I wanted to get active in the humanitarian field. It was a wish of mine to engage in the North Korean human rights sphere ever since I got to know more about Korea and its history, culture and economy when I was an exchange student at Korea University in Seoul in 2009. The wish of becoming actively involved in easing the suffering of the North Korean people and working towards a possible reunification became even more a desire after I have visited North Korea myself in 2011 and despite an ever-watching government was able to witness the poverty and suffering of the people first-handed.
As a matter of fact I am very pleased to be able to support PSCORE in their cause of supporting defectors, raising awareness about the issue and promoting dialogue for talking about human rights issues and reunification. I will be working for PSCORE for a total of three months. My assignment has started in Switzerland itself, where I was the local contact for the PSCORE campaign at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and helped preparing and organizing the week-long stay of our 13-men-strong delegation. I followed the team back to Seoul, where we held awareness campaigns at several universities in Seoul and at the Busan International Film Festival. Here in Seoul I am in charge to prepare our next trip to the UN in Geneva in March ? where we plan to take part in the council itself and organize a photo exhibition. Furthermore, my job encompasses writing press releases, updating brochures and documentations as well as finding donors.