“Just hang in there. If there are some people like us –” Jaehyeon Jeong said.

 “ – I don’t think there’s people like us,” Hoejeong Lee said.

Lee and Jeong met at Yonsei University in Korea where they were pursuing master’s degrees in the communications field. They eventually moved to the United States to study at New York University, and one marriage and two kids later, Lee and Jeong entered the Klein College of Media and Communication media and communications doctoral program in 2010.

While it generally takes most people five or six years to complete a PhD, Jeong said it took Lee and him eight years. Before they moved to the United States, people warned them that if they studied together, they wouldn’t have time for each other and their marriage would end in divorce. To make sure this didn’t happen, Lee and Jeong took their time in their studies in order to make sure they also made time for one another.

“We thought it would be important to spend time with our kids and to spend time to maintain our good relationship with each other,” Jeong said.

All that time paid off, though, as the couple graduated together in 2018 and have published books based on their dissertations. Though Jeong wrote his book proposal in 2018 and Lee wrote hers in 2019, both of their books were published by Rowman & Littlefield on the same day: December 15, 2020. 

Lee’s book, Korean Digital Diaspora: Transnational Social Movements and Diaspora Identity examines the Korean community in the United States as well as other countries in the diaspora and how media shapes their identity. She originally became interested in the Korean diaspora as an exchange student in Japan, when she did master’s work surrounding how Japanese audiences watch Korean TV. In 2014, when a ferry boat accident caused the death of 304 Koreans, she became increasingly interested in how Koreans overseas respond to Korean affairs. Now, she’s put all her passions into one publication.

The same is true of Jeong. As someone who has always had an interest in food, Jeong at one point considered becoming a chef. Instead, though, he published Korean Food Television and the Korean Nation based on his dissertation about the significance and purity of food in Korea.

In addition to their monographs, Lee and Jeong each published a co-edited work for Lexington Books’ Korean Communities Across the World series. Lee’s book, Digital Media, Online Activism, and Social Movements in Korea; and Jeong’s book, Communicating Food in Korea; were both written with Joon-Hwan Oh and published in March 2021.

Director of the media and communications doctoral program Fabienne Darling-Wolf has worked with both Lee and Jeong throughout their time at Temple. They met in fall 2010 when Lee and Jeong were in Darling-Wolf’s communications theory class, and they later served as Jeong’s advisor and dissertation committee chair and as a member on Lee’s dissertation committee.

“It was quite unusual; to have a couple attend the same PhD program and even more unusual for a couple with children,” Darling-Wolf wrote in an email. “But they persevered and became two of the brightest stars in our program. As a bonus, we got to see their children grow up.” 

Jeong agrees and loves the Klein community. “We don’t think of Temple or Klein as just the place we studied,” he said. “We think of Temple and especially Klein College as our family.”

Jeong wants to give advice to other people like him and Lee. “We’ve been there,” he said. “If you stick to your goal and aim and you have a patience and enthusiasm and if you have a good relationship with other people then finally you are going to make it.”