Katherine Han (Singer) receives the Kyobo Education Award in 2025. Courtesy of NVC Korea
In Seoul, a city defined by speed, fast Wi-Fi, fast delivery and fast growth, there is a quiet countercurrent that has been emerging. It does not promise efficiency or productivity. Instead, it asks people to slow down, go inward for self-understanding, listen and speak with unusual honesty and awareness. At its center is NVC Korea, founded by Katherine Han (Singer), who has spent over two decades introducing a radically simple idea: that the way we communicate can transform not only our relationships, but also our inner lives.
The practice that she and her team teach is known as Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a framework developed by American psychologist Marshall Rosenberg (1934-2015). At first glance, it may seem almost too simple. Participants learn to structure communication in four steps: observation, feeling, need and request. But beneath that simplicity lies something more demanding: a shift away from judgment and toward awareness.
Han describes NVC as learning “how to express ourselves honestly without judging others, and how to hear others’ feelings and needs however they express themselves.” In practice, this might mean replacing accusation with clarity. Instead of “You’re always so messy,” one might say: “When I saw clothes on the floor and dishes in the sink (observation), I felt disappointed (feeling), because I need a clean place to relax and some support for that (needs). How do you feel when you hear that? (request).” The change to this kind of communication can be profound for everyone involved — bringing peace and joy, and preventing conflict.
For Han, the journey into NVC began not as a professional calling, but with a personal crisis. In the mid-1990s, while living in the U.S., she attended a workshop by Rosenberg at the suggestion of a couples counsellor. The relationship that brought her there did not last: “that was the end of that relationship,” she recalled, but something else began. “I was deeply touched by what Marshall said that day.”
What followed was a gradual reshaping of how she related to herself. Han speaks candidly about her long struggle with depression, worsened by harsh self-judgment. “Whenever I made a mistake, I would tell myself, ‘You are hopeless,’” she said.
Through NVC, she began to practice self-empathy — the ability to recognize one’s own feelings and unmet needs without criticism. “Now, when I make an awful mistake, it does not make me depressed as before,” she said. “I can learn something from it and grow.”
That internal shift became the foundation for her work in Korea. She introduced NVC to the country in 2003 and formally established NVC Korea in 2006. Her motivation was both personal and social. “I wanted to share the benefit I received,” she said, “especially with young people. I wanted to help keep their smile on their faces.”
She also believes NVC can act as a tool for broader social change.
Korea, she notes, presents both challenges and opportunities for such work. A strong emphasis on speed and efficiency can make it difficult for people to pause and reflect on their inner selves. At the same time, that very intensity creates a hunger for alternatives. “People appreciate the ‘slow down and go inward’ aspect of NVC,” she said.
Over the years, responses have been strikingly wide-ranging. NVC Korea has worked with parents and teachers, as well as institutions including hospitals, the military, police and even prisons. Corporations, too, have taken notice. Han mentions a recent order of 1,000 NVC books by Samsung. “It’s inspiring how eagerly it’s been received,” she said. “Sometimes desperation does that.”
The real impact, however, is often felt in quieter, more intimate transformations. Han recalls one mother who came to a workshop distressed by her fractured relationship with her daughter. The daughter, now in college, had withdrawn completely — coming home late, locking her door, refusing to talk.
“The mother became desperate,” Han said.
But after attending just a few sessions, she began to change her approach. Gradually, the dynamic shifted. One day, the daughter asked her mother to go to the movies. “I almost cried,” the mother told the group, according to Han. “Now I feel like I’ve got the whole world on my side.”
Such stories illustrate what NVC attempts to do: not to fix others, but to transform the quality of connection between people. It is a practice that requires patience, repetition and a willingness to confront one’s own habits. As Rosenberg himself emphasized, change comes through “practice, practice and practice.”
Recently, Han has turned her attention to another community — English-speaking residents in Korea. Having spent many years in the United States, she recalls what it felt like to live as “a stranger in a strange land,” sustained by small acts of kindness. Now, she hopes to offer something similar in return. “There are many individuals living in Korea who might feel that way,” she said. “I’d like to reciprocate that kindness.”
This spring, NVC Korea will offer two opportunities for anyone living in Korea who would prefer to learn in English to engage with the practice. The first is an NVC 1 Weekend Intensive, running from April 3 to 5, an 18-hour immersion into the fundamentals of empathy and honest expression. The second is a six-week program beginning on May 20, with weekly sessions designed to integrate the principles into everyday life.
Both courses focus on lived experience rather than abstract theory. Participants are encouraged to bring real situations — conflicts at work, tensions in relationships or internal struggles — and work through them using the NVC framework. The aim is not simply to learn a technique, but to cultivate a different way of engaging in conversation — a different life.
In cultures where communication is often shaped by hierarchy, expectation or unspoken norms, this can feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. But for many, that discomfort is precisely the point. NVC invites people to replace assumption with warm curiosity, and judgment with empathy — not as an ideal, but as a daily practice, to reflect and connect.
In the end, the appeal of NVC Korea may lie in its quiet refusal of urgency. It does not promise quick fixes or dramatic breakthroughs. Instead, it offers something more modest, and perhaps more radical: the possibility that by changing how we speak and listen, we might begin to change how we live, and our future on the planet.
Visit krnvc.org for more information.
Nilesh Kumar is a film curator from England who operates at the crossroads of curation, events and film. His career has been defined by a commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration, working with a diverse array of cultural and creative entities including Cinema Galeries, Louis Quatorze, Obra Architects, Soho House Mumbai and Kimchi and Chips.