Korea University Outreach Center for Korean Linguistic, Literary, and Cultural Studies

Korean literature is at a major turning point following the rapid changes in this era of digital transition. As the era of mass media is shifting to an era of personal broadcasting and content creation, the power of the literary world is being reorganized. Such examples include diverse experimental literature based on media. This course provides an in-depth examination of various aspects of Korean literature, which stands at the crossroads of change, and help learners understand Korean literature as world literature. Learners will be able to envision the present and future of Korean literature in the digital age.

The energy that insists on dwelling in the unique area of Korean poetry and the energy that ceaselessly seeks to overcome locality and move out into the world have coexisted in Korean contemporary poetry. Its history can be called a literary history of the borders, considering how the tendencies inside and outside have intermixed to form poetry along the borders. This course views Korean contemporary poetry from one of its important features, the perspective of translocality, and provides a deeper understanding of Korean poetry.

This course moves beyond the context of everyday Korean to become equipped with Korean language proficiency that allows learners to carry out academic and professional Korean communication tasks. Korean language learners taking this course will be able to fluently carry out such task from an advanced context based on social and professional themes. To that end, this course will enhance learners’ knowledge and functions of Korean by covering essential themes, related vocabulary, and expressions to broaden the understanding of Korean society and culture as well as utilize reading material across a wide range of genres.

The rapid increase in the number of Korean language learners are leading to increased demands for more effective ways to teach and learn the Korean language. There is a particularly large demand from Korean language educators for professional expertise in the theories and practices of teaching Korean as a foreign language. This course will examine the current state and characteristics of Korean language education to better understand teaching Korean as well as related concepts and principles to explore specific pedagogical methods appropriate for the particular aspects of teaching Korean.

This course is designed to teach learners the commonalities and differences between Korean and Japanese so that they can learn Korean more efficiently based on this knowledge. The course also includes a lecture on common errors Japanese-speaking learners of the Korean language make unconsciously. In addition to Korean language learners, this course will also prove helpful for instructors teaching Korean to Japanese-speaking learners in understanding them and developing effective teaching and learning methods.

Humankind is witnessing how the unit of community that was reorganized by the modern order to center the nation-state is revealing its own contradictions and confessing its limitations. At the same time, however, there are movements to once again reinforce the unity of the nation-state that are growing out of the fatigue from how the desire of capital does not hesitate to cross borders and seek new markets. This antagonism is fueling conflict and enmity between countries. In East Asia, things have reached the state where the word “hate” is used to describe conflict between each country’s people. There is likely no silver bullet to resolve this problem.

This course will help learners understand the form and characteristics of medieval Korean literature from the perspective of East Asian comparative literature. Because Medieval Korea, together with China, Japan, and Vietnam, was part of the East Asian Sinographic cultural sphere, the methodology of East Asian comparative literature is extremely useful in understanding Korean literature. The interpretations of the commonalities and differences that are found through this methodology will be extremely useful for Korean and foreign learners and researchers of Korean literature who seek to understand how Korean literature is different from other East Asian literature.

This course introduces the current state of major dictionaries used in Korean studies and explains the types and structure of dictionaries, how to use Korean language dictionaries to learn Korean, and ways to utilize encyclopedic dictionaries for Korean studies. In addition to enhancing the ability to comprehend Korean, learning this will provide methods to accurately grasp the main terms and concepts of Korean studies. The course also introduces professional ways to use dictionaries through interviews of dictionary experts in key agencies to move beyond obtaining information merely by searching and instead benefit from their function as a compass of the formation of knowledge.

This course in introduces a variety of material showing how the intellectuals of Chosŏn exchanged with those overseas such as the Records of Travels by Korean Envoys (Yŏnhaengnok, Sahaengnok) and examines the literature, knowledge, and worldviews of East Asia in these texts. Learners will be above to view the records of Chosŏn form the perspective of

This course focuses on the cultural aspect of Chinese characters. Learners will gain an understanding of the concepts of Chinese characters, Sinographic cultural studies, and modern study of Sinograph and grasp the cultural elements that Chinese characters themselves carry. Learners will also examine how Chinese characters changed and developed in each region of East Asia including Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore and understand the universality and particularity of East Asian Sinographic culture.