Rountable participants and Ambassador Cho at Shorenstein APARC. Photo: Thom Holme.

Shorenstein APARC's annual overview of the Center's 2017-18 activities  is now available to download. 

Feature sections look at the Center's seminars, conferences, and other activities in response to the North Korean crisis, research and events related to China's past, present, and future, and several Center research initiatives focused on technology and the changing workforce.

The overview highlights recent and ongoing Center research on Japan's economic policies, innovation in Asia, population aging and chronic disease in Asia, and talent flows in the knowledge economy, plus news about Shorenstein APARC's education and policy activities, publications, and more.

Gi-Wook Shin, director of APARC, was quoted in South China Morning Post. “These young people spend the first 25 to 30 years of their life studying for exams, and when they finally move out of their shell into the real world and realise life is not a multiple choice test, and there isn’t always a clear-cut answer to every problem, that’s already a mid-life crisis for them in a way,” he said. “It is both physically draining and mentally not healthy to spend one’s young adulthood studying for exams after exams.”

Future Visions: Challenges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America — Social Science panel. From left to right: UC Berkeley's Laura Nelson, University of Michigan's Jordan Siegel, Stanford's Yong Suk Lee, USC's David Kang, Harvard's Paul Chang.

How can Korean studies faculty cultivate supportive and critical scholarly communities with graduate students? What can be done to overcome the severe constraints on Korean language training in North America? Why is there a dearth of Korea scholarship in academic literature? And how should Korean studies librarians prepare for the future in the light of new technologies and young researchers’ increasing interest in digital scholarship?

These were some of the questions examined at a two-day conference, “Future Visions: Challenges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America,” convened by the Korea Program of Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) on November 1-2. Co-sponsored by the Seoul-based Foundation Academia Platonica, the conference, the first of its kind, gathered distinguished Korean studies scholars from twelve North American institutions to consider the state of the field, assess its challenges, and carry forward a vision for its future direction and potential. Its six unique panels focused not only on the major disciplines of Korean studies—history, literature, and the social sciences—but also on language education, library collections and services, and Korean Wave.

“The presentations and discussions by our fellow experts reflected the breadth and depth of Korean studies in North America,” says APARC Director and the Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin. “Our program was established at Stanford in 2001 and has since become a leader in Korean studies in North America, so it is a special privilege for us to bring together colleagues from eminent institutions around the continent to further advance Korean studies education and research in the academic and policy worlds, and to build upon our track record of action and achievements.”

“The field of Korean studies, however,” notes Shin, “has significantly changed over the past seventeen years and it isn’t without its challenges. This is our opportunity to consider frankly where we go next and how we could explore the path ahead together.”

Conference participants indeed engaged in deep conversations and shared ideas and dilemmas regarding teaching in the different disciplines of Korean studies in North America. Harvard sociologist Paul Chang listed three types of challenges facing the field: publication, academic, and professional challenges. David C. Kang, professor of international relations and director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California, emphasized the publication challenge: why is it, asked Kang, that top academic journals in the discipline of political science and international relations publish so much more scholarship about Europe than they do about Korea and Asia at large, even while the rise of Asian nations is surely one of the most consequential issues of the twenty-first century? The onus, Kang argued, comes back to East Asia scholars “to produce better and more compelling scholarship, and to better train graduate students.”

University of British Columbia's Ross King and conference participants.

Yet complex issues surround the question of how to broaden graduate coursework—and whether to do so. Korean language and linguistics expert Ross King, head of the department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, was one of several panelists who considered the obstacles to graduate training, among different aspects of academic challenges facing the field of Korean studies. King probed into how Sinocentrism and what he called the “Mandarin conceit”—that is, the notion that training in Literary Sinitic should be predicated on a near-native proficiency in modern Mandarin Chinese—are emerging as a major stumbling block to the study of premodern Korean literary culture. He also pointed to the constraints on language training in both Korean and hanmun in North America, which, he claimed, is why we can probably anticipate continued decrease in the number of ethnically non-Korean (non-Korea-educated) graduate students undertaking graduate study in Korean literature.

University of Washington's Hyokyoung Yi (left) and Stanford's Joshua Capitanio at a panel on library collections and service.

Sung-Ock Sohn, who coordinates the Korean language program in the department of Asian languages and cultures at the University of California – Los Angeles, further shed light on King’s prediction. She explained that while enrollments in Korean language classes have shown a sharp increase in American higher education institutions in the past decade, particularly at the introductory level and among ethnically non-Korean students, there is a high attrition rate of students from an introductory to advanced Korean classes nationwide.

How should the field move forward?

Participants proposed a host of ideas to that end. These included helping graduate students collaborate with colleagues in Korea; dedicating funding for junior faculty to spend periods of time before tenure conducting research and honing language skills in Korea at appropriate institutions, and for mid-career scholars to spend a year in Korea; emphasizing the application of social science theories and methods to premodern and modern East Asia; motivating scholars to apply a comparative lens to the study of the historical and contemporary experience of East Asia; and integrating linguistic and cultural diversity in Korean language classes by, for example, incorporating service learning in authentic contexts and extending the content spectrum to include topics such as Korean popular culture.

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Korean Wave was the focus of the conference’s widely attended closing panel that featured K-pop star Siwon Choi, a member of Korean boy band Super Junior, and multi-platinum music producer Dominique Rodriguez, managing director of SM Entertainment USA. They spoke about the global reach of Korean pop music and some of the ways in which Korean popular culture could stimulate interest in Korean studies. Dafna Zur, assistant professor in Stanford’s department of East Asian languages and cultures, who chaired the panel, challenged her students to consider “what it means not just to monetize culture but to design culture with specific markets and audience in mind.” The Stanford Daily published a detailed article on the panel.

“We are grateful to Foundation Academia Platonica for its generous support of Stanford’s Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC and for making this conference possible through our shared vision for the future of Korean studies in North America,” said Gi-Wook Shin. “Our thanks also go to our many other friends and partners, including the Korea Foundation that has helped achieve great results through its commitment to promoting understanding of Korea in academia and beyond and its support of the overseas Korean Studies Program since its establishment in 1991.”

South Korean TV company SBS NBC filmed the conference that will be featured in an upcoming documentary about Korean studies in the United States.

Read the conference report or listen to the audio recordings of the sessions, below.

On November 2, the Korea Program’s Future Visions conference closed with a panel featuring Siwon Choi — a member of Korean boy band Super Junior — and SM Entertainment USA director and music producer Dominique Rodriguez. Panelists spoke about the global reach of Korean pop music (K-pop) and how it could be a key stimulator of Korean studies in America and the rest of the West.

A recap of the panel by The Stanford Daily is now available online.

October 16, 2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STANFORD, CA — The Korea Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to announce it will convene distinguished Korea scholars from across North America at the conference “Future Visions: Challenges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America” on November 1-2, 2018. Participants will gather at Stanford to discuss how the field has evolved over time, the challenges and opportunities it faces, and its future direction and potential.

“The panels and panelists at this conference represent the quality and depth of Korean Studies in North America,” says APARC Director and the Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin. “This is our opportunity to take stock of our achievements in nurturing Korean studies to date, while also considering frankly where we go next and how we might go there together as peers.”

Six unique panels are scheduled over the course of the two-day conference, on themes including literature, language education, social sciences, history, and library collections and services. Each section will consist of three or four panelists who will discuss the state of the discipline.

Stanford faculty will be joined by scholars from twelve North American institutions, including Harvard University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of British Columbia, University of California-Los Angeles, and the University of California-Berkley. They will consider issues such as the research trends in each discipline, the challenges and possibilities for graduate student training, and what intuitional structures may better support faculty.

Additionally, a closing panel discussion on the rise of K-Pop (“Korean Wave”) will be headlined by two prominent artists of Korean Wave, Dominique Rodriguez, Director of SM Entertainment USA, and CHOI Si-Won of Super Junior.  

“We’ve only just begun to examine Korean popular culture through a more rigorous academic lens,” notes Shin. “This conference can serve as a significant first step in exploring what our intersecting disciplines can learn from K-Pop, as well as the other cultural forms that comprise Korean Wave.”

Serving as cosponsor of the conference is Foundation Academia Platonica. Based in Seoul, Korea, the Academy supports the development of research in the humanities. The Foundation endowed a senior fellow in Korean studies position at FSI/APARC and supports research at the Korea Program.

“Foundation Academia Platonica is honored to be involved in this conference,” says Chairman of the Foundation Academia Platonica Chang Won Chey. “We share similar commitments to those of the Korea Program, and agree with them on the great importance this event holds for the future of Korea studies.”

The Korea Program at APARC is proud to partner with the academy and looks forward to future collaborations

For more information about the conference and to view the complete agenda (including the scheduled panelists), visit stanford.io/2ygFxih.

About the Korea Program
The Korea Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, directed by Gi-Wook Shin, conducts multidisciplinary, social science-oriented research on policy-relevant Korea topics and supports teaching and outreach on Korean issues through courses, fellowships, seminars, and conferences. For more information, visit aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/korea.

About the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Center

The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is dedicated to the study of critical issues affecting the countries of Asia and their regional and global relations. Our scholar community is comprised of distinguished academics and practitioners in government, business, and civil society. Through policy-relevant research, publications, education, public programs, and international collaborations, we address pressing challenges in a world in which Asia plays an increasingly central role. For more information, visit aparc.fsi.stanford.edu.

About Foundation Academia Platonica

Foundation Academia Platonica, the first foundation dedicated to support humanities studies in Korea, was established in November, 2010, with an ambitious mission; “To develop and spread the ‘Humanities of soul-searching’ which aims to see the universal progress of the human-spirit and pursue Arete(excellence in virtue).” For more information, visit www.platonacademy.org

Media Contact
Noa Ronkin, DPhil
noa.ronkin@stanford.edu

For more information about the conference, visit: https://stanford.io/2ygFxih, or contact the Korea Program Manager
Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Stanford University
hjahn@stanford.edu