Squid Game, BTS fuel interest in Korea, but Korean studies courses at universities don’t benefit – they lack funding to attract more students, say experts
- The global popularity of Korean cultural exports has piqued people’s interest in Korea, and more universities than ever before have Korean studies programmes
- Most are underfunded compared to Chinese and Japanese studies, however, and Korean companies and the government should support them financially, academics say
By Dong Sun-hwa
The global popularity of Korean culture has piqued people’s interest in Korea itself, with many of them curious about exploring the country so that they can have a deeper understanding of the content they love.
“Interest in Korean popular culture is also generating interest in ‘high culture’ – from Korean language to gestures to semiotics [the study of signs] to cultural customs,” says Jieun Kiaer, a professor of Korean linguistics at the University of Oxford in the UK.
“Even ‘Korean common sense’ in the form of concepts like nunchi – which can be compared to emotional intelligence in the West – is a hot talking point across the globe.”
Kiaer adds that people from diverse backgrounds and age groups join her whenever she organises an event to discuss the subject of “untranslatability” – or the gap in translation – in Korean films and shows.
“During these events, I and my students break down the verbal and non-verbal communication and unveil the meanings that are not expressed in the subtitles,” she explains.
“There were more than 100 participants in some cases. Our talk on translating Squid Game was the most sought-after one.”
Squid Game, BTS propels Korean Wave to the next level, but will China flex its soft power muscles?
This figure seems large at first glance but, according to experts, Korean studies is still the “underdog and straggler”.
“Many say overseas Korean studies is booming, but this is very superficial,” says Ross King, a professor of Korean language and literature at the University of British Columbia in Canada. “The Korean government and companies should make long-term investments in the infrastructure for Korean studies,” King says.
“A lot of people seem to believe that foreigners will happily pay their own money to learn about Korea because they enjoy its cultural content, but this is not true, especially for those hailing from the countries that have a higher gross national product [GNP] than Korea.”
Loli Kim, a DPhil researcher in Korean studies at the University of Oxford, echoes this sentiment.
“As a student, the greatest challenge was acquiring funding to support me throughout my studies over the years,” says Kim, who began learning Korean after studying Mandarin and Japanese. “There are countless diligent and passionate students, but the funding has been so limited.”
The lack of a critical mass of tenure-track academic positions in Korean studies is another issue.
“Most Korean studies programmes are one-man or one-woman shows, where one colleague has to do everything him or herself, whereas the Chinese and Japanese studies programmes always have more staff, teaching positions, funding and better infrastructure,” King says.
From Kim Soo-hyun to Squid Game, how did South Korea get over its China break-up?
There are more than 140 universities teaching Korean language in North America, but only 30 per cent of them teach it for more than 300 hours. The total number of tenure-track jobs on the continent is reportedly only about 15.
“China and Japan studies have five or six times better infrastructure, plus more opportunities for funded study in China, Taiwan and Japan for foreign students,” he notes.
“So the colleagues in these fields control the vast majority of East Asian Studies departments and programmes. In terms of investment, Korea today is doing not even one-fifth of what Japan did 50 years ago.”
The situation is not so different in the UK, either. Currently, undergraduates at Oxford are only offered Korean as a supplementary language along with either Chinese or Japanese, while Cambridge does not offer any undergraduate course in Korean studies. The latter does have courses for Chinese and Japanese studies though.
“Scholarships and grants for students are always in short supply and they need to be prioritised as they are the academics of the future,” Kim stresses. “But I believe that funding for the expansion of Korean studies courses and departments at universities would also be beneficial and the next step to accommodate the growing interest.
“Government and company support has been central to the popularity of Korean culture and the creation of Korean soft power. Now is the opportune time to promote Korean studies so that it can teach something beyond pop culture.”
How China shoots itself in the foot in the global soft power game
The Korea Foundation, which is under the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has been supporting students and professors of Korean studies since its establishment in 1991, is well aware of the issue of the lack of support.
“We can see why students and professors are calling for more support,” says a foundation official. “We know we still have a long way to go.”
According to the foundation’s latest research, there are about 25 professors of Korean studies at eight Ivy League schools in the US, including Harvard and Princeton University, whereas the number is far higher for Chinese and Japanese studies, which have 96 and 63 professors, respectively.
The Korea Foundation is now planning to play a more active role in developing Korean studies – its investments stood at 12.3 billion won (US$9.5 million) in 2018, but it raised the figure to 18 billion won last year.
To date, it has established 153 job positions at 98 universities for academic positions in Korean studies. It has also fielded numerous visiting professors to different colleges, and launched a live online course titled “Global e-school” in 2021 to provide educational material for more people. Around 13,800 have joined the course, it says.
“So far, 12 universities in nine countries have picked it as a textbook for their Korean language courses. The total number of students taking these courses is 871 as of 2021,” says the foundation official.
Korean Wave rising: hallyu and K-pop will propel economy
But many point out that the Korean government should not be the only entity supporting Korean studies positions abroad, calling on Korean companies to do their fair share.
“Companies like Hyundai Motor and [conglomerate] SK did make donations to create positions for professors of Korean studies in the past, but we believe more companies should pay attention to this issue because the budget from the government is not sufficient to help everyone,” the official says.
King also underscored the need for companies’ active participation in creating and sustaining Korean studies positions over the long term.
“Korean studies is far too important to be left in the hands of the government agencies alone, as it seems the annual operating budgets from the agencies in charge of overseas studies are minuscule and are often spent in short-term ways,” he says.
“So Korean companies need to invest and do so in long-term ways like the Japanese private industry did in the 1970s and 1980s, until the early 1990s. Thanks to those investments, the infrastructure for Japanese studies is quite robust, even though the Japanese economy itself has been quite weak for the past couple of decades.”
King believes that now it is time for Korea to step up its game and capitalise on the popularity of its culture before it is too late.
