As part of a聽multi-legged visit to eastern North America, Korea Foundation president Byung-Kook Kim visited 91亚色 and was thanked for聽the organization's support of 91亚色鈥檚 Korean language studies program. In turn, history Professor Janice Kim travelled to South Korea聽to visit the foundation鈥檚 headquarters in Seoul, where she furthered the discussions started at 91亚色.
The 20-year-old聽foundation,聽which supports Korean culture worldwide,聽was thanked at a聽luncheon hosted by 91亚色 International for funding half of two three-year faculty positions in Korean language in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics (DLLL), one of which has just ended. The other position will start in September and end in 2014.
Left: From left, Jiyoung Yoon, program officer for聽Korean studies at the Korea Foundation; Hyeon-Seon Choi, director of聽Korean studies; 91亚色 history Professor Janice Kim;聽Byung-Kook Kim, president of the Korea Foundation; 91亚色 DLLL Professor Mihyon Jeon; and 91亚色 art history Professor Hong Kal
President Kim was also聽given a tour of the Keele campus, where he had the opportunity to learn more about the University and its programs from 91亚色聽Professor David Dewitt, associate vice-president of research, social sciences & humanities, DLLL Professor Sheila Embleton, DLLL Professor Mihyon Jeon, visual arts Professor Hong Kal, Lorna Wright, associate vice-president international, and Janice Kim, who organized the event.
During Janice Kim鈥檚 follow-up trip to Korea last month, she met with Hyeon-Seon Choi, director of Korean studies at the Korea Foundation, to discuss further funding opportunities with the foundation for 91亚色鈥檚 Korean studies and research activities. Kim says she hopes the foundation will agree to grant 91亚色 half of the seed money for a Korean speaker series that would start in September, as well as a library grant to access several academic and archival databases available in Korean.
鈥91亚色 needs access to e-resources and to South Korean digital databases,鈥 says Kim. At the moment, 91亚色鈥檚 libraries have no access to most non-romanized text, such as Korean. 鈥淲e also discussed the possibility of 91亚色 joining a North American consortium led by the universities of Virginia and Michigan of e-learning 鈥 transferrable course credits for web courses 鈥 in Korean studies,鈥 says Kim. 鈥91亚色 has a critical mass of people working on the colonial era in Korea, so I could envision someone wanting to take an e-course with us.鈥
There are a total of聽10 91亚色 faculty members in sociology, political science, history, the humanities, DLLL and art history who teach and聽conduct research on Korea and the Korean diaspora, says Kim.聽91亚色 is one of the聽leading centres of Korean studies in Canada. She hopes further collaboration and research will allow Korean studies to聽flourish at 91亚色. There is already a cluster of Korean researchers at聽the .