Korean Studies: A Discipline Comes of Age

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Milan Hejtmanek remembers when he was one of a tiny handful of graduate students in Harvard's Korean studies department.

This was during the mid-1980s, when Korean studies, in Hejtmanek's words, "hit a trough." Today Hejtmanek, currently an assistant professor of Korean history, finds himself in a very different situation.

"There's been a complete change from the mid-1980s. Now there are about 20 graduate students in Korean studies, and Korea has become a required part of the curriculum in the undergraduate East Asian Studies program."

One of the reasons for this change is the rise of Korea itself as an important political and economic power. Korea's democratic reforms have increased the country's prestige and influence, while its growing economy has helped it to promote its culture by bestowing gifts on institutions around the world. In recent years, Harvard has benefited from this largesse.

In September 1993, the Korea Foundation gave the University $3.5 million to establish a chair in Korean literature. The search for a senior scholar to fill that chair has been going on for the past 18 months, and, according to Carter Eckert, professor of Korean history, an appointment should be announced in the near future.

The Korea Foundation grant has also benefited the Korea Institute, which Eckert directs. The grant has helped to create a permanent endowment for the Institute, now located in newly renovated quarters in Coolidge Hall. Money has also been raised for graduate and postdoctoral fellowships, undergraduate travel grants, the Korea Colloquium, and the Current Events Forum.

Another significant gift came this April when Se Young Yoon, chairman of the Seoul Broadcasting System, gave the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) $3 million to establish the Se Young Yoon Professorship in International Studies.

Eckert, who played an important role in the discussions and negotiations that led to the gift, said that according to the agreement between the Seoul Broadcasting System and FAS, the scholar who eventually fills the chair will engage in teaching and research that has a direct bearing on Korea and East Asia.

These gifts enhance the facilities of what was already one of the premier centers for Korean studies in the world. According to Choong Nam Yoon, librarian for the Korean Collections in the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard's Korean collection of about 85,000 volumes is the largest in the U.S. next to that of the Library of Congress.

Yoon, who is now directing an effort to enter the collection in the HOLLIS online catalog (expected completion time -- three to five years), said that the collection attracts scholars from all over the world.

Just as Korea is becoming a more important force on the world scene, Korean-Americans are becoming a larger and more established segment of the U.S. population, and this change is having an impact on Korean studies as well. A significant portion of the students now gravitating toward Korean history, language, and literature courses come from the nation's growing population of Korean-Americans.

"It used to be that Korean-Americans felt they were called toward the professions," Hejtmanek said. "Now their decisions about what to study have become more diverse."

Susan Lee, administrator and fundraiser for the Korea Institute, said that the enthusiasm of Korean-Americans for Korean studies at Harvard is reflected in the success of the Parents' Campaign. Lee has targeted the parents of Korean and Korean-American students at Harvard in her fundraising efforts and has found the response to be very gratifying.

"What's great is not only the amount we've raised, but also the degree of involvement. For example, the parents of one student, both of whom are factory workers, contributed $100, which I'm sure was not easy for them to afford."

Students of Korean ethnicity are not the only ones developing an interest in this historically and culturally significant peninsula. Classes on both the graduate and undergraduate levels tend to attract students of widely varied backgrounds, Eckert said.

Graduate student Matt Christensen is now working toward a Ph.D. in Korean history concurrently with a law degree. He hopes to combine the perspectives of law with his background in Korean history toward a better understanding of the evolution of political and economic institutions in modern Korea.

"This is a really exciting field to be in right now," he said.

"It's a field that's coming of age. Financial resources are becoming more plentiful, and the Internet is facilitating much closer interaction among students and scholars in Korea, Europe, and the United States."

Frank Hoffmann, a third-year graduate student, is writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the impact of Western art on Korean art of the 19th and 20th centuries, considered within the larger context of Korean intellectual history.

Hoffmann, a native of Germany, represents the increasing interest in Korean studies among European scholars. His decision to study at Harvard stems from his interest in the modern period, a subject that still receives little attention in European universities.

Hoffman has launched Korean studies into cyberspace by constructing a Korean studies home page on the Internet (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hoffmann/), containing links to numerous resources of interest to Korean scholars. With two other graduate students, he is also helping to create the Korean Studies Bibliographic Data Base Project, to be available on the Internet when completed.

Another indication of the growth of Korean studies at Harvard is the fact that East Asian Literatures and Civilizations is now offering courses in Korean Literature. Using some of the income from the Korea Foundation endowment, the department has brought a number of visiting professors of Korean literature to Harvard. This year Kathleen McCarthy taught one survey course on Korean literature in translation and one on Korean humor, with readings in Korean.

According to McCarthy, who wrote her Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard on the poetry of the Kisaeng (traditional entertainers similar to the Japanese Geisha), Korea has a rich literary tradition, which is only beginning to be discovered by the West.

"Korean literature is very rich and fascinating, but so far most of the scholarly emphasis in the West has been on the political and economic aspects of the society. Literature has been something of a poor stepchild. What we need now are more good translations. Since the 1980s, there has been an exponential growth in the number of translations available, but there is still a great deal to be done."

McCarthy herself has been working on translating literature from the medieval period (10th-14th centuries), but she feels there is a great need to translate the works of modern authors, like the well-known political satirist Kim Chi Ha, whose play Napoleon Cognac pokes fun at the pretensions of Korea's new industrial elite.

According to Eckert, recognition of Korean literature is long overdue, and he predicts that when a senior scholar is hired to fill the chair in literature, Harvard will become the leading university in the United States in that field.

"We already have a fantastic collection of scholars here in Chinese and Japanese literature," he said. "Korean literature is something of a missing link. There's a vast body of prose and poetry that remains untranslated, but that's going to change. And once we have a senior scholar here, he or she will be able to play an important role in bringing that change about."