한국국제교류재단

The Korea Foundation focuses its efforts on supporting Korean Studies programs overseas to opportunities for research and education in Korean Studies, to train Korean specialists, and to promote Korean language education overseas. In the beginning, the Foundation’s support was concentrated on the establishment of Korean Studies professorships and on the operation of Korean Studies centers. More recently, the Foundation has expanded its support to include individual scholars’ research and writing activities. In response to the increasing interest at home and abroad in Korean language education in foreign countries, the Foundation plans to further expand its support for Korean language education.

With the aim of increasing the number of Korean language users and of contributing to the development of Korean Studies overseas, the Foundation’s support program for Korean language education is being carried out based on three key strategies: increasing language education opportunities, training educators, and building the foundation for Korean language education. The Foundation expects that the language support program will reap far greater results when it is offered in connection with other topics in Korean Studies, such as literature, history, culture and anthropology.

Programs to Increase Korean Language Education Opportunities

To incorporate the Korean language into the curricula of foreign universities, the Foundation supports the establishment of professorships and offers Korean language courses at universities. The Foundation also provides support for research activities on the development of Korean language textbooks and curricula that will be needed when primary and secondary schools decide to offer Korean courses.

▶Support for the Establishment of Professorships
To facilitate the introduction of Korean language degree programs at universities, the Foundation will support the establishment of professorships at five universities in the United States in 2003: the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, Yale University, Cornell University, Ohio State University, and SUNY Binghamton. The first four universities will receive the next installment of their multi-year grants while SUNY Binghamton will receive the first annual award of its multi-year grant.

▶Support for Korean Language Courses
Under this program, the Foundation supports the introduction and development of Korean language courses at 24 universities in 17 countries. First-time recipients of the Foundation’s support in 2003 include the University of Regensburg in Germany, Palacky University in the Czech Republic, the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies in Vietnam, the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, and a summer program organized by the American Association of Applied Linguistics at Michigan State University.

Study Korea Program for Educators

▶Korean Language Workshop
ln 2003, the Foundation will expand its Study Korea Program for Educators to provide Korean language instructors with an opportunity to refresh their language skills and to visit Korea. With the Foundation’s support, the American Association for Teachers of Korean (AATK) will organize a Korean language workshop at the University of California at Berkeley from July 31 to August 3. The Foundation will continue to sponsor a workshop for Japanese secondary school teachers of Korean at Seoul National University in August and will support the first workshop for Chinese teachers of Korean in Seoul in July.

▶Visit Korea Program for Korean Language Majors
The Foundation will launch the Visit Korea Program for foreign university students majoring in Korean in 2003. Under this program, students will be invited to Korea for an intensive language training session and an opportunity to experience Korean culture. Students from China, Mongolia and a number of Southeast Asian countries will be invited to this year’s program, to be held for about four to six weeks, beginning in August. The Foundation plans to gradually expand this program to include other countries in the future.

▶Fellowship Programs
The Foundation offers fellowships in graduate studies on a long-term basis to graduate students and, in some countries, undergraduates in Korean Studies, including Korean language studies, at overseas universities. The ive of these grants is to encourage many outstanding students to begin or continue Korean Studies and to help them develop professional careers in the field. A total of 155 students will be granted fellowships in 2003.

The Foundation will also provide fellowships for Korean language training to 73 students in 31 countries this year. Under this program, Korean language instructors and Korean Studies scholars will be given the chance to undergo language training at universities in Korea.

Programs to Build a Foundation for Korean Language Education

▶Textbook Development
The first and foremost task in promoting Korean language education at foreign universities, in terms of both quality and quantity, is to develop textbooks that suit foreign curricula. The Foundation, in cooperation with the Korean Language Education and Research Center, has developed textbooks for university students of English-speaking countries since 1994.

As of December 2002, the textbooks that have been produced under this joint effort, published by the University of Hawaii Press, include Integrated Korean I, II and III. These texts are currently being used at about forty universities, including the University of Hawaii, Harvard University and Stanford University in the United States; the University of Sydney in Australia; and the University of Rome in ltaly. Titles to be published in 2003 include Integrated Korean IV and V, Teacher’s Manual, Readings in Modern Korean Literature, and Korean Language in Culture and Society.

In addition to the development of textbooks for English-speaking students, the Foundation will also support the development of Korean textbooks to be used at universities in Russia, Spain and Mongolia in 2003.

The development of multi-media materials for Korean language education is another field in which the Foundation plans to augment its support. As part of this effort in 2003, the Foundation will support a project called ‘Korean Studies Curricula in the Age of Multimedia Education’ under the direction of Professor Cho Young-mi of the State University of New Jersey at Rutgers in the United States. In addition, a web study material bank for Korean language and culture education will be developed under the guidance of Professor Kim Young-a of Monash University in Australia.

▶Reference Materials Distribution
The Foundation distributes educational materials worldwide to increase the use of existing textbooks and materials on Korea. Under this program, the Foundation plans to distribute reference materials to about 20 overseas universities.

▶Meetings of Korean Language Educators
The Foundation supports meetings of Korean language educators and conferences by region and language area to facilitate academic exchanges of information and materials on Korean language education and research. With the support of the Foundation in 2003, the AATK will hold its annual conference from July 30 to August 2 at the University of California at Berkeley. Other gatherings to be supported by the Foundation include an international conference to be held by the Japanese Association of Korean Language Educators at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, on September 20 and 21; and a conference on translation by the Department of Korean Language at the University of Bonn in Germany in October.