Students in last semester’s “North Korea and Religion” course studied eleven memoirs written by North Korean defectors. Then, on the final day of class in December, they heard directly from one.
The course instructor, Hwansoo Kim, a professor of religious studies in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), had arranged for a conversation with Ji-il Kim, a 31-year-old former North Korean soldier who, in 2019, managed to slip away from his military unit and escape to freedom while stationed in Dubai.
Speaking via Zoom from Seoul, South Korea, Ji-il Kim recounted how both he and his working-class family strove to get ahead in a totalitarian society, only to be repeatedly thwarted, sometimes violently. He grew so despairing over the setbacks that he once attempted suicide.
“Money and power rule over the law in North Korea,” he told his audience.
After his presentation, Ji-il Kim took one question after another from the students. What were the greatest culture shocks going from North Korea to South Korea? What was the education system like in the north? How does propaganda shape northerners’ view of the south?
The course isn’t about religion in North Korea in the traditional sense, but about communism as a form of religion — the state ideology known as Juche — and its impact on all aspects of citizens’ daily lives, said Hwansoo Kim.
Students in Kim’s “North Korea and Religion” course last semester had the opportunity for a Zoom conversation with a young North Korean defector.
“What we see in the media about North Korea is focused on how crazy the leader is,” said Kim, an expert on Korean Buddhism and culture. “A better way to understand the country is to understand the people. This course is focused on the people who are living there and who have the same dreams as we do.”
The East Asian languages and literatures department, where Kim has a secondary appointment, has offered Korean language courses since 1990. Kim was hired in 2018 as Yale’s first non-language scholar of Korean studies, and since then, he has taken the lead in expanding the department’s offerings in Korean literature and cultural studies.
Undergraduates majoring in East Asian languages and literatures now have the option of a Korean track, along with the Chinese and Japanese tracks. (The master’s program offered by the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, which Kim chaired for a time, also has a Korean track.) The department has also hired a scholar of modern Korean culture, Kyunghee Eo, an assistant professor.
The effort to expand Korean studies is part of a university-wide effort, noted Aaron Gerow, who chairs the East Asian languages and literatures department and is the Alfred W. Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and of Film and Media Studies.
Recent hires include Hannah Shepherd, an assistant professor of history in FAS, who works on the connected modern histories of Japan and Korea; Bo Kyung Blenda Im, an assistant professor of sacred music and divinity at the Institute for Sacred Music, who specializes in popular music and Christianity in Korea; and the university’s first librarian for Korean studies, Jude Yang.
And in November 2023, the Office of International Affairs helped organized the first Yale-Korea Week, an event that drew hundreds of attendees to learn about and celebrate the country’s culture, denizens, and diaspora.
“What has been wonderful about the growth of Korean studies at Yale is that it has enjoyed broad support, going beyond any single department, with individual programs hiring new faculty on their own initiative,” Gerow said. “We haven’t had to fight and scratch to make gains but have enjoyed strong backing from the administration and faculty across the university.”
In addition, Kim’s expertise in Korean Buddhism and connections in the field helped attract a $1 million gift this year to support the Buddhist Studies Program at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. The gift came from the Jogye Buddhist Order, the largest Buddhist lineage in Korea.
“We’ve accomplished a lot with the support of university administrators and my colleagues,” Kim said. “Now it’s time to plant these basic roots deeply in the ground, to strengthen the foundation of Korean studies before we keep expanding.”
‘Curiosity and enthusiasm’
Growth in Korean studies at Yale comes as the so-called Korean Wave (or hallyu) has flooded the globe with South Korean popular music, film, literature, and food.
The rise of K-pop, and what it reveals about society and culture
Early in the pandemic, sociologist Grace Kao began watching K-pop videos, largely as a diversion. Now she’s exploring the societal impact of the popular genre.
Korean pop music, or K-pop, bands like BTS and Blackpink are high-profile darlings of the music industry. (The explosive popularity of the genre was the focus of a recent conference organized by Yale sociologist Grace Kao, IBM Professor of Sociology.)
The Korean drama “Squid Game” is Netflix’s most-watched series to date, and one of dozens of Korean movies and dramas offered on the site. The 2019 black comedy “Parasite,” directed by Bong Joon-ho, garnered widespread critical acclaim and four Academy Awards.
And just this year, South Korean author Han Kang received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first South Korean writer to do so.
“The global influence of Korean popular culture has sparked curiosity and enthusiasm among students,” said Angela Lee-Smith, a senior lector II and coordinator of the Korean language program. “This initial interest acts as a gateway to further exploration, motivating students to learn the language to better understand and connect with the cultural elements they enjoy.”
Enrollment in the language program has steadily risen from about 100 in 2017 to an average of about 300 students annually for the past three years – making it the sixth most commonly studied language at Yale, according to FAS. The program has added three lectors since 2018 for a total of five full-time lectors on multi-year appointments.
The program has two language tracks: one for non-heritage students, which offers courses from the first through the third year, and one for heritage students, which begins at the second-year level. Both tracks merge at the third year, offering more advanced courses.
More students of Korean heritage are progressing into the advanced language courses, said Seungja Choi, a senior lector and one of the founders of the language program, along with the late Samuel E. Martin, a professor of Far Eastern linguistics. This is partly due to changing attitudes among immigrant parents about the importance of passing on their native tongue, she said.
Choi’s advanced grammar course is focused on Korean history and society, while others examine contemporary life in Korea. The program’s teaching methodology, said Lee-Smith, “emphasizes real-life usage, immersive learning, and transformative educational experiences, ensuring that students not only learn the language but also understand the cultural context and nuances.”
The 5 Best K-DramasSeungja Choi, a senior lector in East Asian languages and literature, offers her recommendations for series to watch.
|
Connecting to heritage
Kim is consulting with colleagues about how they might continue to round out course offerings. He hopes that new scholars might bring a wider range of disciplines — perhaps sociology, anthropology, political science, or art history — and balance out the program’s heavy focus on modern history and culture to include the pre-modern and ancient.
Kyunghee Eo, an assistant professor of East Asian languages and literatures, arrived at Yale knowing the university wanted to expand its Korean studies.
Her research focus is modern Korean literature and popular culture, with a sub-focus on representations of gender and sexuality. She has taught a course in modern Korean literature twice so far; both sections reached the cap for enrollment.
While some of that interest is from people not of Korean heritage but interested in the culture, there is a large body of Korean American students “who are pretty thirsty to learn about the culture of their heritage, the history their parents lived through, possibly.”
While many of them grew up knowing some of the language and eating Korean food, they are eager for a deeper engagement with the culture and access to good research, she said.
“A lot of them tell me they go back to their parents and tell them, ‘I read this book or that book,’ and their parents tell them that they read the same book in school in Korea,” Eo said. “I find that to be really meaningful — increasing understanding and communication within Korean American families.”
