(해외한국학 중핵대학 육성사업, [오클랜드대학교 한국학 교육과 연구의 발전을 위한 5개년 계획], University of Auckland, 2012.12.10~2017.12.9)
송창주 교수(오클랜드대학교)
Professor Song, Changzoo (University of Auckland)
I started to work at the University of Auckland in New Zealand from January 2002. Before then, I worked at two European universities, where I taught comparative politics: Riga Stradins University in Latvia and the National University of L’viv in western Ukraine. These positions were sponsored by the Soros Foundation. While working in Europe I came to work for the University of Auckland’s Korean Studies Program. On my journey to New Zealand from Europe via Korea I realized how far New Zealand was from the rest of the world. New Zealand is almost 10,000km away from Korea. The distance between Korea and New Zealand is a little farther than from Seoul to Los Angeles, and it took about 12 hours by airplane. After my arrival in New Zealand, I discovered that the Korean studies program of the University of Auckland was a well established program already. The program had three full-time academic staff, out of which two staff were managing the Korean language section. I was filling the position of a lecturer, who used to teach Korean history at the university but had to leave for another country.
The Korean Studies Department of the University of Auckland was the only full-fledged Korean Studies program in New Zealand. I was told about the history of the program, and I learned that Korean language classes were first offered at the University in 1989 thanks to the efforts of the senior staff working at the department. By the end of the 1990s, the department added courses in Korean history and Korean literature. By the time when I joined the department in 2002 though it was a well-established program, Korean Studies program was not very popular among students and its prospects did not look very promising due to small enrolments. Seeing some other small programs closed down, I was rather worried if the Korean Studies program same may face similar fate. At that time, most of students who were learning Korean language and taking Korean culture and society courses were local students and there was nothing like the Hallyu phenomenon that made Korea-related courses popular elsewhere. A few Chinese students joined the program, but the situation was greatly different from today when at least 60-70% of students taking Korean language courses are Chinese.
Considering the fact that New Zealand has just about 4 million population (currently the figure is about 4.5 million) and that the two countries had no formal relationship until the 1960s, it was remarkable that the university established its Korean Studies program in the end of the 1980s and developed it into a full-fledged program by the late 1990s. Today Korean Studies have a great potential for further development in New Zealand as the relations between the two countries have grown tremendously. Korea established official diplomatic relations with New Zealand only in 1962 and the two nations opened embassies in the early 1970s. The two nations, however, had already formed an important relation prior to this. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, New Zealand sent troops to help South Korea. Including ground units and naval personnel, the total number of New Zealand’s armed personnel dispatched to Korea during the war was about 6,000. Even after the war New Zealand provided valuable assistance to Korea through various aid programs. One of them was the Colombo Plan, through over 300 Koreans were brought to New Zealand for education and technical training. New Zealand also sent dairy experts to help Korea develop its own dairy industry. As the Korean economy grew fast since the 1960s, the trade volume between the two nations greatly increased. In addition, many Koreans immigrated to New Zealand after the 1990s. A large number of Korean students also come to New Zealand to study English. When I flew to New Zealand from Korean in January 2002 I saw many Korean children who were going to New Zealand for a short-term English education. Increasing number of New Zealand youths also went to Korea to teach English following the English education boom in Korea after the 1990s.
As an increasing number of Asians began to migrate to New Zealand after the 1990s, New Zealand became a highly multi-cultural society in a relatively short period of time. In consequence, New Zealanders began to have greater interest in Asian countries and peoples and demand arose for more education and research about Asian countries including Korea. Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city that accounts for over 30% of the entire population of the country, developed a keener demand for such education. As the University of Auckland had a comprehensive Korean studies program, students from other regions of the country naturally came to Auckland if they wanted to study about Korea. Nevertheless, the Korean studies program of the University of Auckland was not developing much. The number of students taking Korean language classes was increasing only in small numbers through the 1990s, but then there was a downturn in the beginning of the 2000s. Student enrolments began to grow gradually it the end of the 2000s again, apparently thanks to the Korean wave that arrived a little late to New Zealand. This growth was also helped by Chinese students who came to New Zealand after having been influenced by Hallyu in China. Unlike elsewhere, Hallyu was not so strong in New Zealand before the 2010s. Even if more and more students came to like Korean culture and they took Korean language and culture courses, the number of those students did not increase fast. As the number of Chinese immigrants and students who brought Hallyu with them to New Zealand steadily grew, they began to be the most visible group in the classrooms of Korean language and Korean culture. The trend of the past ten years shows that Chinese students normally occupy over 60% of Korean language classes at the University of Auckland. Recently, more and more non-Chinese Asians (such as Vietnamese, Thais, Indonesians and Malaysians) and students from the Middle-East, Latin America and Eastern Europe have chosen Korea-related courses. In the last three years we saw a huge increase in student enrolments in our Korean language and Korean culture and society courses.
At the University of Auckland, the Korean Studies Program belongs to the Asian Studies Department together with the Japanese and Chinese Studies Programs. The Korean Studies Program provides a wide gamut of courses from the lower level to higher level Korean language, society, politics, culture and other related subjects. Our Korean language courses have six levels, two levels each for year 1, 2, and 3 students. Regarding non-language Korean Studies courses, Korean 120 “Introduction to Korean Society and Culture” is for year 1 students, add there are also courses on modern Korean history, Korean Diaspora, music, politics, and films for higher level students. In addition, students also take broader Asian Studies courses on the history of Northeast Asia, international relations in Asia, and New Zealand and Asia.
As mentioned above, three full-time academic staff have been working in the Korean Studies program at the University of Auckland and this has been so since the 1990s. We also had a subject librarian who was in charge of Korean Studies collection at the General Library. There were a few universities in Australia that have large Korean Studies program at that time (Australian National University, University of Sydney, Monash University, and the University of New South Wales), but the Korean Studies Program at the University of Auckland was relatively well developed even compared to those big Australian universities. As the University of Auckland’s Korean Studies Program was selected as one of the Core University Program for Korean Studies institutions by the Academy of Korean Studies in the end of 2012, we could develop it further both qualitatively and quantitatively. In 2014 we hired a lecturer (initially a post-doc fellow) specializing in Korean language teaching to improve the quality of Korean language education at the university. We also started to offer the modern Korean history course and then incorporated a few Korea-related subjects offered by other departments such as the Anthropology Department and Political Studies department. This greatly broadened the choice for students majoring and minoring Korean Studies. We also recruited excellent graduate school students internationally through our post-graduate scholarship programs. Currently we have doctoral students who came from various countries such as Korea, Germany, USA and Argentina. In the last few years we witnessed a high increase in the number of students taking our courses. Until 2012, the number of students taking Korean language courses at the university was about 100-120 at most, but the number has reached over 300 a year for the past two years. This is more than the number of students taking Chinese language, which is rather a big surprise.
We have been working hard also to promote our research outputs here at the Korean Studies Program in the last several years, and this was very much helped by the generous support of the Academy of Korean Studies. Until last year our research activities were focused on Korean nationalism, Korean Diaspora, and the political economy of Korea, which are the specialties of our academic staff. From this year we invited university-wide researchers who are interested in Korea and this widened the spectrum of Korean Studies research at the university. In addition, through the Core University for Korean Studies Program of the Academy of Korean Studies we have been supporting and building special cooperative relationships with the Korean Studies programs of other universities in the region. They include the University of South Pacific in Fiji, the University of Queensland in Australia, and the Ateneo University in Manila. In order to expand the networks of Korean Diaspora research we have been cooperating with other institutions such as Korea University and the Ocean University of China.
Korean Studies in New Zealand is based on the needs of New Zealand society, and we have been meeting the demands of university students who want to deepen their knowledge on Korean society, people, economy, politics and culture. As New Zealand is becoming more culturally diverse and economically dynamic country, such needs will continue to grow. This will call for further development of the Korean Studies Program of the University of Auckland and we are ready to meet the challenges and are developing a blue print for a better future. Our cooperation with and the generous support of the Academy of Korean Studies helps us to achieve our goals fast.