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Analysis of the Research and Educational Trends of Korean Studies in Southern China
The education of Korean studies at Chinese universities has a history of 75 years, and its origin can be traced back to the Department of Korean language of the National Oriental Language School opened in February 1946. There are 125 4-year Joseon (Korean) language courses in total at Chinese universities registered in the CHESICC system of the Ministry of Education of China as of December 2020, and the number of graduates per year is 4,500~5,000. Korean language departments currently rank fifth in terms of size, following 1,002 English departments, 507 Japanese departments, 169 Russian departments, and 151 French departments. Korean language departments used to rank third with more than 200 courses including four-year undergraduate programs and applied Korean language departments at 2-year college programs, but the heyday of the past will never come back.
This paper examines the current crisis and seek alternatives in the future with a focus on Korean language departments in southern China including the Yangtze River basin. Only when Korean language departments, which are responsible for more than 99% of the education of Korean studies, undergo intense restructuring and upgrades of diversification, the education of Korean studies in China will be able to find a new way and promote sustainable development.
As for the research of Korean studies in China, this paper focuses on a series of journals and collections of Korean studies published regularly or irregularly from the 1990s to the present. Among about 20 publications, only Yanbian University's "Journal of Dongjiang"and Fudan University's "Collection of Korean Studies" have been officially registered on China's CSSCI system, but even they are repeating the history of registration/deletion. This paper explores the realistic possibilities of Korean studies in China taking root in the CSSCI-based mainstream academia in the future.
The number of departments of Korean language, including those which offer four-year undergraduate courses and applied Korean language programs provided by junior colleges, once exceeded 200, taking the third spot, but any such heyday will never come back. This paper would like to examine the current crisis and seek solutions, focusing on Korean language departments in southern China, including the Yangtze River basin. Only when the Korean language departments, which account for more than 99% of Korean studies education, undergo severe restructuring and achieve diversification and upgrade will Korean studies education in China be able to find a new path and accomplish sustainable development.
This paper focuses on academic journals and collections of papers related to Korean studies published regularly or irregularly from the 1990s to the recent years. Among the about 20 publications, only two were put on the Chinese CSSCI system -- "Dongjiang Journal" of Yanbian University and "Collected Papers for Korea Studies" of Fudan University. However, even these two continue to repeat the cycle of listing and delisting from the system. This paper would like to explore practical ways to make Korean studies in China take firm root in the mainstream academia by strengthening its position in the CSSCI.
Korean studies education at Chinese universities has a history of 75 years, as it officially began in February 1946 at the National Oriental Language School. In the second volume of his memoir, "Jangjeong (Long March)", former Korea University president Kim Jun-yop recorded details of the time when became the first Korean language professor at a Chinese university. Kim trained the first generation of Korean studies students in China while serving as a full-time lecturer at the Department of Korean Language at the National Oriental Language School for about three years from February 1946 to November 1948. In the meantime, Kim enrolled in the History Department of the Graduate School of National Central University (predecessor of Nanjing University) at the time to study Chinese history. Leading students of Kim during the time include Yang Tongfang (楊通方) who served as a professor at Peking University, Wei Xusheng (韋旭昇), and Xu Weihan (許維翰).
As mentioned above, Korean studies education in China which started with the Department of Korean Language at the National Oriental Language School has achieved a lot of development over the past 75 years. It especially achieved impressive growth in terms of external expansion in the short period of time since South Korea and China established diplomatic relations in 1992. I had dealt with the issue in 2016, when Chinese studies education marked its 70th year, by writing "History and State of Korean Studies Education in China and its Future Prospects." Another five years have passed since then, during which there have been immense changes at home and abroad, including the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many factors such as politics, diplomacy, society, culture, and COVID-19 have large and small impact on Korean studies education and research in China, and they are highly likely to cause a tectonic shift in the future. Therefore, this paper aims to reexamine the current state of Korean studies education and research in China with a more macroscopic perspective and seek ways to proactively prepare for future changes.
The "Education Ministry Sunshine College Entrance Examination Information Platform" affiliated with the Center provides information related to the student recruitment of universities nationwide until December 31, 2020. High school seniors across China apply to universities by referring to the official data of the platform. Related data shows that a total of 125 Chinese universities have opened four-year undergraduate courses in Joseon language (Korean) by the end of 2020.
All the departments of Korean language at the 125 universities registered in the Chinese Ministry of Education system offer four-year undergraduate courses, which 4,500 to 5,000 students complete each year. Compared to departments of other foreign languages and literatures such as English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese, the number of the Korean language departments is not small.
The 125 departments rank Korean language at fifth place among the four-year undergraduate foreign language programs offered by Chinese universities, after 1,002 English departments, 507 Japanese departments, 169 Russian departments, and 151 French departments. The number of departments of Korean language, including those for four-year undergraduate courses and applied Korean language programs at junior colleges, once exceeded 200, taking the third spot, but any such heyday will never come back. This paper would like to examine the current crisis and seek future solutions, focusing on Korean language departments in southern China, including the Yangtze River basin.
Traditionally, the Chinese land was divided by Yangtze River into the north and south. Its basin and the area south of the river is called the Southern Region, which has 14 provinces and cities (direct-administered municipalities) -- Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, and Yunnan. There are 45 undergraduate programs for Korean language in the region. This paper put together the overall state of the Korean language departments at 17 national and public universities. There are private universities in China that also offer undergraduate Korean language courses, and some of them are quite sizable, but they usually focus on education rather than on research.
After the university restructuring in 1952, the boundaries and distinctions between departments in Chinese universities have gone up, and gaps were created between foreign language departments and traditional liberal arts departments such as literature, history, and philosophy. Furthermore, foreign language departments in China have shifted their focus to education of language functions, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This inclination was recognized as a serious problem by all the concerned parties -- professors, students, parents, and education authorities. In the past two to three years, the COVID-19 pandemic worsened economic conditions and made it difficult for students to participate in exchange programs and go for overseas study. This resulted in academically excellent students avoiding applying to foreign language departments. The education authorities also called on foreign language departments at universities to depart from education and research of language and literature and shift to education and research of the overall situation in each foreign country.
In line with such changes and social demands, foreign language departments are moving to change themselves. Peking University's School of Foreign Languages opened graduate courses for area studies majors in 2017 and began recruiting master's degree candidates. On the 120th anniversary of its establishment in April 2018, Peking University opened the Institute of Area Studies, of which Ning Qi, dean of the School of Foreign Languages, concurrently serves as the executive vice director. The institute's website says that "The area studies covers each country's geography, culture, economy, politics, society, folklore, organizations, institutions, and other activities of mankind and that its research goes beyond boundaries of academic departments."
As seen in the case of Peking University's School of Foreign Languages, foreign language departments at Chinese universities are forced to seek involuntarily and voluntarily internal and external expansion and other changes. Under such a situation, what is more important than the concern about the numerical decline of the Korean language departments is how to promote various qualitative changes and developments. Korean language departments need more than anything else to transform the crisis unfolding in front of them into an opportunity for a new leap forward. Only when Korean language departments are reborn through aggressive restructuring, diversification and upgrade can Korean studies education in China find a new way out and achieve sustainable development.
Currently, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) system launched in March 1999 is the largest-scale and most-widely used one in China. The CNKI website says that "the concept of the National Knowledge Infrastructure (NKI) was first introduced in the World Bank's 1998 World Development Report" and that the CNKI project was undertaken as a key project of Tsinghua University. The China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD), which is included in the CNKI system, contains 8,540 Chinese academic publications, including 1,970 Chinese-language core publications of Peking University. Its own data shows that a total of 58.1 million Chinese documents have been registered in CAJD from 1915 to the present.
I used the CAJD system in 2012 to search for research papers on Korean culture, literature, and language published from 1992 to 2011. As many as more than 2,000 articles were searched, but many of them had quality problems. Since CAJD itself did not have strict academic standards for selecting journals, it was mixed up with good and bad ones. Nevertheless, the CNKI is a vast system and it is very convenient to use as it includes many databases, including the China Doctoral Dissertations Full-text Database (CDFD), the China Academic Monographic Serials Database, and other databases on domestic and international academic papers. It also runs a separate plagiarism checking system aimed to prevent research cheating.
The Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) applies stricter academic standards than the Peking University Guide to the Core Journal of China and the CAJD journal database. The system was initiated by Nanjing University in late 1997, which signed a partnership agreement with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in April 1999. It was selected as a key project of the Chinese Ministry of Education in August 1999. It began announcing the list of accredited journals in 1998 and the list of accreditation candidate journals in 2008. Its selection criteria for 2009 limited the total number of CSSCI accredited journals to "20 percent of the total number of Chinese journals." The China Social Sciences Research Evaluation Center's data on the 2021-2022 accredited academic journals and accreditation candidates shows the following: There are a total of 583 accredited journals (Korea has 1,612 excellent accredited journals and candidates) and 229 candidate journals (Korea 216 candidates) in all the fields of humanities, society and arts. The CSSCI-accredited journals account for only 36 percent of South Korea's KCI-accredited journals.
Many academic journals on Korean studies have been published so far in China, but only Yanbian University's "Dongjiang Journal" and Fudan University's "Collected Papers for Korean Studies" can be searched in the CSSCI system. Dongjiang Journal was launched in 1984 by Yanbian Teachers' College, and it was integrated into Yanbian University in 1996, developing into a leading quarterly of the university. It mainly publishes papers on the study of culture in Northeast Asia, problems in Northeast Asia, economics, linguistics, law, and literature. Dongjiang Journal was demoted to an accreditation candidate.
The "Collected Papers for Korean Studies" of Fudan University's Center for Korean Studies was launched in 1995, and it is not a periodical, but a sort of academic monographic serials. It is published twice a year and has been listed and delisted in the CSSCI accreditation several times. It mainly publishes papers on Korean Peninsula issues, including politics and diplomacy, security, history, philosophy, culture, society, economy, and management.
Looking at the titles of academic journals and papers related to Korean studies, what's the most regrettable is that their quality is not proportional to quantity. It is definitely necessary to make strenuous efforts to make them firmly take root in the CSSCI system. The next biggest problem is that the journals and papers fall much short of actively participating in mainstream discourses in China or generating discourses on Korean studies. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to actively engage in mainstream discourses with planned projects on special topics instead of publishing individual papers. Thirdly, the results of Korean studies research in Korea and other countries are not well known to the Chinese academic community, which causes communication problems and even misunderstanding and distrust. Korean studies journals in China need to exert active efforts to resolve this problem.
This paper examines the current crisis and seek alternatives in the future with a focus on Korean language departments in southern China including the Yangtze River basin. Only when Korean language departments, which are responsible for more than 99% of the education of Korean studies, undergo intense restructuring and upgrades of diversification, the education of Korean studies in China will be able to find a new way and promote sustainable development.
As for the research of Korean studies in China, this paper focuses on a series of journals and collections of Korean studies published regularly or irregularly from the 1990s to the present. Among about 20 publications, only Yanbian University's "Journal of Dongjiang"and Fudan University's "Collection of Korean Studies" have been officially registered on China's CSSCI system, but even they are repeating the history of registration/deletion. This paper explores the realistic possibilities of Korean studies in China taking root in the CSSCI-based mainstream academia in the future.
1. Introduction
Korean studies education at Chinese universities has a history of 75 years, with its origin dating back to the Department of Korean Language and Literature at the National Oriental Language School, which opened in February 1946. As of December 2020, there were a total of 125 four-year departments of the Joseon language (Korean) at Chinese universities registered in the CHESICC system of the Ministry of Education. About 4,500 to 5,000 students complete the programs each year. The number of departments of Korean language is ranked fifth currently, after 1,002 departments of English, 507 departments of Japanese, 169 departments of Russian, and 151 departments of French.The number of departments of Korean language, including those which offer four-year undergraduate courses and applied Korean language programs provided by junior colleges, once exceeded 200, taking the third spot, but any such heyday will never come back. This paper would like to examine the current crisis and seek solutions, focusing on Korean language departments in southern China, including the Yangtze River basin. Only when the Korean language departments, which account for more than 99% of Korean studies education, undergo severe restructuring and achieve diversification and upgrade will Korean studies education in China be able to find a new path and accomplish sustainable development.
This paper focuses on academic journals and collections of papers related to Korean studies published regularly or irregularly from the 1990s to the recent years. Among the about 20 publications, only two were put on the Chinese CSSCI system -- "Dongjiang Journal" of Yanbian University and "Collected Papers for Korea Studies" of Fudan University. However, even these two continue to repeat the cycle of listing and delisting from the system. This paper would like to explore practical ways to make Korean studies in China take firm root in the mainstream academia by strengthening its position in the CSSCI.
Korean studies education at Chinese universities has a history of 75 years, as it officially began in February 1946 at the National Oriental Language School. In the second volume of his memoir, "Jangjeong (Long March)", former Korea University president Kim Jun-yop recorded details of the time when became the first Korean language professor at a Chinese university. Kim trained the first generation of Korean studies students in China while serving as a full-time lecturer at the Department of Korean Language at the National Oriental Language School for about three years from February 1946 to November 1948. In the meantime, Kim enrolled in the History Department of the Graduate School of National Central University (predecessor of Nanjing University) at the time to study Chinese history. Leading students of Kim during the time include Yang Tongfang (楊通方) who served as a professor at Peking University, Wei Xusheng (韋旭昇), and Xu Weihan (許維翰).
As mentioned above, Korean studies education in China which started with the Department of Korean Language at the National Oriental Language School has achieved a lot of development over the past 75 years. It especially achieved impressive growth in terms of external expansion in the short period of time since South Korea and China established diplomatic relations in 1992. I had dealt with the issue in 2016, when Chinese studies education marked its 70th year, by writing "History and State of Korean Studies Education in China and its Future Prospects." Another five years have passed since then, during which there have been immense changes at home and abroad, including the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many factors such as politics, diplomacy, society, culture, and COVID-19 have large and small impact on Korean studies education and research in China, and they are highly likely to cause a tectonic shift in the future. Therefore, this paper aims to reexamine the current state of Korean studies education and research in China with a more macroscopic perspective and seek ways to proactively prepare for future changes.
2. Analysis of recent trends of Korean studies education in southern China
The China Higher Education Student Information and Career Center, an agency which is directly under the Ministry of Education, collects and manages comprehensive information related to student recruitment, academic records and background, and employment of graduates of all universities in China. The center, whose English acronym is CHESICC, provides various official information related to recruitment of undergraduate and graduate students at each university.The "Education Ministry Sunshine College Entrance Examination Information Platform" affiliated with the Center provides information related to the student recruitment of universities nationwide until December 31, 2020. High school seniors across China apply to universities by referring to the official data of the platform. Related data shows that a total of 125 Chinese universities have opened four-year undergraduate courses in Joseon language (Korean) by the end of 2020.
All the departments of Korean language at the 125 universities registered in the Chinese Ministry of Education system offer four-year undergraduate courses, which 4,500 to 5,000 students complete each year. Compared to departments of other foreign languages and literatures such as English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese, the number of the Korean language departments is not small.
The 125 departments rank Korean language at fifth place among the four-year undergraduate foreign language programs offered by Chinese universities, after 1,002 English departments, 507 Japanese departments, 169 Russian departments, and 151 French departments. The number of departments of Korean language, including those for four-year undergraduate courses and applied Korean language programs at junior colleges, once exceeded 200, taking the third spot, but any such heyday will never come back. This paper would like to examine the current crisis and seek future solutions, focusing on Korean language departments in southern China, including the Yangtze River basin.
Traditionally, the Chinese land was divided by Yangtze River into the north and south. Its basin and the area south of the river is called the Southern Region, which has 14 provinces and cities (direct-administered municipalities) -- Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, and Yunnan. There are 45 undergraduate programs for Korean language in the region. This paper put together the overall state of the Korean language departments at 17 national and public universities. There are private universities in China that also offer undergraduate Korean language courses, and some of them are quite sizable, but they usually focus on education rather than on research.
After the university restructuring in 1952, the boundaries and distinctions between departments in Chinese universities have gone up, and gaps were created between foreign language departments and traditional liberal arts departments such as literature, history, and philosophy. Furthermore, foreign language departments in China have shifted their focus to education of language functions, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This inclination was recognized as a serious problem by all the concerned parties -- professors, students, parents, and education authorities. In the past two to three years, the COVID-19 pandemic worsened economic conditions and made it difficult for students to participate in exchange programs and go for overseas study. This resulted in academically excellent students avoiding applying to foreign language departments. The education authorities also called on foreign language departments at universities to depart from education and research of language and literature and shift to education and research of the overall situation in each foreign country.
In line with such changes and social demands, foreign language departments are moving to change themselves. Peking University's School of Foreign Languages opened graduate courses for area studies majors in 2017 and began recruiting master's degree candidates. On the 120th anniversary of its establishment in April 2018, Peking University opened the Institute of Area Studies, of which Ning Qi, dean of the School of Foreign Languages, concurrently serves as the executive vice director. The institute's website says that "The area studies covers each country's geography, culture, economy, politics, society, folklore, organizations, institutions, and other activities of mankind and that its research goes beyond boundaries of academic departments."
As seen in the case of Peking University's School of Foreign Languages, foreign language departments at Chinese universities are forced to seek involuntarily and voluntarily internal and external expansion and other changes. Under such a situation, what is more important than the concern about the numerical decline of the Korean language departments is how to promote various qualitative changes and developments. Korean language departments need more than anything else to transform the crisis unfolding in front of them into an opportunity for a new leap forward. Only when Korean language departments are reborn through aggressive restructuring, diversification and upgrade can Korean studies education in China find a new way out and achieve sustainable development.
3. Analysis of recent trends of Korean studies as seen in China's CSSCI system
The first large-scale classification and selection of periodicals officially published in China was undertaken by the Peking University Library, which published the first volume of "A Guide to the Core Journal of China" in 1992. The guide was published up to the eighth volume, in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017. The website of the Peking University Library says that "the number of periodicals, which was less than 100 in the early 1970s, rose sharply to 6,000 by the end of the 1980s." It encouraged the library to select core journals to help with library collection and readers. At the beginning, the listing of core journals had a significant nationwide influence, but of course, it included publications that cannot be regarded as academic journals if rigid standards were applied.Currently, the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) system launched in March 1999 is the largest-scale and most-widely used one in China. The CNKI website says that "the concept of the National Knowledge Infrastructure (NKI) was first introduced in the World Bank's 1998 World Development Report" and that the CNKI project was undertaken as a key project of Tsinghua University. The China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD), which is included in the CNKI system, contains 8,540 Chinese academic publications, including 1,970 Chinese-language core publications of Peking University. Its own data shows that a total of 58.1 million Chinese documents have been registered in CAJD from 1915 to the present.
I used the CAJD system in 2012 to search for research papers on Korean culture, literature, and language published from 1992 to 2011. As many as more than 2,000 articles were searched, but many of them had quality problems. Since CAJD itself did not have strict academic standards for selecting journals, it was mixed up with good and bad ones. Nevertheless, the CNKI is a vast system and it is very convenient to use as it includes many databases, including the China Doctoral Dissertations Full-text Database (CDFD), the China Academic Monographic Serials Database, and other databases on domestic and international academic papers. It also runs a separate plagiarism checking system aimed to prevent research cheating.
The Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) applies stricter academic standards than the Peking University Guide to the Core Journal of China and the CAJD journal database. The system was initiated by Nanjing University in late 1997, which signed a partnership agreement with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in April 1999. It was selected as a key project of the Chinese Ministry of Education in August 1999. It began announcing the list of accredited journals in 1998 and the list of accreditation candidate journals in 2008. Its selection criteria for 2009 limited the total number of CSSCI accredited journals to "20 percent of the total number of Chinese journals." The China Social Sciences Research Evaluation Center's data on the 2021-2022 accredited academic journals and accreditation candidates shows the following: There are a total of 583 accredited journals (Korea has 1,612 excellent accredited journals and candidates) and 229 candidate journals (Korea 216 candidates) in all the fields of humanities, society and arts. The CSSCI-accredited journals account for only 36 percent of South Korea's KCI-accredited journals.
Many academic journals on Korean studies have been published so far in China, but only Yanbian University's "Dongjiang Journal" and Fudan University's "Collected Papers for Korean Studies" can be searched in the CSSCI system. Dongjiang Journal was launched in 1984 by Yanbian Teachers' College, and it was integrated into Yanbian University in 1996, developing into a leading quarterly of the university. It mainly publishes papers on the study of culture in Northeast Asia, problems in Northeast Asia, economics, linguistics, law, and literature. Dongjiang Journal was demoted to an accreditation candidate.
The "Collected Papers for Korean Studies" of Fudan University's Center for Korean Studies was launched in 1995, and it is not a periodical, but a sort of academic monographic serials. It is published twice a year and has been listed and delisted in the CSSCI accreditation several times. It mainly publishes papers on Korean Peninsula issues, including politics and diplomacy, security, history, philosophy, culture, society, economy, and management.
Looking at the titles of academic journals and papers related to Korean studies, what's the most regrettable is that their quality is not proportional to quantity. It is definitely necessary to make strenuous efforts to make them firmly take root in the CSSCI system. The next biggest problem is that the journals and papers fall much short of actively participating in mainstream discourses in China or generating discourses on Korean studies. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to actively engage in mainstream discourses with planned projects on special topics instead of publishing individual papers. Thirdly, the results of Korean studies research in Korea and other countries are not well known to the Chinese academic community, which causes communication problems and even misunderstanding and distrust. Korean studies journals in China need to exert active efforts to resolve this problem.
