[KS] Korean Studies in Oxford

Fri Apr 15 12:52:58 EDT 2005

 Dear All,
Since Brother Anthony mentioned this subject, I have been hiding and
hoping that I could avoid saying anything, but I guess that I should
clarify my view before there is any misunderstanding.
The University of Oxford has declared that Korean Studies will be
terminated from June 2007, unless sufficient funding is found to ensure
the continuation of the fledgling programme, preferably endowment
funding. I was interviewed by the Chosun Ilbo on this matter and a
reporter ran a short piece (see A below). The Chosun Ilbo then also ran
an editorial (B below), and they published a short piece authored by
myself and the same Chosun Ilbo journalist who interviewed me (C below).
I have given no interviews or contributions to any other news outlet.
The point made in the articles and especially in the editorial is that
if Korean Studies disappears from the University of Oxford, indeed
declines across Europe for lack of financial support, this will
adversely affect Korea, because it will reduce the number of people who
can interpret Korea in its own terms to European and to global society.
Without such people, European journalists, businesspeople, and
government officials will be forced to solicit information on Korea from
Japanologists and Sinologists, currently a common practice as many of
you will know. Many of you are in North America and Europe may appear
unimportant, but I am sure that seeing Europeans draw on Japanologists
and Sinologists for information on Korea can only be to the disadvantage
of Korean interests, and so the loss of Korean Studies at Oxford and the
hardships it faces elsewhere in Europe are worthy of attention in Korea
and worthy of support by Korean government and business. The Korea
Foundation has been very generous, but their budget was only about USD
$5,400,000 last year. This is only 1% of the budget available to their
counterpart, the Japan Foundation. We all know how many requests we put
to the Korea Foundation, and we know how hard they work, but I am sure
that very few of us know how slim are their resources. To paraphrase a
well-known Brit, we are all very thankful to these few who have done so
much for so many with so little.
Many of us hope that the Korean government will see their way to expand
the Korea Foundation's budget, to target support to struggling European
programmes, and to enlist the aid of Korean businesses, who seem
strangely absent from the scene. According to the President of the Korea
Foundation, former Ambassador to France KwOn In-hyOk, part of the reason
for the absence of business interest must lie in the fact that Korean
corporations cannot currently obtain tax relief for gifts to foreign
institutions to support Korean Studies. Many of us would like to see
this law changed, and I have heard in the past day that a bill is being
proposed to the National Assembly to change the law.
Some of you have raised the question of institutional commitment to pick
up posts after an initial three or five years of support. This is a
common arrangement, and Oxford thought that it could raise external
funding to endow its fledgling programme. We have been partially
successful, and over the 10 years we have been running, the Korea
Foundation has been asked to support us to somewhere under 70% of our
costs. Currently, the KF is only paying for 50% of our Instructor's post
to 2007 and providing no other support. There has been no "cutback" in
KF funding here. Rather, we have been somewhat successful in raising
outside funds from benefactors, and we continue to seek such support.
However, we have not been as successful as we had originally hoped. On
top of this, the University is facing a financial crisis as is much of
higher education across the UK and Europe, and the University has
decided to cut the programme. European universities are having to adjust
to the neoliberalism sweeping Europe and the resulting curtailment of
state budgets for education. Budgets drop, but tution income remains low
or nonexistent, as I will explain below. Most institutions are state
organs, or quasi-state, quasi-private institutions as in the case of
Oxford, and European states are privatising and downsizing. While
Chinese Studies may be expanding in some places, Korean Studies is being
terminated, and even Japanese Studies is being cut back. Japanese
Studies, though, can fall back on a much larger potential cushion
supplied by the Japan Foundation and on large benefactions and gifts
from Japanese corporations. Korean Studies cannot.
This has become a long missive. I am sorry, but I didn't raise this
point on the mailbase, and I think some clarity is needed, so please be
a bit more patient.
I would like to warn my concerned friends against seeing Europe as
somehow like the US or even Canada. One size does not fit all. Frank is
right that an endowment is best, particularly in the Oxford context,
where Japanese and Chinese Studies rely for nearly 50% of their
operating costs from endowment funds and a good 70-80% of the rest of
Oxford operates on endowment of one sort or another. The generosity of
outsiders to support this charity called the University of Oxford has
been the custom here for the past 800 years, and I dare say this won't
change. Ann (we've never met; I hope you don't mind my calling you Ann),
there are a few critical differences between universities in Europe and
the US and comparisons with the American case are usually misleading.
For example, a large reason for the existence of Korean Studies in so
many American universities is because the children of Korean immigrants
demanded courses on Korea and put pressure on university
administrations. Europe lacks this critical demand push from below. As
Ross says, Korean Studies is a fairly exotic subject in Europe. Add to
this the fact that there is generally no tuition payment in continental
Europe, so students add no income stream; they merely use a service.
Even at Oxford, which is widely regarded by my European colleagues as
"expensive", tuition for a Brit or EU undergraduate student is about
?3,000 or under USD $6,000 (my est. for Harvard is USD $30,000? Rutgers
website seems shut down?); for a graduate student tuition runs about
?5,000 or under USD $10,000. Of course, non-EU students pay more, but do
we want to recruit only Americans or Koreans just to pay the bills?
Rates are set by government, so if we raise our tuition, we risk losing
the research grants that fund the sciences and the other
constantly-dwindling government support that we do receive. Considering
that Oxford may be the global leader in having the lowest student to
teacher ratio, and it must be one of the worst institutions in the
English-speaking world for tapping its alumni, I imagine that you can
understand what financial pressures we are under.
Finally, the choices today are not what they were in 1992 or 1994, when
Ross argues that SOAS should have received the USD $500,000 seed-money
that Oxford got. SOAS will always have Korean, because SOAS was and is a
creature of the UK Foreign Office. I recall talking to Ross in the
summer of 1994, as he was preparing to leave SOAS, in something of an
irate temper, as I recall, and among his charges was the complaint that
the Foreign Office expected free and tailored instruction. I think the
situation has changed, but SOAS is still able to call on `government
necessities' when pressed, and it still boasts the rich complement of
staff that Ross remembers: Pak Youngsook, Yeon Jaehoon, Anders Karlsson,
Keith Howard, and Grace Koh (my student). It is the envy of Europe.
Nevertheless, SOAS continues to struggle, as does Sheffield, which has
developed an expertise in modern Korean society and economy. I won't
even mention Durham, which closed its entire East Asian programme, or
Newcastle, where Korean language will cease to exist from this coming
September. We do mourn them, Ross, but the numbness is taking over.
Ross, you're also mistaken to say that Oxford doesn't want Korean. My
colleagues do, and the students do, but around here, you either find an
endowment or you fold, because student fees just don't pay for anything.
Perhaps you didn't like the bloody-mindedness of the Brits, and that's
part of the reason why you left, but I admire it. They've taught me that
there is virtue in hanging on, because good things are worth the fight.
One thing you don't do, though, is fight against your friends and
allies. My colleagues at SOAS and Sheffield may correct me, but I don't
think that we see ourselves in competition with each other. We cater to
different constituencies and we provide different instruction. We don't
think it is healthy to have one `centre', because that risks corruption.
Consider how poor would be the US if Korean could be studied only at
Harvard and Hawaii. Now, consider what it would mean if Harvard were not
the financial behemoth we have today and because of its financial
restructuring it was forced to close down Korean Studies. This is what
it will mean if Korean goes at Oxford.

Yours,
Jay Lewis
Oriental Institute, University of Oxford

A) Original Korean:
http://www.chosun.com/national/news/200503/200503290389.html
English translation:
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200503/200503290024.html

B) Chosun Ilbo Editorial

Original Korean:
http://www.chosun.com/editorials/news/200503/200503300467.html
English translation:
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200503/200503300043.html

C) My Op-Ed piece in the Chosun Ilbo:
http://www.chosun.com/editorials/news/200503/200503310292.html

Brother Anthony wrote:

>The Korea Times editorial on April 8 about Korean Studies Overseas included the sentence: "Last month,
>Oxford University announced that it decided to close its Korean studies program from June 2007 due to a
>lack of funding." The editorial goes on to deplore this and question how the Korean government could allow
>such a thing to happen. This was the first I had heard of this decision, but it seems to me that we should
>share that sense of outrage if indeed it is the case that a refusal from the Korean side to continue to
>provide funding is to blame. Are there other programs which might equally be subject to similar cutbacks? I
>think that this List might have some opinions about this. The editorial seemed to suggest that there might
>still be hope of saving the program if funding were found . . .? But it would be good to know what the
>Korean government thinks it is doing to support Korean studies when this kind of thing happens.
>
>(Professor) An Sonjae (Brother Anthony)
>Sogang University, Seoul, Korea
>
>
>
>  
>

-- 
Dr. James B. Lewis
University Lecturer in Korean
Oriental Institute
University of Oxford
Pusey Lane
Oxford,  OX1 2LE
United Kingdom
Email: jay.lewis at orinst.ox.ac.uk
Tel: +44-(0)1865-278200
http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ea/korean/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20050415/2eb64e31/attachment.html>