[KS] korean studies at the university of california in jeopardy

[gkl1 at columbia.edu]

It?s sad to read these postings on the situation in Berkeley, but as  
one of the few
people in Korean Studies to have graduated from the EALC department  
(then called the
Department of Oriental Languages) for all three of my degrees, I must  
say that I agree
with everything, whether negative or positive, that has been said. I  
can think of few
East Asian Studies departments less worthy of sympathy and support in  
the situation
Berkeley?s department now faces.
     When I was there things were different. I arrived in the Spring  
semester of 1956. In
those times Korean Studies hardly existed in the U.S. Suh Doo-Soo was  
teaching Korean
language and literature at the University of Washington, and Edward  
Wagner was getting
things started in language and history at Harvard. Hawaii a program  
atarting up, and Columbia had language
courses but no professor. But that was about it. The people in  
Berkeley were all in the
Chinese or Japanese field, except for one, Michael Rogers, then the  
youngest, who worked
in Korean as well. Since I wanted to work in the pre-modern centuries  
and be able to read
Korean source materials, I studied Classical Chinese and modern  
Japanese to supplement my
Korean, learned in the Army Language School. All three of my theses at  
Berkeley were,
with the approval and encouragement of the faculty, on Korean subjects  
using Korean
sources. I can?t think of any  better training for I what I actually  
have done for the
last half century. I love everything about those years and will never  
forget those
wonderful professors, who were also inspired human beings.
     But it wasn?t Korean Studies. I had created my own Korean Studies  
program, but it
left Berkeley with me. Mike Rogers was a brilliant scholar, a very  
good man, and he came to be a close friend as well. But he
wasn?t a developer. He did establish the language program now  
threatened, and he offered
a course in Korean culture, but neither he nor any of the chairs of  
the department after
I left (1963) ever got beyond that, while other departments around the  
country, including
the one in which I served at Columbia, were developing programs and  
attracting students.
The state of the field now, though not perfect, is healthy and getting  
better all the
time. But at Berkeley, studied inattention, shameful indifference, and  
incompetent
administration was what you have had over most of the years since the  
80s. And it?s not as if Korean Studies was the only
thing that suffered. A good number of scholars of China and Japan have  
arrived at
Berkeley over the years, and not a few of them later left, discouraged  
or disappointed,
for other programs or careers.
     The truth is, as Mark Peterson and others have suggested, that  
the management and
administration of that department has been without imagination or  
energy, and in some
cases irresponsible and incompetent. None of the chairs ever gave much  
thought to Korea;
some of them none at all. When Mike Rogers died a few years ago, not a  
single one of his
EALC professorial colleagues showed up at his memorial service. In the  
entire world of
Berkeley academe, two Korean language teachers, Claire You (who runs  
the program) and the
long-serving teacher Kay Richards, and David Keightley, a professor of  
Ancient Chinese
history in the History department, were there. James Bosson, a former  
Berkeley Mongolist
(another of Mike?s languages) was the only academic from outside the  
campus besides
myself. As a Berkeley BA, MA, and PhD, I felt deeply ashamed.

     Of the many pertinent comments made in the postings in regard to  
Korean Studies
generally, those by Ruediger Frank made a special point for me: the  
need to have the
support of one?s colleagues in the Chinese, Japanese, (and if you're  
really on top of things, Vietnamese--talk about a
struggling specialty!) fields. The biggest change for me at Columbia  
was the 1980s, when
the wave of Korean-Americans (my first Hallyu) began to flood the  
classrooms for
language study. At 10 credit-points per year (a full third of the  
student?s tuition) they
contributed a whopping amount of tuition credits for the department,  
and made the
administrators sit up and notice. But most importantly, those  
enrollments made the professors in the
Chinese and Japanese fields notice, and gave me an argument that they  
listened to. The
Korea Foundation grants and endowments of the early 90s were big, but  
that tuition income
made colleagues take heed and notice what Korea was doing. In recent years,
our professors in the Chinese and Japanese fields have been visiting  
Korea, and for those
that I have talked with, it has been a real eye-opener. Since the  
early 90s Columbia has
added four tenure-line appointments and greatly expanded the language  
program. Other
universities have done better than that, including the real Korean  
Studies gem at the
University of California, the program at UCLA. (Given Berkeley?s utter  
failure to make
any use of the Asami Collection of Korean manuscripts, that fabulous  
resource should be
transferred immediately to Los Angeles.)
     Beyond practical support, Chinese and Japanese studies are  
important contexts for
Korean studies. East Asia is greater than the sum of its parts, and  
Korea is now a big
part and has always been an important part. There is a tendency for  
Korea emphasizers to
see Korea all alone, and somehow in academe a victim of China and  
Japan all over again.
This solipsism is not good. Many people in Korea and in the overseas  
Korean communities
tend to see the existence of Korean Studies in the universities of the  
world as a
validation of their worth and importance, but give little attention to  
the work we produce.
     For many younger overseas Koreans, the presence on campus of a  
Korean language
program and serious people specializing in Korea reinforces their  
identity and gives them
an added consciousness of Korea?s importance. That?s fine, but Korean  
studies has to be
about more than identity. Much as I?m grateful for Christine Hong?s  
cri de coeur, I sense
between the lines of her plea to us a feeling that the loss of the  
Korean language
program would be a blow to her own identity over there in the English  
department. I do
not at all look down upon such a sentiment, but I do suggest that a  
good deal of Korea?s
financial support for our Korean Studies is driven by an urge simply  
to get the attention
of the world. We still have some way to go to achieve the maturity and  
breadth that the Chinese and Japanese programs have attained. It's not  
that we don't have many fine scholars, but that the general quality is  
still uneven and the total field is not fully fleshed out.
     I have no desire to see Korea ignored, quite the contrary, but  
the substance of
Korean Studies is important. It?s our job to understand Korea and to  
spread understanding
and appreciation of its role in the world, in all planes, be they  
economic or political,
or in history, culture or the arts. So Korean Studies programs must  
exist and grow. The
heart and soul of any Korean Studies program is the Korean language,  
but as Ross King
insists, it is always the most vulnerable part. Invariably its  
teachers collect some
of the lowest salaries in the university, and professors of various  
fields in language
and culture departments collect salaries well below the level of those  
in the social
sciences, who are out-earned by those in the physical sciences. Forget  
about salaries in
the law, medical, and business schools; the Schwarneggars of the world  
don?t touch them
much. In this context, the situation in Berkeley is one that hits us  
all. Though Berkeley itself may be undeserving of rescue, as some of  
us have pointed out, it still is not good that any Korean Studies  
program--even Berkeley's very minor minor, is under attack.

Gari Ledyard
King Sejong Professor Emeritus of Korean Studies
Columbia University in the City of New York


Quoting Ruediger Frank <ruediger.frank at univie.ac.at>:


[Hide Quoted Text]
Dear all,

no matter what the merits of a specific program, I guess we all  agree in our
unhappiness about the closing down of Korean Studies at  Berkeley, or  
at any other
university.

I'd like, however, to highlight what Dr. Peterson has mentioned in   
his statement - the
fact that KS stands alone once the going gets  tough, and inevitably  
suffers most if
compared to Chinese or  Japanese Studies (CS or JS). In Europe, we  
have (had) quite
similar  problems, which prompted the Korea Foundation to ask Jay  
Lewis of  Oxford (or
was it the other way round?) to organize a workshop on  the future of  
Korean Studies on
our continent. A number of scholars  including myself have  
participated in this
workshop, tried to  formulate ideas from their various perspectives,  
and then presented
the results at the 2007 biannual conference of the Association for   
Korean Studies in
Europe (AKSE) in Dourdan/Paris. These were the  single contributions:

1) 'Proposals to Secure a Critical Mass of Professorial Positions in   
Korean Studies at
Strategic Universities in Europe'
by Marion Eggert, Ruhr-Unversität, Bochum, Germany
2) '(The?) Future for Korean Studies: Finding ways to Cooperate with   
East Asian Studies
and Social Sciences and Avoid Marginalization or  How to Organize  
Interdisciplinarity'
by Ruediger Frank, University of Vienna
3) 'Proposals for Fostering Future Generations of Korean Studies   
Scholars: The Role of
the Korea Foundation Fellowship Programs'
by Carl J. Saxer, Copenhagen Business School
4) 'Proposals to Use Libraries and Museums to the Full to Support  and  
Disseminate
Korean Studies Throughout Europe'
by Beth McKillop, Keeper, Asian Department Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Jay has ever since, as far as I understand, communicated the results   
at a number of
occasions. The full text of the papers presented at  the 2006 meeting  
can be found here
(http://www.akse.uni-kiel.de/upload_files/2006_06_Oxford%20Papers%20on%20KS%20Future.pdf). If that link doesn't work, send me a personal message (ruediger.frank at univie.ac.at) and I forward the file to you. I also hope Jay reads this and adds his own comments as well as an updated version of our discussions on  
the
matter.

I dealt with the issue of cooperation. My own experience at   
Humboldt-University, where
the flourishing program in Korean Studies  - the only one in Germany with two
professorships and a strong focus  on contemporary affairs - was  
closed for a number of
reasons that  still freak me out, has taught me that support from CS  
and JS is  crucial
for the survival of KS. The much more positive experience  now in  
Vienna where JS and CS
are among my closest partners  demonstrates that even the success of  
KS can be strongly
enhanced  with support by CS and JS. On a side note, I can also tell  
you that  selfish,
uncooperative and unprofessional behavior by KS will of  course not be  
of much help in
such a relationship.

I don't want to go on for too long; what I wanted to say in support   
of and reaction to
Dr. Peterson's remarks is that hoping for  selfless help by CS and JS  
in case of a
threatened KS program or  position might be unrealistic under the  
usual circumstances.
In  other words, if the question is "us or them", they will of course   
say "them" and
sacrifice KS in order to save themselves. This is not  nice, but quite  
understandable
and, frankly, hard to criticize. So  what is the solution? Well, it's  
easy: make our
problem theirs. In  other words, create structures in which KS are an  
integral part of
CS and JS, and vice versa. East Asian Studies are harder to attack   
than Korean Studies.
Similar strategies can be followed with regard  to social sciences or  
other disciplines.
Such a strategy has its   downside and risks, and I discuss some of  
them in my paper.
However,  it should at least be considered if we want to avoid the   
continuation of the
same sad procedure as at Humboldt, Berkeley and  many other places.

My best wishes,

Rudiger


--
Prof. Dr. Rudiger Frank
Chair of East Asian Economy and Society
University of Vienna
East Asian Institute
Spitalgasse 2 Hof 2
1090 Vienna
- Austria -

phone: +43-1-4277 43871
fax:   +43-1-4277 43849
web:   www.koreanstudies.de/frank
email: ruediger.frank at univie.ac.at