East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi

Infusing Modern China into the
Undergraduate Curriculum

Infusing Korean Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum

Helpful Links

The links below may provide useful information and further links, when exploring in the field of Korea and Korean area studies.
General
Key Issues in Asian Studies:  Association for Asian Studies
Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Historical
Korean History:  A Bibliography, compiled by Kenneth R. Robinson
A Timeline of Korean History, Asia for Educator, Columbia University
Literature

Philosophy and Religion

Buddhist Studies WWW Virtual Library by Dr. T. Matthew Ciolek, Australian National University

Online Resources Compiled by the Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies
Academic Study Resources by DharmaNet International
Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism:  detailed information on Korean Buddhism, its practices, resources in visuals and writing, and more
Languages
Resources for East Asian Language and Thought by Dr. Charles Muller, University of Tokyo
CJKV-English Dictionary:  A dictionary of Sinitic characters and compounds related to East Asian cultural, Political, and Intellectual History
Museums and Libraries
World Digital Library:  cultural treasures from around the world in one site
C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University Libraries
Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums:  Harvard Art Museums:  devoted to Asian art and searchable by keyword, title, artist, etc.
The Smithsonian's Museums of Asian Art
Harvard-Yenching Library--Asia Collections

Journals and Publications

Asia Past & Present:  Publications by the Association for Asian Studies
OAIster:  Find the Pearls:  scholarly publications from universities all over the world
The National Academies Press:  download by chapters or books
Archive.org:  eBooks and Texts internet Archive:  Internet archive and open library, fully accessible books and texts.
Open DOAR:  The Directory of Open Access Repositories
Directory of Open Access Journals to search in your interested fields
Electronic Journal Intersections:  Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific
Maps

Korea Map, University of Texas at Austin,

Data
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository:  includes studies, journal articles, books, etc. from the World Bank Economic Review and World Bank Research Observer, WB annual reports
UNdata:  free data access to UN statistical databases, containing over 60 million data points and covering a wide range of themes from agriculture, crime, education to energy, environment, and industry
The World Bank's Open Data Initiative:  comprehensive set of data on living standards around the globe, including 2,000 indicators
A comprehensive database of Korean films, Koreanfilm.org:  it features films, reviews, interviews, essays and more
Korean Movie Database:  searchable by year or film category in Korean and English
Teaching Resources
Asia for Educators, the Weatheerhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University:  includes teaching aids, resources and a library on China, Japan, Korea and other countries in Asia. Topics range from geography, art, language arts, religions and history.
Education about Asia, Association for Asian Studies:  articles on all areas of Asia in wide range of topics from ancient times and cultures to current events, resources for classroom use, sample syllabus, and more.
The National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, funded by Freeman Foundation and created jointly by Columbia University, the Five College Center for East Asian Studies, Indiana University, the University of Colorado and the University of Washington:  offers seminars, workshops, summer institutes, webinars and other useful resources in the area of teaching about Asia.

Asian Educational Media Services, the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:  provides multimedia resources for teaching about Asia, including searchable database, lesson plans, film reviews, and more.

Expanding East Asian Studies Program, Columbia University, funded by the Freeman Foundation:  provides teaching materials and resources, syllabus, and links to online resources for teaching about Asia and more.

Five College Center for East Asian Studies, Five College Consortium:  classroom resources, links to useful organization and sites, publications, events and more.

Programs in International Education Resources, Yale University:  PIER-East Asian Studies, established in 1974, works to strengthen the understanding of East Asia – China, Japan, and Korea. Provides online resources, classroom resources, media resources and more. In addition to East Asia, it also provides resources in African, European, Latin American and Middle East Studies.

Primary Source, a nonprofit professional development center for educators in the areas of world history and cultures. Offers resources on teaching about Asia, including resource guides, seminars, publications, modules and more.

A nice, short video on Sokkuram Grotto, stressing it’s engineering achievements.

There is a classroom friendly short video on the Buddhist canon in Korean  woodblock print. Students will often not appreciate the national scale of effort to produce the single woodblock set for the canon, which has some 81000 individual blocks inscribed with 52 million characters. Stacked one on top of the other, the collection would rise to 15,000 feet. For the Koryo carving, some 50,000 scribes were employed. It was quite a feat, to say the least. The details of production bring into focus the kind of collective effort involved and suggest how it could serve the purpose of national unification.

For those interested in looking into the Neo-Confucian tradition, a classroom-friendly introduction is Barry Keenan’s book. It’s clearly written and while focused on China will give you a good working knowledge of the kind of Confucianism that becomes dominant in Korea. For those who just want the basics in a few pages, I have attached the outline of a talk of mine that you might find useful if you just need a few keywords and figures to flesh out a session.

A Yang for Every Yin: Dramatizations of Korean Classics:  The author has adapted a few of Korea’s favorite traditional stories to the stage, with songs and extensive historical and cultural notes, for a modern audience. These plays are based on stories from Korea in the 17th and 18th centuries, and they are still being told in the 21st century, in their original pansori venue but also on TV, stage, and film. While the Joseon Dynasty was closed off to the rest of the world, it was developing a world-class literature. Four of the five plays in this book are dramatizations of pansori, one of old Korea’s most highly developed performance arts; you may already have heard about Chun Hyang, Hungbu and his brother Nolbu, Hare and the Sea Palace, or Ong Go-jip. The other play is based on the popular short story “Grandpa’s Wen.” All of these stories were passed down orally through many generations, developing all along in complexity and sophistication, until the 18th and 19th centuries, when they were set down in written form. Confucians wrote moral lessons into the stories, but loyalty, honesty, modesty and generosity are basics in any system of values.

Compact Anthology of World Literature (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) edited with the grants from the University System of Georgia to provide students and others affordable education. These are free textbooks that you can use; you can turn specific pages into pdf files and use them in your classes, instead of having to navigate many pages. The textbook says that "If you reuse this content elsewhere, in order to comply with the attribution requirements of the license, please attribute the original source to the University System of Georgia."

  • You can find Korean sijo poems and The Tale of Hong Gil-Dong (English translation) in Part 3.
  • You can find the Pansori Chunhyang in Part 4
  • You can also find Korean modern writers Yi Sang and Cho Se-Hui in Part 6 (English translation).
More on pansori:  if you click the web address above, your computer will be downloading the bilingual pansori collections. If you are interested in teaching Chunhyang, I recommend that from the zip file, you select "Chunhyang" and then select "Chunhyang-Kimsoheui" to open the specific pansori script: The Song of Chunhyang, based on the Kim Soheui version.”