Insight into Korean History and Education

Abstract

Our project, “Teaching Korean History in English,” includes both research, and teaching which was offered to both Korean and foreign undergraduate students at Yonsei University, Wonju Campus. This paper is focused on one of the lecture topics in our module, “Japan’s advance on Korea,” during the first half of the twentieth century, and relates the intensive intercommunication that I, as a course instructor, had with the students, when they organized an in-class discussion on the topic. One of the goals in our course is to encourage students to learn different versions of Korean history, and produce historical knowledge for interpreting and acting upon the world from a wider perspective. As subjects of history, these students involve themselves in historical production by analyzing the text and expressing their opinions, which are their own historical narratives. My experimental study suggests that their social position and experience affect their relationship to the past, and influence the structure of their historical accounts. Teaching Korean history in English seems to play a distinctive role in providing students with opportunities to compare and analyze the views provided by scholars who have different social and academic backgrounds.