CourseShare: Three Korean e-school Courses for Fall

The University of Minnesota (UMN) Korean language program, led by Hangtae Cho, has long been an active participant in the Korea Foundation’s global e-school initiative, which uses the existing CourseShare structure to share courses in Korean Studies in the Big Ten, providing students with an opportunity to explore a range of topics related to Korean history, culture and modern life. For Fall 2021, UMN students have three courses to choose from, including a well-established course taught by Dr. Cho himself:

• AMES 3576 – Language & Society of the Two Koreas: This course is designed to offer an introduction and contrastive analysis of the language and society of the two Koreas; the Republic of Korea (better known as South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (better known as North Korea). This course will introduce the growing divide of the past 70 years between North and South Korea in the areas of language, society, and culture.
• LANG 3507 – Korean Language and Contemporary Pop Culture: The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the various sociolinguistic phenomena in contemporary Korean society. The course will address topics such as general linguistic characteristics of Korean, Confucianism and honorifics, language changes, gender differences, generation differences and Korean contacts with Chinese, Japanese and English etc. In particular, the discussions will focus on various linguistic phenomena found in contemporary pop culture such as Korean movies, dramas, K-pops, and commercials.
• LANG 3508 – Making Places in Seoul: History of Urbanism and Development: Mainly focusing on five districts in Seoul, this course will explore how they have come to represent different facets of Seoul’s urban culture in the past as well as in the present. We will see the birth of modern urban life going back to the colonial period, the reconstruction of the city from the utter destruction of the Korean War, the breakneck speed of urban development in the era of rapid economic growth, and the rise of the new  urbanism around the beginning of the new millennium.

Received CourseShare classes are continuing to open for Fall 2021 registration. Students who do not see the language or level they are looking for may submit a CourseShare inquiry or email elsie@umn.edu.