Nordic-Baltic Korean Studies Days

NBKSD 2024 was held from March 4th to March 8th, 2024 at the University of Copenhagen. 

The principal motivation of the course was to enable students with an interest in Korean Studies to meet and study alongside their peers in order to develop a pan-Nordic-Baltic network and sense of community.

Students gained time with Korean Studies research and teaching faculty from other institutes helping to diversify their regular curriculum and learning opportunities. For teachers, it was similarly a chance to collaborate with their colleagues and students.

The Nordic-Baltic Korean Studies Days is a co-taught course organized between Korean Studies faculty of Nordic (and newly) Baltic institutions including the universities of Helsinki, Turku, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim), Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas), and The University of Latvia. It was generously funded by Nordplus that supports educational cooperation throughout Nordic and Baltic states. This was the fourth Nordic, and first Nordic-Baltic Korean Studies Days!

In addition to workshops and talks, the students participated in one of three training courses according to their interests.

• Silla Exhibition Training, where students created a plan for a museum exhibition showcasing artifacts from the Silla period.
• Transmedia Storytelling in East Asia and Game Jam on The Journey to the West with a Korean twist, where students created a text-based adventure game based on the classic story of Journey to the West
• Discussion group in Korean, where students were able to hone their Korean speaking skills by discussing Korean diaspora.

Workshops:

• John Lee (Durham University): The Sylvan Local: The Pine Protection Spirits' n Kye in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1700–1900

The 2022 NKSD were organized as a 5-day intensive course and hosted by the University of Copenhagen, 7-11 March. The course comprised online talks, workshops and transferable skills-oriented training as well as a student-organized roundtable.

The computer games made during the game jam were The Journey to Graduation (by Team Monkey), The Ugly Piglet (by Team Pigsy) and Journey to the West (by Team Tripitaka).

The online talks were recorded and can be accessed on YouTube:

• Naomi Hyunjoo Chi (Hokkaido University): Voices of the Voiceless People-The Underclass and Social Inclusion in South Korea
• Seongnae Kim (Sogang University): Shamanic Epics and Narrative Construction of Identity on Cheju Island
• Jocelyn Clark (Pai Chai University): When ‘Music’ is not a ‘Universal Language’: Listening to the “Scattered Melodies” 散調 of Jeolla’
• Soo Ryon Yoon (Lingnan University): Making Space for Afro-Asian Methods: Koule Kan's Burkinabe Performance in South Korea
• Amos Farooqi (University of Copenhagen): Regional hip hop and the Seoul Metropole: A case study of underground hip hop in Gwangju
• Mikyoung Kim (Pukyong University): In the shadows of K-culture: Korea's Sex Industry
• Hannes Mosler (University Duisburg-Essen): The 2022 Presidential Election and the Future of Democracy in South Korea
• Javier Cha (Seoul National University): Big Data and the Future of the Korean Humanities
• Hye Seung Chung (Colorado State University): Squid Game as a Levinasian Morality Tale: Ethics of Alterity and Empathy in Survival Game Narrative 

Main teachers: Prof. Dr. Vladimir Tikhonov (University of Oslo), Prof. Dr. Sonja Häussler (University of Stockholm), Dr. Gabriel Jonsson (University of Stockholm), Dr. Barbara Wall (University of Copenhagen), Dr. Myunghee Lee (NIAS), Dr. Sangpil Jin (University of Copenhagen), Dr. Andrew Logie (University of Helsinki), Dr. Antti Leppänen (University of Turku) and Dr. Sabine Burghart (CEAS, University of Turku).

In 2021, the NKSD are organized as a 12-week course (5cr) and hosted by CEAS, University of Turku. The course covers different disciplines such as history, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology and political science. 

The 2021 course includes a great variety of topics such as The Making and Remaking Silla Origins, "Red feminism" and Social and political radicalism during the colonial Era, Socio-cultural monuments, moments and movements in South Korea (1950-1980), Contemporary Literature, The depiction of Single Mothers in South Korean Literature, Film and TV-dramas, inter-Korean relations, the Nordic countries relations with the Koreas, the self-employed in South Korea and more...

The 2019 NKSD that were hosted by the University of Copenhagen covered various topics including pseudo historiography and “history wars”, the communist movement in colonial Korea, folklore studies in North Korea, transmedia ghost story telling, inter-Korean relations, South Korea’s foreign aid and family in South Korea.

Teachers: Sonja Häussler (Professor, Stockholm), Vladimir Tikhonov (Professor, Oslo), Gabriel Jonsson (Senior Lecturer, Stockholm), Andrew Logie (Assistant Professor, Helsinki), Barbara Wall (Assistant Professor, Copenhagen), Antti Leppänen (Researcher, Turku), and Sabine Burghart (University Lecturer, Turku).

Main sponsor of the 2019 NKSD: The Korea Foundation