If you examine Korea in a wider, comparative, perspective, it will be easier to understand what is typically Korean. Sometimes it may seem that certain things in Korea looked very similar to what was happening in China, but if you take a closer look it turns out there are considerable differences. For this reason I would like to encourage research which places Korea within the context of East Asia. You see the same trend in Korean Studies, but so far somewhat less than in Japanology or Sinology, mainly because there are fewer researchers involved. In Leiden the department is still small and for that reason it is impossible to have the same number of specializations as the Chinese or Japanese departments, but I hope that we will manage to create a department where so-called traditional and modern aspects of Korea receive equal attention.
Students nowadays ask for a bigger variety of subjects in the course of their study.
To get a job later it it is important for them to do more than language acquisition and to obtain specialized knowledge of certain aspects of Korean society and culture, difficult as this may be within the four years of the curriculum. At this moment there is a trend among my students to combine the study of law with Korean. Since 1977 the Association for Korean Studies in Europe has received support from Korea to organize conferences and workshops. Organizations like the Korean Research Foundation and the Korea Foundation directly support our department by sending books and by financing the appointment of staff members to assist in the teaching and develop teaching materials. Moreover researchers and students can apply for a fellowship to these foundations.