Summer Program Opens in Korea

Harvard Summer School is getting a little Seoul.

The University will launch its first summer study abroad program in South Korea this year, bringing American, Korean, and other international students to Ewha Womans University in Seoul for a five-week study of Korean history, politics, and culture.

Designed to foster cultural and academic exchange among students and faculty, the program features courses on Korean literature, art history, post-World War II politics, and gender relations.

“This will be a fascinating new way to understand Korean culture,” wrote Professor Eun Mee Kim, dean of international studies at Ewha, in an e-mail.

Initiated after many years of scholarly exchange between the Harvard-Yenching Institute and Ewha, the program was made possible through University President Laurence H. Summers’s recent study abroad initiative, Kim wrote.

The program also aims at allowing students to experience South Korea through a variety of extracurricular activities, such as visiting Seoul’s National Museum, which displays “historic relics from the country’s rich past,” and staying in a temple to learn about Zen Buddhism, Kim wrote.

She added that students will also get to experience Korean popular culture. “Seoul is the birthplace of ‘Hallyu’ or the Korean Wave, which is a new alternative popular culture that has spread through Asia with great force in the 21st century,” she wrote.

David McCann, Director of the Korean Institute and a professor of Korean Literature at Harvard, will be teaching a course titled “Korea at 2100,” exploring traditional and contemporary Korean culture and literature.

He said he plans to take students to participate in the Korean Manhae Festival and show how literature and poetry have crossed over to different genres of culture.

“From the Summer School’s perspective, Ewha is an excellent partner at the forefront of the globalization trend underway in Korean higher education,” Dr. Robert Neugeboren, special programs director of the Harvard Summer School, wrote in an e-mail.

“Its International Education Institute offers courses in a wide range of relevant fields, all taught in English at a level and quality consistent with our standards.”

The program lasts from June 18 to July 29 and costs $5,500. For Harvard College students, the program counts for two half-courses credits. Financial aid is available through the Harvard Office of International Programs (OIP).