Korea, South

This course provides an overview of theories on international politics and security as well as specific security issues between China, South Korea, North Korea and the US. 

This course offers a general introduction to the language and various aspects of Korean culture to the foreign students currently studying at SNU. Topics to be discussed in the course include the outline of the Korean language with honorific forms. Other topics are Korean history, nature, economy and society; Korean art, music, literature and philosophy; as well as problems concerning the traditional culture such as family, relatives, wedding, funeral ceremony, folk belief, shamanism, seasonal rite and custom.

This course provides an introduction to basic concepts of artificial intelligence. The course addresses heuristic search algorithm and knowledge reasoning of symbolic AI (Artificial Intelligence), a traditional AI approach. In addition, the course addresses theories about computational AI, such as genetic algorithms, and neural network learning, and how they can be applied in each field. The course also studies the application fields of artificial intelligence technologies.

This course exposes undergraduate students to the fundamentals of qualitative and quantitative research methods in sociology. It discusses conceptualization; operationalization; variables; hypotheses, and sampling. The course also covers types of research as well as fundamentals of qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

Computational Thinking is a process of solving problems typically with four steps—decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithmic thinking. This course concentrates on algorithmic thinking and examines how to reformulate problems with step-by-step procedures to solve the problems. Students then practice the implementation of the procedures with Python programming language in their homework assignments. This course also covers various paradigms in designing the procedures such as divide-and-conquer, greedy methods, dynamic programming, backtracking, branch-and-bound, etc., along with fundamental data structures such as linked-lists, stacks, queues, recursion, graphs, trees, binary heaps, and hashing. 

This course is an introductory study of Korean music and culture that focuses on the significance of music and musical practices in a holistic manner that includes court music, religious music, folk music and contemporary music. It is intended to provide basic knowledge of terminology, history and the characteristics of important genres that might emerge in discussing theoretical aspects of Korean traditional music.

Goals are 1)To introduce Korean musical instruments and their historical relevance in Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Central Asian Music. 2)To appreciate various Korean traditional music genres such as classical (court and ritual music) and folk music (folk songs, pansori, sanjo). 3)To discuss the philosophical backgrounds of Korean religious music: Shamanism, Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christian 4)To distinguish Korean musical features in pansori and sanjo. 5)To learn how to analyze music within a cultural context. 6)To discuss Hallyu and Korean popular music.

This course shows the economics principles behind the law. Topics include efficiency, Coase theorem, decision under uncertainty, negotiation theory, the origin of property right, deciding the owner, monetary damage vs. injunction, intellectual property, contract theory, backward induction, breach of contract, reliance, gap in the contract, default rule and hypothetical bargaining, formation defense and performance excuse, tort law, strict liability vs. negligence, the Hand rule, error, commercial product cases, and criminal law.

This course deals with a series of recent issues in artificial intelligence (AI) focusing on the field of design, more specifically deep learning and architectural space design, for beginners. Students review the related technologies with cases, and the conceptual and intellectual issues on top of AI in the perspective of design. Not only focusing on the AI techs, but also surveying the qualitative/quantitative aspects of design with theoretical issues outside of the conventional state of knowledge are the objectives of this course, empowered by actual individual project developments. Theory lectures, case studies, survey on the references, and students’ participation in class are the materials for the course. In the technological standpoint, recent decade has marked a huge change in how we perceive and talk about general AI. Buzz words “Big Data” and “Machine Intelligence” also changes (or will change) the fundamental role of designers form conventional approaches, and we will take a look where to go via this course. The deep learning (DL) techniques, for example, have shown how end-to-end differentiable functions can be learned to solve complex design tasks involving high-level perception abilities. In association with this shift and effect to our domain-specific knowledge, design, we would keep eyes opening so that we can take max advantages from it.

This course introduces the main aspects of contemporary Korean society, including those pertaining to the family, gender, education, population, religion, economy, and popular culture. The course specifically focuses on topics and issues that figure prominently in the lives of the Korean people, such as the persistence of extended families, the rise of Christianity, education frenzy, population aging, low fertility rate, increasing ethnic diversity and multiculturalism, rapid industrialization, Seoul-based urbanization, and the rise of Hallyu as a global phenomenon. Each of these issues will be examined through sociological, historical, and comparative perspectives. 

Many Koreans have a fixed image that Greek-Roman myths (so-called classic myths) are standard of myth. This image is related to Euro-centered education in school of Korea. Many Korean students ask why we don't have a creation myth, and why have no heroes like Greek heroes. There are many kinds of myth in Korean oral and literal tradition. We have a creation myth, a flood myth, the origin myth of god, the birth myth of a nation, a shrine myth, and progenitor myth. We analyze and interpret these kinds of Korean myth in class. We also analyze myths by theories including comparative mythology, Sinocentrism, feminism and poststructuralism. Through this subject, attendees understand not only Korean myth, but also Korean culture and cultural unconsciousness deeply.