Yonsei University

This course provides an introduction to the very complex phenomenon of first and second language acquisition. It explores the fundamental properties of language acquisition and discusses, compares, and evaluates significant theories of language acquisition and empirical findings. The course covers the linguistic nature of second language learner's inter-language systems and underlying cognitive mechanisms posited to explain them, as well as the various social and effective factors that affect the ultimate success of the learner. 

The course addresses the history, current state, and future of North Korea, essential to understanding its human rights and human security situation. It examines the vast oppressive apparatus employed to execute North Korea’s policy of human rights denial and to maintain the status quo. The course also covers the applicable international legal framework, and the available remedies embedded in relevant provisions, as well as the methodology employed by human rights organizations dealing with North Korea, including the execution, processing, and analysis of interviews with North Korean defectors and other witnesses, and their corroboration with satellite imagery and other available relevant data. Also explored in depth is the structure and functions of both the UN system and international civil society.

This course provides students with theoretical knowledge, which is essential for discussing critical issues on public bureaucracy in modern liberal democracies. The course is divided into four main parts. In Part I examines the primary concepts of this course (i.e., bureaucracy, democracy, and their relationships). Part II focuses on the administrative branch by discussing traditional scholarly debates and recent controversial topics such as representativeness, democratic control, political neutrality, and the brain drain of government bureaucracy. Part III discussions are expanded to the other government institutions: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and their relationships with the administrative branch. Part IV includes in-depth discussions on how we could blend in our understanding of the essential values and relationships revolving around public bureaucracy which is especially helpful for those who plan to work in the (quasi-) public sector.

The course covers basic concepts and theories of contemporary debates and issues in security affairs of Northeast Asia. The course studies basic concepts, theories and logic that are useful for making sense of contemporary security issues. It then surveys several important issues in regional security with frequent use of recent historical examples. Topics include realism and military security; liberalism and cooperative security and arms control; constructivism and human security; domestic politics and international security; hegemony and military security; coercive diplomacy; alliances in northeast Asia; US-China competition; Japan`s security policy; North Korea`s nuclear challenge; Rok and peace in the Korean peninsula; and the US grand strategies and the future of NEA regional order.

This course examines some major topics on European Modernism. It focuses on the philosophies of the influential modern and contemporary European thinkers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, etc. Topics include Language, Poetry, European Nihilism, Power, Modernity, Value, etc.

This course is a thematic introduction to the major artistic and cultural trends of East Asia, with a focus on the history of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese art. We study major developments and issues in the art of each culture, discussing mutual influences and cross-cultural artistic flows, as well as the many cultural and artistic differences between cultures in the region. Major monuments of East Asian art will serve as our primary evidence. We focus on how to look at works of art and architecture in an art historically-informed way, how to articulate what our visual responses might mean, and how to begin answering some of the questions our observations of the objects may raise. Our goal is to enable you to better appreciate, analyze, evaluate, and interpret works of art, both those that seem familiar at first glance and those that do not. In addition to becoming familiar with major works of art in weekly slide lectures, you are expected to develop, through weekly readings and discussion, an understanding of the various approaches major scholars in the field of art history and East Asian studies have developed to examine them. You are expected to evaluate and try out some of these methods in your own research, written work and class discussion. The course is divided into three discrete sections that focus respectively on China, Korean, and Japan. Although these three regions engaged in extensive cultural interchanges during the period of time covered by this course, each also developed its own artistic styles and forms. Discussions of these cross-cultural interactions are constant subtheme, especially as our shared understanding grows over the course. Whether the aims of their creators were philosophical, spiritual, political, social, economic, or purely aesthetic, we seek to better understand them, as well as the context in which they were acquired and cherished, the uses to which these monuments may have been put, and the grounds for both their original and subsequent appreciation. Thus, the goals of this course include developing visual and historical tools you can use outside the confines of this class to explore art and visual culture.