Yonsei University

The study of politics includes not only how the political world operates, but also how it ought to operate. This course focuses on some of the most important contemporary political thoughts that have been presented within the last few decades. Topics include democratic ideal, liberalism, conservatism, socialism and communism, fascism, politics of identity, green politics, and populism.

This course provides a study of French culture and society. The course starts with the modern French characteristics and its way of thinking, then moves on to French cultural, educational, and political policies. Lastly, the course covers architectural culture and the history of France through art and films.

This is the first semester of advanced Korean, and is designed to advance students to greater strengths in oral communication competences and linguistic knowledge of Korean. Students read selected texts related to daily life, society, culture, nature and other common topics. It aims to help students achieve high levels of proficiency not only in interpersonal but also in presentational communication.

Assessment: Attendance & Participation (20%), Assignments (30%), Speaking Assessment (30%), Take-home Achievement Assessment (20%)

Prerequisite: Intermediate Korean (2) or equivalent

The course begins with a study of the rebuilding of Europe and the stark division of the continent following the Second World War. It compares how countries across Western Europe embraced varying combinations of liberalism and socialism while the 'Iron Curtain' sealed Eastern Europe within Communism until that system's stunningly peaceful collapse that climaxed in November 1989 with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. It also traces the evolution of the European Union, despite references to the 'United States of Europe', dating back to the earliest visions of European integration. The course analyzes how the European Union has been developing on a fundamentally different path from the United States of America and any other political system.

Between the early seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, along with the Peace of Westphalia, Major European political thinkers first began to look outside their national borders and envisage a world of competitive, equal sovereign states inhabiting an international sphere that ultimately encompassed the whole globe. This course focuses on some of the most significant (British) thinkers on modern international relations and international laws that have been present since the birth of the term. The goal of the course is to provide students with theoretical musculature to think further about "international."

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.