Korea and Southeast Asia: Building Partnerships in Education

섬네일을 만드는 중 오류 발생: 섬네일 변수가 잘못되었습니다

In May 2014, a story emerged from Palo, Leyte, about the death of Technical Sgt. Pedro Pedrosa, a Filipino veteran of the Korean War in the 1950s, member of the 19th Battalion Combat Team of the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea (PEFTOK). Leyte may be recalled as the Philippine province that was hardest hit by the super-typhoon Haiyan (locally code named “Yolanda”) in November 2013.

At the time of the 89-year-old Pedrosa’s death, over 200 soldiers in the Republic of Korea Joint Support Group known as Araw were in Leyte—the only ones remaining of the many foreign military groups who came to aid in reconstruction of the villages devastated by Haiyan. These Korean soldiers transformed an old Filipino veteran’s funeral into a celebration of his life, with family members, and Korean and Filipino soldiers trading speeches and stories about their memories of the war and times gone by. The Korean soldiers, who were mostly engineers and carpenters, also took time to build Pedrosa a tomb of brick, mortar and granite to serve as his final resting place at Palo Cemetery. What a poignant image this has etched of the reminiscences of how Filipinos and Koreans work together!

Such people-to-people encounter demonstrates what is at the core of relations between and among countries. As vital as trade and security agreements and official development assistance (ODA) are, it is people who serve as the beating heart of bilateral relations, such as between the Philippines and the Republic of Korea (ROK) or multilateral pacts such as between the members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ROK. Thus, I submit, that any discussion of Korea-Southeast Asia collaboration, particularly in education, should be grounded people-to-people relationships. Resulting bilateral and multilateral agreements are just manifestations of the deepening appreciation and understanding of one another as regional neighbors and global partners.

ASEAN-Korea strategic partnership

ASEAN-Korea partnership that began in November 1989 has deepened through the decades. In 2010, the Joint Declaration on ASEAN-ROK Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity was adopted. Korea and ASEAN are also working toward strengthening regional integration and promoting peace and coprosperity in the East Asia region through the ASEAN+3, the East Asia Summit, and the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and the East Asia Economic Community by 2020 under the Korea-led East Asia Vision Group.

ASEAN is now the second top trading partner of Korea and its third largest foreign direct investment destination. Trade between Korea and the ASEAN reached US$135 billion in 2013 from US$131 billion in 2012. The foreign direct investment flow from Korea to ASEAN has also increased from US$1.9 billion in 2012 to US$3.5 billion in 2013. In addition, ASEAN members are recipients of a large share of Korean ODA, with annual Korean support to ASEAN countries rising from US$81.22 million in 2005 to US$411.6 million in 2013.

ASEAN has become the top travel destination for South Korean tourists. In turn, the number of ASEAN visitors to Korea has increased since 2010, making ASEAN the third top source of visitors to Korea after China and Japan. Incidentally, since 2010 the Philippines registered the highest number of visitors to Korea among the ASEAN countries, followed by Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

ASEAN-Korea educational initiatives

Korean universities are among the highest ranked tertiary institutions in the world, and are thus in a good position to be “mentors” to ASEAN universities and faculty members. Backing up such performance is the fact that total expenditure on educational institutions in Korea for all levels of education was the third highest among OECD countries, about 8% of GDP in 2011, compared with 6% on average for OECD countries overall. The share of private expenditure on education in Korea was also among the highest, especially at the tertiary level: 73% of spending on tertiary education came from private sources in 2011, compared with an OECD average of 31%.

Indeed, cooperation in education between ASEAN and Korea has made strides through initiatives such as the international college student exchange programmes between ASEAN and Korea, the ASEAN-Korea Academic Exchange Programme, and the ASEAN Millennium Leaders College Student Exchange Programme.

Korea also provided funding for ASEAN-Korea Scholarship for the Korean Studies Programme, coordinated by the ASEAN University Network (AUN). One of these is the Master of Arts Programme in Korean Studies, launched by Chulalongkorn University, the AUN, and Seoul National University, with scholars supported by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. From 2008 to 2012, the AUN granted 25 scholarships under this programme to ASEAN students from Thailand (10), Cambodia (4), Indonesia (4), Laos (2), the Philippines (2), Vietnam (2) and Myanmar (1). As for the ASEAN Millennium Leaders College Student Exchange Program, it is being conducted by the AUN in partnership with Daejeon University of Korea, this time focusing on the fields of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), social sciences, and humanities.

In terms of Korean Studies in ASEAN countries, one of the leading institutions promoting Korean Studies as a global academic discipline is the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS), through its Korean Studies Promotion Service (KSPS) division. Another leading agency tasked with promoting Korean Studies worldwide is the Korea Foundation (KF).

Outside Korea, the Korean Studies Association of Southeast Asia (KoSASA) has served as an important platform in the development of Korean Studies in the ASEAN region and the “expansion of political, economic, and socio-cultural interactions and exchange between Southeast Asia and Korea.” Established in 2004, KoSASA consists of the leading universities in 8 countries in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar). It has become an important regional cooperative community for development of education and research in Korean Studies in the region.

ASEAN Studies in the ASEAN region is a relatively young field, as is the emergent field of Aseanology, which aims to inculcate consciousness and identification with the ASEAN regional community. In fact, just this year, five open universities in ASEAN—namely, Universitas Terbuka of Indonesia, Open University of Malaysia, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University of Thailand, the Hanoi Open University of Vietnam, and the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU)—came together at the UPOU headquarters in Laguna for the first international symposium on ASEAN Studies, organized by the UPOU and themed "Our ASEAN: Cultivating the Field". The ASEAN Studies Graduate Program intends to promote regional and global understanding about ASEAN countries from the perspective of ASEAN; increase the ASEAN community’s consciousness of its common historical, cultural, and regional identity; and obtain a balanced perspective in ASEAN studies.

Aside from the open universities, other institutions, and organizations taking on ASEAN are the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, which includes the ASEAN Studies Centre. This is in addition to the various Southeast Asian programs and courses in various ASEAN universities.

Meanwhile, the Korea also provides scholarship opportunities for the participation of Korean students in the ASEAN Studies Programme launched by the AUN.18 The AUN developed this programme as a fullscale, systematic course to be incorporated in university course curricula and teaching materials. The course includes 21 modules that examine the historical, political, security, economic and sociocultural issues of ASEAN.

Korea, for its part, has had a long-standing interest in Southeast Asian studies, since Hankuk University of Foreign Studies began to teach the language and literature of Southeast Asian countries in the undergraduate programs during the early 1960s. Busan University of Foreign Studies followed suit by offering undergraduate programs in Southeast Asian languages in 1991 and 1992. These programs focused on teaching languages, history, literature, and culture. Two Korean professors—Park Seung Woo of Yeungnam University and Lee Sang Kook of Sogang University —surmised that the first Southeast Asian specialists appeared in the 1980s, alongside the Korean government's policies for liberalization and opening up the economy. Around this time, many Koreans began to show interest in other foreign countries, including Southeast Asia.

By the early 1990s, Korea had opened up to the forces of globalization and regionalization, resulting in a heightened interest in international area studies. Thus, Korean researchers established academic organizations such as the Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies and the Korean Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (KISEAS), and more and more research into Southeast Asian countries was being done.

By the 2000s, more PhD-level scholars, both Filipinos and Koreans, in various disciplines were doing research on Southeast Asian studies, with wider themes such as regionalism, integration and the East Asian community, migration, international marriages and migrant labor, as well as the phenomenon of hallyu or "Korean wave" of pop culture that swept through Southeast Asia. Hallyu is an interesting phenomenon, a potent demonstration of Korea's soft power, hallyu introduced the world, including Southeast Asia, to K-pop, competitive electronic sports, Korean food, fashion, comics, movies, celebrities, video games, and—a favorite among Filipinos—Korean TV drama series or Koreanovelas. In 2013, Korea reportedly raked in US$5 billion from its pop-culture exports, and is set to double that amount by 2017. But besides the obvious benefit of a global market for Korean pop-culture products, for many young people around the world, hallyu serves as an enticing doorway into the study of the Korean language and the field of Korean Studies.

In fact, Prof. Chung Soon-Woo, KSPS Director, says of this phenomenon on the KSPS website: "Recently, hallyu has become popular worldwide, and the situation calls for greater efforts to shed new light on the unique culture and long history of Korea. Since people from different countries have their own culture, languages as well as perspectives, in my opinion, people over the world will have diverse ways of looking at Korean Studies."

A recent study of US colleges by the Modern Language Association (MLA) has shown that, at a time when the number of college students taking language classes has been declining, enrollment in Korean language courses rose by 45 percent from 2009 to 2013. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times, the executive director of the MLA attributed this to Korean popular culture in film and music captivating the minds of young people.

Korea: enriching multiculturalism

But aside from inspiring new insights into Korean Studies, the undeniable popularity of all things Korean has contributed to Korea’s tourism industry and transmigration into Korea, along with in-flows of migrant labor. For instance, Korea has about 1.58 million resident foreigners as of September 2014, accounting for 3.4 percent of the total population.

Korea’s rapid economic development since the 1970s has diminished the need for Koreans to emigrate. By the 1990s onwards, Korea has become a net migrant receiving country. The Korean government continues to embrace the entry of foreign workers especially in recent years as a way to cope with the effects of a low birthrate, an aging population, and a shrinking workforce.

International marriages are also becoming more common. Often these are marriages between Korean men, many of whom reside in rural areas, and foreign women. More than 80 percent of these women come from other Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Mongolia, and the Philippines. This phenomenon has been increasing in the past decade, and since 2000, foreign women in South Korea then numbering 236,000 has given birth to about 190,000 children, most probably of mixed race. Add to this is the in-flow of international students and professors coming to study or teach in Korean universities, as well as overseas Koreans returning back to their home country. So far, the Korean government has responded to this influx of foreign migrants by establishing stricter requirements on visas and including a Korean language proficiency test and proof of income; implementing the Korean Immigration and Integration Program to help immigrants integrate with Korean society; enacting the Support for Multicultural Families Act in 2008, and the opening of Multicultural Family Support Centers operated by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, among others.

In short, embracing multiculturalism and multiracialism has become a hot-button topic in Korea, regarded as one of Asia’s most homogenous societies. As with any controversial issue, it is also a historically unique growth point for Korea, one that scholars and researchers study, to deepen discussions on the issue of multiculturalism and social and cultural integration. Scholars from ASEAN countries with common histories and who deal with multiculturalism and multiracialism in their societies can also work with their Korean counterparts. This will broaden and enrich even further the discourse and generate insights to benefit future generations not only in Korea but in ASEAN as well.

ASEAN: the people-to-people Korean Wave

ASEAN is also experiencing another kind of Korean wave: actual people-to-people exchanges, with 4.95 million Korean people visiting the ASEAN region in 2014 as travelers and tourists. ASEAN has been actively encouraging international tourism, and Korean tourism in ASEAN was supported by the Korean government through several promotional activities and capacity-building.

As for Korean migration to ASEAN, around 300,000 Koreans resided in ASEAN countries in 2014, and ASEAN member countries rank among the regions in the world with significant populations of overseas Koreans. In fact, among the top countries with the largest Korean populations, the Philippines ranks 9th worldwide and the first among ASEAN member countries with around 88,000 Koreans, with Vietnam coming in at 10th with 86,000. They are then followed by Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia.

Combined with hallyu, the presence of a significant Korean community within these countries becomes the best introduction to the Korean language and culture, and the field of Korean Studies for the ASEAN people. The people-to-people contact between ASEAN citizens and Korean nationals helps to establish the personal networks that serve to dispel misconceptions about the respective races and cultures, and to deepen the desire to learn and understand one another’s histories and social contexts. We go beyond trade, investments, statistics and numbers, and we enter into ties of friendship, shared history, respect, and a mutual willingness to learn about the other on a people-to-people basis.

Philippine-Korea relations: history

As a case in point for Korea and Philippine relations, allow me to return briefly to the story of Sgt. Pedrosa and the tribute offered in his honor by Korean soldiers. The shared history between Korea and the Philippines that forms the backdrop to this encounter goes back a long time.

A paper published by one of the professors at the UP Diliman Department of History, Raymund Arthur Abejo, provides details of the lives of the three Koreans who first came to the Philippines—Pak Marina or Mary Park, Tomas, and Gayo. The three were among the 350 Catholics who were exiled from Japan by order of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The exiles arrived in Manila on December 21, 1614, and many of them lived in San Miguel, a village in Quiapo, Manila. Pak Marina, who joined the monastery of the Miayo no Bikuni in 1612, stayed in San Miguel until she died in 1636. Jesuit-trained Tomas was already around 40 years old when he joined those exiled to Manila. He settled at San Miguel until 1618 until his father, who had been searching for him, asked for him to return home. The third Korean settler, the monk Gayo, did not stay long in the Philippines. In 1615, he accompanied some European missionaries to Nagasaki, Japan, and continued his work there as a dojuku and cathechist. Eventually, he was arrested, imprisoned, and sentenced to die in 1624, along with another Catholic martyr.

After tracing the history of these three Koreans, Abejo concludes in his paper: “A bond of friendship was formed between these Koreans seeking refuge in Manila and the natives who welcomed them. This served as a bridge of cultural relations between the two countries.”

The history of bilateral ties between Korea and the Philippines in the modern era is easier to track. The two countries established formal diplomatic ties in 1949, with the Philippines as the fifth country in the world and the first in Southeast Asia to recognize the ROK. A year later, the Korean War broke out, and the Philippines deployed its first combat unit under the PEFTOK in September 1950, the third UN member country to send troops. During the war, a total of 7,420 Filipino soldiers fought alongside their Korean comrades. Monuments to honor these soldiers were erected in both countries, such as the one at Gyeonggi-do near Seoul, the PEFTOK memorial in Manila, the Marikorea Monument in Marikina City, and the PEFTOK Korean War Memorial in Bayani Road, Taguig City. After the war, Filipinos helped in Korea’s rebuilding efforts—with two landmarks built back then, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the US embassy in Seoul still standing today.

Philippine-Korea relations: present

We have seen 60 years of bilateral ties built upon mutual friendship, trust and respect. We have seen the two countries take differing paths toward development. We have seen an economic miracle happen—the Miracle on the Han River —and this miracle continues to inspire us. With the continuing cooperation at the level of government as well as the flow of labor migration, the Korean wave of pop culture and Koreanovelas, and the growing interest in each other’s country and culture, bilateral relations between the two countries are expected to become stronger.

Today, we can see Korea on almost any part of the Philippines—in shops, business districts, malls, tourist resorts, restaurants, and on TV, in popular magazines and celebrity websites, on the silver screen, and on the airwaves. Koreans are the largest ethnic immigrants in the Philippines. There are Korean communities or so-called “Little Koreas” in almost all of the Philippine major urban areas. In terms of tourism, as of May 2015, Korea is still the biggest international visitor market, with 546,041 arrivals or 24.5 percent of the total inbound traffic, as well as the biggest contributor of visitor earnings for the country, with Php4.055 billion, overtaking the US and Japan.

The Filipino community in Korea is also making its mark upon Korean society. As of 2010, the number of overseas Filipinos in Korea reached 82,359. Moreover, the number of Filipinos who have obtained Korean citizenship or the right of permanent residence, rose from 5.4 percent of the total number of Filipinos living in Korea in 2000 to 13 percent in 2010 with the rise in the number of marriage migrants. The number of Filipino travelers to Korea has also grown over the years. During the first half of 2013, the number of Filipino tourists in Korea rose to 280,000, a 30.2 percent increase from the previous year. There are at present 33 Filipino religious organizations and 60 Filipino community organizations in Korea,48 and these provide support, solace, and a sense of community for the many Filipinos living in Korea. One such group is the Hyehwadong Filipino Catholic Community (HFCC), which recently organized a Santacruzan street parade in northeastern Seoul to mark the end of the monthlong Flores de Mayo.

Furthermore, as of 2014, there were an estimated 600 Filipino exchange students both undergraduates and graduates in around 40 universities in Korea. Most of them are under short-term and long-term international scholarship programs and they pursue diverse fields such as international relations, business, and the sciences. In 2005, several students led by Dr. Dennis K. Gomez from the Seoul National University formed the Pinoy Iskolars in Korea (PIKO) to provide a support system and forum for Filipino students in Korea. Seven years later, PIKO’s services has expanded to include undergraduate and graduate students, short-term exchange students, post-doctoral fellows, and visiting professors from different parts of Korea, as well as some professionals in Korea-based firms.

All these form the context in which we must boost the educational partnerships with one another— between Korea and the Philippines, and between Korea and the ASEAN. These are the rich soils in which we must plant the seeds of learning, research, and optimism for the future, which will, in time, yield a harvest of understanding, appreciation of one another’s cultural gifts, and stronger bonds of friendship and respect.

The key to this—as it is for the strategic partnership between Korea and ASEAN and the bilateral ties between Korea and the Philippines—is to enable, promote and support people-to-people connections. I offer UP as an example.

Korean Studies in the Philippines: opportunities

Koreans tend to top the list of foreign nationals enrolled in Philippine colleges and universities, usually, in connection with learning English as a second language. However, the state of Korean Studies-related research and education in the Philippines is just beginning to pick up the pace compared to Japanese and Chinese Studies. At present, the Philippines has just a few research and academic centers focused on the study of Korean social sciences, humanities, and language. These include the Samsung Korean Studies Program at the University of Asia and the Pacific, with Prof. Djun Kil Kim as project director; and the Initiatives for Korean Studies at the Ateneo de Manila University. There is also the Korean Cultural Center in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, which is the 20th Korean Cultural Center around the world, operating under the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Korean Embassy in the Philippines.

At UP, a substantial amount of activity in Korean Studies is being handled by four colleges in the UP Diliman campus—the Asian Center, the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Center for International Studies. Each offers courses on Korean Studies, Korean language or wide-ranging courses on Asia or East Asia where facets of Korean culture and society are taken up. In addition, UP offers a host of non-area-dependent, multidisciplinary courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs that foster an intellectual curiosity about Korea. Examples of these are course offerings on gender, media and film, economic development, business management, and applied social sciences. In addition, extramural Korean language instruction such as those offered by the UP Department of Linguistics help facilitate translations of resources on Korean lifestyle, practices, and topics such as the Korean diaspora, Korean literature, folklore, or even K-Pop. These Korean Studies-related programs and courses in UP are handled by Korean visiting professors and "Koreanists" or Filipino scholars of Korea who have become area specialists, historians, or linguists after obtaining at least some of their graduate education in Korea. These Korean professors and Koreanists form yet another kind of Korean wave—a network of people-to-people exchanges and connections that serve to strengthen ties of friendship and heighten mutual interest in each other’s cultures between Filipino and Korean students in UP. Through the years, UP’s Korean Studies faculty and visiting faculty have pushed to elevate the teaching of Hangeul beyond the basics to include socio-cultural, historical, and socio-economic-political contexts, leading one associate professor at the Asian Center to observe that Filipino students changed in their interactions with the Koreans on campus after taking these classes.

The efforts and encouragement by UP professors, both Korean and Filipino, transform interest in Korean language or pop culture into passion for the serious study of Korean culture and history among an increasing number of students. These students go on to take further studies in educational institutions in Korea such as the AKS, with the support of the Korean government, where they serve as able ambassadors of the Philippines to the Korean people. In fact, the current chair of the UP Department of Linguistics, Dr. Aldrin P. Lee, is an alumnus of the AKS, where he earned his interim masters degree in International Korean Studies and a doctorate degree in Korean linguistics. Prof. Raymund Abejo, whose paper I mentioned earlier, is also an AKS scholar, and he serves as lecturer on social and economic development of Korea at the UP Asian Center.

The Korean visiting professors at UP, such as Prof. Kyung-min Bae and Dr. Youngmee Kim, senior lecturers of Korean Language at UP Diliman, also share their love of their language and culture with UP students. These students later become faculty members and pass on their own knowledge, research, and passion for Korea to a new generation of Filipino students.

Moreover, most of the UP international students, both in the postgraduate and undergraduate programs, come from Korea, with UP Diliman having the largest number of enrollees. Aside from English, these Korean students come to take graduate programs in the social sciences, such as political science and history. These students, upon return to Korea, generate an interest in the Philippines, its history, multiethnic culture, and social issues as an academic discipline in their respective institutions, thereby widening the people-to-people network between Korea and the Philippines. Let us take the case of Dr. Kim Dong Yeob of the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Busan University of Foreign Studies (BUFS). He is an alumnus of UP, having completed his MA and PhD degrees in Political Science in the University in 1998 and 2003, respectively. Just this year, he published a Korean translation of Noli Me Tangere, one of the two novels of Filipino national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, with the help of Dr. Jovy M. Peregrino, a professor at the UP Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature, who is a visiting professor at BUFS. Through this first Korean translation of a classic novel from Philippine literature, more Koreans, including those with Filipino ethnicity, will get to commune with one of the most brilliant minds Asia has ever produced. And perhaps, more Koreans will be interested in learning about the Philippines, in coming to or living in the Philippines, and in getting to know Filipinos beyond the ODAs, media reports, and stereotypes.

In short, we recognize that the true pillars of the development of Korean Studies in UP are people— professors and visiting professors, and Filipino and Korean students. However, there is work to be done. Linkages need to be intensified and strengthened; the needed infrastructure must be built, and more collaborative research and teaching partnerships must be promoted and established. There is a need to address the underlying structural problems, which impede collaborative research and the development of a critical mass of Korean Studies scholars due to the low scale of activities in UP that are related to Korea.

Hence, with an approved funding support from AKS, UP is in the process of establishing a Korean Research Center (UP-KRC) which will serve as a hub for research and education in Korean Studies, focusing particularly on the areas of social sciences in relation to the bilateral relations between the Philippines and Korea.

The UP-KRC is envisioned to encourage inter- and cross-disciplinary research by drawing research members from the different academic disciplines across the UP System to conduct Korea-related research. It will also tap international research partners such as the AKS and the Korea Research Institute at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Inter-disciplinary projects, with a comparative perspective between the Philippines and Korea, will also be undertaken each year on priority research areas, such as, economic development, public administration and public sector reform, and culture and cultural industries. The UP-KRC will also review the Korea-related course subjects currently being offered in the interest of strengthening their content and coverage, and even possibly developing undergraduate courses for Korean Language majors and interested students from other disciplines. In addition to this, the UP-KRC at UP will facilitate interactions and cooperation among Korean Studies scholars and various institutions in Southeast Asia, such as the Korean studies centers in the member universities of KoSASA, to promote collaboration in joint research, exchange of resources, and development of teaching materials.

Korea to the Philippines and back again

As I mentioned earlier, Korean scholars and academics coming to the Philippines do more than serve as ambassadors of Korea to the Philippines and to Filipinos, as well as resource persons for various Korean Studies centers being developed in the Philippines. Like Dr. Kim Dong Yeob, they also serve as bridges and translators when they return home to Korea after having immersed themselves in Philippine culture and society. With their level of understanding and appreciation of the two cultures and societies, they do much to help navigate the occasionally choppy waters of cultural misunderstandings and negative perceptions between Filipinos and Koreans. They can thus contribute significant and much-needed research and insights into policy-making, both in government and in the administration of higher education.

The growing numbers of Southeast Asian—particularly Filipino—migrant laborers and migrant spouses in Korea, the thrust of the Korean government toward multiculturalism, and the general trend toward globalization have not come without challenges. There is the issue of widespread discrimination, and Korean authorities are confronted with the test of striking a balance between maintaining cultural traditions and respecting, even embracing, diversity.

There is thus a need not just for more in-depth research into the different foreign, especially Southeast Asian cultures, but to popularize these and extend their reach beyond the academe. International studies institutes such as the AKS, KISEAS, KoSASA, and the departments and centers for Asian or international studies under various universities play a critical role in making these studies wellunderstood and valued. However, as with the case is for UP and the Philippines’ quest to enhance Korean Studies, the strength and effectiveness of these Asian research centers, departments, and programs rest upon the effectiveness and enthusiasm of its people toward understanding the cultures, histories and context of their Asian neighbors, especially Southeast Asia, and imparting this understanding with others. People-to-people connections must be enabled and encouraged so as to eventually create a critical mass of international, Asian, and Philippine scholars who can educate others and inspire enlightened policy.

Under this general objective of furthering understanding between Southeast Asia and Korea, and the Philippines and Korea, there are particular disciplines that offer the most promise or generate the most interest among the respective peoples. For example, literature, the arts and humanities, and philosophy are fields that can be further enriched. Korea has 1,500 remarkable years of literary and philosophical history, from Korean shamanism to Confucianism, from classical poetry forms and songs to contemporary novels spanning Korea's modern history. Some of these works have been translated into German, Spanish, French, Polish, and English, but I would like to see more literary works translated into Southeast Asian languages, especially Filipino. While there is a perception that for the Philippines, translating literary works into English will do, the choice to use English limits the reach of these works to particular audiences. Translating work into Filipino, and eventually into the other Philippine languages, is a good way to popularize the works of, for example, Gong Ji-young, Park Kyung-ni, and Hwang Sunwon among ordinary Filipinos whose appetite for Korea has already been whetted by the hallyu.

Conversely, more literary works in Filipino can be translated into Korean, particularly works that touch on the Philippine experiences with colonialism—something Koreans can relate to, historically. Other Philippine works of fiction are those that can showcase different forms and aspects of the country’s multiethnic, multilingual society as a kind of window into possibilities. As already pioneered by Dr. Kim Dong Yeob and Dr. Jovy Peregrino, more of these joint translation projects can be undertaken and further encouraged through the support of the respective universities, literary organizations and funding institutions.

With the level of technological advancement attained by Korea, science, information technology, computer engineering, and other similar courses are attractive to Southeast Asian and Filipino students. As for what the Philippines can offer Korean scholars, other fields and disciplines besides English language instruction can yield more riches in terms of understanding and insight. Many Korean students in UP choose to take courses in social science and public governance, digging deep into what the two countries have in common, where the differences lie, and what lessons we can learn from one another.

The University of the Philippines, as a member of the AUN and KoSASA, is also an excellent doorway into the ASEAN. In fact, UP’s Asian Studies program, also under the Asian Center, with a focus on Southeast Asian Studies, is designed to enable a student to acquire a deeper understanding and a wider perspective of many Asian cultures through an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspective, in addition to the language training one can get in English, Filipino, and other Asian languages.

For Korean nationals interested in specializing in a broad and integrated comprehension of Philippine society, culture, political and socio-economic development, and external relations in order to serve, the Asian Center also offers a Master of Arts program in Philippine Studies, employing a multi-disciplinary approach and encouraging studies of the Philippines and Filipinos in their broader Asian context. The Asian Center also offers a PhD program in Philippine Studies, which is a joint program handled by three colleges—the Asian Center, the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and the College of Arts and Letters. Students may select their major area or discipline among Philippine development studies, foreign relations, and socio-cultural studies, Philippine languages and literature, and the social sciences.

The way forward: prioritizing people-to-people connections

With Filipinos studying Korea and its people and Koreans studying the Philippines and its people, we create ripples of mutual understanding and respect that positively impact society and inform policy at all levels. We strengthen political, economic, and socio-cultural ties between Korea and the Philippines, and Korea and ASEAN. We open up more venues for dialogue, we generate spaces for cultural exchanges, we open windows ro explore new knowledge, and we create zones of peace, cooperation, and prosperity from the community level to the regional, in the full appreciation of the truth that each one of us has something to bring to the table. This is the Asian Community in its truest sense.

Earlier this year, the ASEAN and Korean leaders met in Bali, Indonesia to reaffirm the ASEAN-ROK Strategic Partnership and to commemorate 20 years of dialogue partnership, growing interdependence, and intensifying political, economic, and socio-cultural interaction between ASEAN and its member nations, and Korea. Movements in the education sector must respond to this increasingly dynamic interdependence and interactions. And at all times, we must be consciously aware that the most transformative changes happen not at the level of policy, but at the level of people-to-people exchanges and interrelationships.

• Note: Interviews with Prof. Kyung-min Bae and Department Chair Dr. Aldrin P. Lee of the UP Department of Linguistics, and Prof. Raymond Abejo, UP Department of History also served as references for this paper and are acknowledged.

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