Education

Interest in Korea has grown over the past two decades thanks in part to the international spread of Hallyu or the Korean Wave of popular culture. Korean Studies has seen an exponential increase in enrolments since 2017, growing from 600 enrolments to over 820 in 2020. In 2017, Monash Korean Studies had no postgraduate students, but as of 2020 it has three PhD students and five MA students pursuing Korea-related research.  In 2017, teaching focussed primarily on Korean language instruction, as of 2020, students have a choice of new content units on Korean Popular Culture, Literature, History, and Translation. In addition, to teaching content and language units, Monash University Korean Studies organizes a regular language exchange programme with partner universities in South Korea and also sends students on language and research programmes to Seoul. Student study at Monash and overseas is also supported by Monash Korean Studies educational scholarships and awards scheme.

Teaching Programme

Korean studies has been taught at the University since 1988. Our teaching program is designed to provide a solid foundation in Korea-related fields and aims to help students acquire not only Korean language competency, but also other valuable skills, such as intercultural communication. We take pride in our innovative teaching, as well as our strong commitment to research.

Courses

Undergraduate studies

Master's by coursework

Graduate Research

Find out more about the Arts Graduate Research Program.

Complete an entry level test to determine which unit you will be placed in, and find out more on the language framework Korean studies page.

Research programme

We welcome applications from prospective HDR students (honours, MA and PhD) wishing to conduct research within the areas of expertise of our staff. The research strengths and supervision areas of the Korean studies staff are:

  • North and South Korean film
  • Korean popular culture – K-Pop
  • Rebellion in Korea
  • Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language
  • Korean linguistics
  • Korean modern literature
  • Premodern and modern Korean history
  • Translation studies
  • Korean diaspora
  • Korea and international relations
  • Korean society and culture
  • Gender and state
  • Korean pragmatics, politeness and honorifics
  • Korean language maintenance in Australia

If you intend to work on a project that combines Korean studies and another discipline, we will organise the necessary complement of research expertise to meet your supervision needs. Please visit the ‘meet our researchers’ page to see the supervision availability of our academic staff.