South Korea’s Pai Chai University recently announced an organizational overhaul that will merge several humanities departments, touching off a debate on the “crisis of humanities.”

At the center of discussion was the school’s decision to merge the Korean Language and Literature Department with the Department of Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language. Pai Chai, which has produced top-notch literary figures such as poet Kim So-wol and linguist Ju Si-gyeong, will have no dedicated Korean literature department after the merger.

Pai Chai students majoring in Korean literature cried foul, saying that the school’s decision was unilateral and that it made no sense to integrate departments with such different curriculums.

“It is impossible to merge two departments but the university is adamant on its position,” said Jeong Ji-hong, leader of the student body representing the Korean Language and Literature Department in an interview.



Pai Chai’s choice, however, is not an isolated one. Across the nation, Korean universities are scrambling to shut down unpopular humanities departments. Hannam University is reportedly planning to eliminate departments which receive the poorest scores in internal evaluation.

The trend against humanities departments at colleges is partly due to the dismal employment rate of graduates of literature, philosophy, history and other academic disciplines that have no explicit link to a career. According to a survey by Job Korea, 70.3 percent of respondents who graduated with humanities-related degrees said their major did not help them get a job.

Most students favor business administration and other popular majors that boost their chances of landing a job.

The near-collapse of humanities as legitimate academic courses in higher education, however, might be overstated. The humanities have faced trouble in recent years but there are signs of hope, as the public is increasingly drawn to the study of humanities as part of lifelong education and self-improvement efforts.

On some campuses in Korea, new courses and programs focused on humanities that target the general public are popping up. For instance, state-run Seoul National University and other prestigious colleges are introducing special humanities courses.

Similarly, online education is discovering the value of humanities subjects. Hunet.com, a major e-learning provider, said the number of users taking humanities classes doubled in 2012 from a year earlier.

As for the conflicting interpretations about the status of humanities in Korea, Kang Myeong-kwan, professor at Pusan National University, said the two different views are closely interconnected.

“The fundamental problem behind it (the crisis of humanities) is a social system that makes its members compete all the time, whether it is for college admission or job seeking,” Kang told The Korea Herald.

He added that the current education system deprived students of opportunities to study humanities and the unfulfilled desire to study the subjects resurfaced as they got older, a process he described as “unnatural.”

As a result, historical knowledge of young Koreans is alarmingly low. According to a survey of the Ministry of Patriots and Veteran Affairs, 23.2 percent of respondents in their 20s or younger had no knowledge of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Another survey by the Joongang Ilbo said that nearly 1 out 4 Korean students thought that the Korean War was started by Russia (12.1 percent) or the United States (11.5 percent). 


By Yoon Min-sik
(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)