East Asian Linguistics Graduate Studies

[jobm]

Hello everyone~ 

 

I hope you guys are okay~ After five years, I was able to fulfill (a part of) my dream and now I am studying Chinese language and literature here in South Korea (Hanyang University) ?.

 

 

[Tomsima]

Just read through this thread and the advice from oneeye and others, congrats on making it to south korea - did you make it to China at all in the 5 year interval?

[jobm]

Thank you everyone and @Tomsima! Besides the time when I went to study abroad in China during my undergraduate, none. After graduation, I had worked for one and a half years, applied for the Korean government scholarship, and came here to Korea. 

[jobm]

Hi guys! Long time no update. I've finally able to graduate from Hanyang University in August 2021. I wrote a thesis in Korean on the distribution and development of a certain sound change (post-lateral tensification as we call it in Korean linguistics) present in Sino-Korean words. 

 

With regards to my experience in South Korea, I think the experience was generally good. I was a scholar of the Korean government and received the highly-competitive Korean Government Scholarship (Program) (KGSP) or Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) as it is called now. I think Hanyang University has a strong Chinese department. Our faculty consists of scholars trained not only in South Korea but also in Mainland China, Taiwan, and the US so I think there's a good mix of different teaching styles, theoretical approaches and methodologies from the said countries. I think it's nice that in South Korea, I had access to sources from Asia and the West. Sometimes we used sources written in Chinese or Korean (and sometimes even English!). It's just sad to think Korean scholarship on Sinology is often overlooked in the West or outside South Korea. As I see it, a lot of Chinese language scholars in the West learn Japanese to read Japanese sources but hardly Korean. My classes were either taught in Chinese, Korean, or a mix of the two. One course that I took was trilingual - English, Korean, and Chinese. If the courses are done in Korean, it's common to be asked to read the reference in Chinese and summarize and translate it into Korean and present it by reading it aloud in class. The graduate students are 2/3 Korean, 1/3 Chinese (usually Mainland but there's one from Taiwan too). I was the only (and the first) non-East Asian student in the department. I think I took around eight courses spanning mostly on Chinese linguistics (Chinese syntax, phonology, philology, and pedgogy). Since my program was "Chinese language and literature", I had to take one Chinese literature class, which was my waterloo. I chose to take Chinese theater in the 20th century up to the present which was interesting but pretty challenging. With regards to Classical Chinese, I think I was supposed to take one undergraduate course on it but I think it wasn't offered or something so I was not able to do it. In my classes, sometimes we would need to understand a quote in Classical Chinese and translate it. It's assumed that you know a bit but of course, I was lagging behind my peers because Koreans could also choose to study Classical Chinese in middle or high school. I could say my Korean classmates who majored in Chinese literature have a good command of it (as expected). Fortunately, I was able to understand simple texts in Classical Chinese (there's a lot of good introductory courses in Korean) but I couldn't say I'm proficient because sometimes I was able to find translations in English and Korean (that's why I told Korean scholarship is good too). Honestly, it's even easier to go from Chinese to Korean than Chinese to Korean because of the Sinitic vocabulary in Korean. I also had to submit articles and take exams in Korean and Chinese, though one time, I wrote my research paper in English. I also wrote my thesis in Korean which is a requirement for all students, even the Chinese ones. I also defended mine in Korean. I also had a chance to meet William S-Y Wang, which is one of the most prominent scholars in Chinese linguistics. 

 

One bad side of the program was the program was poorly structured. I would expect there would be a good and logical structure of the program to introduce you to Chinese linguistics and literature but the courses were kind of random and didn't provide a good foundation on the field. Imagine taking a construction grammar class in Chinese without a basic understanding of syntax! I came from a theoretical linguistic background so it's not that difficult for me but my classmates didn't since Chinese language and literature programs in Korea concentrate more on teaching Chinese language skills, culture, and literature than linguistics per se. I had classmates who were on the Chinese linguistic track that only knew about the IPA, for example, in our historical phonology class. I was disappointed on how some courses were not that fully intellectually stimulating since generally, the teaching style in Korea is very teacher-centric and you just sit down and listen to your professor. I don't think I was able to develop a lot of technical skills that made me struggle to find work or a PhD program after graduation. The chance of presenting at a conference and publishing an article was also pretty low. I didn't feel the environment was conducive enough to grow as a scholar. I wished I could have planned my studies thoroughly so that I could make the most of my stay there. The program could be done for two years but no one could and did because of the thesis. I finished the program in 2.5 years but in my last semester, I didn't get any living stipend from my scholarship so it was a big struggle that I overcame by doing side hustles here and there. The scholarship I got was good but whenever I had any problem, it's hard (almost impossible) to get help. The stipend is not that high and you're not allowed to work unless it's in campus and related to your major. It's hard if you don't have savings like I do. The pressure from your professors and from Korean society in general was high and Koreans also tend to be cold towards others. The hierarchy between you and your seniors and your professors was real. It's hard not to be depressed. 

 

My advice is if you're interested in studying abroad, know what you're going into. Plan your studied pretty well, have some money, develop a high proficiency of the local language, and have a support system. Have a clear goal of your path during and after the program. 

 

After applying for several programs, I'm also happy to share that I will be moving to Germany this September! I'll do my Ph.D. in East Asian Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. I'll be researching Philippine Hokkien phonology. I was fortunate to be awarded a DAAD scholarship for my doctoral studies. I'm excited to embark on a new journey and I hope everything will turn out well.

 

 

[Tomsima]

fantastic write up, thank you for sharing! I have recently been thinking about how unfortunate it is that Korean scholarship gets overlooked in Chinese linguistics - that includes myself though, as I only read about it through secondary sources and can't read Korean (perhaps a future project...)

 

congrats on the PhD too, great news and look forward to hearing more in future

[jobm]

@Tomsima I think that's a big problem. As this SCMP article pointed out, interest in Korean studies is still pretty low especially when compared with Chinese and Japanese studies. However, once you know Chinese, Korean is a walk in the park. ?

 

Thank you so much for your interest! I'm also thinking of make a blog/vlog for my PhD journey and I'll share it here once it's available ?