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Not long after a U.K. visit by Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, the country's oldest university Oxford has provisionally decided to shut down its Korean studies program, the latest in the slow death of such programs all across Britain. Critics point out that Japan aggressively supports Japanese studies abroad, enabling it to highlight its side of disputes such as the recent territorial spat over Korea's Dokdo Islets, while Korea has no such strategy.
Prof. James Lewis of the Department of Korean Studies of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University said Tuesday the university recently decided to do away with regional studies programs that do not financially support themselves. He said financial trouble would likely force the university to drop Korean studies, which was clearly not bringing in the required financial support, from June 2007.
Lewis said Oxford's Korean studies program was founded in 1994 with the support of the Korean government's Korea Foundation and was currently surviving on the patronage of a businessman. He expressed concern that the program would be left high and dry if the businessman withdraws his sponsorship.
A spokesman from the Korean Students Association at Oxford said the group asked several institutions in Korea to help the university's Korean program but was told there was no budget. The spokesman said for this to happen the same year President Roh paid a state visit to the U.K. was harmful to the promotion of friendly ties between the two countries. Worse, he said it would narrow the room available to overseas specialists who could speak for Korea's position in disputes like Dokdo Islets row.
The University of Durham also decided to shut down its Korean studies program, and the University of Newcastle will soon decide whether to scrap its Korean studies, sparking fears of a domino effect. Some critics worry whether the government's recent announcement that it will strengthen overseas Korean research through the Academy of Korean Studies was only hot air.
In sharp contrast, none of the financially struggling British universities are shutting down their Japanese and Chinese programs. The Japanese government and corporations like Nissan have been pouring lavish funds into Oxford's Japanese program since the 1980s, and the university library even has a separate, 100,000-volume Japan section. As a result of Japanese support for the discipline, the British media is full of articles reflecting Japan's position in conflicts like the Dokdo row.
Lewis said Japanese governmental and corporate support for overseas Japanese research meant the world's elites commonly saw problems between Korea and Japan from Tokyo's point of view.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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