While there is ‘some’ debate over who started teaching Korean first in American higher education institutions, Korean language education in this country has a long history. With the establishment of the American Association of Teachers of Korean (aka AATK) in 1994, Korean language education was at a dramatic turning point in terms of practical classroom teaching as well as Korean as a second or foreign language (KSL/KFL) research. AATK will celebrate its 30-year anniversary in 2025 and it is a perfect time to reassess what has been done during the past three decades and what needs to be done moving forward. In this era of globalization and the spread of Hallyu worldwide, learning Korean language and culture has become a worthy endeavor for many students, heritage learners and non-heritage learners alike. In this talk, I will be reflecting on 30 years of Korean language education in U.S. higher education from both practical and academic perspectives.

Hye-Sook Wang is an associate professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University. She is the author of Generation Gap and Other Essays and Frog's Tears and Other Stories (both by Cheng & Tsui), editor of Rise of Korean Language Programs in U.S. Institutes of Higher Education (2015, Korea University Press) and Sociolinguistics and Korean Language Education (forthcoming in 2024, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC-Berkeley), and co-author of Integrated Korean: High Advanced I & II 1st & 2nd Ed. (University of Hawaii Press, 2005, 2025) in addition to many journal articles. She has also served as the editor-in-chief of The Korean Language in America: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Korean for eight years after serving as the president of AATK from 2003 to 2006.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at ncks.info@umich.edu.