ABSTRACT
Korea has had a large number of Japanese language learners for the past three decades; the largest number in the world until the middle of the 2000s, and the third largest by the early 2010s. At least from a quantitative perspective, based on the booming of Japanese education, Korea has enjoyed very vigorous research activities with more than 1000 researchers of Japanese Studies and 30 Japan-related research associations arising out of the boom. Aiming at exploring research trends of Japanese Studies in Korea, in particular, this paper clarifies two special features. One is the historical and political legacy that affects research on Japan in Korea. The current boom in Japanese Studies and Japanese language education did not occur until the end of the 1970s. Before the 1970s, there was a strong anti-Japan sentiment within Korean society, which was caused by the fact that Korea had been under Japanese rule until 1945. This paper will reveal legacies affecting Japanese Studies in Korea, such as colonial occupation, post-war relations with Japan and ordinary peoples’ perceptions of Japan. The other feature is the low degree of influence from Anglophone academia on Japanese research in Korea. A large portion of Korean scholars on Japanese Studies received their research training in Korea or Japan, and publish their research outcomes mainly in Korean or Japanese, which is partly due to their high-level proficiency in the Japanese language, while there is no pressure to publish works in English.
