Multicultural Policy in South Korea and its Implications for Social Inclusion of Multiethnic Youth
Memo #391 By: Léo-Thomas Brylowski – ltbrylowski [at] gmail.com A record number of children born from mixed marriages are starting to make their way through South Korea’s public schooling system since the country’s multicultural turn in 2007. These children represented less than 0.5% of all students enrolled in Korean public schools in 2010, but are […]
Why should we care about transnational social capital in development cooperation?
Memo #386 By: Rennie J. Moon – rennie.moon [at] yonsei.ac.kr and Gi-Wook Shin – gwshin [at] stanford.edu Higher education aid as transnational social capital Current approaches to higher education aid have focused either on developing human resources or on building social capital in the local context. For instance, donor countries offer various programs to train […]
Reflection Requires Reading: A New Japanese Middle School History Textbook
Memo #379 By:Hyung Gu Lynn – hlynn [at] mail.ubc.ca Despite the regular protests by South Korean and Chinese governments there remains confusion about Japanese history textbooks in terms of their production, approval, adoption, reception, and contents. Separate teams work to produce texts for private publishers, and these are approved or declined by the Ministry of Education, […]
Investigating Evidence: Japan’s War Responsibility in Southeast Asia (A Video Memo with Dr. Nobuyoshi Takashima)
Memo #350 Featuring Nobuyoshi Takashima [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyKGbIXU2OM[/youtube] A few weeks ago the Asia Pacific Memo sat down with Dr. Nobuyoshi Takashima, Professor Emertius at the University of the Ryukyus. He is a noted scholar in the areas of history education, textbook issues, war responsibilities and war memory, including those of Okinawa. Professor Takashima has been leading study tours to Malaysia and Singapore […]
Lingua Franca?: Francophone scholarship on the Asia-Pacific
Memo #349 By: Gisèle Yasmeen – gisele.yasmeen [at] ubc.ca While English is often thought of as the international academic lingua franca, there is significant scholarship on Asia in other languages, including French. French-language scholarship on the Asia-Pacific should be valued, particularly in Canada – a bilingual country home to a number of French-speaking Asianists who […]
South Korea Moves Ahead with Plans to Publish State-Authored Textbooks
Memo #348 By: Rufina K. Park – rufina.park [at] asiapacific.ca South Korea Nationalizes History Textbooks In October 2015, the South Korean government announced its decision to nationalize middle and high school history textbooks, which means that starting from 2017, schools will no longer have the option to choose from Ministry of Education approved independent publications. Instead, the […]
A New Look at Chinese Liberalism among Elite Students
Memo #330 By Fen Lin – fenlin [at] cityu.edu.hk Peking University, the traditional locus of Chinese liberalism, seems to be yielding this role to China’s economics and financial universities. A 2012 survey, conducted among six elite universities in Beijing and Shanghai, revealed that only 14% of Peking University students described themselves as liberal reformists, the lowest […]
The Global Intensification of Supplementary Education
Memo #271 Featuring Julian Dierkes Recently, Ee-Seul Yoon of the Faculty of Education at UBC in coordination with the Asia Pacific Memo sat down with Dr. Julian Dierkes, Associate Professor and Keidanren Chair in Japanese Research at UBC’s Institute for Asian Research, to pose a few questions about Professor Dierkes’ recently co-edited volume, Out of the Shadows: The Global […]
NYU Shanghai and the Future of International Higher Education in China
Memo #261 By Joel Heng Hartse – joelhartse [at] gmail.com New York University Shanghai recently completed its first semester of operations. Though NYU Shanghai was recently touted by National Public Radio as the first Sino-U.S. joint university, there are in fact hundreds of approved joint-degree programs and more than thirty jointly run Sino-foreign universities operating in China—and the […]
Visas, Medicine, Education: Feeling Chinese Soft Power in Mongolia
Memo #256 By Jargalsaikhan Mendee – mendee [at] alumni.ubc.ca China has been gradually increasing its soft power in neighbouring Mongolia, from offers of visa-free travel to access to its medical facilities, and most recently, growing educational opportunities in China for Mongolians. These policies have gone far in diminishing deep-seated anti-Chinese sentiment among Mongolians, feelings hardened during the […]