A Graduate Student Perspective: Merle Kartscher, G2, History, KI Graduate Summer Language Grant, Summer 2024

My PhD research focuses on the experiences and activities of women (both Japanese and non-Japanese) under Japanese imperialism, especially those who lived in colonised Korea,Taiwan and Manchuria. To conduct this sort of research, it is crucial to utilise a variety of primary and secondary sources in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, so as not to produce a one sided narrative and reproduce the biases of the colonial archive. In order to improve my Korean language skills and make this research possible, the Korea Institute generously awarded me the Graduate Summer Language Grant, which allowed me to participate in a short-term intensive language program at Korea University this summer, from July 1st to July 27th.

Prior to our arrival in Seoul, the teachers at the Korean Language Center of Korea University had conducted interviews via zoom, to assign us to one of three language levels, and I found myself placed in level 4 – higher intermediate. Upon inspection of the textbooks, I realised that we had actually already covered the entire grammar introduced in level 4 in the Korean language classes I had taken at Harvard up until now. However, due to the requirement that each level would have to have at least 8 students, level 4 was the highest language level offered at Korea University in July, so there was no option to switch courses. While initially I was a little worried about the suitability of the course to my skills and whether this would affect the progress I could make, the level 4 course, on the contrary, proved to be very rewarding: While not learning a lot of new grammatical patterns, I was able to revise old content in new contexts and become more confident with its usage; I was confronted with an abundance of new, advanced vocabulary and I was challenged to apply all my new and old Korean skills inconversations in and out of the classroom with teachers and classmates, many of whom werespeaking at a much more advanced level than me. In class, I particularly enjoyed the listening comprehension component and the strong focus on speaking, both of which are the skills I am struggling with most and which improved drastically over those four weeks, but what ultimately propelled my progress most was being immersed in a Korean-speaking environmentall day every day. Navigating everyday life completely in Korean showed me the progress I have already made and simultaneously emphasised the many, many gaps in my knowledge, both of which make me feel strongly motivated to keep studying Korean during the coming semesters at Harvard. Although the Korean language classes did occupy most of my time with homework, vocabulary memorization and test-prep, I did manage to explore the Korea University library holdings as well as the National Library of Korea archives. Due to my interest in Japanese women’s associations operating in colonised Korea, I mainly focused on finding evidence of their activities in Korean newspapers from the colonial period, including the Kyŏngsŏng sinbo, Maeil sinbo and Busan sinbo. Overall, then, my trip to Seoul this summer was very successful and I sincerely thank the Korea Institute for making possible.