Library Guides: Korean Studies and Language: Introduction

Introduction

This subject guide highlights some key discipline resources to get you started with study and research.

Refer to the New Students Library Guide for everything you need to know about Library services and resources.
Build your researching, reading and writing skills with the Research Essentials Library Guide.
Streamline your access to online resources with the Library's quick access tools.

Korean language learning

Below are some textbooks and reference works to get you started.

For further resources, also check the following subject headings in the Library Catalogue.

Alternatively, you might try the following keywords search in our Library Catalogue:

Korean AND Grammar
Korean AND Textbook*

Note: * will pick up variations, eg, textbook, textbooks, which will allow you to search for multiple words in one go.

Textbooks

Dictionaries

Periplus Pocket Korean Dictionary by Seong-Chul Sim; Gene Baik It's never a good idea to be overly-relient on technology while traveling! Look up words quickly and easily with this great travel-sized Korean dictionary. Intended for use by tourists, students, and business people traveling to Korea Pocket Korean Dictionary is an essential tool for communication and a great way to learn Korean. It features all the essential Korean vocabulary appropriate for beginning to intermediate students. It's handy pocket format and easy-to read type will make any future trip to Korea much easier. In addition to being an excellent English to Korean dictionary and Korean to English dictionary Pocket Korean Dictionary contains important notes on the Korean language, Korean grammar and Korean pronunciation. All Korean words are written in English as well as Korean script (hangul) so that in the case of difficulties the book can simply be shown to the person the user is trying to communicate with. This dictionary contains: The 11,000 most commonly used words and expressions in the Korean language. English-Korean and Korean-English sections. Hangul and Romanized Korean. An introduction to and history of the Korean language. Designed for English speakers Information on Korean grammar. A guide to pronouncing Korean correctly. Other books from this bestselling series you might enjoy are: Pocket Tagalog Dictionary, Pocket Vietnamese Dictionary, Pocket Mandarin Chinese Dictionary, Pocket Cantonese Dictionary, Pocket Cambodian Dictionary, Pocket Indonesian Dictionary, Pocket Thai Dictionary, and Pocket Malay Dictionary.
ISBN: 9781462918942
Publication Date: 2016-08-30
Tuttle Pocket Korean Dictionary by Kyubyong Park It's never a good idea to be overly-relient on technology while traveling! Look up words quickly and easily with this great Korean dictionary. Intended for use by tourists, students, and business people travelling to Korea Tuttle Pocket Korean Dictionary is an essential tool for communicating in Korean. It features all the essential Korean vocabulary appropriate for beginning to intermediate students. It's handy pocket format and user-friendly, two color layout will make any future trip to Korea much easier. All entries are written in a Romanized form as well as Korean script (hangul) so that in the case of difficulties the book can simply be shown to the person the user is trying to communicate with. This dictionary includes the following key features: Over 18,000 words and expressions in the Korean language. Korea-English and English-Korean sections Fully updated with recent vocabulary and commonly used South Korean slang. Clear, user friendly layout with headwords in blue. Romanized and Korean Script (hangul) for every entry. Other books from this bestselling series you might enjoy include: Pocket Japanese Dictionary, Pocket Mandarin Chinese Dictionary, and Pocket Cantonese Dictionary.
ISBN: 9781462914449
Publication Date: 2015-01-20

Encyclopedias & handbooks

Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea by James E. Hoare South Korea (Republic of Korea) is the more successful of the two Koreas in both economic and political terms. Even the Asian economic crisis of 1997-1998, which hit badly, was weathered successfully, and when the next crisis came along in 2007, South Korea coped better than many other countries. This economic strength, taken with the steady progress of democratization since 1987, indicates that when the peninsula is eventually reunified, as one day it probably will be, a new unified Korea will follow the South Korea model rather than that of North Korea This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country's politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Republic of Korea.
ISBN: 9781538119754
Publication Date: 2020
Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean Literature by Yoon Sun Yang (Editor) The Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean Literature provides a comprehensive overview of a Korean literary tradition, which is understood as a multifaceted nexus of practices, both homegrown and transnational. The handbook discusses the perspectives from which modern Korean literature has thus far been defined, analyzing which voices have been enunciated, underappreciated, or completely silenced and how we can enrich our understanding of it. Taking up diverse transnational and interdisciplinary standpoints, this volume aims to encourage readers not to treat modern Korean literature as a self-evident category but to examine it anew as an uncultivated and uncharted space, unearthing its internal chasms and global connections. Divided into five parts, the themes covered include the following: Literature and power Borders and boundaries Rationality in literature and its limits Language, ethnicity, and translation Korean literature in the changing mediascape. By introducing new conceptual paradigms to the field of modern Korean literature, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Korean, East Asian, and world literature alike.
ISBN: 9781315622811
Publication Date: 2020
The Koreas: a global studies handbook by Mary E. Connor; Lucien Ellington (Editor) The Koreas delivers border-to-border coverage of North and South Korea, with chapters dedicated to history and geography, social and cultural customs, and economics and politics. It's not hard to understand why Koreans describe their lives as han, which means "living with a great and sustained sorrow." In the 20th century alone, they endured a 35 year Japanese military occupation, one of the most brutal civil wars in history, and decades of occupation by rival superpowers. Yet the story of this hauntingly beautiful, mountainous land is not ultimately one of war and devastation. The Koreas: A Global Studies Handbook tells the story of a warm and generous people who have retained their distinctive language and culture despite repeated foreign occupations, achieved a literacy rate of almost 100 percent, outscored nearly every other nation in science and math, and reshaped their devastated post-war economy into one of the four tigers of Asian economic growth. Analyzes Korea's geography, history, and economic and political development, along with its current social and political problems Offers practical information on culture and etiquette for the first-time visitor
ISBN: 1576072770
Publication Date: 2002
Korea: a Very Short Introduction by Michael J. Seth Having spent centuries in the shadows of its neighbours China and Japan, Korea is now the object of considerable interest for radically different reasons - the South as an economic success story and for its vibrant popular culture; the North as the home to one of the world's most repressiveregimes, at once both bizarre and menacing.This Very Short Introduction explores the history, culture, and society of a deeply divided region. Michael Seth considers what it means to be Korean, and analyses how the various peoples of the Korean peninsula became one of the world's most homogeneous nations, before exploring how this nationevolved, in a single lifetime, into today's sharply contrasting societies. He also discusses how Korea fits into the larger narrative of both East Asian and world history, economically, politically, and socially.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, andenthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
ISBN: 9780198830771
Publication Date: 2020
The Korean War: an encyclopedia by Stanley Sandler (Editor) First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
ISBN: 0824044452
Publication Date: 1995

Books

You can access print and eBooks via the Library Catalogue. To find books on a particular subject, try a keyword search:

To improve your searching skills, see the Research Essentials Library Guide. Note that you can search the catalogue in non-Latin scripts (including Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Korean).

For information on access and loans, including material from other libraries, see the borrowing from the library page. The eBook Guide provides information on eBook access.

Tips on searching for Korean language books held in ERC Library

There are three ways to find Korean language books held in ERC Library, you could search in English, Korean scripts, and Korean Romanization.

Searching in English

For example, if you are looking for Korean literature works written in Korean language, in the Library Catalogue, try a keyword search with Korea* AND (literature OR novel* OR fiction*), and limit your search to East Asian Collections, please see below:

Searching in Korean scripts

If you know the book title, you could try a title search, see below:

Searching in Korean Romanization

You could also search with Korean Romanization, see below:

For more information about the Korean Romanization rules, please refer to the McCune-Reischauer Romanization System below:

모음	Roman	자음	Initial	Medial	Final
ㅏ	a	ㄱ	k	k, g (between vowels and after m, n, ng, l), ng (before m, n, l)	k
ㅑ	ya	ㄴ	n	n, l (when preceded or followed by l)	n
ㅓ	ŏ	ㄷ	t	t, d (between vowels and after m, n, ng)	t
ㅕ	yŏ	ㄹ	n	r (between vowels), l (before all other consonants and after n, l), n (after other consonants)	l
ㅗ	o	ㅁ	m	m	m
ㅛ	yo	ㅂ	p	b (between vowels and after m, n, ng, l), m (before m, n, l), p (before and after all other consonants)	p
ㅜ	u	ㅅ	s, sh (before wi)	s, sh (before wi), n (before m, n, l)	t
ㅠ	yu	ㅇ	Not romanized	Not romanized, ng (as syllabic final)	ng
ㅡ	ŭ	ㅈ	ch	j (between vowels, and after m, n, ng) ch (after all other consnants)	t
ㅣ	i	ㅊ	ch’	ch’
ㅐ	ae	ㅋ	k’	k’
ㅒ	yae	ㅌ	t’	t’
ㅔ	e	ㅍ	p’	p’
ㅖ	ye	ㅎ	h	h
ㅚ	oe	ㄲ	kk	kk	kk
ㅟ	wi	ㄸ	tt	tt
ㅢ	ŭi	ㅃ	pp	pp
ㅘ	wa	ㅆ	ss	ss
ㅙ	wae	ㅉ	tch	tch
ㅝ	wŏ
ㅞ	we

The University of Melbourne Library also has access to the following book database:

KRpia knowledge reference service
Full-text collection of Korean classical books. Users may search and retrieve primary sources, oral sources, classical texts, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and general reference works in fields such as Korean history, literature, civilization, medicine, architecture, and natural history. Databases both in Korean translation and in the classical Chinese-language original.

Databases and journals

Use databases to search across many academic resources (including peer-reviewed journals) at the same time.

Refer to the A-Z Ejournals and Databases page for a comprehensive list of available resources.

Korean studies-specific databases:

First of all, try searching in one of these subject-specific databases.

DBpia Electronic Journals Service
Full text database including over 1,000 Korean scholarly journals. the journal titles are arranged by 11 subject categories (Business/Economics, Theology, Education, Sociology, Natural Science, Human science, Linguistics, Law/Administration, Artistic and Physical). All journals are available from the first issue of a given title.
RISS International
Search all data of more than 500 Korean University Libraries + Korean Journal Articles + Korean Theses & Dissertations. Full text only available where accessible via subscribed DBpia database.

Core Arts and Humanities databases:

The selection of multidisciplinary databases below will retrieve results from different subject areas.

Discovery (EBSCO)
Discovery is a major library tool. Discovery combines the information from the library catalogue, the digital repository and many databases into a single database. However, for a comprehensive search it is recommended that you also search individual databases
Google Scholar
(With University of Melbourne authentication) Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a digital library of thousands of academic journals, books, and primary sources from a wide range academic publishers and university presses. Titles span across disciplines, including core areas such as business & economics, social sciences, education, history, language & literature and science. Current journals are linked and cross-searchable with archival journals and ebooks on JSTOR, helping patrons discover, use, and build upon a constantly expanding range of academic content.
Oxford Journals
Oxford Journals includes current content from all subject areas, the Oxford Journal Archive content going back 140 years and the ‘Oxford Open’ initiative which includes over 100 open access journals.
Cambridge Core Journals
Cambridge University Press currently publishes over 300 peer-reviewed academic journals for the global market. Cambridge Journals Online contain the latest research from a broad sweep of subject areas. From September 2016 titles are available via the Cambridge Core platform alongside Cambridge Books, Histories and Companions.
ProQuest Central
Covering more than 160 subjects areas, ProQuest Central is the largest aggregated database of periodical content. This award-winning online reference resource features a highly-respected, diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.
Bibliography of Asian Studies
Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) is a comprehensive western-language resource for research on Asia. BAS provides indexing coverage of many important journals, particularly ones published in Asia, which are not indexed anywhere else. It also contains citations to Western-language chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, Festschriften, and more. BAS covers all subjects (especially in the humanities and the social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present.

Newspapers

Visit the News and Newspapers guide

Theses

Visit the Finding Theses guide

Primary sources

Selected Primary Source Databases:

Below is the selected humanities primary source database, you can find more by visiting the A-Z eJournals and Databases website or by clicking the button below.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports (1941-1996) consist of translated broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals and government statements from nations around the globe. These media sources were monitored in their languages of origin, translated into English and issued by an agency of the U.S. Government. The collection is supplemented by Annexes that were created by the U.S. intelligence community to benefit analysts and policy makers. FBIS Daily Reports from Readex represent a unique resource for the study of foreign affairs, business, law, sociology, political science and more, as they cover all regions of the world.

Click on the button below to browse all online primary source databases the Library subscribes to (it will open in a new tab). You can sort the list by era by choosing a specific time period from the drop down menu labeled 'All Database Types'.

Browse all primary source databases

TV & streaming media

Television databases

EduTV (Informit)
EduTV is a Video Streaming service of over 50,000+ broadcast programs from free-to-air and pay TV channels in Australia. Coverage commences with 2006 and includes content across a wide range of learning areas. Free to air content is recorded from the ABC, SBS, NITV, 9, 7, 10, etc. channels. EduTV also includes several programs broadcast on Pay TV such as The History Channel, National Geographic, BBC Knowledge and Discovery channels.

Streaming media

Kanopy (Kanopy)
The Kanopy Streaming Service is the leading supplier of streamed videos to global academic institutions. The service utilises sophisticated platform and delivery technology to offer a new world of online engagement that empowers University of Melbourne Library to stream on demand video at optimal quality to their registered staff and students.

Explore the catalogue of over 20,000 videos from the world’s most prominent filmmakers and production houses. Specially curated collections cover a wide range educational disciplines including literacy, mathematics, history and issues in society. Kanopy also offers a hosting service allowing for DVDs to be uploaded and streamed online provided digital rights is obtained. Kanopy offers a large range of Australian content and videos can be searched using the library catalogue.
Alexander Street Video
Alexander Street Press offers video, audio and text-based resources covering an extensive range of subjects. This site allows users to cross-search the content purchased by the University of Melbourne Library. It features a single, fully integrated platform, offering access to thousands of full-length streaming video titles and audio recordings. Almost every video in the collection is fully transcribed in addition to being indexed for subjects, people, places, release date, language, publisher, and video type. Users can also select to view a single subject collection by using the dropdown menu at the top of the homepage.