Dongguk University will be hosting its first Dongguk International Virtual Winter School. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a recession in global interaction and global education market growth. This has led to a significant decrease in the actual number of exchange students and has resulted in Dongguk International Summer School being cancelled, despite having been organized without fail for the past 13 years consecutively.

Dongguk University will launch the "2020 Dongguk International Virtual Winter School," an online-based short-term special program, to overcome these limitations of physical mobility constraints. This virtual school intends to set forth a direction for international education programs in the COVID-19 era and seek a way to advance in the global education market, which has shrunk due to COVID-19.

The Virtual Winter School will be held for about two weeks from December 23 to January 8 via the Webex tool, a remote video education system, with two English courses focusing on film and media, the representative academic fields of our university.

The course of ‘Introduction to Korean Film’ will introduce the creative and commercial rebirth of 101 years of Korean cinema from the 1960’s until Director Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite winning the 2020 Oscar for Best Picture by which time the most transformative changes in Korean society had already taken shape. Through screening various Korean films of this era and discussing their representations of Korean culture, students will explore the tumultuous transformations of Korean society from the Korean War and military dictatorship to rapid capitalization and democratization. The course consists of lectures, film screenings, and discussions.

‘Korean Pop Culture ; Society & Media’ aims to introduce students to cultivate an appreciation of Korean film, TV drama and music as a complex form of popular culture. The class will also look more deeply at Korean society and the nature of popular culture itself, and the intertextual relationship of individual text & cultural industries with the audience.

The 2020 Dongguk International Virtual Winter School will be open for students enrolled in our school as well as students from overseas universities interested in Korean pop culture and the latest media trends such as K-POP and K-movies. The participants will be offered a valuable opportunity to share their knowledge and thoughts with each other in the era of COVID-19.

For more information about the Virtual Winter School, please refer to the link below. http://diss.dongguk.edu/bbs/board.php?bo_table=diss7_1