Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

This dissertation is a study of North Korean art as a site where politics, history, and culture meet.

The Master’s in Korean Studies at Leiden University offers specialised, in-depth study of the cultural and societal issues of pre-modern and modern Korea.

The Academic Language Center Leiden offers Korean language courses at various levels and customized Korean language training. The courses are practical in nature: focused on the use of the language. More information can be found here >

If you really want to understand East Asia, you can't overlook Korea. At the Bachelor's programme Korean Studies at Leiden University you will discover a fascinating mix of age-old traditions and modern customs through intensively studying culture, history and language.

Christopher Green defended his thesis on 26 February 2020

SLAVES TO THE SYSTEM: Locating Responsibility for Forced Expatriate Labour Practices by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)

Xiao Ma defended her thesis on 26 September 2018

Korea specialist Koen De Ceuster has combined 1200 posters from North Korea in one database. He believes the posters are extremely valuable for researchers who want to make a more in-depth study of this closed country. The database will be launched on 15 June in Leiden.

On Wednesday 14 February 2024 Yorum Beekman successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

Choong-Yeol Kim defended his thesis on 14 November 2019

Yeonhwa Jeon defended her thesis on 6 July 2017.

Seven prominent North Korean exiles will shed new light on the dictatorial state in a conference hosted by Leiden University on 17 and 18 September. All of the speakers once held high-ranking positions in the regime and now reveal its inner workings.

The greatest threat to the North Korean regime is not the outside world but its own developing private market and the growing frictions at the top. This was the argument put forward by North Korean exile Jang Jin-sung in his lecture in Leiden on 18 September 2014.

This study aims to examine how South Korea (hereafter, Korea) and Japan, two neighboring countries in Northeast Asia, have been responding to and mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

The notion of North Koreans as brainwashed and unable to think critically about their heritage and what it means to be North Korean is pervasive. More so, it is untrue, argues Christopher Green: ‘North Koreans, like any other people are diverse in their opinions and self-understanding.’ PhD defence…

North Korean labourers are still being forced to work in the European Union. According to researchers, including Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker at Leiden University, Dutch companies are buying ships from a dockyard that uses North Korean workers.

In her dissertation, Xiao Ma takes education as a lens to reveal the dynamic relations of three groups of South Koreans – parents, students, and educational agencies – to nation-states of both the origin and arrival. Her study shows the temporality and ambivalence of population movements between two…

This project embarks on empirical analysis of popular psycho-physical practices in contemporary Korea.

On 31 August 2022, a delegation from the Korean Ministry of Government Legislation visited the International Institute of Air and Space Law (IIASL) at Leiden University as part of their official visit to the Netherlands. The delegation’s visit was aimed at exchanging knowledge and experience on interaction…

North Korean workers designed and built numerous monuments, museums and other buildings in southern Africa. This is clear from research by history student Tycho van der Hoog for his master's thesis. These monuments can be an important source of income for a country that has become quite isolated on…

This project investigates the effects of the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) on the production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food in transwar Japan and Korea.

Koen de Ceuster, university lecturer for Korea Studies at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, was interviewed on the NKNews Podcast about art in North Korea. He speaks about the role of art in North Korean society, art ‘business’, and argues why it is not possible to separate propaganda…

The major objective of the study is to ascertain how Japanese colonialism affected the manner in which food was produced, processed, prepared and consumed in the colony, and how new attitudes towards these practices were constructed.

Aleydis Nissen published a feature article on the South Korean electronics industry in Eos magazine. The Pascal Decroos Fund sponsored this article.

What makes South Korean films successful? In the first part of the video series 'The World of the Korean Wave', University Lecturer Peter Verstraten discusses the recent success of South Korean cinema.

She studied Korean and Asian Studies and, four years after graduating, is now working as a specialist for an ICT secondment company. This is the story of Lisette Atsma’s career (27).

In recent decades, women in Japan and South Korea have been catching up in terms of educational achievements and economic activity. Yet the number of women in leadership positions is still lagging behind. PhD candidate Yorum Beekman investigated why this is.

K-pop is wildly popular. Fans all over the world sing along to the Korean songs, often without understanding exactly what the lyrics mean. University lecturer Mirae Kim explains why these songs are so difficult to translate in the video series

Fans of the Korean music movement K-pop go through hell for their idols. In return, artists care deeply about their fans: they even get to decide their hair color. In the video series 'The World of the Korean Wave', PhD candidate Flora Smit takes a closer look at this relationship.

In the Western world, kimchi is on an unstoppable rise, but in South Korea the dish is actually losing popularity. Professor Katarzyna Cwiertka explains how this is possible in the video series 'The World of the Korean Wave'.

In order to be able to handle the pressure of modern life better, Koreans practise GiCheon: intensive exercises for body and spirit. This movement theory is based on the tradition of mountain ascetics, but GiCheon is primarily a modern urban phenomenon. This is the conclusion of PhD candidate Victoria…

Reading & Panel Discussion

The announcement by US President Donald Trump on 9 March in response to the invitation for a summit meeting with the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un came as a big surprise. Media analyses vary from being very positive to almost cynically negative. However, according to researcher on Korea Koen…