Our Hanmun is fun quiz is now listed in the AAS program! The exercises are designed so that even students in their first year of Korean language learning can try them. No prior Hanmun experience needed!
Please share widely with your students and colleagues: forms.gle/oLgLh8Ja5AjT... #AAS2026
"Anyway, reading soothes me. Would you understand it if I told you that reading enabled me to accept myself? I could understand humanity through books. How week we are, an also how strong we are. How endlessly good, and yet endlessly violent." (219) #IWentToSeeMyFather #아버지에게갔었어
To encourage broad participation, one paper with sample exercises will be pre-circulated. Our presentations will reflect on participants’ responses and aim to spark a collaborative conversation on improving Literary Sinitic pedagogy in Japanese and Korean Studies. #AAS2026
Finally, Emilie Mellerkær offers the perspective of a current hanmun learner in Korean Studies, emphasizing the value of translanguaging and interactive exercises for increasing student engagement and comprehension.
Felix Siegmund turns to the linguistic concepts of hôsa and silsa (empty vs. full words), exploring their didactic potential for hanmun training.
David Lurie, drawing on over two decades of experience teaching Literary Sinitic in a Japanese Studies context, critiques the dominant use of a narrow set of Confucian texts in kanbun education and calls for broader diversity in both content and method.
Ross King opens the panel by advocating for more ‘authentic’ hanmun instruction—blending traditional Korean pedagogical methods with modern analytical tools.
Moreover, there is still no shared platform to discuss how best to teach and learn Literary Sinitic in these disciplinary contexts.This panel brings together 4 instructors and 1 student engaged in Literary Sinitic education to explore more effective, inclusive, and engaging pedagogical approaches.
Yet today, training in this classical language remains a rare privilege in most Japanese and Korean Studies programs in Europe and North America. When courses are offered, they often assume prior knowledge of Mandarin, not of Japanese or Korean.
🔹 Panelists:
Ross King · David Lurie · Felix Siegmund · Emilie Mellerkær · Barbara Wall
🔹 Panel abstract:
Literary Sinitic (漢文; J. kanbun, K. hanmun) shaped the literary cultures of East Asia for centuries.
and everyone who takes the quiz and attends our panel will get a chocolate. 🍫
🔹 Panel:
“Classical Chinese”? Kanbun? Hanmun? The Conundrum of Literary Sinitic Training for Japanese and Korean Studies Researchers
Thursday, March 12, 2026; 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM PDT; Location: VCC, Room 301
While the exercises are primarily designed for students who have learned Korean, all Hanmun lovers are very welcome. Please feel free to share with your students and anyone who might be interested.
Emilie and I will present these pedagogical experiments at the upcoming AAS Conference in Vancouver ..
We’ve been experimenting with interactive Hanmun exercises tailored specifically to students in Korean Studies, and one early “guinea pig” told us the quiz made her brain happy ❤️
If you’d like to test it yourself (and perhaps make your brain happy too), try it here:
👉 forms.gle/oLgLh8Ja5AjT...
Have you studied some Korean and are curious about taking your first steps into Hanmun (Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic)? 😄 If you’d like to test it yourself (and perhaps make your brain happy too), try it here:
👉 forms.gle/oLgLh8Ja5AjT... #AAS2026
Please share widely! It's much fun!
I love this translation! "I felt like a butterbur leaf in the vegetable patch being hit by the relentless rain." (125) #IWentToSeeMyFather #아버지에게갔었어 Thank you, @antonhur.com
Friends, an article (short one, just 2,400 words) that I wrote just came out. It's part of the @eastasiaforum.bsky.social issue on "Resource Geopolitics" and my article is on #Korean #SoftPower (or rather my misgivings that Soft Power actually exists and really can help Korea, beyond
😆😆😆
世事悠悠不忍聞
荒橋立馬忽忘言
幾時白日明心曲
是處靑山隔淚痕
燒棧子房寧負信
翳桑靈輒早知恩
傷心無術身生翼
飛到雲霄一叫閽
세상일 갈수록 차마 들을 수 없어
다리 위에 말 멈추고 말없이 서 있네
어느 때 백일이 심정을 비추어 줄는지
이곳은 청산이 눈물에 가렸네.
잔도 태운 장자방이 어찌 신의를 저버렸으랴
예상의 영첩도 벌써 은총을 알았다오
마음 아프구나 이 몸에 날개 돋울 길 없어
하늘로 날아가 옥황상제에게 하소하지 못하니
(26) #여행 #심경호 #益齋亂稿
"I was as much of a bee as the ones we wanted to attract; and, like them, I was being quickly lured to a flower, though I didn't yet know what that flower was." (276) #Eco #Pendulum
Seven years ago, my previous employer's head of data science told me that machine learning would soon advance to the point where machines would be able to interpret and translate classical Chinese documents. My response was, no chance. He turned out to be absolutely right; I was wrong.
"Keunbong, placing the unsuspecting boy's index finger into a straw cutter, quickly brought down the blade...now that he couldn't pull the trigger on a rifle, he wouldn't be wanted by the military." (74) #IWentToSeeMyFather #아버지에게갔었어
"No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them." (225) #Eco #Pendulum
"I decided to invent a job for myself. I knew a lot of things, unconnected things, but I would be able to connect them after a few hours at a library." (223) #Eco #Pendulum
"Mysticism is a degenerate form of contact with the divine, whereas initiation is the fruit of long askesis of mind and hear." (215) #Eco #Pendulum
"'But what do they want people to know?' 'Only that there's a secret. Otherwise, if everything is as it appears to be, why go on living?'" (208) #Eco #Pendulum
"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job." (200) #Eco #Pendulum
"everything was the hieroglyph of something else." (195) #Eco #Pendulum
月夜瞻鄕路
달 밝은 밤 고향 길 바라보니
浮雲颯颯歸
뜬구름 너울너울 돌아가네
緘書忝去便
서찰 봉해 그 편에 부친다 해도
風急不聽廻
바람 급해 화답이 돌아오지 않으리
我國天岸北
우리나라는 하늘가 북쪽에 있고
他邦地角西
이곳 남의 나라는 땅끝 서쪽
日南無有鴈
남방에는 기러기 없으니
誰爲向林飛
누가 계림으로 전해 주랴 (26) #여행 #심경호 #往五天竺國傳
"I had a vague feeling. That my incompleteness would continue - that wherever I was, I'd be writing and erasing, writing and erasing. That even after writing the last period, I would be endlessly refining the words I had written." (38) #IWentToSeeMyFather #아버지에게갔었어
