This year’s AKSE conference, held at the campus of Sapienza University and Quirinale Hotel in the center of Rome, will deal with about 40 topics, including South Korea’s candlelight revolution, movies and literature, and North Korean folklore, according to its organizers. A vice president of Sapienza University said at the opening ceremony that the AKSE gathering is meaningful due to the growing importance of Korean studies in Europe, noting the number of Korean studies department students, including those in the master’s and doctoral courses, at his university, has surged from a mere seven in 2001 to 330 now.

James Lewis, president of the AKSE and a professor of Britain’s Oxford University, said he has struggled to sort out 160 papers to be presented at the Rome conference out of 580 papers submitted on various topics. Ahn Byung-wook, head of the Seoul-based Academy of Korean Studies, expressed his respects to the European scholars of Korean studies in an address, saying the AKSE has contributed to expanding the horizon of Korean studies in the world for over 40 years. “I hope this year’s AKSE conference will help spread Korea’s tradition and cultural values more widely,” Ahn said.

 (Yonhap)