Greetings.

It is a special privilege to welcome you to the Asiatic Research Institute (hereafter ARI) of Korea University, a leading hub of East Asian studies with a long tradition and history of research excellence.

Since ARI’s establishment in 1957, it started with studies on the Communist bloc countries such as North Korea and China and its focus has eventually expanded to Northeast Asian politics, economy, society and history as multidisciplinary regional studies in the last 60 years. From 2008 to 2018, the institute was selected as one of the recipient research institutes of the government-sponsored Humanities Korea (HK) Project to incubate a world-class research institute of regional studies on Northeast Asia. ARI showed the successful accomplishment of this 10-year project. In particular, ARI’s major achievements include publication of its quarterly journal “the Journal of Asiatic Studies”, first published in 1958, and the Research Collection Series and Data Collection Series. ARI also has been actively conducting academic research activities by organizing international conferences and seminars every year on comprehensive Northeast Asian politics, economy, society, and history. ARI has continued to play the leading role as a representative research institute in Asia working domestically and also internationally as presenting new paradigms in the field of Northeast Asian studies.

Based on ARI’s performances accumulated over the last half century, ARI will continue to carry out the central role at the regional studies network and to conduct comprehensive academic research covering politics, economy, society and history. It will build a stronger network with major research institutes of Northeast Asian regional studies in the United States, China, Japan, Russia and other countries. Especially ARI will make considerable efforts to respond to current affairs such as United States-China hegemonic war, Korea-Japan conflicts, South Korea-North Korea-United States relations that are greatly reshaping the regional dynamics of Northeast Asia. The ARI’s efforts will focus on strengthening a human and material infrastructure and collecting related documents for the database that are fundamental to the Northeast Asian regional studies. In designing future research projects of ARI, the institute will actively react to relevant and timely issues through interdisciplinary and collaborative works among ARI’s different centers to cross the boundaries between social sciences and humanities. Furthermore, ARI will maintain its continuous research on East Asian Community Building, Korea’s New Northern and New Southern Policy, and Peace and Prosperity of Korean Peninsula to create a breakthrough in Korea’s economy and to facilitate integration of politics, economy and society in the Korean Peninsula.

As the hub of Northeast Asian Research Network, ARI will contribute to expanding a pool of experts domestically and internationally and utilizing its research capacity, experiences and wisdoms to solve problems occurred in the process of reshaping the Northeast Asian dynamics. ARI will continue to strengthen its research capacity as one of the key research institute operating comprehensive and interdisciplinary East Asian regional studies to take the lead in the Age of Asia of the 21st century.

September, 2019