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영어

The history of Korean Studies in Russia starts from the year 1897 when the first members of the Korean Diplomatic Mission began to teach Korean to the Russian students in the Saint-Petersburg Imperial University in Saint-Petersburg. Moreover, Saint-Petersburg is known for being the first academic establishment in Europe where Russian researchers began to study Korea systematically. Since that time Russian scholars of Korean Language and translators of Korean Literature presented the results of their extensive work in various kinds of research works, scientific papers and articles, translations of traditional and modern Korean Literature, and the publication of many collections of poems and prose. Due to the prominent Russian research professor Alexander Kholodovich, who organized the Korean Language curriculum in the early 1950s in the University and published the first book on Korean grammar in Russian, the so called ‘Leningrad school’of researchers and translators of Korean Literature had appeared: Marianna Nikitina, Adelaida Trotsevich, Dmitry Eliseev, Gennadiy Rachkov, Lim Soo, Larisa Zhdanova, Anatoliy Vasiliev. Due to these talented researchers and translators, Russian readers could delve into the world of traditional Korean Literature and get a flavor of Korean culture. The objective of this paper is to introduce the history, present situation and perspectives in the studying of Korean language and Literature on the example of the Saint-Petersburg State University, where research works on Korean Grammar and translations of Korean Literature have been published since that time by the pupils of the first generation of the Russian “Koreanists”. This new generation of Russian scholars has tried to preserve and follow all those traditions and principles of classic philology in the study of Korean Literature. The main idea of the Saint-Petersburg Koreanists was to teach Korean Language and study Korean Literature as a unique phenomenon, to trace not only the modern elements in Korean Literature, but also the traditional elements, to analyze literary works in the context of the historical and socio-cultural changes in Korean society and to take into consideration all the nuances of the Korean Language when translating literary works. At present, under the project name “The Golden Collection of the Korean Literature”, the Publishing House “Giperion” (SPb), with the financial support of the Korean Literature Translation Institute (RK), has already published five Collections of traditional Korean Literature. These are the translations of the first generation of the Russian Koreanists. In the near future, “Giperion” plans to publish other Collections of traditional Korean Literature.