This book was written for those who are going to teach Korean culture. Perhaps couple of questions will follow this statement, such as 'Should we learn Korean culture?', 'What's the purpose of learning Korean culture?' or 'Who is teaching and who is learning?', etc.
We would like to answer to these questions as follows. We should learn Korean culture if we are to properly know about Korea. Also, we should learn and get familiar with Korean culture if we want to correctly learn Korean language. Furthermore, we should know about our own Korean culture in order to build up the capability of understanding other cultures which are not ours.
That is, people should know about Korean culture in advance in order to understand Korea and Korean language correctly, and should learn and know Korean culture in order to correctly understand foreign cultures. Here the person who wants to know about Korea can be either a Korean or a foreigner. Of course, most of the people who want to learn Korean language might be foreigners. Also, If he or she wants to learn Korean culture, he or she can be either a Korean or a foreigner.
With respect to culture education, if we call the people who teach about Korean culture 'Korean culture teachers', then the people who learn Korean culture can be called 'Korean culture learners.' Here it is not so important whether the Korean culture learner can command Korean language or not. This is because the education of Korean culture can be given by either Korean language or the learner's language.
Then, what are the capability and quality required for the Korean culture teachers. What is mostly necessary for them is the capability to interpret the past·present·future of Korea and the phenomena which can be observed in each time frame. Also the teachers need to acknowledge and accommodate foreign cultures and have the capability of objectifying their own culture and comparing it with foreign cultures. Finally, they should get familiarized to the basic teaching technique that is to propose the contents of education which fit to the level and requirement of the learners.
Therefore, the teaching materials for the Korean culture teachers should include 'Contents of Korean culture' for teaching, 'Method for developing teacher's capability', and 'Applicable teaching materials'. In this regard, we explored various sides of Seoul in its history and integrated tons of materials to provide cultural contents in this book under the theme of 'Change of Korea', where we could find out the hidden causes of the change through our conversation. And finally, based on the contents described above, we provided teaching materials which can be used for in-situ culture education.
