Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts) has served as home to prominent Korean artists, inspiring their creativity. It has also been fulfilling its mission of fostering and aspiring young artists blessed with great passion and potentials. Despite its short history, K-Arts has accomplished remarkable achievements, demonstrating great enthusiasm based on its conviction in the importance of art education. Creating such a university is like planting the seed of a magnificent tree that will take firm root to nourish the world.
K-Arts will nurture an optimum educational environment in which professors teach with unparalleled capabilities and passion, and students exhibit their potential to the full. These programs will help our students stand tall in the international arena.
Art education has developed with a complementary relationship between art universities and art schools in the form of conservatories. Art universities focus on studying art in the academic field, and art schools have fostered professional artists through apprentice education since the middle ages.
However, art education in Korea has recently produced only average artists through a course which does not distinguish scholars, instructors, or artists. Without adapting traditional art education methods, there has been a shortage of professional artists that all societies require. Young people who would like to become professional artists have left the country to find more systemized and high-quality educational institutions abroad.
The self-reflection and self-awareness of the state of our art education have led to a movement that a national art school should be established to foster professional artists. These social requests have determined that the school should be equipped with a new educational method, a world-renowned faculty, and excellent educational facilities to become a professionally practical educational institution. Therefore, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism established the Korea National University of Arts, which professionally educates across six art areas: music, drama, film & multimedia, theatre, film, dance, art, and traditional art. This university is the first to meet the wishes of the world of art and education.
Comparable to the Korean school system, which has stepped from elementary, middle, and high school up to the university level, foreign school systems are diversified, so they have various secondary schools that correspond to different disciplines. Since society has become increasingly professional, art education institutions have also accelerated professionalization and have been established and operated along each different area of study.
The Korea National University of Arts consists of the School of Music, School of Drama, School of Dance, School of Visual Arts, School of Film, TV & Multimedia, and the School of Korean Traditional Arts. Each school functions as an independent educational institution, like the schools mentioned above. Although these six schools are professional, independent institutions, they actively interact to improve their professionalism across the world of art.
In terms of the goals and content of education, an art school and an art department at the university serve two distinct purposes. The former offers a professional education to promote the capability of practice and production for professional creative artists. The latter offers education for studying arts in the academic field.
What separates Korea National University of Arts from other standard art universities is its educational goals and curriculum, which aim specifically to professionally educate artists in creating fine arts in their respective fields.
Therefore, each curriculum is designed to improve students’ production capability within their major. To achieve this, all classes are structured to promote students’ voluntary will to learn. Teaching through rote memorization is rejected as often as possible, and classes are operated through a combination of one-on-one lessons, group discussion, workshops, group production, and practice in the field.
The credit and graduation system are designed utilizing the concept of supremacy enhancement: the nurturing and acceleration of talented students according to their levels. The graduation process demands students’ complete dedication and effort. Therefore, students who do not make an effort naturally fail. On the other hand, acceleration systems such as the ability completion or early graduation system for advanced and exceptional students are to be placed and rewarded accordingly.
To become an artist, one must be talented and prepared to devote his or her life to studying and creating art. In line with this philosophy, the Korea National University of Arts selects students who uniquely meet the qualifications above. Since it values performance, the admission selection focuses on assessing present capability and latent potential in prospective students. To achieve this, the admissions process considers grades on the performance test and high school grade point average. According to the department and significant and an aptitude test, the admission test consists mainly of a performance test, written examination, an oral examination to assess its capability synthetically.
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