History of Art and Korean

History of Art and Korean brings together visual culture and one of East Asia's most important and rapidly evolving languages, creating a combination that opens distinctive intellectual and career possibilities. History of Art is the discipline of understanding how images, objects, and built environments have been produced, circulated, and interpreted across different cultures and periods. It develops close looking, aesthetic analysis, and the capacity to situate visual works within their historical, social, and political contexts.

Korean, meanwhile, provides access to a culture of increasing global significance: South Korea is a major economic, technological, and cultural force, and Korean language skills are increasingly valuable across a wide range of professional sectors.

At the School of Oriental and African Studies, this four-year full-time programme includes a foundation year and is taught within a university that has unparalleled expertise in Asian and African languages and cultures. You will develop Korean language skills from foundation level to a genuinely useful level of proficiency, while studying art history with particular attention to the visual cultures of Asia and the broader world beyond the European canon. SOAS's distinctive perspective means that the History of Art you study here is genuinely global in scope, taking seriously non-Western artistic traditions rather than treating them as footnotes to European art history.

You will develop analytical, research, and language skills that are rarely combined in a single degree, giving you a distinctive profile in the job market.

Graduates move into careers in museums and galleries, cultural institutions, auction houses, journalism, international business, education, diplomacy, and organisations with an interest in Korea or East Asia. The combination of art historical knowledge and Korean language competence opens doors in the Korean cultural sector, in arts organisations with international programmes, and in companies with business interests in the Korean market. Postgraduate study in art history, Korean studies, or museum and gallery studies is also a natural next step for many graduates.