The Teach Korea Corps is a national pilot project, concentrating on developing curriculum on Korean culture and history in American public schools, and concurrently a teacher training movement appealing to Korean American young professionals.

There is currently a crisis in American public middle and high schools. Korea, its grand history and enchanting culture, is all but overlooked in today?s Social Studies curriculum. Currently, Connecticut?s Social Studies curriculum in grades seven through ten contains less than one and a half pages of information about Korea, a number that is almost insulting to the seven and half thousand Korean-American people that reside in Connecticut. While there are a number of chapters on China and Japan in this same curriculum, there is no visible pool of teachers trained to teach about Korea. This situation is similar even in California, the state with the largest Korean-American population of almost 350,000, or approximately 32% of Korean-Americans.

Korea is situated in the major corridor of the East Asian civilization, and must be properly understood if one wishes to deal with growing significance of Asia in American life, both economically and politically. How can we, as educated citizens, let this glaring opportunity slide by, and make the mistake of overlooking Korea? The students that pass through the public school system are in desperate need of at least a small foundation of Korean history, and one and a half pages in a textbook surely cannot suffice. In this present day, without proper knowledge about the Koreas, our effort in America to encourage commerce, cultural exchange, and diplomacy with North and South Korea cannot be ensured.

For the past fifty years, the East Rock Institute has researched and learned about Korean culture, issues of Korean American identity, and more recently the common issues of the Korean diaspora, not only in the U.S., but also of the major diaspora countries, such as China, Japan, and Kazakhstan. ERI has sponsored four international conferences, four young professionals? retreats and 27 annual conferences on Korea and Korean Americans, and has been the publisher of the only journal dealing with Korean Americans and the Korean Diaspora for the past 20 years. ERI has also published several high school curricula and an award-winning teaching website.

Therefore, the goal of the Teach Korea Corps is to implement a Korean curriculum into the American public school system that honors Korea?s history and culture, and more fully prepares Americans for the reality and future of East Asian- American politics and commerce.