Writing under Wartime Conditions is a study into North and South Korean literature written during the Korean War.

LIAS aims to advance the globally conscious vision of area studies, both within and outside the academic community. Focusing on Asia and the Middle East, the institute is a meeting place of multiple fields of inquiry, theories and methods, historical periods, and areas.

This dissertation is a study of North Korean art as a site where politics, history, and culture meet.

The Master’s in Korean Studies at Leiden University offers specialised, in-depth study of the cultural and societal issues of pre-modern and modern Korea.

If you really want to understand East Asia, you can't overlook Korea. At the Bachelor's programme Korean Studies at Leiden University you will discover a fascinating mix of age-old traditions and modern customs through intensively studying culture, history and language.

Humanities, Institute for Area Studies

On Sunday evenings the NVIC is presenting NVICinema. We bring a varied programme of Dutch or Flemish films, Egyptian classics as well as contemporary Egyptian feature films and short films from young talented directors, all with English subtitles.

Christopher Green defended his thesis on 26 February 2020

SLAVES TO THE SYSTEM: Locating Responsibility for Forced Expatriate Labour Practices by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)

The Question of Medium Specificity in Contemporary Moving Images

Leiden University has made history with its many scientific discoveries; a history that is also illustrated in a variety of books and films.

Do you enjoy a great story? In the Bachelor's programme Film and Literary Studies at Leiden University you study the stories behind the stories. Because what makes a novel fascinating or a horror movie frightening? Study film, literature and media from around the entire world and discover the differences…

The master’s programme in Film and Photographic Studies at Leiden University covers the history and theory of film and photography within the broad context of visual and other media.

Xiao Ma defended her thesis on 26 September 2018

Korea specialist Koen De Ceuster has combined 1200 posters from North Korea in one database. He believes the posters are extremely valuable for researchers who want to make a more in-depth study of this closed country. The database will be launched on 15 June in Leiden.

If Dutch cinema is examined in academic studies, the focus is usually on pre-war films or on documentaries, but the post-war fiction film has been sporadically addressed.

South Korean smash hit Squid Game is on track to becoming the most successful Netflix production ever. The series is number one in over 90 countries. Professor and Korea expert Remco Breuker can see why South Korean pop culture is becoming so popular, also outside Asia.

Show People offers a comprehensive history of the film star from Mary Pickford to Andy Serkis, traversing more than one hundred years and drawing on examples from America, Britain, Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. Aarts, Prof.dr. J.M. van Ruitenbeek

Choong-Yeol Kim defended his thesis on 14 November 2019

In Film and Video Intermediality, Janna Houwen innovatively rewrites the concept of medium specificity in order to answer the questions “what is meant by video?” and “what is meant by film?”

Thomas Mes defended his thesis on 9 January 2018.

Yeonhwa Jeon defended her thesis on 6 July 2017.

This week 'Dutch Post-war Fiction Film through a Lens of Psychoanalysis' by Peter Verstraten was published by Amsterdam University Press, the sequel to Humor and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film from 2016. Each chapter in his 482-page new study begins with a title of Fons Rademakers who made films…

The short documentary film was selected to the short film corner of the Cannes Film Festival.

Seven prominent North Korean exiles will shed new light on the dictatorial state in a conference hosted by Leiden University on 17 and 18 September. All of the speakers once held high-ranking positions in the regime and now reveal its inner workings.

Film and Photographic Studies master’s students Vanessa and Deirdre created a film programme about the Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon for the Jewish Cultural Quarter. Due to the pandemic, they could no longer hold a physical screening and they decided to move their project online.

The greatest threat to the North Korean regime is not the outside world but its own developing private market and the growing frictions at the top. This was the argument put forward by North Korean exile Jang Jin-sung in his lecture in Leiden on 18 September 2014.

Haunted Europe offers a comprehensive account of the British and Irish fascination with a Gothic vision of continental Europe, tracing its effect on British intellectual life from the birth of the Gothic novel, to the eve of Brexit, and the symbolic recalibration of the UK’s relationship to mainland…

This study aims to examine how South Korea (hereafter, Korea) and Japan, two neighboring countries in Northeast Asia, have been responding to and mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

The short film Alma & Esperanza , directed by Itandehui Jansen, a PhD candidate (directing supervisor Professor Dr. Kitty Zijlmans) of the Leiden University Academy for Creative and Performing Arts, has been selected to the Short Film Corner of this year’s edition of the Cannes International Film Fe…

This project embarks on empirical analysis of popular psycho-physical practices in contemporary Korea.

The notion of North Koreans as brainwashed and unable to think critically about their heritage and what it means to be North Korean is pervasive. More so, it is untrue, argues Christopher Green: ‘North Koreans, like any other people are diverse in their opinions and self-understanding.’ PhD defence…

The short documentary film was selected to the short film corner of the Cannes Film Festival.

North Korean labourers are still being forced to work in the European Union. According to researchers, including Professor of Korean Studies Remco Breuker at Leiden University, Dutch companies are buying ships from a dockyard that uses North Korean workers.