[World Class] Dongguk looks to Buddhism, Hallyu and AI to shape global identity

New college planned for 2028 will give international students a dedicated academic home and access to dual majors

Behind each university’s global ambitions are choices about what to preserve, what to develop and where to go next. In “World Class,” The Korea Herald interviews leaders of Korean universities about the strengths they are cultivating and the futures they envision. — Ed.

Dongguk University President Yun Jae-woong sees Buddhism, Korean culture and artificial intelligence as the foundations of a distinctive international education — one that gives students a reason to choose Dongguk beyond studying in Korea.

A central part of that strategy is a standalone college for international students, which the university plans to launch in March 2028.

“Students will enroll through the International College and graduate under the International College,” Yun said during an interview with The Korea Herald on Oct. 1. “They will be able to build a better sense of belonging, while also being able to study the fields they want to study through dual majors.”

The proposed college, tentatively called the International College, is expected to include majors such as Hallyu cultural content planning, film production, advertising and media and global business. Students would enter the college directly and remain affiliated with it through graduation, while retaining the option to pursue additional majors.

Yun described the plan as the most significant institutional change the university has undertaken for its international students during his term.

Dongguk has around 2,500 international students, accounting for about 13 percent of the university’s total undergraduate and graduate enrollment, according to Yun.

The university has spent several years preparing the new academic structure. Institutional and admissions procedures are expected to move into full swing in 2027 ahead of the college’s planned launch.

The college would give students dedicated academic advisers and administrative staff, addressing what Yun described as a weakness of the current system, in which international students are supported by their respective departments but can be difficult to support closely.

“I planted the seed,” Yun said. “The next leadership can grow it and harvest the fruit.”

For Yun, the new college reflects a broader question at the heart of Dongguk’s internationalization strategy. With Korean universities increasingly competing for the same pool of international students, what can Dongguk offer that others cannot?

His answer combines some of the university’s oldest assets with some of its newest -- Buddhism and Korean culture alongside artificial intelligence and advanced research.

Making Hallyu something students can study

Dongguk is not alone in seeing the global popularity of Korean culture as an opportunity to attract international students. But Yun argues that its academic history gives it an advantage in turning that interest into a field of study.

The university has longstanding programs in literature, philosophy, Buddhist studies, film, visual media, advertising and cultural content. Yun wants to bring those disciplines together so international students can study not simply Korean pop culture itself, but how it is created, distributed and understood.

“If we strengthen the academic structure and research competitiveness that can internationalize and universalize these strengths, we can create a good stage for foreign students to come to Korea and study Hallyu systematically,” he said.

Dongguk already operates a Hallyu Convergence Academy, while Hallyu-related majors are among those being considered for the new international college.

Yun also rejected the idea that Hallyu is too dependent on popular trends to become a lasting academic discipline.

“An academic field does not necessarily begin after everything has already been fully verified,” he said. “You build it while doing it.”

As researchers study Hallyu, courses emerge, and as more students take those courses, the field itself gains academic substance, he argued.

“Hallyu itself has already become too large a global phenomenon,” Yun said.

His proposition also extends Hallyu beyond K-pop, dramas and commercial content to include Dongguk’s Buddhist heritage.

Where Buddhism fits

Founded as a Buddhist school in 1906, Dongguk is Korea’s only comprehensive Buddhist university.

Yun sees that identity as one of the university’s strongest competitive assets.

“Among the different forms of Hallyu, Dongguk’s Hallyu can include things like meditation, temple food and temple stays — things other universities or organizations cannot do,” he said.

Yun identifies Buddhist studies, meditation, Hallyu and culture and arts as areas in which Dongguk wants to deepen overseas education and research cooperation.

The university has already been trying to internationalize those assets through projects including the Seoul International Meditation Expo, its Buddhist cultural archives and multilingual Buddhist-content platforms.

Yun also sees Buddhist culture as a practical way to integrate international and Korean students.

International students already participate in activities such as lantern-making, Young Camp and temple stays alongside Korean students, he said.

“A temple stay with international and Korean students together — they become very close just through that experience,” he said.

That matters because creating a separate college for international students carries a risk of inadvertently separating them from the rest of campus.

Yun said the answer is to give international students a clearer academic home while deliberately creating places where they interact with Korean students through classes, mentoring, student activities and cultural programs.

Dongguk has already established a Global Service Desk for international students and is now developing an integrated management system intended to support them from admission and academic life through employment and eventually alumni relations.

The university also plans to strengthen employment counseling, industry-linked programs and mentoring, while preparing faculty guidelines for teaching students from differing cultural and educational backgrounds.

Putting AI into a 120-year-old Buddhist university

Yun’s vision for Dongguk’s Buddhist identity is also closely tied to AI.

In September, the university established an AI Convergence Research Institute designed to connect artificial intelligence with engineering and science, as well as fields including Buddhism, culture, film and the performing arts.

Yun points to the Tripitaka Koreana, the Buddhist canon carved onto more than 80,000 woodblocks, as an example of what that combination could mean.

Digitizing Buddhist texts once meant preserving them in searchable archives. AI, he said, now allows those materials to be summarized, translated and reorganized across languages, potentially making Korean Buddhist scholarship and cultural heritage much more accessible abroad.

“When technology and cultural content are combined, the value of AI can increase fivefold or tenfold,” he said.

The institute is also intended to expand overseas joint research in “AI+X” fields, with outcomes extending beyond papers to international intellectual property and technology transfer.

For Yun, the humanities side of that equation is as important as the technology.

“No matter how much AI and technology advance, ultimately the human mind becomes more important,” he said.

“If we do not want to fall behind AI or become subordinate to it, we have to recover a clear sense of human agency.”

He believes philosophy, humanities and Buddhist thought can give Dongguk a different starting point from universities building AI strategies primarily around engineering.

Beyond research, Dongguk is also applying AI to the practical difficulties international students face in the classroom and on campus.

The university currently provides multilingual speech-recognition subtitles for lectures and plans to improve them, while considering real-time voice translation. It is also upgrading an AI model designed to identify students at risk of academic difficulty or having difficulty adjusting to university life.

That system is expected eventually to connect with Dongguk’s career and curriculum recommendation platform, DaDAM, and a multilingual counseling chatbot.

Fewer ceremonial ties, deeper partnerships

Yun also wants Dongguk’s overseas network to become more substantive.

The university has partnerships with around 380 universities and institutions across 58 countries, while roughly 450 Dongguk students study abroad through semester-long exchange programs each year.

Dongguk wants to move from exchanges and memorandums of understanding toward joint curricula, dual or joint degrees and collaborative research, particularly in areas where the university already has recognizable strengths.

It plans to emphasize student exchange and research with North America and Europe; expand summer schools and short-term programs with Japan and Greater China; and connect education cooperation in Southeast Asia with official development assistance.

Yun said Dongguk currently runs dual degree programs with Stony Brook University in New York and Niigata University in Japan.

Government-funded official development assistance projects carried out by Dongguk also increased from two in 2024 to four in 2026, according to the university.

For students hesitant to spend an entire semester abroad, the university also plans to expand scholarships for shorter overseas programs and department-level academic trips, using those as a bridge toward exchanges, dual degrees or graduate study overseas.

Research beyond Korea

The same shift toward measurable outcomes is visible in research.

Dongguk said 69 of its researchers were named among the world’s top 2 percent of scientists in 2025. In the 2026 QS subject rankings, religion and philosophy, including Buddhist studies, placed in the global 51-100 band, while several fields including linguistics, pharmacy, chemistry and materials science also ranked internationally.

The university has begun recruiting and supporting highly cited researchers at roughly the global top 1 percent level this year, with the aim of using those hires to build wider international research networks.

Its research priorities include materials, chemical engineering and biotechnology, while AI, semiconductors and computer science are being developed as newer strategic fields.

Yun also gave a concrete ranking target. Dongguk should first move into the top 500 of the QS World University Rankings and eventually establish itself in the 300s, he said.

But his longer-term ambition is for internationalization to become part of how the university operates.

“When my term ends, I want people to say that Dongguk’s internationalization did not stop at increasing the number of foreign students, but became naturally embedded across education, research and university operations,” Yun said in his written response.