Symposium on ‘Social Humanities’ A symposium to address the problem of the absence of mutual communication in the humanities was held on September 25 at the Chang Ki Won International Conference Hall. Organized by Yonsei Institute for Korean Studies, the symposium explored ‘The Reality of Humanities and Subject of Social Humanities.’ ‘Social Humanities’ is the institute’s research subject for the next ten years as a part of Humanities Korea Project, supported by National Research Foundation of Korea. The project aims to renew and restore the comprehensive nature of humanities through rehabilitating social aspects of humanities. Paik Young-seo, the director of the institute and professor of Chinese history, clarified in the announcement that the social humanities is not a mere combination of humanities and social science. It is rather a comprehensive humanities that gathers together isolated knowledge from specialized academic fields, promotes whole understanding and sense of life, and performs a role as ‘a critique of life.’ To achieve these goals, he proposed to establish dialogues with the past as a mirror of the present, through imagination and sympathy, storytelling and critique of history. Professor Park Myung-lim followed the argument, saying that to establish social humanities properly, restoration of social aspect in humanities and of humanistic aspect in society should be carried on simultaneously. He reminded the audience of the fact that the humanities itself began its career as an effort to solve social and human problems, and almost every outstanding humanities scholar was a social commentator or critical participants rather than an academic purist. Professor Park underlined the importance of mutual communication within humanities and between social science and humanities, alerting the participants on the urgent need to give Korean studies a greater universal scope to make it more communicable and exchangeable.