The Sogang Institute for East Asian Studies has been selected as a host institute for the 2008 Humanities Korea (HK) Project administered by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the Korea Research Foundation. The Humanities Korea Project is a large-scale national program that the Ministry is promoting as a core initiative to establish an institute-centred research system in the humanities and area studies. With research funding for the ten years beginning in November 2008, the Institute will carry out its research program under the theme 'Southeast Asia as an Open Regional System: A New Paradigm for Communicating with the Globe and Reaching Out to the Public.' Through the program the Institute will cultivate full-time faculty researchers of world-class research capacity, thereby leading Southeast Asian area studies in Korea while, through cooperation with leading research institutes abroad, raising Korean Southeast Asian studies to a world-class level. An excerpt of the project proposal is published here.