In the context of the establishment of Korean studies, this paper reviews the practices and development of university research institutions that led the way toward production of humanities knowledge in support of the historical and cultural identity of Koreans after the Korean War. Studies on Korea, which had previously been defined within the three different but interrelated regional perspectives, such as Far Eastern, Eastern, or East Asian, gradually came to be independent from these regional study groups with the formation of Korean studies. Along with this move came the decline and loss of regional views, the blooming and subsequent peripheralization of culturalist Korean linguistics which succeeded the tradition of Joseon studies formed in the colonial period. To a large extent, the separation of Korean Studies, driven by university humanities research institutes in the 1960s and 1970s, transformed the terrain and character of discourse on humanities.