Middle and high school students in the Philippines will now be able to learn Korean as a second language in school.
 
The South Korean Embassy in the Philippines said Thursday that it signed an agreement with the Filipino education ministry on Wednesday for it to add Korean as an optional course in the second language curriculum of public middle and high schools.
 
The education ministry plans to first select ten middle and high schools in Manila within the year to launch a pilot Korean program before expanding the offer throughout the nation.
 
Currently, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and French are taught in public middle and high schools in the Philippines as optional courses.