This was a training session for Korean instructors, held at the Korean Education Center of Daegu University on Wednesday, October 10th. Forty-give instructors working at King Sejong Institute located in 17 countries, including Russia, China, and the United States, were gathered there for a lesson in teaching the Korean language. Here’s Mr. Lee Gyu-wan이규완 of the Korean Language Education Team at the National Institute of the Korean Language to tell us more about it.

As of October 2012, there are 90 King Sejong Institute branches in 43 countries. Those offices teach Korean culture and language to foreigners wishing to learn more about Korea. We provide educational materials to people overseas through the internet and invite foreign Korean instructors to Korea to train them in teaching methods. The National Institute of the Korean Language also dispatches native Korean teachers to King Sejong Institute offices overseas to teach them advanced Korean and spread the Korean language.

It’s been three years since the King Sejong Institute instructor invitation program started. Instructors who underwent online teaching courses were eligible for the 12-day offline education program taking place from October 8th to 19th. The program took off because many foreigners wanted to learn the Korean language, thanks to the spread of K-pop and Korean TV shows. Here’s Ms. Lee Bo-ri from King Sejong Institute in Moscow, who came to Korea for training.

The desire to learn the Korean language is awesome. There are about 500 students in Moscow’s King Sejong Institute. More and more Russians are becoming interested in Korea as Korea’s status rises. Many Korean corporations have their branch offices in Moscow. Many Russians want to work in the headquarters of those Korean companies and young students want to learn more about Korean music and dramas, and subsequently the Korean language.

They have many reasons to want to learn Korean. They may want to work at a Korean company, want to sing along to Korean pop songs, or want to watch Korean TV shows without subtitles or dubbing. Here’s Ms. Pham Meu Ng, a Vietnamese instructor from King Sejong Institute in Vietnam.

When I ask my students why they chose to learn Korean, they usually say that they came to the Korean department because they love Korean dramas and K-pop stars. They also say that graduating from the Korean language department helps them find jobs. Thanks to hallyu, Vietnamese people are very interested in Korea. They like Korean products and clothes. I see so many cell phones and electronic devices made in Korea. That’s why Vietnamese people like Korea and become interested in everything Korean.

Roughly 560 years have passed since the creation and promulgation of Hangeul. Now the Korean alphabet has spread to far corners of the world.

Wang Leung came from China just three weeks ago, but he sings Korean pop songs as naturally as a Korean teenager. At first he studied Korean by himself, because he wanted to learn the lyrics to his favorite K-pop songs, but now he’s come all the way to Korea to learn Korean the right way.

It’s been three weeks since I came to Korea. I learned Korean by myself in China. Learning Hangeul was fun. I have watched Korean dramas for a long time and came to like the idol group Shinhwa by watching variety shows. I learned Korean by watching Shinhwa’s concert in Shanghai. I had studied Korean for a month before I watched the Shinhwa concert, and it was really fun. Hangeul is hard to write, but it’s fun when I watch a TV drama and understand a little bit of what they’re saying.

Hallyu played a big part in giving rise to the let’s-learn-Korean fever. But being fluent in Korean is also a big asset for job seekers, because they can be employed by Korean companies operating overseas. For them the Korean language has opened the door to a promising future. Here’s Pham Meu Ng from Vietnam to explain more.

I heard that graduating from the Korean language department gave advantage when finding employment. There are many Korean companies doing business in Vietnam. I gained more confidence since I took Korean grammar and advanced Korean classes.

The KBS nine-o’clock newscast aired on October 9th, Hangeul Day in Korea, reported on foreigners learning Korean.

Hangeul and the Korean language have provided hope and a chance for a better future for people in Southeast Asia. In response to the growing popularity of Korean culture, Sao Paolo University in Brazil plans to establish the Korean language department next year, and many living in other Latin American countries, where K-pop has huge fan bases, are learning Korean on their own through books and online sources. In the Middle East the Korean language, together with Chinese, reigns as the second language college students want to learn the most. The desire to learn Korean is on the increase not only in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, but also in Europe. Here’s Ms. Yun Sun-young of the University of Bonn in Germany to tell us more.

King Sejong Institute in Germany opened in March 2012. Forty students enrolled in the first semester, but in the following semester more than forty students registered. Since Korean is used in many areas in the community and Korea’s status has risen, many students come to King Sejong Institute to learn Korean as a general requirement course or a hobby. Germans used to think of Asia as only China and Japan, but now more and more German students want to learn about Korea. Even ordinary Germans say they wish to learn basic Korean before they travel to Korea.



Hangeul was chosen as the Memory of the World by UNESCO in 1997. Each vowel and consonant was created to resemble the body parts that generate sound, namely the mouth, the throat, the tongue, and the teeth. Hangeul is recognized as the most scientific and easiest writing system in the world, as attested by the back-to-back title won by Hangeul in the World Alphabet Olympics. Here’s Mr. Lee Gyu-wan of the Korean Language Education Team at the National Institute of the Korean Language for more.

The superiority of Hangeul is already widely recognized. UNESCO instituted the King Sejong Literacy Prize in 1989 to honor individuals or government agencies that contributed to lowering illiteracy. The prize was named after King Sejong, the creator of Hangeul. UNESCO also registered Hunminjeongeum, a manuscript instructing people how to use Hangeul, as Memory of the World in 1997, making Hangeul no longer an alphabet only for Koreans but for everyone around the world. Hangeul should be learned and mastered to fulfill its role as Memory of the World.

Hunminjeongeum Haerye, a manuscript describing the creation process of Hangeul and how it should be read, was registered as UNESCO’s Memory of the World in 1997. The World Intellectual Property Organization, better known as WIPO, adopted Korean as an official language for publication at the 43rd general assembly in 2007, making Korean only the ninth WIPO-recognized language in the world. Furthermore, Hangeul is the only alphabet in the existing writing system to have a precise promulgation date and a known creator. So those learning Korean know all about Hangeul Day and King Sejong.

- I’m Nicola from Belgium. I came to Korea about a year ago. I think October 9th is a special day, a day to think about King Sejong, who created Hangeul. Koreans used to write in Chinese in the olden days, which was hard, but Hangeul made writing easy.
- I’m Manuska from Switzerland. I’ve been studying Korean at the Korean Language Institute for a year now. King Sejong created Hangeul because not all Koreans could learn Chinese.
- My name is Francois and I’m from Canada. King Sejong made Hangeul about 500 years ago. Before that Koreans used difficult Chinese characters, but they were hard to learn. So King Sejong made Hangeul to make writing easy.

Foreign students of Korean say they started learning the Korean language because they were interested in Korean media or wanted to get a good job or to study in Korea. But the more they studied, the more interesting it became. Here are an American and a Japanese students of Korean.

- There are many Korean words that do not have equivalents in English, such as “jeong,” which has that warm, fuzzy feeling. There are more words that come from the heart in Korean. That’s why I like Korean.
- Hangeul is such an amazing creation. Because we have to use Chinese characters in the Japanese language to convey meanings, but Hangeul doesn’t need Chinese characters, because it was created based on sounds. That’s pretty awesome.

In Korea the month of October is filled with various events celebrating Hangeul Day and the wonderful writing system of Hangeul. From October 5th to 11th the area around Gyeongbok Palace and Gwanghwamun Gate in downtown Seoul was the site of the Hangeul Week events. This year’s theme was “Hangeul, Sharing with the World” and here’s Ms. Nam Dong-mi to tell us more about the events.

The main events were held at Sujeong Hall in Gyeongbok Palace. Sujeong Hall is a symbolic place for Hangeul Week events, because that’s where Jiphyeonjeon, a royal research institute where King Sejong’s trustworthy scholars helped him create Hangeul, used to be. The “Hangeul Comes” event displayed all the writing instruments since the creation of Hangeul, such as the writing brushes, metal printing blocks, wooden printing blocks, and typewriters, to shows how people communicate through Hangeul. The “Hangeul Is Digital” program is about how extensively Hangeul is used in IT devices and our lives in the digital age. The “Hangeul Is a Friend” event shows the historical development of Hangeul and how the Korean alphabet is making its way into the world. There are now 90 King Sejong Institute offices in 43 countries, and this is the year the King Sejong Institute Foundation was founded. The foundation’s purpose is to spread Hangeul worldwide and use it to communicate with people around the world.

The theater play “Tree with Deep Roots,” featured at Yong Theater of the National Museum of Korea, depicts the creation process of Hangeul. The play’s director is thinking about going on an overseas tour after its run in Korea is over. Here’s its director Lee Ki-do.

The world’s leading scholars recognize Hangeul as the best alphabet in the world. Hangeul will be able to spread to the world if we can share the values of Hangeul with ordinary people abroad, not just with scholars. I wish this Hangeul-based play could appeal to tourists as a great cultural content.

People who visit Gwanghwamun Plaza in downtown Seoul can see a display of beautiful Hangeul fonts, a Hangeul-teaching robot, a video show, a dance performance, and even a fashion show. But the most crowd-pleasing event of all is a Korean composition contest for foreigners.

Foreign students show off their Korean skills by composing poems and essays. Today’s topic is “chair.” It’s not an easy topic, but contestants try their hardest to come up with inspiring writing.

Korea’s rising economic status and the rising popularity of Korean pop culture have fueled the world’s interest in Hangeul. The Korean government plans to promote the spread of Hangeul by increasing the number of King Sejong Institutes to two hundred by 2016. Before long, Hangeul would be mastered by an unimaginable number of people around the world.