Many K-pop fans have wished for the ability to speak Korean and luckily for the students at the Kpop Academy KCCUK, the second lesson was about the Korean Language and Hangul (script).
Image by Su Mi
The 2hr session was split into two with a break in-between and during the first half of the session the students that were absent the previous week had a short but prompt presentation to introduce themselves. But before that we had a small starter which involved recognizing our own names written in Hangeul (Korean) placed on nametags stuck on the wall. Most of us were able to recognize our own names thanks to attempting to self-study Korean in the past. We were then to vote for a class representative and congratulations to Tamanna!
We were then shown a video clip, which gave us an overview on Korean. It showed how the Korean language was made as well as some interesting facts about it. Did you know that Hangul is the only language invented in the whole world?
Image by Su Mi
During the second half of the session Dr. Jaehoon Yeon from SOAS University came and gave us a lecture, which explained the clip we watched earlier in more detail. He told us about the theories of the creation of Hangul and told us why it was created. One of the reasons was that King Sejong wanted to improve literacy rates in Korea so that everyone would be able to read and understand the law and not commit crimes only because they didn’t know that it was against the law. We were also told about the different dialects in Korea and had a great laugh when Dr. Jaehoon shared with us some jokes that came about due to the different pronunciations of certain words.
At the end of the session all the students were given a booklet to aid us in self-studying Korean at home.
The next session would be at a Korean restaurant where students would have hands-on opportunity to try and make Korean dishes. With only 2 sessions so far the K-pop Academy seems to be very promising. What surprises do the Korean Cultural Centre UK have up their sleeves? We’ll be updating on every class so stay tuned on UnitedKpop.
