By Honorary Reporter Khloud Khaled Aboul Yazed from Egypt 
Photos = King Sejong Institute's website

The website of King Sejong Institute, a chain of schools worldwide for Korean-language education, is globally popular for its free courses in many tongues. It also offers courses in calligraphy and doing business with Korea.

The institute holds annual competitions that motivate its students. One for calligraphy  was held last year from Oct. 14-31 and another on "the best tips" for using the King Sejong app from Dec. 6-16.

These are ads for competitions hosted by King Sejong Institute.

The institute's most famous program is its metaverse, which was launched for the public last year on Nov. 25 and is ongoing 24/7. Connecting the world through the Korean language and culture, the metaverse allows those interested in Korea worldwide to communicate in Korean and practice the language in a group conversation within the virtual campus.

Shown are the metaverse announcement from the King Sejong Institute website and the institute’s mascots and logo.

This interesting experience has users first choose a nickname and later create a virtual character. Afterwards, the user visits virtual places designed by the institute like its campus, town square, fountain, city center, Gwangjang Market, Hangang Park and Dokkaebi Park featuring cute designs.

This is a metaverse map from the institute's website and mascots from its official Facebook page.

While browsing the metaverse, I found an escape room game inside Dokkaebi Park. To enter the game with a virtual character, a user must choose the correct door and say, "Open sesame." After entering, solving the puzzle is needed to escape the room.

I was walking around the virtual market to experience a Korean restaurant with just a click of a video clip designed with 360-degree technology. I also made virtual visits to the studios of major Korean broadcast networks like KBS, TVN and MBC. In downtown Seoul, I hit other facilities such as a beauty salon and a bank.

The unique feature of this experience is that everything is in Korean only with no translation. This makes users practice Korean by playing, exploring and meeting new people who share the same interests. Another great option is inviting friends to this metaverse.

kalhong617@korea.kr

*This article is written by a Korea.net Honorary Reporter. Our group of Honorary Reporters are from all around the world, and they share with Korea.net their love and passion for all things.