Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, the oldest and one of the most renowned educational and research institutes in the country, celebrated opening of its new Korean language major on April 5, which was also the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the university.
By Xu Aiying and Kim Young Shin
Photos = Ewha Womans University
Chulalongkorn University, the oldest and one of the most reputable Thai colleges, will allow students to major in Korean beginning in the 2018 academic year.
Ewha Womans University announced on April 10 that Chulalongkorn University hosted a Korean Festival to mark the 100th anniversary of its establishment and the offering of its new language major on April 5.
In 2007, Professor Supaporn Boonrung, who studied Korean at Ewha Womans University, graduated and got appointed as a professor at Chulalongkorn University. The university started then to offer Korean as a minor.
In 2017, 500 students were enrolled in Korean courses there.
Over the past 10 years, 60 students have graduated with a minor in Korean.
“Thanks to the Korean language boom in Thailand, competition for entry into our Korean major in 2018 may be higher than 10 to one,” said Professor Boonrung.
The first students majoring in Korean will be studying with a Korean language textbook jointly developed by Chulalongkorn University and Ewha Womans University. This is the first time for a Thai university to write a college textbook for Korean.
“The textbook is the first to be written from a Thai perspective,” said Kingkarn Thepkanjana, the dean of linguistics in the Faculty of Arts at Chulalongkorn University. “It will be able to mend the deficiencies from teaching courses in Thai classrooms using textbooks solely made by Koreans.”
xuaiy@korea.kr