The Ministry of Education on March 14 said about 160,000 students at 1,699 schools in 39 countries last year took Korean-language classes. The photo shows on Oct. 6, 2020, a class in Korean at a school in Vladivostok, Russian Far East. (Yonhap News)

By Xu Aiying and Lee Jihae

The global boom of K-pop has spurred about 160,000 elementary, middle and high school students worldwide to study the Korean language.

The Ministry of Education said this on March 14 while announcing its plans this year for supporting Korean-language education projects abroad.

Last year, nine countries including Denmark and Latvia newly offered courses in the language, raising the total to 39 countries with about 160,000 students at 1,699 educational institutions studying it.

In July last year, India, with a population of 1.3 billion, designated Korean a secondary elective in foreign language in its public school curriculum, joining French, German, Spanish and Japanese. Chinese was dropped and Korean was added on the list.

In 2016, Vietnam began a pilot project for teaching Korean in schools. Last month, the Southeast Asian nation adopted Korean as a primary elective in foreign language, which is offered from third grade of elementary school and also includes English, Chinese, Japanese and French.

Elsewhere abroad, 12 middle and high schools in Ecuador, Belgium and Jordan this year established Korean-language courses, meaning 1,800 schools in 43 countries now teach the language.

The budget for supporting Korean-language education was nearly doubled from KRW 12.6 billion last year to KRW 23.6 billion this year. The number of Korean-language teachers dispatched abroad also surged from 70 in six countries to 132 in about 10 over the same period.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Yoo Eun-hae said, "The expansion of Korean-language education shows the high and stable demand for Korean," adding, "So that those wishing to learn Korean in all countries can do so systematically, we will cooperate with each nation's education authorities and expand related support."

xuaiy@korea.kr