By Xu Aiying and Yoon Sojung

From 2025, the Korean language will be a subject in the college entrance exam of Hong Kong.

The Ministry of Education in Seoul on June 22 said Korea's National Institute for International Education (NIIED) and the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) will sign a memorandum of understanding to adopt Korean as a second language subject in the test for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE).

Under the agreement, Korean from 2025 will join French, Japanese, German and Spanish as a second language subject in the special administrative region of China.

The HKEAA said it decided to include Korean considering growing interest among Hong Kong youth in the language.

The Korean-language test of the HKDSE exam will be replaced with the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) administered by the ministry affiliate NIIED.

Once an HKDSE test taker selects Korean on the second foreign language section of the exam, the NIIED will send that person's highest TOPIK score to the HKEAA.

TOPIK is intended gauge the Korean-language proficiency of Koreans abroad and non-Koreans whose mother tongue is not Korean. An estimated 330,000 people took the test in 75 countries last year, and the score is valid for two years.

Korean is a subject for college entrance exams in eight countries: Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, France, Australia and New Zealand. Hong Kong, however, is the first region to use the TOPIK score for its exam.

The University of Hong Kong has a Korean studies program, while six other universities in the city offer Korean as an elective or subsidiary subject.

Vice Minister of Education Jang Sang-yoon said, "As the number of people in Hong Kong taking TOPIK is expected to grow, we anticipate more elementary and middle schools in Hong Kong adopting Korean as a regular subject," adding, "We hope that more countries use TOPIK as part of their college entrance exams."

xuaiy@korea.kr