First lady Kim Jung-sook on Oct. 8 gives a congratulatory speech at the finals of the 2020 King Sejong Institute Korean Speech Contest at the National Hangeul Museum in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District. (Yonhap News)
By Lee Kyoung Mi and Lee Jihae
First lady Kim Jung-sook has asked students of Korean to "become bridges connecting Korea and your countries and the world while learning the Korean language."
She said this on Oct. 8 at the finals of the 2020 King Sejong Institute Korean Speech Contest in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District.
In a congratulatory speech at the National Hangeul Museum, she said, "In Korea, where the people are of one mind in overcoming COVID-19, we often see placards saying 'Social distancing of 2 m, emotional distance of 0 m.'"
"You're in a different time and different space, but because we're connected through Korean, the distance between our hearts is 0 m."
The finals of the competition were held online due to COVID-19.
Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Park Yang-woo on Oct. 8 takes a commemorative photo at the National Hangeul Museum in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District in front of a video screen of Zaharia Jaafar Ali Alsafi from Bahrain, the grand prize winner of the 2020 King Sejong Institute Korean Speech Contest. (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism)
A combined 1,918 contestants from 213 King Sejong Institutes in 76 countries participated in the contest. Ten of them passed the preliminary rounds to qualify for the finals, where they gave speeches on the topic "Koreans I've met and will meet."
The grand prize winner was Zaharia Jaafar Ali Alsafi, a student at the institute's branch in Manama, Bahrain. In fluent Korean, she said, "I've felt that Koreans often compliment each other, have quick nunchi (the ability to perceive what others are thinking or feeling) and are sincere."
Runner-up Aybike Sungur from the institute's branch in Bursa, Turkey, talked about her camaraderie with her friend in Gwangju and said in Korean, "I hope we can reliably maintain a symbiotic relationship."
The ten finalists will receive training in Korean from next year in Korea at eight institutions of higher learning, including Korea, Seoul National and Sungkyunkwan universities. The institute's branches where the two top finishers were from will also receive a Korean-language book autographed by the first lady and a K-pop album.