Korean Education amidst COVID-19

A Google animated Doodle, made by Seoul-based visitor artists Yunho Lee and Kangin Kim of Studio Kimgarden to reflect a converging of Hangeul and English, celebrates Hangeul Proclamation Day in Korea on October 9.

I spent some weeks in the past month to complete a verified 'First Step Korean' module on Coursera by Yonsei University. The course really started from the basics the basics beginning with the Hangeul alphabet.

I am still learning but this helped too.

"This is an elementary-level Korean language course, consisting of 5 lessons with 4 units, and covers 4 skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. The main topics include basic expressions used in everyday life, such as greetings, introducing yourself, talking about your family and a daily life and so on. Each lesson covers dialogues, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, quizzes and role-plays. 

After completing this course, you will be able to

1. read and write Korean alphabet.

2. communicate in Korean with basic expressions.

3. learn basic knowledge on Korean culture.

It’s fun and easy to follow! Enjoy it!"

Start by learning the alphabets today!

King Sejong the Great designed Hangeul during the 1440s with a royal committee to make it easy to learn and literacy rates in Korea improved significantly since then. Koreans used to utilise Chinese characters, and the writing system was so complex that access to education was bound to society’s elite. Consonants were drawn to impersonate the shape of the mouth when making a specific sound while vowels depended on combinations of three elements: a dot symbolizing the sun in the sky, a line symbolizing a person, and a horizontal line symbolizing the earth. Today, South Koreans celebrate Hangeul Day to commorate the promulgation of the Hunminjeongeum on October 9, 1446. Some do so by visiting the museum of King Sejong which is situated close to Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul. A huge golden statue of King Sejong remains there to pay tribute to a leader associated with his commitments to education for all. Contrastingly, for North Koreans, the holiday is called Chosŏn’gŭl Day and is commended on January 15 to celebrate the declaration of the formation of the Hunminjeongeum on January 15, 1444.

Time flies when 'learning Korean through TV shows'

So that's that for a teaser on the Korean language or Hangugeo. The other interesting thing I'd like to share about is how the Republic of Korea (ROK) has been sharing their Policy and Technology implementations internationally with special webinars on COVID-19. (I hope I do not immediately lose the interests of those who have been using the WFH or FHBL period to binge on CLOY or TKEM.) Other webinars can be found here and here oo.

Webinar newsletter

As I was researching on what has been done using technology for education, these webinars from ROK struck me quite a bit as they were really open in sharing some of their best practices especially for countries which might still be struggling or at least planning for future policy and technology implementations. Their webinars were mostly in Korean and were often complemented with English and Spanish/French or even Russian interpreters.

Some of the slides from the sharing by Director Kim 

I was also honestly impressed as Director Jin Sook Kim of the Education Service Divisions, Korea Education and Research Information Service, took the opportunity to share the slides in the English language. Her slides covered quite a bit starting from the different extent of social distancing measures applied in the varying periods, preemptive response by the Korean MOE with social distancing in and out of school with an online school year introduced to different levels in phases. There were mock drills held in all schools nationwide before physical school reopening.

Another fascinating thing was 'The Community of  10,000 Representative Teachers' with at least 1 teacher from every school across the 17 provinces bing involved in capacity-building efforts for educators nationwide. Director Kim also highlighted how the online participation rate was on par with the national attendance rate at about 98.8%. In addition, the conversation around online learning used some terminologies worth mentioning here like real-time interactive class, content-oriented class and task-oriented class in contrast to synchronous or live and asynchronous learning. 

Their private-public partnership linked to digital resources and e-textbooks development, and support for even teachers by providing web cameras and microphones for teachers showed how their approach was quite comprehensive. Looking outwards, Prof Prof Kwon Soonman from the Graduate School of Public Health from Seoul National University, who was the moderator also closed the webinar with some meaningful words. 

Basically, he shared that the policies of a country will reflect and change based on the evolution of the situation. The sharing of knowledge is important and in the past we all did so by getting together to have a meeting. After the outbreak, we can still share information and knowledge at the same time online so in a way there are so many effective ways to share information as we strive to overcome this crisis together. Non-f2f online education has been discussed and we need to accumulate concrete experiences so as to reach a future world of happiness with cooperation and sharing. I will continue my scans on international sharing of best practices and I really look forward to how Singapore will take this opportunity to think about reforms for the education landscape here moving forward.