After the kick start of Kpop academy at the Korean Cultural Centre in central london , the 30 successful candidates which were chosen are now in their 2nd week of the course. Kpop academy is a 12-week programme , designed to examine the phenomenon that is ‘Korean Pop’ and also to explore the historical / cultural aspects of Korea.
This week , the main focus of the lecture was to have a better of understanding of the Korean language and how it was first created and expanded. The students once entering were asked to pick out their names from the wall. The names however were all written in hangul, to see whether or not the students were capable in recognizing their names in a foreign language as many of these students already study Korean. We then carried on with a lecture which informed us of the basics of the history behind the Korean language and hangul as a writing system.
It was very interesting to see how the letters were formulated and designed to emulate how the letter of of the sound is pronounced. They were then asked to fill out a questionnaire on what they had learnt from the and the main aspect thof korean culture we had learnt about previously.
The candidates were then later introduced to lecturer at SOAS university Jaehoon Yeon who taught them everything they needed to know about the Korean language and alphabet.
He explained to the students of how Korean language was created and how it had evolved from Old Korean during the three kingdom period to contempary korean in the 20th century. He also explained the theories in which it Korean Language was said to derive from. The korean language is a purposely designed writing system and was created by King Kim Sejong as a way for koreans to be able to read and write , no matter what their social class or background. It was a very enlightening experience on how the language has progress over the years and its compares to English language and other languages in general.
Kpop concerts is very excited to see what else is on offer for the students in the following weeks and will be constantly updating. Next week they will visit a korean resteraunt and have a go at making korean cuisines!
Photography By Su Mi
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