The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Minister PARK Bo Gyoon, MCST) together with King Sejong Institute Foundation (President LEE Hae-young, KSIF) opened '2022 World Korean Educators Conference‘ from August 9 (Tue) to Aug 12 (Fri) at the JW Marriott Hotel, Seoul, to enhance the teaching competitiveness of Korean language instructor and educators and provide communication platform. Considering the Pandemic, the conference is held in a hybrid manner, both offline and online and real-time streaming service via the official website of the King Sejong Institute Foundation (https://www.youtube.com/user/LearnTeachKorean) will be provided.

  Marking the 14th year in 2022, the 2022 World Korean Educators Conference is a comprehensive workshop on Korean language and Korean culture inviting not only lecturers at the Sejong Institute but also Korean language experts, instructors, and educators at home and abroad. This year's conference will be joined by approximately 500 participants, including lecturers at Sejong Institute, lecturers at universities at home and abroad, and multi-cultural education support centers.

  On the first day, a video on stories of the Korean language instructors teaching abroad will be shown as well as SONG Sohee performance. After that, there will be award ceremony by MCST Minister given to best lecturers with good performance in Korean language and Korean culture respectively. KIM Myung-hwa from Sejong Institute Indonesia will receive the award for Korean language and YOO Young from Sejong Institute in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan for Korean culture. In addition, newly appointed Sejong Institutes will be provided with designated books. Following that there will be various lectures and opportunities for communication, including keynote lecture  and story shared by lecturer who became a teacher from student in Nairobi, Kenya.

  On the second and third day, diverse training sessions will continue in both language and culture sector. Such training education sessions include status of Sejong Insititue operation in each branch and its future operation plan, guiding on teaching Korean language pronunciation, effective method of promotion for Korean language classes, learning the history of Hanji (Traditional handmade paper from Korea). On the last day of the conference, there is a special lecture under the theme of The spread of Hallyu and the role of Korean language lecturers and a prize will be given to well operated Sejong Institute branch.

  As the K-pop and K-drama are continuously influential, demand for Korean language has been gradually increasing. The number of Sejong Institute worldwide recorded 244 in 84 countries, including 23 new branches in 19 countries which opened the doors this year. The number of students studying at the Institute stood at 81,476 in 2021 from 740 in 2007, recording the total number of students increase by 584,174 for the past 15 years. As the number of Korean language students substantially increase, the number of people who gain the national certificate of teaching Korean language granted by MCST is 8,229 in 2021, increase from 639 in 2007. This shows that the number grew 13 times with the accumulated total number over 70,000.

  MCST Vice Minister JEON Byeong Geuk said "Just like K-contents that global citizens enjoy, I hope Korean language will become another area that people all over the world can love and enjoy learning. To help Korean language instructors to show their excellent performance, MCST will do best to enhance the learning materials and provide educational training to fully support educators."