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네이버 공유 카카오 공유 트위터 공유 페이스북 공유

The Joy of Teaching Korean to Students in Bulgaria

In the beginning of this summer, I attended the 2nd Workshop of the European Association for Korean Language Education, which was held at Ankara University’s Colakli Conference Center, near Antalya. This important and useful event was generously sponsored by the Korea Foundation. The enhancement of Korean language instruction, as well as the development of Korean Studies in Europe, has been continuously associated with the Korea Foundation ever since the launch of its operations.

For the people interested in the Korean language and culture, and in the cultural exchange between Korea and their countries, the Foundation’s activities have taken on deeply personal dimensions. For me, attending the Workshop was significant not only professionally but also very personally. It was very emotional for me to again see a Turkish friend, whom I had met in Korea for the first time in 1994. After we studied Korean together in Seoul for several months, we went our separate ways and I had not heard from him all this while. It was also a great pleasure to participate in the conference along with one of my first students; she is now an assistant professor whom I am indeed proud of. I also met other people that I had met sometime ago and had wanted to see again. I made new interesting acquaintances and felt enriched with such precious memories.

Over the last 15 years, I have come to know a number of dedicated people who have worked at different levels of the Foundation, or have been KF Fellows. I have invariably been impressed by their professionalism and cultural sensitivity, as well as personal tact and genuine caring. With many of them I have found that we share common interests and ways of looking at the world. I have become part of a large community that could be described as the Korea Foundation’s “family.” I am happy and also very proud to be an old member of this ever-extending and cheerful family. I know that through this all I have received so much. The feeling of belonging also encourages me to give back, to share my accumulated knowledge and experience with other people, especially with new students. I feel responsible to teach and present everything I have learned through this long process.

For me, it all started in 1992 when I was thrilled to learn that a Korean language course would be offered at Sofia University, for the first time. In March 1993, my curiosity and enthusiasm for Korean had already brought me to Seoul, as I was one of the 30 or so members of the first group of Korean Language Fellows. Thanks to the Korea Foundation, I spent 18 months studying Korean at Seoul National University and Yonsei University. The Korean friends that I made during the first weeks in the country remain my best Korean friends to this day. This first direct encounter with Korea proved profoundly fateful, as it changed my personal and professional life thereafter.

Since the autumn of 1995, I have annually initiated first-year students into the Korean language program at Sofia, which has given me extreme professional satisfaction. My experiences in Korea continued in 1997, when I spent six months there as a KF Korean Studies Fellow doing research on the traditional symbols of modern Korean poetry. Thanks to this research it was possible for me to further my interests in Korean culture. One of the notable outcomes was the publication of an anthology of modern Korean poetry that was compiled and translated into Bulgarian by two of my colleagues, Spas Rangelov and Kwon-Jin Choi, and myself. The work on this project and the joyful weeks of introducing it to the literary community of Bulgaria were probably the most rewarding highlights of my career.

In my country, they say that mountains do not meet mountains but people can meet people. We can never bring Korea to our country, but we can connect to people through studying their language and literature, by acquainting ourselves with their works of art and their economic and cultural achievements, and by learning about their lifestyles and everyday routines. This can happen at art exhibitions, live music and dance concerts, or scholarly conferences, so I am pleased to see that the Korea Foundation is actively helping to organize such events. At the end of the day, just one such event could ignite a personal motivation that could change someone’s life forever.

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