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‘Over 100,000 students in 166 countries attend 1,918 Korean language schools’

August 14, 2014

According to Overseas Koreans Foundation

These students are learning Korean at Orange County Korean Cultural Center at Irvine (20 Truman Avenue, Suite 107),

About 106,000 students in 166 countries are attending 1,918 Korean language schools around the world, the Overseas Koreans Foundation said.

According to the foundation’s research, which started in February, there are 5,333 teachers.

North America holds the highest number of these schools, with the U.S. and Canada alone comprising 1,070 schools and 57,702 students of the total.

Southern California alone has 217 Korean language schools. Schools specializing in Korean increased by more than 60 over the past 30 months in southern California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, the Los Angeles Korean Consulate General said.

“Although the number of schools has increased, we haven’t seen a huge change in the number of enrolled students, with 13,000 in that period,” said Kim Du-yong, vice president of the Korean Education Center in Los Angeles. “The reason the number of schools increased so much is because many of them are small church and other religious organizations.”

The center said the largest of these is at Bethel Church in Orange County, which has 600 students in its Korean language school.

The Asia and Oceania region had 363 schools, followed by Russia and the CIS with 240, Europe with 111, Central America with 89 and Africa and the Middle East with 45.

The first-ever Korean language school was opened in 1906 inside a Hawaiian church. It still enrolls students, with 120 currently attending.