[KF Mailbox]From the Home of Pyramids
Chung Young-in
Visiting Professor of Korean Studies, Ain Shams University, Egypt
On the first Friday of September 2015, I set foot on Cairo International Airport. Nearly seven years have passed and today, I am wrapping up my life here. The KF’s recent request to write about my experience in Egypt gives me a timely opportunity to bid farewell.
During my time in Egypt, I have served as supervisor of Master’s and Ph.D. students at Ain Shams University’s Department of Korean Language. Having retired from a Korean university after over 23 years of teaching, I felt it rather familiar to teach graduate students here and help them write their theses. I found the students who kept asking questions during my class commendable, to say the least. Here, graduate students are also teaching staff. Every year, some 30 undergraduates finish at the Department of Korean Language, but only the top three can be selected as such staff within a year after graduation. Considering that only the very best applicants from the university’s Faculty of Al-Alsun (School of Languages) make it to the department, these graduate students are truly the cream of the crop. Currently, nine Master’s students are paring their theses, with another nine doctoral students working on their dissertations.
In accordance with school regulations, Ph.D. students must obtain their doctorates within 10 years, a deadline that puts a lot of pressure on them. Most overcome this stressful situation, but undesirable things occur, too, such as plagiarism. Attempts to earn a Master’s degree with minimum endeavor are an insult to everyone in academia. One graduate student even filed a complaint with a court and the Ministry of Education regarding an alleged failure in the faculty’s thesis deliberation.
In August this year, I will carry out my last deliberations for two graduate students and one Ph.D. candidate. More than 10 graduate students received a Master’s degree over the past seven years. If and when the deliberation is completed in August, the world will see the first Ph.D. earner in Korean studies from the Middle East and Africa. I hope that these students serve as catalysts for the Korean studies field in the region.
In July 2019, I launched the Association of Korean Language Education in Egypt, which is in active operation with over 40 Korean members living in Korea and Egypt as well as teaching staff at Ain Shams University. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted workshops online and put 37 online classes on YouTube last year alone. On Hangeul Day, commemorated each year on October 9, we celebrated the occasion with special events. In 2019, at the lobby of the Faculty of Al-Alsun, we held a class dubbed “Learning Hangeul in 20 Minutes” in the way King Sejong the Great intended to explain the Korean alphabet, and organized small group meetings and events to share Korean food and write participants’ names in Hangeul. The events were participated in not only by the dozen teachers of Korean, but also by over 100 students regardless of their majors. On Hangeul Day last year, we publicly released an Arabic translation of King Sejong’s preface to Hunminjeongeum for the first time in the Arab world.
The Martyria Korean Language Class is jointly operated by the Association and the Martyria Foundation for Culture & Development, an Egyptian NGO. The class is held four times a year and Association members use it as an occasion to practice their Korean language skills. Naturally, the class was opened after I checked and consulted on its plans and proceedings in advance. Egypt is no exception when it comes to the zeal of students striving to learn Korean, and needless to say, I feel proud and happy about this.
Among Egyptian institutions of higher learning, only Ain Shams and Aswan University have Korean language departments, and we need to open more at other schools. To that end, we discussed opening such a department at Kafrelsheikh University in the Nile Delta. In December last year, we agreed with the president of Sohag University in central Egypt to set up a department at the school. If things go as agreed, the university will have Egypt’s third department of Korean in September.
In my view, more such departments are necessary because of the monopolistic structure of Arabic language education. Ain Shams has the oldest Korean department and produced many excellent graduates, but the overall number of Arabic tutors fluent in Korean remains limited, and some charge considerable fees that only few can afford.
I hope the Korean language department that will newly open up at Sohag University will also produce many excellent graduates.
Let me bid farewell in Colloquial Egyptian.
Salaam!
KOREA FOUNDATION
