"First Steps in Korean" on Gangnam Online Lecture... Pilot Korean Course for Foreigners Launched

Based on Seoul National University Curriculum
First-Come, First-Served Registration for 300 Participants

On May 15, Gangnam-gu District in Seoul announced that it will begin a pilot operation of the online course "Let's Start, Korean" for Korean language learners, including foreigners and members of multicultural families, on Gangnam Online Lecture (edu.ingang.go.kr) starting from May 20.

Gangnam Online Lecture Guide. Provided by Gangnam District Office.

Until now, Korean language education for foreigners in Gangnam-gu has primarily focused on offline programs run by related institutions. To assess demand for online courses, the district conducted a pre-survey with 632 foreigners from January 27 to February 8. The results showed that 79% of respondents expressed interest in taking Korean language courses online.

"Let's Start, Korean" is based on the Korean language education curriculum developed by the Language Education Institute of Seoul National University. It is designed to allow beginners to learn Korean step by step, starting from the basics. The course consists of four beginner-level tracks (1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B), 68 lectures, and approximately 27 hours of content. Learners can sequentially study from basic expressions such as greetings and self-introductions to commonly used situational phrases in daily life.

To make the course easily accessible to learners of various nationalities, multilingual subtitles are provided in English, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Russian, and Vietnamese. This feature helps reduce the language barrier at the initial stage of learning and enables learners to review the materials repeatedly.

The course is open to anyone who wants to learn Korean—including foreigners and members of multicultural families—regardless of nationality. Applicants must register as full members of Gangnam Online Lecture before signing up for the course. Registration will be open to the first 300 people on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 1:00 p.m. on May 20, and will close once the quota is reached.

Through this pilot program, the district aims to confirm the actual demand for online Korean language learning among foreign learners and plans to expand the user base of Gangnam Online Lecture from its current focus on middle and high school students to a more diverse range of learners.

Gangnam-gu Mayor Cho Sungmyung stated, "We expect that foreign learners will be able to study Korean in a more systematic way through proven educational content based on the Seoul National University curriculum," adding, "Going forward, we will develop Gangnam Online Lecture into a public online education platform used not only by youth but also by foreigners, adults, and lifelong learners."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.