Column

As a public university located in Jordan’s capital Amman, the University of Jordan is the only university among its neighboring countries, such as Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia (excluding Egypt), to offer an undergraduate major in the Korean language. The Korean language major at the University of Jordan is located in the Department of Asian Languages in the School of Foreign Languages. The Department of Asian Languages offers majors in four languages, namely Russian, Turkish, Chinese, and Korean. A unique feature of the department is that all of its majors are all joint majors with English. Thus, the official names of these majors are actually the Russian/English program, the Turkish/English program, the Chinese/English program, and the Korean/English program.

The University of Jordan’s Korean/English major was established in the 2006/2007 academic year and accepts about 80 to 120 new students each year. Because it is a joint program with English, Korean language courses comprise about 60 credits of the total 144 credits needed for graduation. As there are both advantages and disadvantages to a joint major, we try to mitigate the disadvantages by hosting the TOPIK exam twice a year to motivate students to learn and provide them with an opportunity to verify their abilities before studying abroad or seeking Korean language-related employment.

The Korean language major at the University of Jordan has received support for education and cultural events from AKS since 2019. In 2019 and 2020, we held the Debate Competition and the History Quiz Competition activities. In 2024, we planned and received funding for two activities, namely the Asian World Literature Project and the Fan Dance Performance. The Fan Dance Performance activity involved visiting primary and secondary schools in Amman to hold Korean culture performances, such the fan dance (buchaechum). The fan dance team comprises students in the Korean language major. Although the team performs at school events when needed, they primarily hold performances at primary schools to introduce Korean culture to the students. In Jordan, most people assume any Asians to be Chinese and consider Korea a very distant country. Thus, by sharing Korean culture, such as the fan dance, taekwondo, or samulnori, with young students, Korea and Jordan can be brought closer together. Although taekwondo, the mask dance (talchum), or samulnori is also sometimes performed together with the fan dance team, the fan dance is most popular among all the performances and is most enjoyed by both the performers and the audience alike.

The second activity is the Asian World Literature Project. This activity involves students in the Russian/Turkish/Chinese/Korean majors of the Department of Asian Languages selecting short works (either translated or in the original language) to read and carrying out various related activities, such as debates, writing contest, or plays. The basic goal of the project is to provide an opportunity for the department’s students to read literature from the other majors and interact with one another. Each specialization selects one short story under one theme and participants need to read four stories during one semester and participate in events like plays, quizzes, and writing discussions to produce a final result. This serves as an opportunity for students to improve their multicultural and multilingual competence. For the Korean language major, this project is meaningful as it creates more overseas readers of Korean literature and allows for detailed opinions to be heard through comparison with other literatures. While there are various ways to inform the world of Korean literature, I believe that sharing literature with expert readers, like overseas university students, and listening to their opinions is a good method. To this end, bidirectional exchange, rather than unidirectional exchange is needed. I hope that by continuing to develop and invigorate this project, it can grow to a stage where we can facilitate exchange between Korean authors, other Asian authors, and the students of the Department of Asian Languages at the University of Jordan.

The AKS Korean Studies Grant actively invigorates Korean studies activities in local overseas areas. On the basis of this firm support, I hope that the Korean language and Korean Studies in Jordan and the Arab region can continue to advance and bear many fruitful outcomes.