When Mina Oh first began making videos in 2008, she found less than five Korean language lessons on YouTube. Feeling a need to ”contribute some pixels to the online community,” she created YouTube lessons with the equipment she had on hand: a laptop, some green screen fabric, and an impressive talent for caricature. Playing multiple members of a fun fictional family, she shared common Korean words and their context in a series of KWOWepisodes.
Mina Oh began teaching YouTube Korean language lessons and has expanded into food and travel videos./ MINA OH
The initial foray into YouTube eventually led Oh away from a career in architecture to make hundreds of language videos, along with Korean food and travel videos. The timing was right, as an even larger swath of the world’s netizens was about to be seduced by the Hallyu, a term that refers to the influential wave of Korean pop culture. The burgeoning fandom for k-pop, Korean TV dramas, and film naturally wanted to learn Hangul, the Korean language.
“Many k-pop fans want to learn Korean to sing their favorite songs, which can be especially awesome for audience participation at live concerts,” said Oh. “K-drama lovers can watch their episodes in the native Korean language without reading subtitles, which are not always translated accurately. How can you? There are cultural words and feelings that just cannot be perfectly translated into another language. So learning the language is a way to better understand the culture and people.”
The interest has prompted fans to study Hangul in both traditional and innovative ways that include YouTube, individual and college courses, immersion programs, language learning sites and/or via Hallyu fan sites.
Recently, the Modern Language Association of America published a report on enrollment in foreign languages taught in American universities, which showed that only Korean and Japanese language classes showed gains in enrollment, while most languages showed a decline. The study attributed the interest to the Hallyu.
“They wrote this report based on the data gathered from 2013 to 2016, but I believe that the situation has drastically changed since then and the results will be different if the data is up to date,” said Ji Eun Kim, director of the Korean Language Program, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.
BTS fans enjoyed singing along with Korean lyrics during the band’s 2019 tour. /RICH FURY/AMA 2017/GETTY IMAGES PORTRAIT
Given that 2019 was a banner year for k-pop, with BTS breaking multiple records in the international music industry, Kim thinks current numbers would definitely be higher. A few years ago, Kim avoided using k-pop references in class because she wasn’t sure students would be familiar with them. Now k-pop is more mainstream.
“In the past, only one or two out of ten students in my class said that they’re fans of k-pop and the other students did either not know about it or did not care. That’s why I had some reservations about mentioning or using this as an educational resource in my class. Today, I would say that more than half of my students have their own favorite singers and enjoy listening to Korean songs. I feel more comfortable incorporating these resources into my class.”
Kim’s students are also interested in k-dramas, so the course includes a weekly drama club where students can watch an episode.
“As the University of Chicago uses the quarter system, we can only watch 10 episodes in one quarter and students can finish watching the drama over the break,” said Kim. “Each quarter, we watch a new drama, alternating with a historical drama and a contemporary one. Korean language ability is not required as we watch with English subtitles, but we talk about Korean history, traditional, and modern culture and their social implications through dramas.”
Romantic dramas such as ‘Her Private Life,’ starring Kim Jae Wook and Park Min Young, inspire fans to learn Korean. /TVN
How these resources are used depends on the class level.
“For example, in introductory classes, where students’ linguistic ability is limited, we mostly use them to make our class more fun and entertaining,” said Kim. “As the level goes up, we use short clips to present various contexts where certain linguistic forms or expressions are used in real life. It’s more effective than explaining verbally. I choose k-pop if the lyrics of the song repeatedly present grammatical patterns or expressions we learned from the textbook.”
Even organizations that have long offered language courses notice a difference in student demographics.
The Korea Society, based in New York City, has taught Korean language classes since 1994, and Ja Hee Yu, the society’s language program director, has seen a shift in the reasons that students sign up. Previously, only a third of the students who attended the comprehensive courses were non-Korean, but now it’s up to two thirds. While many students still attend because they want to communicate with Korean-speaking family members, learn more about their heritage or do business in Asia, greater numbers are drawn by exposure to and interest in the Hallyu. In one of Yu’s classes, where student ages range from the 30s to 50s, students are more interested in k-drama than k-pop, and want to learn the language because they want to fully understand what they are seeing. Yu is surprised and pleased by the interest.
“More students have a personal interest in k-pop or k-beauty or drama or Korean contemporary culture,” said Yu. “It’s so amazing to have a lot of people who have a fantastic idea about Korea and want to go there, to study there, and who are thinking about Korea only in a good way.”
In the last few years Yu has also seen more students continue on to intermediate levels.
“We used to have students who would take the introductory courses, but drop out by the intermediate level. We now have regular students who take classes many times. We have a good number of students who want to study to a continually higher level.”
Immersion programs can help students, who might be shy when practicing a new language, feel supported enough to speak up. EF Education First Seoul opened its language immersion school in Korea two years ago and has since welcomed thousands of international students. In answer to a company-conducted poll, 90% of their students cited an interest in k-pop as part of the reason they decided to study in Korea.
“We originally opened EF Seoul as a ‘pop-up’ school to celebrate our participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics, as EF was Official Education Services Sponsor to the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games,” said Alexis Jungdahl, manager of the Korean program. “While we were excited to add the Korean language to our offering, we never expected the amazing reaction we’ve witnessed over the past several years. We quickly decided that there was enough interest to add Seoul to our roster of 52 permanent language schools worldwide. In 2019, we experienced a 125% increase in volume from 2018, just from our U.S. travelers.”
Jungdahl also noted increased interest from students from France, Italy, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.
The Korean immersion courses feature about 22 hours of instruction per week, but are not just based on rote memorization and grammar. Courses feature native speaking teachers who also work on speaking and comprehension, as well as chances for students to participate in activities around the city.
“Cultural fluency is a big part of what we offer, as we don’t just want our students to learn the language, but also to live it,” said Jungdahl. “We’ve responded to the growing interest in Korean pop culture by adding k-pop, k-dance, k-drama and k-beauty electives and activities to our programming in Seoul. Students might find themselves trying on Korean face masks one day or learning the dance moves to a BTS song, all while using the vocabulary they learned in class in real life situations.”
Fans may be motivated to develop a learning system that works for them. Sammie Scordato began watching Korean dramas about five years ago. Something about the more romantic dramas clicked with Scordato, a self-described “sucker for romance,” and she quickly became hooked.
“I started to become interested in learning the language when I realized I was listening to more Korean then I was, English,” said Scordato. “English had started to sound like the foreign language to me, yet I couldn’t fully understand the Korean.”
Scordato bought Korean language books, but they broke the basics down so clinically that she did not enjoy studying.
“I felt like I was cramming for a test, which isn’t how I want to feel when I am supposed to be doing something for pleasure. I am a different kind of learner.”
So, in 2018 she created Korean From Context. As the daughter of a New York Times bestselling romance novelist, it made sense to learn Korean in the context of a romantic drama and she hoped the method might work for other fans.
“I wanted it to be fun and not feel like I was in an educational environment,” said Scordato. “And using the genetic traits from my mother of loving to write, and loving to write about love, I began to write these romances about Korean men who fell in love with non Korean women.”
She threw Korean phrases that she remembered into the story and put markers down for things she wanted to know how to say. Then she watched k-dramas, with English subtitles, and if she heard the desired phrases, watched that scene repeatedly to hear the phonetics.
K-drama fan Scordato listens to dramas such as ‘The Lonely and Great God: Goblin,’ starring Gong Yoo and Kim Go Eun,” to hear how Korean words are pronounced. /HWA & DAM PICTURES
“Once I heard the phonetics, I would grab my translator on my phone, speak into the microphone, and there it was written for me in Hangul,” said Scordato. “I would take that Hangul and put it into my story. When I would come back to those scenes in my book to edit, I saw the Hangul and read it out loud. I began to remember what those things meant.”
Scordato’s site covers conventions and concerts, k-beauty and Korean food. “Every part of our site is educational in a way that a visitor doesn’t even realize they’re learning. That’s my favorite part.”
Motivation definitely helps boost language learning.
During the last 11 years, Oh has seen trends in the way k-pop and k-drama influence language learning by reading the comments that her YouTube videos get.
“I’ve often seen viewers say they are learning Korean because of a specific k-pop band,” said Oh. “Years ago, people said they wanted to learn Korean for SNSD (Girls’ Generation). These days, it’s been dominantly BTS.”
Oh does not feel that the interest in k-culture—and as a result Hangul—is merely a trend.
“It seems to be a universal happening where when a culture’s entertainment influence grows, the desire to learn their language follow,” said Oh. “I would imagine k-pop growing as the fanbase can be very loyal and passionate. But with all things in life, nothing lasts forever. There is a period when something is popular, but cools down. Something else may take its place. Other times, that popular entity can become a classic. Something to be enjoyed and well-known far beyond its trendy days.”
This article was originally published on forbes.com.