10. The essence of Korean!

[말레이]

10. The essence of Korean!

On the first day, we gathered in the auditorium of the National Institute of the Korean Language and finished registration. After a simple ceremony to start the training session, we greeted each other. Those who participated in the training session were Korean teachers and local teachers who teach Korean around the world. In other years, these two courses were conducted separately, but that year, the government announced the Sejong Institute program and had special plans for Korean language education. In order to keep up with these events, the two training sessions were conducted together for various purposes, such as allowing teachers in this course to participate in the World Korean Educators Conference and Hangeul Day events. In this process, it had the effect of challenging our Korean teachers more. After a brief opening ceremony, the lectures began right away. Through the lectures, we were able to receive many challenges, starting with the differences between Hangul and Korean, which we often use interchangeably, and through various other lectures.

And for two days starting the next day, I attended the 1st World Korean Language Educators Conference, where representatives of Korean language teachers from home and abroad gathered to listen to lectures and discuss various aspects of the Korean language, and I was able to hear an explanation at the time that the government was planning to unify Korean language education into “Sejonghakdang” in the future. And on the fourth day, I left my accommodation by bus to attend the Hangeul Day event at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, but due to the traffic, I was unable to see the unveiling ceremony of the King Sejong Statue on Sejong-ro, now Gwanghwamun, and could only watch it through a live broadcast on the bus. And I arrived at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts just before the Hangeul Day ceremony began, and was barely able to participate in the event. It was my first time attending a large national event, and I felt proud, but it was also a great challenge and encouragement. After the event, I thought that I should bring the small Taegeukgi that was waved during the cheers during the event and use it as educational material or for Korean-American events locally, so I went around the seats of Sejong Center for the Performing Arts and collected Taegeukgi that people had left behind. I held one to my chest and went outside to share it with other teachers. Each of us held about 20 Taegeukgi. As I looked at the statue of King Sejong, the grandmothers and grandfathers asked for just one Taegeukgi, but I explained to the children overseas and ended up not giving them to them. As a result, I was able to bring them back to Korea. If I had given them to them, the flag would have been discarded without being treated with such care in Korea, and it would have disappeared quickly on site because so many people asked for it. This also shows that the conditions of Korean language schools, Korean schools, and cultural centers overseas are that poor, and that it is difficult to bring in such materials.

And then the training continued. All day, it was a forced march with only lectures by professors specializing in Korean and teachers researching at the National Institute of the Korean Language, but in the evening, teachers living far away from each country and local Korean teachers would gather together and build a special bond? Even so, I thought that it would not be possible for Koreans of this age to gather and build this much bond, but it was because Koreans living abroad miss their homeland so much, and problems sometimes arise between Koreans in the local area, but it was a gathering of people who gathered for the same purpose, and what kind of purpose was that? It must have been even more so because it was a gathering of people in charge of promoting and teaching the most symbolic Korean language of Korea abroad. In particular, I remember one professor saying during class, “Thank you! is a Japanese expression‎, and thank you! is a pure Korean expression‎, so it would be better to use it that way!” I always used ‘Thank you!’ when I spoke to Koreans in emails and phone calls, but it didn’t work well when I suddenly changed it to ‘Thank you!’, but I made sure to correct it in emails. However, when I had to express it in a softer way, such as ‘I thank you!’, it was not easy. It was awkward to say ‘I thank you!’, so I ended up expressing it as ‘I thank you!’, although I am not sure if it is the correct Korean expression‎. There was a result of this challenge, and it was that I was able to read three or four related books during the training period, which was a lot of challenges. However, while reading these books, I realized that I was currently receiving education about Korean and that writing so that many people could read it would help me convey my meaning much more, and this challenged me about writing. So I decided to write throughout the training period and made a promise to myself. When I came back, I put those thoughts into practice and immediately started writing. After returning to the country, I wrote every day until late at night whenever I had time. Once I decided to write, I first collected materials about the direction I wanted to write in and read them again. Then, I planned the overall content and began organizing the content into writing every day until dawn whenever I had time. Although I was not an expert in writing, I had a lot of fun writing here.

However, what was more important was the content and direction of the writing. While receiving Korean language training, I learned from many Korean language experts about the sentiment of Koreans who use the words Hangul and Korean interchangeably. And while receiving training on important aspects of Hangul and Korean, I was impressed by seeing local Korean teachers from each country who studied even harder than Koreans. This was because I always felt how difficult it was to learn or use a language that was not my native language while living in a foreign country, and so I thought learning another language was difficult. However, I learned that the average Korean language skills of local teachers were very high, and it was also an opportunity to feel even more how much interest foreigners have in Korean. In addition to this general atmosphere of the training, I decided to write after being challenged by the impression I received from a novel called ‘The Shack’ that I had read a while ago. After gathering materials and looking through them, I realized that Hangul and Korean! And the history of the creation of the world and faith, that is, God’s love, flowed in the same way. And this did not flow horizontally like water flowing on flat ground, but flowed down from God above to us humans, historically and emotionally, and it started from the Creator and will continue until the end of time. And in the end, this flowed down to me and also to all mankind.

However, I felt frustrated when I thought that there were many people who did not think about this fact. So I started to think about whether there was a way to flow to and influence not only the people I could meet in my reality, but also people I had never met or did not know.

And I realized that this could be possible by teaching Hangul and Korean to people from other cultures or countries, and furthermore, by writing so that people could read it. And I thought that if not only people I preach the gospel to in the field of life but also people I don’t know read my writing and come back to me even just one person, wouldn’t that be a living influence? So I made a firm resolution,

“For that, let’s work hard to teach Korean and Korean language,

and also write!”

. And thinking that this must have started a long time ago,

I came to think,

“I should check it from the beginning,

the point of its flow.”

To do that, I first calmly checked each and every item from the Book of Genesis in the Bible, which is the only book on this earth that records the creation of heaven and earth, and rediscovered things that I had not discovered before in the creation of heaven and earth, and how it has flowed down to us and to me until now, and how it will flow down to the final point where the world and time exist in the future? In order to understand and confirm‎ more systematically, I opened up Genesis again and checked, and realized how the Korean language flowed from the language given by God along with the creation of heaven and earth. While dreaming of how I could unfold the mission given by God through this Korean language, I boarded the plane back to ‘Molisha’.