 |
| Woongjin Foundation Chairman Shin Hyon-ung, center, poses with radio hosts of a multicultural family music broadcasting station in celebration of its ninth anniversary at its studio in Yeomni-dong, northwestern Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Woongjin Foundation |
By You Soo-sun
A radio station airing music programs for foreign residents in Korea celebrated its ninth anniversary, Tuesday. Since the Multicultural Family Music Broadcasting station was started in 2009, it has offered various programs in eight different languages to meet the needs of the growing number of foreign residents here.
The station was founded by Woongjin Group with the aim of helping foreign residents adjust and actively get involved in Korean society. The programs are delivered by native speakers of Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Thai, Japanese, Mongolian, Arabic and Russian. In addition to introducing Korean music and traditional music from their respective countries, the hosts also offer news and daily living tips.
The program serves as a gateway for renowned figures with different ethnic or cultural backgrounds, who often appear on the station to connect and communicate with their respective communities.
The programs also deliver news and information relevant for their community. For example, the Philippines program hosted by Gennie Kim provides news and information about the Philippines, Korea and multicultural families. It also targets Philippine women married to Korean men. A few examples of the broadcasts are about Korean language and cooking lessons and a variety of cultural segments.
According to the Woongjin Foundation, the service has been well received as exemplified by the number of tune-ins and downloads. More than 42 million listeners tune in on a yearly basis as of August, 2017. The number of downloads on smart phones and televisions is also high, sometimes as high as 120,000 in just two days. In 2015 and 2016, their music channels received the highest grade in an evaluation of the 31 channels being offered at KT skylife audio.
The most popular program has been "My mom's fairy tales" which first aired in December 2012. It presents 160 traditional fairy tales of different cultures in both Korean and the language of that country. It has a record number of downloads of 240,000.
Listeners may easily tune into the station any time of the day through various channels including cable TV, smart TV, smartphones, and online.
![[INTERVIEW] Choi Min-sik, Lee Dong-hwi on creating Korean-style noir with 'Big Bet'](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/8b795a8f6b42492db4e8fdc47e9abd8d.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
