By Kim Tae-gyu
South Korea plans to write agriculture textbooks in the Korean alphabet Hangeul, which will be used by Indonesia’s Cia-Cia tribe in Bau-Bau City situated in the southwestern Sulawesi Island.
The Cia-Cia tribe, one of the minority tribes in Indonesia, adopted Hangeul as the writing system for its tongue midway through 2009 and the Indonesian government has authorized the idea of late.
Korea’s Rural Development Administration (RDA) announced Monday that the textbooks would be completed by the end of this year so that they could be used at a newly built high school in Bau-Bau City next year.
“At the request of Bau-Bau City earlier this year, we started to check the viability of publishing agriculture textbooks using Hangeul and decided to do so,” RDA official Kim Hwang-yong said. “Toward that end, our researchers are now working in Indonesia. In time with Hangeul Day, which falls on Oct. 9, the books will be available to the public and all the projects will be concluded by the end of this year.”
To follow local regulations, the up-and-coming textbooks will be written in a total of three languages — English, Indonesian and the tongue of the Cia-Cia tribe written in Hangeul.
Beginning next year, the works will be highly likely to be adopted as official textbooks of a Bau-Bau City-based agricultural high school, which is now under construction. But there is a chance that the opening of the school might be delayed.
Kim said that the textbooks would be based on the traditional agricultural culture of the Cia-Cia tribe instead of featuring translated materials from developed countries in terms of farming.
Bau-Bau City has a population of more than 120,000 as of the end of 2008 and about 12,000 of them work on farms, making it possible for agriculture to employ around a quarter of the people aged 15 or older.