By Shim Jae-yun, Park Jin-hai
The U.S. Navy is not immune to the global hallyu (Korean wave) phenomenon.
Last year, U.S. Navy cadets posted a YouTube video of “Naval Academy Gangnam Style,” a parody of Psy’ s video hit, where they danced in uniform to the Korean singer’s song.
Throughout April of this year, various programs on Korean culture and language were held on the campus of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis in MD.
On April 12, some 300 cadets took part in an event that featured Korean foods, including bulgogi (grilled marinated beef), gimchi (spicy fermented cabbage) and jeon (Korean pancake).
Five days later, a Korean language open-class was offered on campus, and a “Korean Movie Night” took place on April 23.
“The US Naval Academy has Chinese, Japanese and French classes on their curriculum, but no Korean class so far,” said Kim Woo-sang, president of the Korea Foundation (KF).
The foundation’s Washington office organized the event in a bid to help future naval officers better understand Korea, and plans to hold more such in coming years.
“At first we plan to create enough demand for such classes, and then have them included on the regular curriculum,” Kim said. He said the naval cadets have shown a growing interest in Korea and its culture.
KF, a nonprofit organization with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is dedicated to promoting the development of Korea-related education at prestigious universities worldwide, through the provision of support for the creation of Korean Studies professorships and the dispatch of visiting professors.
With the goal of addressing fast-growing demand at overseas universities to expand the Korea-related lecture courses, the organization launched a new “KF Global e-School” initiative in 2011, which combines real-time online video lectures of Korea Studies courses together with offline programs, such as academic workshops and seminars.
Kim said the KF will work closely together with related bodies to boost the e-School project in the four to five years to come in many countries, to promote hallyu there.
Last year, a total of 2,600 people attended lectures through 114 courses at 53 universities in 23 countries.