On October 14, 11th Province-wide foreigners’ Korean speaking contests was held at Seminar Room in College of Humanities second building. This contest is a commemoration festival of the 571st anniversary of the Hangeul Proclamation Day. Jeju-NU noticed this Province-wide foreigners’ Korean speaking contest from September. ‘Hangeul, a happy meeting,’ is the main theme of this 11th Korean speech contest.
This event was for the foreigners in Jeju Special Self-Governing Province. They must make a three minutes speech in Korean with undecided topics. The main event of the contest was started 2 p.m. in October 14. In the Seminar Room, there were lots of people who are one of the family, friends of the participants. The 32 contestants from eight different countries competed for their Korean language skills at the contests, and 14 of them won Presidential Awards and Prize stipends.
The Grand Prize was prepared for the eventual winner. Six of participants of the General Department competed for each of gold, silver and bronze medal. Also, other 26 of the Student Department competed for one gold, three silver and three bronze prizes. There was Popularity Award for the best participant who got the crowds to respond in this contest. The Grand Prize winner is Russia-native Kristina, who spoke about her life in Korea ‘Reasons for Learning Korean’ at the contest. In addition, Chinese native Yi Lan won a gold medal with her presentation ‘My Life in Korea’, the student division winner, Kali Un, from Mongolia presented the talk entitled ‘Cultures of Different Countries.’
Jeju-NU Province-wide foreigners’ Korean speaking contest is one of the most influential Jeju-NU events to foreigners since 2007. This acts as the stage to make friendships among foreigners themselves. “I saw their speech is a little bit unskilled but the passions of using Korean. In my viewpoint, it was a very novel thing as compared with other events for foreigners in Jeju. This makes people not only competition, but also making new friends,” said Kang Hye-Won(Mathematics, 1).