Sejong Institute withdrawal to leave Cia-Cia out in cold

A Korean teaching institute in Indonesia that taught the Korean alphabet or Hangeul to a small tribe using an aboriginal language has shut down.

The King Sejong Institute said Monday that it withdrew from Bau-Bau, a city located on the island of Buton, after a year-long operation.

The decision raises concerns that the Cia-Cia, an Indonesian ethnic minority that adopted the Korean alphabet to transcribe its native language, may suffer from the lack of a proper writing system.

The Cia-Cia chose to use Hangeul as its official writing system in 2009 to preserve its spoken language. It was the first case of Hangeul being used by an ethnic group abroad. And the King Sejong Institute under the International Korean Language Foundation set up an office to teach the Korean alphabet to the 60,000 tribal population that lives in Bau-Bau.

The institute dispatched a Korean teacher from Kyungpook National University under a one-year agreement with the foundation to educate the Cia-Cia.

The effort faced extreme difficulties stemming from a lack of financial support from both the Korean and Indonesian governments as well as cultural differences between the two countries, according to a university official.

“The office opened in September 2011 but we were not able to teach students until Jan. 30 this year because of financial problems,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous.

The King Sejong Institute has a total of 90 branch offices across the world. And while a number of countries, including the United States and China, offer instructors with Korean-language teaching certificates in, it was not the case in Indonesia, according to the official.

“There was only one instructor from Kyungpook University who had to manage all the work with a little help from an Indonesian assistant from a local university,” he said.

“What made the education process more difficult was cultural differences between the teacher and the students, on which I will not go into details because I don’t want to offend the Cia-Cia tribe.”

Neither the instructor, surnamed Jeong, nor officials at the foundation dealing with the shutdown of the office could be reached for comment.

The group of scholars at the Hunminjeongeum Society, an organization that studies Hangeul, finished writing a new textbook edition for intermediate-level students learning Korean.

“We’re afraid our efforts to teach our language around the world will become useless in Indonesia,” a scholar said. The organization has provided the textbooks since the Bau-Bau office opened.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has taken part in global Korean-language education. It said it is seeking other universities in the country to help King Sejong Institute reopen its office in Indonesia. <The Korea Times/Yi Whan-woo>

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