Astrakhan State University Enhances Cooperation with South Korea

Yesterday, the university welcomed representatives of the Cultural Centre of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea — Assistant to the Director Park Miyoung and Head of Department (senior specialist) Choi Jong Ho.

During the visit, the guests where shown the ASU Centre of Korean Language & Culture “King Sejong Institute” and the university in general.

The main goal of the Korean delegation’s visit to ASU is to develop further cooperation for promotion of the Korean culture and language in Astrakhan and Russia. Next year will see the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between South Korea and Russia with plenty of different events, most of which will be organized primarily in Moscow and St. Petersburg. However, as the Cultural Centre representatives say, Astrakhan has excellent potential for receiving Korean performers, organizing movie screening, etc.

Elina Polyanskaya, the First Vice-Rector — Vice-Rector for Strategic Development, bore out the guests’ words:

“Citizens of our region are very interested in the Korean language and culture: each year, from 50 to 100 people do language courses and want to learn more about traditions and customs of the country. This has been made possible thanks in large part to the ASU Centre of Korean Language & Culture, and the efficiency of its work deserves the top assessment from the founders”.

Along with the cultural issues, the parties also discussed other areas: prospects of networking, academic exchange, grant programmes and so on. The guests admitted that the interuniversity cooperation between Russia and South Korea is mainly developing at the level of leading universities of the Russian capital, while there is little information on achievements of regional universities. Meanwhile, there are a lot of interesting projects that can be jointly implemented.