The Diplomat
The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, left yesterday for Seoul to visit, this coming Saturday, the building that will house the future headquarters of this institution in the South Korean capital, whose inauguration is scheduled for 2023.
Together with the Spanish Ambassador to South Korea, Juan Ignacio Morro Villacián, García Montero will visit the facilities of the future Cervantes of Seoul. The new headquarters will replace the Aula Cervantes, located since 2011 at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, and will meet the growing demand for Spanish language learning in South Korea, the country with the most DELE exam candidates per capita in Asia.
According to Cervantes, García Montero also plans to participate in the Hispanists in Korea congress and in a literary meeting with Korean poets, as well as to sign a collaboration agreement with the educational services company Daekyo. Hispanism in South Korea has a tradition of more than 70 years, since the study of Spanish began in the first foreign language courses. The Korean Association of Hispanists, founded in 1981, today has more than 250 members and publishes the journal Estudios Hispánicos (Hispanic Studies), a linguistic institution in Asia.
