One of my friends, who is a professor from the university, always complains that many of her students have low motivation in studying, and it’s difficult to get them to attend classes and hand in assessments.

However, one day I joined the Korean Day in the university and I was so impressed with how the students prepared all the booths by themselves to introduce Korean culture to others, such as Korean letters, traditional games and Korean dances. They even made Korean food by themselves to teach the participants more about Korean culture. The most surprising thing I witnessed was a group of students acting out a 30 mins Korean drama with very fluent Korean.

The university has had strong connections with university and institutions in the Republic of Korea since 1989. Korean language has been taught in South Thailand for more than 30 years. More students have chosen Korean language as their major in past few years because of the influences of K-pop. Many secondary students dance and sing K-pop during free time at school, so a native Korean teacher was so surprised that many of the Year 1 students could speak Korean already and knew more about K-pop culture than she did.

Usually, we plan what we want to do or want to teach the youth in the community, but we never listen to their needs and step into their world to find out what their interests are. When they find something that they really like and enjoy, they can spend most of their time learning and practise day by day. It reminds me that we need to listen to them before planning our actions.