KOICA Organizes Three-Day Cultural Event in Luxor

The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), South Korea’s official development aid agency, has organized a three-day event “Korea-Egypt, Let’s go Together” (Yalla Maabaad) as a part of volunteers’ cooperative activity in Luxor from April 22 to 24.

The event was held in cooperation with The High Institute for Tourism and Hotels Luxor (EGOTH ), the Ministry of Defense Language Institute (MODLI), and Aswan University.

It was led by three Korean language volunteers in KOICA that volunteer in EGOTH, MODLI, and Aswan University.

According to a statement recently issued by the South Korean Embassy in Cairo, the event aimed at providing 30 Egyptian students learning the Korean language in those schools a chance to practice Korean tour guiding and exchanging knowledge and experiences among themselves through various activities and exercises.

Additionally, the event offers prospects for students, particularly those who are eager to begin a career in the tourism sector.

Through this program, KOICA helped Students from Cairo and Aswa, who traveled and gathered in Luxor for three days, make presentations and peer reviews to examine their competence in Korean language skills with the supervision of a professional tour guide that speaks Korean language roaming around Luxor's tourist attractions including Luxor temple, Karnak temple, and Hatshepsut temple.

Talking about the three-day journey, Ms. Asma, a fourth-year student from the Korean language department at Al-Alsun Aswan University, expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to take part in the event because she had huge challenges in taking Korean classes during the COVID-19 outbreak since her first year.

She continued that it was a great opportunity to improve her Korean language skills and consider the tour guide as one of her future career paths after graduation.

Meanwhile, Ms. Moung-jin Hong, a KOICA volunteer who works at Aswan University and who is in charge of event planning and management of this program mentioned that the majority of Egyptian students were first-timers in Luxor, thus they researched historical landmarks beforehand and toured the sites. Some students were marveled at and deeply moved by ancient Egyptian ruins, she noted.

In the same connection, she said that while listening to the professional tour guide’s explanations and career path lectures, she could interact with students asking many questions about their tourism guide jobs, and she believed this event would have been useful to students.

In turn, the country director of the KOICA Egypt Office, Mrs. Kim Jinyoung said that it is an opportunity to provide domestic students who have relatively limited access to Korean language education with more opportunities to learn the Korean language.