S.Korean Cultural Center Finalizes 2021 K-POP Academy

The Korean Cultural Center in Egypt successfully finalized the 2021 K-POP Academy event, which was held at The Greek Campus.

Starting with the opening ceremony on September 16th, the 2021 K-POP Academy continued for two weeks at the Academy of Arts in Egypt from September 26th until October 7th, about 50 dance students were pided into four classes, practicing the dances of BTS - Dynamite, Twice - LIKEY, 4 minute - Crazy, and Seventeen - Left & Right.

Taking into consideration the changes that occurred in the cultural and artistic environment due to Corona, the meaningful point this year is that rather than inviting instructors from Korea, the winners of the K-POP World Festival held at the Cultural Center in July worked as dance mentors to build a self-sustaining K-POP community in the host country.

To prove this, Mariam Tamer (19 years old, living in Zagazig City), who participated in the event, showed her passion for two weeks, as she continuously commuted a 10-hour trip from Zagazig City to Cairo solely to participate in the K-POP academy.

Mariam Tamer said, "I am so grateful to the Cultural Center for providing me with such an opportunity to learn K-POP dance, and it takes this 10 hour- trip to repay my gratitude, that’s why I made sure to participate every day." It's a very difficult schedule just to commute from there to here, but it's a worthy valuable experience," she said.

"Through this academy, all dancers who learned with the mentors became like a family.

"I'm really grateful for all the hard work of the teachers, and I'm also very grateful to the Korean Cultural Center for providing this opportunity and generously supporting me to focus only on dance during the academy," she continued.

Oh Sungho, director of the Korean Cultural Center, said, “It was good to have an opportunity to share an understanding of Korean culture under the theme of K-POP. I hope this opportunity will revitalize and increase communities related to Korean culture.” He declared.

He added, "The Korean Cultural Center will make sure to provide many opportunities through events and classes so that more and more communities related to Korean culture can be established in the future."

"As K-POP is already loved by Egypt, it is very meaningful to unite sporadic activities to build a self-sustaining K-POP community and actively support it." He also said he hopes to provide more expatriates with experience in cultural exchange in the future, deepening their mutual understanding between Korea and Egypt," he noted.