HUFS ranked first in the comprehensive evaluation of the Critical Foreign Language Education Promotion in 2023, made by the Ministry of Education, for two consecutive years, school authorities announced on Jan. 24.

      Critical foreign languages are those designated by a presidential decree to be strategically necessary for national development, with a total of 53 languages currently designated. HUFS has carried out projects since 2018, when it was designated as a specialized educational institution of the Critical Foreign Languages Education Promotion following the enactment of the Act on the Promotion of Education of Critical Foreign Languages, targeting 16 critical foreign languages. The 16 languages are: Dutch, Hindi, Hungarian, Iranian, Italian, Kazakh, Laotian, Malay-Indonesian, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Uzbek.

      In addition, the National Institute of International Education under the Ministry of Education has designated HUFS as an educational institution of five more languages — Azerbaijani, Croatian, Czech, Greek, and Ukrainian — for the year of 2024, bringing the total number of languages that the university’s Critical Foreign Language Education Promotion Institute offers to 21. The institute aims to foster specialists in critical foreign languages and also provides courses for citizens to learn critical foreign languages.

     Jeong Myung-seo, a junior studying Persian and Iranian, who participated in the Persian translation talent training program, said, “In the program, we translated Korean songs by choosing appropriate vocabulary that would convey the meaning correctly and put it into sentences. It was a meaningful experience to understand and explore Persian culture. My major language is only offered at HUFS, so it’s hard to learn it elsewhere.” It is a great strength of HUFS to offer these many language programs since there is not much opportunity for students to learn critical foreign languages elsewhere.