King Sejong Institute Foundation is offering 15 online courses on Korean culture for foreigners as untact (contactless) learning is gaining ground amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The institute will offer online courses on five themes for the first session starting Monday -- culinary, handicrafts, paintings, dwellings and traditional wedding -- in Korean, English, Chinese, Russian and Vietnamese via its website -- www.iksi.or.kr

The second session of the online classes will kick off in October with 10 themes that include K-pop, samulnori (Korean traditional percussion quartet), hanbok (Korean traditional attire), K-beauty and Hangeul (Korean alphabet), talchum (Korean masked dance) and Korean literature.

Learning kits will be distributed through the Sejong Institute for students to experience drawing minhwa (Korea’s folk paintings), making hanji (Korean traditional mulberry paper) plates and bokjumeoni, a small pouch.

KSIF was founded in 2012 to disseminate Korean culture and Korean language around the world to keep up with the rising demand of learning the local culture due to the expansion of Hallyu. There are 180 King Sejong Institutes in 60 countries as of June 2019, according to KSIF.

By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)