Southeast Asian universities will introduce online real-time lectures on Korea’s popular culture, automobile industry and other hallyu content, addressing the lack of professors despite growing global interest, according to the Korea Foundation on Wednesday.

In celebration of its 20th year anniversary, the foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Indonesia, University of Malaya and six other universities from Thailand, Laos, Australia, Philippines and Cambodia to offer a Global e-School program.

Top professors from seven distinguished Korean universities, including Seoul National University and Ehwa Womans University, are contributing to the lectures, which focus on Korean politics, economics, enterprises and hallyu, or the Korean Wave, rather than the Korean language. All lectures will be in real-time to an audience of students from both Korea and Southeast Asia.

Each Southeast Asian university will offer two to four courses, primarily taught in English, although upper division courses may be offered in Korean. Courses such as “Hallyu and Asian pop culture” and “Globalization and Korean wealth,” may start as early as this March.

“Up until now, there was a need to promote Korean Studies, but in reality there had been difficulties due to the lack of domestic and foreign professors on the matter,” said Korea Foundation president Kim Byung-kook.

“We believe that the real-time Internet lectures will bring about breakthroughs.”

According to Kim, the foundation is planning to diversify the content of Korean studies, from a foundation primarily for a U.S. and Japanese audience to also include Southeast Asians as well.

The Korea Foundation is a government organization that promotes the country to the international community and attempts to establish relationships within a globalized setting.

By Robert Lee (rjmlee@heraldcorp.com)