On 30 April 2021, Her Excellency Miss Rommanee Kananurak, Ambassador of Thailand to the Republic of Korea and 12 Ambassadors and representatives of the embassies in the Republic of Korea attended the 1^st Critical Foreign Language Ambassador Forum at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), to promote learning of foreign languages to Koreans and encourage cultural exchanges in the Republic of Korea.

In 2016, the Act on the Promotion of Education of Critical Foreign Languages of the government of the Republic of Korea specified 53 foreign languages, including Thai Language as critical foreign Languages to strengthen its relationships with other countries and to enhance national competitiveness by encouraging Koreans to study the said critical languages and developing their proficiency in foreign languages. Currently, HUFS is providing 11 language courses which are comprised of Mongolian, Swahili, Uzbek, Persian, Indonesian, Turkish, Thai, Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian and Hindi. In this connection, HUFS invited related Ambassadors and representatives of the Embassies to give a briefing on the importance of their country’s language.

On this occasion, the Ambassador of Thailand emphasized the close relatioship between Thailand and the Republic of Korea which has been elevated to a strategic partnership and further bolstered by the Republic of Korea’s New Southern Policy, aiming to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with all 10 ASEAN member countries and India. Consequently, the exchanges of high level visits between Thailand and the Republic of Korea in 2019 resulted in the signing of important bilateral MOUs in various fields including Korea Language Studies. The Ambassador reiterated that close economic ties and potential high number of exchange of visits between the people of the two countries suggest that there are a lot of opportunities to further enhance mutual cooperation, which will lead to more demand for Thai experts from both public and private sectors in the Republic of Korea.

Thai language department at HUFS was established in 1966 and is one of the longest established Thai Language Department among universities outside Thailand. The department has continued to offer courses both in Thai language and Thai studies in such areas as history, literature, art and culture. HUFS also signed MOUs with 12 Thai Universities to organise exchange programs. The Embassy has also provided funding support for HUFS to organise activities to promote the study and use of Thai Language, such as Thai speech and essay competition and/or special seminars to encourage the studies of Thai language and culture.