South Korea Bringing Education Within Reach Through E-Learning Platforms

PETALING JAYA (Selangor, Malaysia), May 27 (Bernama) -- South Korea has pledged to bring education opportunities within reach to people in the ASEAN region through e-learning platforms, said its Deputy Prime Minister, Lee Joonsik. Lee, who is also South Korea's Education Minister said the internet had brought them alongside other nations in ASEAN and the other plus three countries (Japan, South Korea and China). "All are getting smaller through the internet, cyber learning systems development are greatly enhanced as well," he told reporters on the sidelines of The Third ASEAN+3 (APT) Education Ministers Meeting (EMM) here, Thursday. While e-learning courses in South Korea are still in its early stage, Lee was confident that it will be extended, in addition to promoting cyber networking and student exchange with APT countries, especially China and Japan. "South Korea has quite a number of cyber universities which are also open to ASEAN communities like Malaysia," he added. The meeting was held in conjunction with the 9th ASEAN Education Ministers Meeting (ASED) and Third East Asia Summit (EAS) Education Ministers Meeting convened here earlier. The EAS comprises the ASEAN member countries in addition to Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Lee said that South Korea was also committed with promoting the continuous exchange of students and faculty members, especially in higher education. He revealed that there were 800 South Korean students in Malaysia and 991 Malaysian students in South Korea as of last year. Besides planning to expand the number of student exchanges alongside other participating countries, Lee said the South Korean government has invited students to apply to their Global Korea Scholarship which among others offers Science and Engineering courses to ASEAN university students. "The Global Korea Scholarship has benefited 1,325 students from various nations to date," he added. Meanwhile, Myanmar Education Minister, Prof Dr Myo Thein Gyi has expressed interest in working with Malaysia to strengthen its Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in their country. "We need to train more TVET trainers and support more facilities for this sector in order to meet our local needs in terms of small and medium enterprise, we are very much interested to work closely with Malaysia. Myo said Myanmar was currently collaborating closely with several countries in the APT including Indonesia, China and Korea in the TVET sector. --BERNAMA