Spoken by more than 75 million people on the Korean peninsula and around the world, Korean is an increasingly important Critical Language due to South Korea's growing economic position in Asia and the highly impactful geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula. The Korean language also reaches global audiences through widespread interest in popular Korean film, television, and music. Korean classes prepare students to participate in international experiences such as MIT-Korea.<br><br>The Korean Studies curriculum promotes critical thinking skills, communicative and interpersonal abilities, and intercultural competence, as well as linguistic proficiency itself, through various resources. Korean Studies holds these five competences as vital skills for language learners and for any student to become an intellectual global citizen. The Korean language curriculum is carefully designed to integrate language and culture at all levels by adopting innovative pedagogical methods. Its special focus on functional proficiency, through interactions with various sources of Korean language media and native speaker usage, allows students to express themselves in a culturally natural manner. All instructional materials and assessments are developed based on the Communicative Language Teaching approach.