French culture at the center

French culture at the center

Aug 01, 2005

The new French Cultural Center, located in the Woori Building in downtown Seoul next to Namdaemun, offers Korea a small slice of France with a wide range of services, a restaurant and a plan to bring in more French culture to Seoul in the coming year.

"The good points about our location are that it's very modern compared to the previous one. It has better equipment, a good location but a little far from the university," said the Director of the French Cultural Center, Jean-Luc Maslin. (The old center was next to Gyeongbok Palace and is now the Polish Embassy).

"The weakest point obliges us to develop partnerships and to develop activities outside the center because we do not have a real cinema house in here and we don't have a real exhibition hall so we're obliged to do partnerships with a lot of Korean institutions which is quite nice," Maslin said during an interview with The Korea Herald.

The center is currently working to relaunch a new marketing program this fall to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Franco-Korean relations. Because of the anniversary both countries plan on hosting many cross-cultural programs to celebrate this milestone.

"We will have a new logo, new communication, new marketing, and we will set up a new cinema-tech with a popular movie theater (the name is not yet known because of ongoing contract negotiations). Each week we will present a French film.

"We wish to be better known in Korea and offer to students the possibility of knowing more about France and French cultural events in Seoul and Korea. We plan on getting all the scattered information about French cultural events and gather them under one umbrella," said Maslin.

For lovers of French media, the center offers an extensive media-tech (media library) with countless French books, DVDs, audio cassettes, and CDs. There are also many Korean books translated into French and vice-versa.

"For France, Korea is now one of the most important countries to translate books." said Maslin. "Last year more than 600 books from France were translated into Korean and more and more Korean books especially novels are being translated into French."

Future members can chose between different packages that range in price and service. A year's membership for adults interested in only renting books is 20,000 won (students 28 years and younger pay 15,000 won). For those wanting the complete package which also includes CD-ROMs and VHS the price is 70,000 won per year (40,000 won for students). Availability of the books are also available online.

"We also have a small cinema house in which each week we present a French film and once a month we invite a great Korean director - or if we have a chance a director from another country - to present one of his films and talk about his work."

Another activity at the center is promoting higher education in France. "More and more French courses are taught in English (in universities in France) so it's better for Korean students who speak both Korean and English. We have installed an office here for the promotion of higher education in France.

"For this we launched a new scholarship of excellence targeting master levels in France opened to any excellent students in Korea in the field of science, engineering sciences, political science, management, and commerce. We launched it this year for the first time with limited publicity to 10 (Korean) universities and surprisingly we got more than 120 applications for eight high level scholarships. All students will receive full scholarships, airfare and 1,700 euros (just over 2.1 million won) per month," Maslin said.

The center also offers a French restaurant with a French chef. It's open for weekday lunches and on Tuesdays and Thursdays is open until 9 p.m. "French food, French wine, French cheese and bread and a French chef; it's not high cuisine but its good cuisine."

The center also offers French lessons to students between the ages of kindergarten to 18. "We welcome French and non Korean students and we wish to welcome Korean students but due to the law until now it's impossible. We do have Korean students who's family's spent more than five years in France. We are discussing with the government so more and more can come."

For more information about the center's services call (02) 317-8502. A proper Web page will be available when the center launches its new services in the fall.