By IANS,
New Delhi : Indians and South Koreans can now learn each other’s languages more easily with Indian Tourism Minister Ambika Soni releasing the first Korean-Hindi dictionary – a collaborative effort between the two countries.
“The work on this dictionary started in 1994 and contains more than 50,000 main entries including 20,000 sub-entries with over 700 pages,” an official statement said here Tuesday.
Funded by the South Korean government and India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the dictionary was released by Soni during her recent visit to Seoul.
The work was undertaken by the faculty and students of the department of hindi at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) and was coordinated by Kim Woo Jo, a professor there.
On the occasion of the release, college student Lee Dong-won was awarded a Seoul-New Delhi return by Air India for her valuable contribution in the compilation of the dictionary.
Soni went to Seoul after chairing a meeting of the executive council of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), which compiles world tourism rankings. The two-day meet, which ended last Friday, was held in Jeju Island in South Korea.
At the meeting, Soni stressed on the need to address the severe manpower shortage in the hospitality sector and urged the UN body to take a lead in organising adequate training programmes for capacity building in member states wherever possible.
The UN body also announced that it would contribute $500,000 from its budget towards sustainable tourism and eliminating poverty.
The money will be used for the Sustainable Tourism for Eliminating Poverty (STEP) Programme, which is dedicated to promote poverty elimination through sustainable tourism development programmes and projects.
On the occasion, Tourism Secretary Shilabhadra Bannerjee also launched an updated Korean website of Incredible India.
The website is tourist friendly and will serve the purpose of dissemination of tourist information in the Korean language, he said.
Addressing representatives of the South Korean tourism and travel Industry, Bannerjee presented the latest initiatives undertaken by India in the tourism sector.
The tourist arrivals from South Korea to India have increased by more than 56 percent during the last three years. Last year, the number of visas issued from South Korea were 70,000 and this year the target set is 100,000.