(Photo: King Sejong Institute)

A government-run Korean language learning institute with branches in many countries is to launch new learning programmes using clips from popular TV shows from public broadcaster KBS.

The King Sejong Institute said it would unveil new Korean learning programmes using popular dramas including the KBS’s ‘Are You Human?’ (2018), ‘Dr Prisoner’ (2019) and ‘Meow, The Secret Boy’ (2020), The Korea Times reports.

It said the five-minute clips would help its students learn daily Korean expressions, grammar and culture.

The institute had branches in 82 countries in 2021 and the government hopes to boost that number to 270 branches by the end of 2022.

The number of students enrolled in its online courses exceeded 56,000 last year and the number of subscribers grew to over 400,000. The number of mobile app downloads in 2021 reached 1.2 million.

The newspaper says the boom in learning the Korean language is being fuelled by the rising global popularity of Korean content – K-pop, K-dramas and films.

Korean is the 14th most widely used language in the world and is the second-fastest growing language in the world after Hindi, according to language learning app Duolingo.