Instituto Coreano Argentino is a Korean international school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It serves the preschool and elementary school levels. In 2010 it had 29 teachers, 184 day kindergarten students, and 155 day elementary students. Its weekend school that year had 207 students. There are two principals, one each appointed by the Ministry of Education of Argentina and the Ministry of Education of South Korea. Jaekeun Lee, author of the master's degree thesis "En búsqueda de una identidad coreana-argentina Exploración y aproximación panorámica de los elementos identitarios del coreano-argentino a través del análisis de La peonia y su sombra," described ICA as an example of maintaining "Koreanism", that is their Korean culture and language heritage, in Argentina.
History
It originated from the Korean School in Argentina, a weekend school established in 1976 and registered with the embassy of South Korea in 1977. The organization was founded in 1986. In this year a land was bought on which the ICA building would be built later. The day school was established with funding from the South Korean government in 1995 with a curricula established and oversighted by the South Korean Ministry of Education, and the Argentine Ministry of Education gave formal approval to the enrollment of students in 1998, being added a morning school with the Argentine curricula taught in Spanish.
Curriculum
The school has coursework in Korean, Spanish, and English, with subjects related to Korea in the first language. Lessons are taught from Monday to Friday in the morning and in the afternoon, where morning subjects are standard lessons according to the Argentine curricula such as mathematics, Spanish language, physical education, natural sciences or social sciences that are taught in Spanish language, while afternoon subjects include English and Korean languages, Korean history, Korean art and computing. All students are required to take taekwondo. ICA offers Korean language lessons in the "Saturdays' school", which Korean-Argentine and Argentine people can attend.
