The Yonsei Language Institute

The most unique aspect of YLI is that its target population comprises of non-English speaking Korean immigrants as well as Korean immigrants with limited English proficiency. Their lack of functional fluency in English severely limits their career advancement within the mainstream American society. They are doubly handicapped by the fact that their lack of fluency in English prevents them from pursuing education at existing institutions of higher education. YLI fills this vacuum by offering educational programs in their mother tongue--Korean during their first few years in America.

Another unique aspect of YLI is that it can serve as a research and coordinating center for fostering cross-cultural relationships and provide greater understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity among the people in its service area. These activities will be vigorously pursued in the belief that languages are the essential media for enhancing cross-cultural understanding. YLI also will endeavor to preserve the heritage of the Korean immigrants, second generation and native-born Americans of Korean heritage.

Three of the better known traditional values are:
(a) sanctities of family
(b) diligence
(c) stress on education as the best means to achieve upward mobility.

Finally, YLI is funded and supported by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, a New York based consortium of American missionary organizations which has been supporting Christian institutions of higher education in Asia for many years. One of the reasons for establishing a language training center in the United States that also combine teaching of culture, literature and history of Korea is that those who wish to serve as missionaries in Korea can acquire functional fluency as well as functional knowledge of Korean culture in the United States instead of traveling to Korea and enroll in the Yonsei Korean Language Institute in Seoul, Korea.

The Institute is located at 3450 Wilshire Blvd. Ste.600 Los Angeles, California.