Korean Cultural Center Wraps First Phase of 3-Year UAE Program

The Korean Cultural Center UAE, working with the National Gugak Center, has completed the first stage of a three-year institutional commitment to Korean traditional music education in the Emirates, a program whose structure and long-term obligations matter as much as its recent showcase.

The 2026 Overseas Korean Traditional Music School ran from Oct. 5 to Thursday at Arirang Hall inside the cultural center in Abu Dhabi. Under the arrangement, the center delivered the program while the National Gugak Center supplied instructional expertise, most visibly through Kwon Oh-sung, an instructor affiliated with the institution and a certified practitioner of Namsadang Nori, a traditional Korean performing art formally designated as intangible cultural heritage. Kwon led practical lessons for two classes over the course of the program.

Forty residents of the United Arab Emirates took part, ranging from a 9-year-old child to adults in their 40s. Instruction followed a defined curriculum: participants studied the janggu drum’s basic structure, playing posture and stick techniques, then moved on to traditional rhythms and ensemble coordination. The program closed with a showcase on Thursday in which participants demonstrated the skills they had acquired, followed by a ceremony awarding certificates to those who completed the course.

Organizers framed the mixed ages and backgrounds of the participants as evidence that traditional Korean music can connect generations through shared practice and performance. For many in the cohort, the showcase marked their first opportunity to move from encountering gugak, or Korean traditional music, as an audience member to performing it themselves.

Meanwhile, the center opened a separate one-day gugak class to the general public, extending access to the art form beyond those formally enrolled in the school.

What changed with the certificates is what comes next. The program is the opening phase of a three-year educational plan designed to help participants establish their own gugak clubs and informal groups, giving them a structure through which to continue learning and performing once formal instruction ends. The Korean Cultural Center UAE has said it will keep offering progressive training and will support participants as they build independent music groups and sustain interest in Korean traditional music in the Emirates.

That commitment places the burden of continuity on the institution itself rather than on individual enthusiasm alone. The center is effectively accountable for a multi-year pipeline: recruiting and training each cohort, backing participants as they organize their own ensembles, and maintaining momentum for the art form in a country where it has no indigenous base. Whether the first cohort’s forty graduates translate into self-sustaining clubs will be the measure by which the program’s stated goals are judged.

For now, the institution has met its immediate obligations. Classes were delivered as scheduled, a certified heritage practitioner provided the instruction, participants completed the curriculum and received formal recognition, and the public was given a point of entry through the one-day class. The showcase in Abu Dhabi, with drummers of widely different ages playing rhythms they had learned weeks earlier, served as the visible proof of the program’s first term.

The next test belongs to the center’s planners. Over the remaining two years, they must convert a successful introductory course into durable local infrastructure, and their stated intention to continue progressive training will be watched by the participants now holding certificates and looking for somewhere to play.

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.