Hoping to Revitalize a Dying Language, Koreans Turn to Hawaiʻi

"In 2014, a producer and camera crew followed a team of professors on a journey across the Pacific to visit Pūnana Leo o Hilo,

a Hawaiian language immersion school located in Hilo on the island of Hawaiʻi.

The professors came from a volcanic island called Jeju off the southern coast of South Korea that is like Hawaiʻi in many ways: balmy air,

sandy beaches, and majestic waterfalls. Making Jeju even more similar is a local dialect that is so different from standard Korean

that it is considered an indigenous language. The team of Koreans was on an important mission. The Korea Broadcasting System (KBS)

hoped to produce a feature segment that would draw public attention to Jejueo, the island’s critically endangered language."

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