New home for Korean school
It is moving to a Bukit Timah campus five times the size of its current Paya Lebar space
By Cai Haoxiang
The Singapore Korean School's current campus is noisy due to the nearby Paya Lebar Air Base. -- ST PHOTO: RAJ NADARAJAN
THE Singapore Korean School is moving to a new campus in Bukit Timah that will be five times the size of its current premises in Paya Lebar.
It will sit on 11,000 sq m of land in Bukit Tinggi that the school bought for $20 million in January last year, a plot in the vicinity of the German and Swiss schools.
Its new location is also convenient as many South Koreans live in the Bukit Timah area, South Korean Ambassador Kim Joong Keun told The Straits Times.
To open in September, the new school will be a far cry from the current one off Guillemard Road, where 100 or so pupils attend classes in a relatively rundown building amid the distracting noise from the nearby Paya Lebar Air Base.
The new campus will have 39 classrooms, a gymnasium and two basketball courts, said Dr Hyejin Kim, the school's director of development planning.
While the current school has only primary classes, there will be kindergarten and secondary classes at the new school, she said.
The kindergarten will be big enough for 80 to 100 children, while the primary school will triple its capacity to 300. The secondary school will start next year, and eventually offer classes up to the O levels.
By then, the school foresees its student population growing to 500 students.
The expanded facilities will also let the school offer more Korean language classes for the rising number of Singaporeans keen on learning it.
Enrolment in its language classes has swelled from 50 in 2007 to 175 today. Last September, it introduced a class for teenagers.
The move by the Singapore Korean School to its new home has been in the making since 2007. The $20 million purchase of the Bukit Tinggi land, which is currently occupied by the Canadian International School, was finalised in January last year.
The South Korean government contributed $7 million to the purchase, with another $12 million coming from the sale of the former Guillemard site.
Ambassador Kim hopes to raise a further $3 million from the South Korean community here in an ongoing fund-raising drive.
The extra $2 million will be used to renovate the school, buy new computers, hire teachers and a chief executive, and set up a scholarship fund, said Mr Kim.
The South Korean community has grown from 7,000 in 1993 to 16,000 today. Most are university graduates, employed by about 200 companies in industries such as oil, banking and maritime, as well as by electronics and telecommunications giants Samsung and LG.
The school's long-term goal is to become an international school to compete with others here like the Singapore American School and the United World College of South East Asia, said Mr Kim.
Mr Cho Jae Kyung, 47, a manager in the oil and petrochemical industry, has a 10-year-old son studying at the Singapore Korean School.
The South Korean community is proud of the move, he said, adding: 'Bukit Timah has a reputation for being an educational hub. Kids will feel proud to study in such a good environment.'
haoxiang@sph.com.sg
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