TOPIK, or Test of Proficiency in Korean is a Korean language

Korean language

Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

 test offered twice annually to foreigners in Korea and people studying Korean in other countries. TOPIK is administered by the Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation (Hangul: 한국교육과정평가원 Hanja: 韓國敎育課程評價院).

History

The test was first administered in 1997 and taken by 2274 people. Initially the test was held only once a year. In 2009, 180,000 people took the test. The Korean government introduced a law in 2007 that required Chinese workers of Korean descent who have no relatives in Korea to take the test so they could be entered in a lottery for visas

Visa (document)

A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...

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Format

The test is divided into four parts: vocabulary & grammar, writing, listening, and reading. There is currently no oral section. Two versions of the test are offered: standard (S)-TOPIK and the business (B)-TOPIK. There are three different levels of S-TOPIK: beginner (초급), intermediate (중급), and advanced (고급). Depending on the average score and minimum marks in each section it is possible to obtain grades 1-2 in beginner, 3-4 in intermediate and 5-6 in advanced S-TOPIK. In B-TOPIK the scores in each section (out of 100) are added together to give a score out of 400.

Testing locations

In addition to Korea, TOPIK is available in the following countries: Japan, Taiwan, China, Mongolia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Paraguay, Argentina, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, Turkey, Czech Republic, Egypt, Belarus, Russia, Brazil and Cambodia.

External links

• (Korean with English page) TOPIK homepage KICE homepage