Kenyan, Chinese are first foreign students to graduate with top honours in South Korea

02 Mar 2018

Wang Ping from China and Mango Jane Angar from Kenya have made history by becoming the first foreign student to graduate with top honours in their respective South Korean universities.

Angar graduated with a 4.18 out of 4.3 GPA at the Department of Political Science and International Relations in Sookmyung Women’s University while Wang scored 4.26 out of 4.5 at the School of Media and Communication in Korea University, Korea Herald reported.

When asked how she scored a nearly perfect GPA, Angair said:

“At first I was really worried about my grades. It was difficult because I couldn’t speak Korean fluently, and I had to adjust to a different academic environment.”

To improve her Korean, Mango watched political-themed Korean dramas such as “The President” and “Big Man”, even writing a report titled “The Influence of Korean Dramas on Foreign Students” for her Writing and Reading class.

International students get top honors at Korea, Sookmyung universities https://t.co/gfvdJfuv8n

— KingSejong (@KingSejong) March 2, 2018

By asking questions and approaching her professors, she managed to overcome this and learned how to digest the information and make it her own, Angar said in her university’s newsletter.

Wang, a fan of Korean dramas, started off with language courses at Dongguk University in 2012 and later enrolled in Korea University two years later.

She credits her part-time work outside, working in cafes and as a tourism host on TV, in helping her overcome her language barrier. She also recorded lecturers and listened to them repeatedly to memorise them.

Wang has since landed a job at Chinese tech firm NETIS Systems.

As for Angar, she dreams of opening a library back home in Kenya as well as becoming a political theory scholar and figuring out solutions for global wealth inequality.