GOTHENBURG, Sweden -- It’s 6 p.m. on a regular Thursday in Sweden’s second-largest city of Gothenburg. Seventeen students of various ages gathered in classrooms at a high school to learn a language that is spoken in a distant land: Korean.

They are the enrollees of a Korean language course offered at a branch of the King Sejong Institute, the Korean government-run language education center. The KSI Gothenburg is one of the center’s 248 branches worldwide and the only one in Sweden.

“The classes have become such a big part of my life,” Lizzie Kullander, 52, who studies at an advanced-level class, told The Korea Herald on Sept. 21.

She added with excitement that she and her classmates were going to check out a new Korean hot dog vendor in town after class.

“The best part about learning Korean is actually the classes themselves and the people in them,” she added.