A Caucasian high school student from Maine became the first person not of Korean descent to place in a national Korean speech contest, according to the Chosun Ilbo.
Alyssa Donovan placed second in the contest hosted by the U.S. National Association for Korean Schools in Burlingame, Calif. last Friday, besting more than 300 competitors along the way. The 14-year-old said she became interested in the Korean language due to a crush on a Korean-American classmate in April 2007.
When the 10th grader from the Deering High School in Maine said, “I could not confess to the boy who made me study Korean because he moved away,” the crowd burst into laughter. She drew a big round of applause when she went on to add that she “continued to study Korean, and got to love Korea instead of him.”
The highschooler told the Chosun Ilbo that it only took her six months to pick up conversational fluency in Korean.
She progressed through various literary translations and recently read the four Shakespearean tragedies in Korean. In the preliminaries of the New England Chapter, Donovan had raised herself to such a level that even students of Korean origin were unable to compete with her.
Alyssa, a big fan of K-pop and Korean dramas, added that she is considering attending college in South Korea.
See a video of a speech given by Alyssa from the earlier regional preliminaries after the jump.
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