According to Rahyafte(the missionaries and converts website) Won, who has adopted the name Ahmed after converting to Islam, said the first rendering of the Quran into Korean was done in 1971 by Yung Sung Kim and another one came out later by a Muslim Korean.
See the Persian text here
He told World.kbs Radio that the current translations are not very precise and well comprehensible.
Ahmed said it first occurred to him to translate the Quran when he was acquainted with Egyptian Quran and Arabic language expert Ahmed Abdul Fattah Suleiman in 1985.
He embraced Islam after meeting the Egyptian scholar and learned Arabic from him.
“Since then, I was thinking of translating the Holy Quran,” he said, adding, “I studied the Quran for 30 years to fully understand it (in Arabic) before embarking on the translation three years ago”.
Ahmed noted that he is using eight Quran interpretations in Arabic as well as 13 English translations of the Quran to translate the Holy Book into Korean.
He also plans to translate a number of books on Hadiths into Korean so that people in South Korea can learn about the Islamic culture.
Korean is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea. Beyond Korea, the language is a recognized minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture and Changbai County. It is also spoken in parts of the Russian island of Sakhalin and parts of Central Asia by the Koryo-saram.
In South Korea, Islam is a minority religion. The Muslim community is centered in Seoul and there are a few mosques around the country.
According to the Korea Muslim Federation, there are about 100,000 Muslims living in South Korea, about 70 to 80 percent of whom are foreigners.
iqna
