 The origins of the school go back to May 1994; a South Korean ethnographer doing research on the indigenous peoples of Siberia had been in discussions with the government of the Sakha Republic to set up a Korean-language school, and began to look for teachers in South Korea.Gang Deok-su, a professor of Russian at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and head of the Sakha-Korea Friendship association, agreed to assist.The Yakutsk Korean Association, founded in 1989, had previously set up Sunday schools for the teaching of the Korean language, but due to the increasing demand for specialists of the language, powerful supporters threw their weight behind the move to set up a full-time school, including president of the Sakha Republic Mikhail Nikolayev.