HWASEONG, Gyeonggi Province —Amira Kamal Mohamed says she used to be a shy person who rarely spoke. That began to change a decade ago, when she took up Korean while living in her home country of Egypt. She found the language gave her far more ways to put her feelings into words than her native Arabic. "In Arabic, 'sad' is just 'sad' and 'happy' is just 'happy,' but Korean has so many different expressions," said Mohamed, who studies at the King Sejong Institutes in Cairo and hopes to become a Korean language interpreter. "It let me express my emotions much more richly." Mohamed was among 181 outstanding learners from 71 countries invited to Korea by the King Sejong Institute Foundation. On Wednesday, they gathered at Hotel Prumir in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, to cheer on the 20 finalists of the foundation's Korean speaking and writing contests. The event came two days before the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Hangeul Day this Friday. It offered a glimpse of how far interest in the Korean language has spread, as many participants traced their first engagement with the langu