HUFS and Korea’s premier 24-hour news channel YTN hosted the 11th middle school English debate on August 29 and 30 online. Due to COVID-19, the event was held online and 59 teams from all over the nation participated in the two-day debate championship.

On the first day, all teams participated in the preliminary rounds, and on the second day 20 teams participated in the final rounds, which consisted of 8 topics: public education, politics and elections, nations without borders, minority rights, and social media policy.

The champion of the international league was team SPAM (Han Ji-yoon, Park Se-jin, Yoo Ji-min) and the champion of the domestic league was team LISTO (Kim Min-kyu, Baek Sun-woo, Lee Da-eun), and the topic for the final round was “When the government restricts personal desires, there is more social loss than gain,” an ethical question of high difficulty level.

The event was held online due to COVID-19, and the students wore masks and used hand sanitizers during the debate while maintaining social distance. This event will serve as a marker for “untact” events held in the future.

Prior to the middle school debate, an elementary school debate was held on August 15 and 16. The topics were on public policy, education, family and society, media, social activism, and science technology, and the event encouraged the students to hone their basics in debate and the criteria for adjudicating was based on the persuasive use of English rather than fluency in English. In a likewise manner, the entire process (including the orientation and adjudicator training) of elementary school debate was held online due to COVID-19.