Last updated on August 16, 2024
The year 2012 may well go down in history as an important year for teaching Korean as a second language.
For the first time, the number of people taking the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) passed 1 million. The King Sejong Institute formally began its activities as an independent foundation. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” gave millions their first contact with the Korean language.
For all the progress, a number of challenges remain. Like nations, languages rise and fall with changes in global political and economic relations. During the Cold War, for example, Eastern European nations learned Russian, but quickly switched to English and German after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Japanese language education boomed during the 1980s but growth slowed in the ‘90s as the economy languished. Chinese, by contrast, has become increasingly popular as China’s economic and political influence has grown.
Korean is not Russian, Japanese, or Chinese. Each of these languages is spoken in major economic and political powers with a population over 100 million. Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish all have large numbers of speakers and considerable economic power. English, of course, is in a class by itself as the default international language.
Seen from a broader perspective, Korean is close to Italian, an important language that people learn mainly to appreciate Italian culture or to live and work with Italians. Like Italian, native speakers of Korean are limited to a peninsula and various Korean communities overseas. And like Italian, Korean is almost always learned after a more important language, such as English, has been learned.
The essential reason to learn Korean, then, is to appreciate Korean culture or to live and work with Koreans. Korea, like Italy, attracts a number of international students who need to learn Korean for academic purposes but many of these students end up studying in Korea because of their interest in Korean culture and cultural products, such as “hallyu” and K-pop. The increasing number of foreigners living in Korea, particularly long term, creates further demand for learning Korean.
Despite the increase in number of learners, Korean language education has not keep pace with the changing reality, leaving the field with several challenges.
The first challenge is the lingering idea that “foreigners don’t need to learn Korean.” When Korean universities post positions for foreign professors, they rarely mention, let alone require, proficiency in Korean. Japanese universities, by contrast, almost always require knowledge of Japanese for tenure-track positions.
The assumption in elite circles in Korea is that foreigners can live an English-based life in Korea and thus do not need to learn Korean. The assumption in Japan, by contrast, is that learning Japanese makes living in Japan more interesting and makes it easier for foreigners to adjust to life in Japan. The Japanese approach clearly makes more sense and Koreans should do more to encourage foreigners to learn Korean.
Another challenge is the lack of creative approaches to teaching Korean. Classes at universities fit a typical pattern of language institute-based intensive classes that meet for about four hours a day. The classes use a textbook series, often produced by the institution itself.
Some university institutes, of course, have shorter lessons and evening classes but many use an in-house textbook. The result is a rigid curriculum centered on a textbook series. This is fine for students who like to sit quietly in class and follow along, but it leaves students who want a more spontaneous learning environment with few options. Many of these students are interested in Korean culture and want to have fun while learning the language.
Finally, there is the issue of non-native-speaker teachers of Korean. The number of non-native speakers teaching Korean here is still in the single digits. The situation overseas is similar, except for Japan and China, where there are a number of non-native-speaker teachers. The overwhelming majority of English as a second language classes are taught by non-native speakers with varying degrees of proficiency in English.
The same holds true for other commonly taught languages. Non-native speaker teachers play an important role in second language curriculums because they can explain grammar and cultural nuances in the learners’ native language. In other cases, they can provide a positive role model that can help inspire learners.
In the end, learning Korean is a labor of love, not an integral component of socioeconomic advancement. To build on what has been accomplished, Korean language education needs to be more fun, in the spirit of Psy’s horse dance.