[KS] Unstoppable English - Korea and Japan make English Official (못말리는 영어)

[johnfrankl at yahoo.com]

Thank you for the thought-provoking post. I have given this a lot of consideration in the past, and will add just a few thoughts and observations.
 
First of all, you are absolutely correct about Korea being far ahead of Japan in terms of English language proficiency and usage. The Japanese themselves are also fully aware of this. I have only been at Yonsei for five years, but we have already hosted several different groups of Japanese educators who wanted to ask us about the "secret"  to Koreans' English proficiency. My former dean wryly commented to one group that they would never catch the Koreans because the Japanese were not irrational enough to pay ridiculous amounts for private education, live apart as kirOgi for several years at a time, and often lose a good degree of fluency in their mother tongue all for better English. 
 
He was only partially joking, and added quite seriously that Korean schools have little to do with English proficiency. But he also commented that he believed Japan was more like the U.S.--a large and rather self-sufficient country/economy that was rather complacent with monolingualism--while Korea "needed" English to be competetive. While this is rather simplistic, it is also worth considering. 
 
As for companies/universities adopting English as their official language, this should also be taken with a grain of salt. I cannot speak for Japan, but in Korea these claims and figures are quite often inflated. Legislating "100% English" is somewhat akin to making drugs or prostitution illegal and then assuming they will not be readily available; official statutes and policies often have little relationship to actual circumstances. 

"Are they pursuing an independent strategy for globalization from that
being pursued by the Korean elite?"
 
If you mean raising their children in U.S. boarding schools or domestic international schools with the concommitant loss of Korean language ability, yes. 
 
"This terrible fear of raising Japanese illiterates seems to be behind the
tendency of the Japanese students and businessmen abroad to leave
their family behind in Japan.  Korean students and businessmen abroad
on the other hand, appear not to be subject to such fear of illiteracy
(thanks to Hangul), and have the exact opposite tendency of having their
children in the States, so I have observed."
 
Hangul may make their children (and anyone else with a few hours to study) able to read, but that is quite different from actual ability in the language, which I think the Japanese you mentioned were pursuing. 
 
"Over the last 10 years, the public's attitude also seems to have gone
decidedly pro-English.  Every public survey about using English as the
official language at work seems to show that about 70% of the respondents
favor it."
 
Yes, and how ironic. In the xenophobic 80s and early 90s many parents were against English being introduced to their innocent children before middle school, fearing it would corrupt their Korean identity. Now they send them abroad before puberty. 

"Now this is a brave new world in Korea."
 
This is where I disagree. The xenophobic, monolingual South Korea of the mid-to-late 20th century represents the abberation. For well over 1,000 years prior to 1945, nearly all members of the Korean "upper class" were in a sense at least bilingual and bicultural. This was true, of course, for many places outside Korea prior to the rise of nationalism. In any case, employing English as an official language of scholarship, business, law, etc. while using Korean for much of spoken and casual written communication has much in common with Korea's historical use of literary Chinese. As such, I see it more as a return to established practice than as "a brave new world."
 
A couple of random but not unrelated thoughts are as follows:
 
The above observation dovetails nicely with the fact that contemporary Korean nationalism is much more ethnic than cultural/linguistic. 
 
Whether discussing literary Chinese in the Choson dynasty or English today, many Koreans at the top of the social hierarchy had/have a vested interest in keeping access limited. 
 
National language is not always pushed for altruistic or patriotic purposes. Certain groups of Koreans, Japanese, and Westerners were all pushing for increased hangul usage in the late-19th and early-20th century. But all of them were doing so for the selfish reason of wanting to disseminate their own propaganda more quickly and efficiently, not for any love of King Sejong.  
 
JMF
 
 
--- On Sat, 7/10/10, kc Kim <kc.kim2 at gmail.com> wrote:


From: kc Kim <kc.kim2 at gmail.com>
Subject: [KS] Unstoppable English - Korea and Japan make English Official (못말리는 영어)
To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Date: Saturday, July 10, 2010, 11:56 PM


Unstoppable English--Korea and Japan make English Official:
Rakuten, Uniqlo, Nissan, KAIST(100%), POSTECH(100%),
LG(100%), Samsung(?%), SK(board meetings), Korea U(70-80%),
Yonsei U(some faculties 100%)

Hi,

Who can tell what the feelings of Minister Mori might be at the
recent turn of events?  As I see it, the Japanese are definitely
behind the curve.

It would appear that the behemoth that is English is making
steady inroad into the East Asian language-sphere, with Japan
clearly trailing behind Korea in this race.

Recent news of Rakuten and Uniqlo, both Japanese companies,
deciding to adopt English as the official language for their firms
appear to have not shaken anybody in Japan, everybody taking
it in stride.  Just as Nissan and Sony conducting their board
meetings in English have fazed nobody anywhere.  After all,
it is business demands driving business decisions.

Uniqlo drops Japanese and makes English official language
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/fashionnews/7857217/Uniqlo-drops-Japanese-and-makes-English-official-language.html

Japanese lost in translation
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/japanese-lost-in-translation/story-e6frg8zx-1225889148786

Looking at the actual distribution of Uniqlo and Rakuten global
presence, those affected will be the speakers of French, Korean,
Chinese, and Japanese.

But looking at this in the context of the Korean experience, one has
the feeling that the Japanese are definitely BEHIND THE CURVE and
clearly LAGGING..

We have, for example, KAIST, the premier engineering school
in Korea which fully committed to English as official language over
4 years ago.  POSTECH is also supposed to be 100% English as
of this year..

Controversial KAIST  President Wins a Second Term
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/controversial-kaist-president.html

No Looking Back: Kaist's  President Fights for His Legacy of Change in
South Korea
http://chronicle.com/article/No-Looking-Back-Kaists/65974/


LG Electronics also adopted English as the official company
language a few years back, and so have several divisions of
the behemoth Samsung, and apparently the board meetings of
several major corporations in Korea are conducted in English.
I don't think any of this is really shocking news to anybody..

LG전 자, 영어공용화 ‘대세론 In’ ‘회의론 Out’
http://news.donga.com/3/all/20100321/26995414/1

‘삼성맨’들은 요즘 ○○ 공포에 떤다
http://www.munhwa.com/news/view.html?no=2010031001031624080002

삼성건설 `글로벌 조직문화 구축 나선다`
http://www.hankyung.com/news/app/newsview.php?aid=201007097909e

Question is, why is Japan so far behind the curve in including English in
their business and academia?  Are they doomed to lose the edge?

Are they pursuing an independent strategy for globalization from that
being pursued by the Korean elite?

Yours respectfully,

Joobai Lee

7/10/2010

P.S.

Thinking back to my own youth, I remember two Japanese high school
friends.  By definition, they were 조기유학생, having follower a reporter
and businessman father for a long term stay in the US.  Remarkably,
they were carrying full loads of study in both Japanese and English. They
confessed to the need for parallel load in Japanese because as they
put it "we would be literally illiterate back in Japan otherwise when we
return."  Apparently there were some famous historical instances of
illiterate returnees.  And they were determined not to be in the same
boat.  I saw their class notes, and they definitely gave me a deep sense
of what illiteracy in Japanese might mean.

This terrible fear of raising Japanese illiterates seems to be behind the
tendency of the Japanese students and businessmen abroad to leave
their family behind in Japan.  Korean students and businessmen abroad
on the other hand, appear not to be subject to such fear of illiteracy
(thanks to Hangul), and have the exact opposite tendency of having their
children in the States, so I have observed.

Over the last 10 years, the public's attitude also seems to have gone
decidedly pro-English.  Every public survey about using English as the
official language at work seems to show that about 70% of the respondents
favor it.

Now this is a brave new world in Korea.




      
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