South Korea: language policy and planning in the making

The situation in North and South Korea may perhaps be compared with that which existed in former East and West Germany. This, however, is not a fair comparison since even before the Berlin wall was torn down, East Germans knew about life on the other side from West German television. By contrast, North Koreans cannot watch South Korean television, and few dare tune in to South Korean radio stations. Similarly, South Koreans do not have direct access to North Korean television, although they can nowadays view a limited amount of North Korean news broadcast on television. Also refer to C.-W. Kim (Citation1991, pp. 252–254) on why and how the situation in Korea differs from that in former East and West Germany, or in China and Taiwan.

Kaplan and Baldauf (Citation1997, pp. 113–117, 121) suggest a more domain-specific label, i.e. ‘language-in-education planning’, in lieu of Cooper's ‘acquisition planning’.

For example, cenki written in Hankul can have at least six different meanings (i.e. electricity, biography, former period, aforementioned, turning point and military history), each of which can be represented by different Chinese characters.

The magnitude of South Korea's spending on private English language education can perhaps be better appreciated when compared, for example, with the R&D expenditure of other developed countries (for example, well under 2% of Australia's GDP in 2002; just over 1% of New Zealand's GDP in 2004).

J. S.-Y. Park (Citation2009) does not define what he means by ‘active usage’; it is clear from his book that he means the same kind of English usage as documented by Baik (Citation1992, Citation1994) and Shim (Citation1994), i.e. occasional use of English words or expressions in a limited number of domains such as TV commercials, movie titles, brand names, etc. Thus, Park's (Citation2009) ‘active usage’ is equivalent to Haarmann's (Citation1986) ‘impersonal bilingualism’ or Blommaert's (Citation2010) ‘emblematic use’ of a foreign language.

Of course, it cannot be assumed that these US$ amounts correspond proportionally to the numbers of imported copies or titles, the data on which are unavailable. Nonetheless, the differences in monetary value give one an idea as to from which countries South Korea imports more or fewer books and printed materials.

South Korea's state expenditure on education accounts for about 4% of the GNP, but the total costs are considerably higher, when private after-school instruction is taken into consideration, i.e. 12% or up to 15% of the GNP (Seth, Citation2002, p. 187; Sorensen, Citation1994, p. 22); as much as 30% of total household income is estimated to be spent on education (Seth, Citation2002, pp. 184,187). South Korea spends a larger share of its income on education than any other nation in the world (Seth, Citation2002, p. 5).

That is, 72% or 60% of South Korea's or Japan's aggregate Internet connections, respectively, have Internet connection speed above 5 Mps.

The DOI is based on three clusters of Information and Communication Technologies (or ITCs): opportunity, infrastructure and utilization (www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/doi/index.html).

For instance, Andes and Castro (Citation2009, p. 2) report that among the G-20 countries, South Korea has made the largest investment in information and telecommunications (ICT) technology, allocating 1.1% of GDP to ICT-related stimulus investments. By comparison, the USA and Japan have spent 0.7% and 0.3% of GDP on ICT-related stimulus, respectively.

Some of these multilingual websites have their Chinese-medium content produced in simplified as well as in traditional Chinese characters.

In South Korea, kindergarten education is not provided by the state. That said, the national kindergarten curriculum has been in place since 1969, the latest revision thereof undertaken in 2007. One of the focus areas in the national kindergarten curriculum is the four basic skills in Korean (i.e. speaking, listening, reading and writing). One of the goals of the 2007 revised national kindergarten curriculum in Korean is to enhance continuity between kindergarten and year 1 of primary school (i.e. including the four basic language skills). Since it is neither compulsory at the time of writing nor provided by the state, kindergarten education will not be  discussed in this monograph. For further discussion on the national kindergarten curriculum in the Korean language, see Kim and Yoon (Citation2009).

In May 2011, the South Korean government announced that as from 2012, one year of kindergarten or nursery school will be part of the country's compulsory education (Dong-A Ilbo, 2 May Citation 2011 ). Also included in the announcement was the plan to provide education subsidies to families with children in kindergartens or nursery schools.

Kaplan and Baldauf (Citation1997, p. 151) point out, based on proficiency studies, that languages such as French, German and Italian take between 700 and 800 h, and languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean between 2700 and 2900 h to acquire a Level 3 in the four main language skills (i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing) on the Australian Second Language Proficiency Rating Scales. Level 3 is defined as general social proficiency.

For instance, refer to Laufer (Citation1992), and Laufer and Nation (Citation1995) on the correlation between vocabulary size and second language proficiency.

For an overview of the relationship between second language proficiency and syntactic complexity including mean length of clause/sentence, see Ortega (Citation2003). For evidence for mean length of clause/sentence as a reliable measure of second language proficiency, see Lu (Citation2011).

How seriously South Koreans take these CSAT English listening tests is illustrated by the South Korean Army's decision to halt its live-fire drills and the country's ban on jet airplanes taking off or landing during the tests (BBC News, 15 September Citation 2009 ).

Cho (Citation2009, pp. 113–114) reports that in 2007, there were also 755 schools which provided lessons in the Korean language in conjunction with after-school extracurricular or additional courses. Strictly speaking, however, these lessons cannot be regarded as proper KSL. At any rate, probably because they were offered as after-school lessons, the participation rate turned out to be low, i.e. 46%, 30% and 24% of all multicultural family children enrolled at the primary, middle school and high school level, respectively.

What is highly unusual in Table 10 is the number of Hankul schools in Uzbekistan: 122 schools for 134 students. Either the data are inaccurate or ethnic Koreans in Uzbekistan must be very widely dispersed in very small numbers.

In the USA, for instance, there were, as of November 2009, 58 primary or secondary schools which offered Korean language classes, serving 5578 enrolled students (Foundation for Korean Language and Culture in USA at www.klacusa.org). In Australia, there are 49 schools teaching Korean, 9 of them through the International Baccalaureate Programme (Asia Education Foundation, Citation2010, p. 21).

North Korea's decision to choose the dialect of Pyongyang, its capital city, was largely driven by North Korea's then leader Il-Sung Kim's own ideological position, as manifested in his May 1966 speech (also see Kaplan & Baldauf, Citation2011; C.-W. Kim, Citation1978; Song, Citation2001):

In order to develop our language, we must prepare its foundation well. We must preserve the national character of the language and develop it based on the speech of Pyongyang[,] which is the headquarters of revolution and is the capital and cradle of all aspects of strategies and tactics of revolution including politics, economics, culture, and military affairs. But the word Phyocwune must be changed to another word [i.e. Mwunhwae], for it may be understood as referring to the speech of Seoul, and therefore we need not use it. It is appropriate to call it by another name; after all it is based on the speech of Pyongyang[,] which is the capital of revolution and it is developed by us[,] who are building socialism. (as translated in C.-W. Kim, Citation1991, p. 257)

Note that there was a lapse of 56 years from the birth of the Unified Orthography in 1933 to the implementation of the Revised Orthography in 1989.

As C.-W. Kim (Citation1991, p. 241) puts it colourfully, ‘[o]vernight all Chinese characters were dumped into the Yellow Sea’. At one stage, the police were called on to remove shop signs written in Chinese characters from streets (C.-W. Kim, Citation1978, p. 247).

In fact, two newspapers had already adopted the Hankul-only practice and had been publishing without using Hanca: Seoul Sinmun and Honam Sinmun. In particular, the latter was printed in only Hankul from 15th August 1947 to the end of October 1956. Both newspapers discontinued the Hankul-only practice, citing negative feedback from their readership (Ahn, Citation1983, p. 105).

There is indeed evidence in support of Hanca contributing positively to memory and processing. Park and Arbuckle (Citation1977), for example, find that their Korean subjects remembered words presented in Hanca better than those presented in Hankul.

In North Korea, the use of Chinese characters was officially banned in 1949. The reason for this decision was that Chinese characters would hinder the speedy development of literacy, and consequently the diffusion of communism and of the North Korea's leader Il-Sung Kim's personality cult (Song, Citation2001, p. 141). Indeed, ‘if the rate of literacy could be increased, the regime would be better able to exert control over the population’ (Cooper, Citation1989, p. 26). Moreover, the use of Chinese characters, as pointed out earlier, had historically been reserved for the segment of the society in power or authority. Not surprisingly, ‘the use of Chinese characters was condemned as obsolete and reactionary’ (Kaplan & Baldauf, Citation2011, p. 157). Subsequently, however, Il-Sung Kim directed that the teaching of Chinese characters should be resurrected in North Korea's educational system, and since 1966, Chinese characters have been taught at secondary and tertiary levels (Song, Citation2001, p. 144; for a further discussion, see note 34).

In view of the government's drive for internationalization, it has been pointed out in favour of Hanca that Chinese characters constitute an international script, because one quarter of the world's population use them. Thus, the Twenty-First-Century Committee was led to advise the President of South Korea that ‘[t]o raise internationalists, Koreans must learn Chinese characters and the English language from primary school’ (Taylor & Taylor, Citation1995, p. 241).

One pertinent personal experience of the present writer is that he was asked in 2009 to provide a South Korean linguistics journal with his name in both Hankul and Chinese characters when he was invited to join its editorial board.

Choi (Citation2003, p. 123) points out that one of the major causes for this dictionary initiative was the publication in 1992 of North Korea's Cosenmal Tay Sajen ‘The Great Dictionary of North Korean’.

North Korea's per capita income is less than 5% of South Korea's (Beck, Citation2010).

The lack of productivity deriving from this heavy investment in English language education is further supported by the fact that South Korea ranked 93rd out of 147 countries in 2004 and 2005 TOEFL scores (J.-K. Park Citation2009, p. 51). This certainly does not seem like a good investment.

Beck (Citation2010) estimates that reunification may cost South Korea ‘anywhere from US$ 2 trillion to US$ 5 trillion, spread out over 30 years’. While it may probably be at the top end of reunification costs, Beck's estimate clearly demonstrates the enormity of Korean reunification. No doubt there will also be other non-economic costs involved. The South Korean government has recently alluded to the possibility of introducing the so-called reunification tax.

As one of the CILP referees points out, South Korea's experience with these issues is not an isolated instance. Japan is also finding itself grappling with similar issues (see Gottlieb, Citation2008), particularly the presence of many foreign residents in the country. For instance, because of ‘a rapid increase in foreign residents’, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyusho; www.ninjal.ac.jp/english) has come to recognize as one of its core research projects the teaching and learning of Japanese as a second language.

Although Chinese characters are banned from North Korean books, magazines, newspapers and school textbooks, Hanca education continues in North Korea to the effect that North Korean students may learn more Chinese characters (i.e. 1500 characters at the secondary level, and 500 or 1000 additional ones at the technical-college or university level, respectively) than South Korean students (i.e. 1800 characters). Moreover, Hanca is only an elective subject in South Korea, while this does not seem to be the case in North Korea. In 1966, North Korea revoked its earlier decision and began to deliver Hanca education within its national curriculum at the behest of the then leader Il-Sung Kim, who was of the view that Chinese characters should be retained in the light of the fact that they were very much in use in South Korea, and with a view to maintaining mutual intelligibility in writing in the event of reunification (Kaplan & Baldauf, Citation2011, p. 159; Song, Citation2001, p. 144).