Small news stories often trigger larger questions that society has left unanswered. One such story is a recent report in this paper of the formation of Council of Promotion of Francophonie in Korea. With the support of the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF), an organization of 57 member states and 20 observers, representing nearly 280 million French speakers around the world, the group will support activities related to promoting the French language in Korea. 

The larger, unanswered question, of course, is what is the most appropriate foreign language education policy for Korea in the 21st century?  Which languages should be taught and why?

English has only been dominant in Korea since the end of the Japanese colonial period in 1945, During that time, the emphasis was on forcing Koreans to learn Japanese rather than on English, French, or German, which were part of the Japanese educational system at the time.  After American involvement in World War II, English was not taught again until 1945 when the U.S. military government revived it.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, English was the dominant foreign language, but German, French, and from the 1980s, Japanese were commonly taught as second foreign languages. The 1990s saw a rapid shift away from German and French to Japanese and Chinese.

The 1990s also saw the rise of globalism, particularly after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, as guide to policy decisions. As the first wave of Koreans who earned advanced degrees in the U.S. in the 1980s moved into decision-making positions, globalism was defined as a U.S.-based standard, and the word “global standard” became the buzzword of the day. That global standard also included English, so it is no coincidence that the focus on English intensified at this time. The era even produced a quixotic debate about making English an official language along with Korean.

Things have changed since the heyday of the global standard, but foreign language education policy in Korea has not changed with the times. The national curriculum includes Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese, but Chinese and Japanese are the only languages that are widely taught in the schools. Arabic and Vietnamese are taught in only a couple of schools, Russian and Spanish are rarely taught and French and German are declining rapidly. Chinese and Japanese have a significant number of learners, but receive very little institutional support. Despite the diversity of the curriculum, educational policy remains centered on English, leaving second foreign languages as an afterthought.

Predicting the future is always risky, but if current trends hold, the world will look different in 2030 and most certainly in 2050. Children born today will be in middle school in 2030 and in their prime working years in 2050. They need the chance to learn languages that will reflect the world they will live in.

A 2015 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that the center of economic activity will move to Asia, as has long been predicted. In 2030, China will have the largest GDP (at market exchange rates) in the world, overtaking the U.S. India will move into third place, pumping Japan down to fourth place. By 2050, the top three will remain the same, but India’s economy will be much larger. Indonesia will move into fourth place, Brazil into fifth, while Japan drops to sixth. The biggest surprise will be Mexico moving into seventh place and Nigeria into ninth place. Russia, which currently ranks ninth, will move up one notch to eighth. Germany in 10th place will be the only Western European nation in the top 10; today there are four.

All of this means that, while English will remain the most important language for Koreans to learn, Chinese and Indonesian will grow in importance while Japanese will remain important, despite Japan’s relative decline. The rise of Brazil and Mexico suggests that Portuguese and Spanish will grow in importance. Spanish already has more native speakers than English and the gap will widen by 2050. Russian, though rarely taught in Korea today, will become more important as the country’s economy grows. The best way to support these languages is to ensure that they are offered in more schools and that learning them “counts” as an achievement.

Security interests and English proficiency (given that English is required in Korea) are also important factors to consider, but for an export dependent economy like Korea, it is not the primary consideration. Economics, after all, supports human interaction which lies at the center of language itself.

By Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Ann Arbor, Michigan. — Ed.