Korean language teaching expert says demand has outstripped supply

The Korean language and its writing system Hangeul are not easy to learn, let alone teach. Two non-Korean scholars have shown that that notion might be changing -- and the Korean government agrees.

The two scholars will be awarded the Order of Culture Merit, the highest national recognition for contributions in the field of culture, at an official ceremony marking Hangeul Day on Wednesday morning in Sejong City. The city is named after King Sejong the Great (1418-1450), the fourth Joseon king who invented Hangeul.

Miyuki Hamanoue, a professor of Korean language at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan, and Dafna Zur, a professor teaching Korean literature at Stanford University in California, will each receive the fourth and fifth-highest recognition in the five-tiered merit system, called “okgwan” and “hwagwan,” respectively.

The two have long committed to promoting Hangeul. Hamanoue, who is credited with founding an academic journal on Korean at his university, said his Annual Journal of Korean Linguistics focuses on academic findings about the Korean language.

“We aim to stimulate academic exchange between Korean language researchers in Japan and Korea,” Hamanoue told The Korea Herald ahead of Wednesday’s awards ceremony.

Zur is known for raising Hangeul’s global profile. Besides teaching Korean literature and popular culture at Stanford University, she educates those at the Korean Language Village at Concordia Language Villages, a nonprofit in Moorhead, Minnesota.

The US group, sponsored by Concordia College, has been running immersive camps or “villages” since 1961, now teaching 15 languages from Korean to Arabic, Spanish, German and Russian.

“In the year 2000, I was hired as a counselor at the Korean Language Village by my Ph.D. adviser, professor Ross King,” Zur said referring to the village founder. Zur took over as the village dean after King. “I have worked at the village for 20 years, the last 10 of which were as dean.”

The Korean village set up an independent space at Turtle River Lake, Minnesota, in July. Zur expects the move will boost the resources available for those looking to improve Korean proficiency.

“Many non-native speakers achieve a high level of fluency in Japanese (compared to Korean). The difference, I believe, is in the infrastructure: the systems and learning aids for learning Korean as a second language are less robust than those available for Japanese language learners,” she said.

The Stanford professor suggested such changes should materialize quickly to take advantage of a surging demand for learning Korean. “We have had to manage long waiting lists since the early 2010s because there is more demand than space,” she said.

Hamanoue also noted that the “level of Korean language education for foreigners is becoming much higher than before,” pointing out that many theories have been developed to help non-native speakers perfect Korean.

“The stereotype that ‘foreigners have difficulty learning Korean’ will eventually disappear in the near future,” he said.