In S. Korea's language villages, the young get an English edge
ANSAN, South Korea -- "Next!" barked Joanne Richardson, a bureaucratic-looking Canadian sitting behind a desk in a bustling hall marked "Immigrations." She beckoned to a timid 15-year-old girl wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt.
"Good morning. What is your name?" Richardson, 27, asked using clear, enunciated English.
The South Korean girl beamed, suddenly excited at the sound of a language she has come to love through Britney Spears songs and Disney movies. "Hello, my name is Hu Jung Hee," she blurted out in brave but labored diction, "and I want to be a movie star! I know first I have to learn good English."
"You came to the right place," said Richardson, one of 40 native English speakers from six countries who teach at this novel, government-funded language complex on a small island 40 miles southwest of Seoul. "Welcome to English Village. Enjoy your stay."
For South Korean students, that stay is five to 30 nights inside this three-month-old immersion compound, where young guests check into a hotel, shop, bank, order food, take cooking lessons or acting classes, and even make short documentary films -- all in English.
First developed by officials in Kyonggi, a prosperous province of 10 million people south of Seoul, five more English villages are sprouting up across South Korea, including an $85 million town under construction 32 miles north of Ansan, which will boast a main street with Western-style storefronts and a small live-in population of native English speakers.
As tougher immigration laws make it increasingly harder for foreign students to learn English in the United States, immersion villages, according to specialists, have promise beyond South Korea. The Japanese, for instance, have visited this English village and may implement the idea.
In South Korea, which is on the peninsula that, for centuries, was known as the "hermit kingdom," the language villages mark a quest for a competitive edge in one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world.
Education specialists say South Korea has been embracing English training with aggressiveness and creativity. South Korea ranked first last year in the number of students taking the standardized Test of English as a Foreign Language. More than 86,000 South Korean students took the exam last year, eight times the number in France and almost three times the number in China.
The push to learn English is coming from public and private sectors. For instance, developers recently broke ground on an eight-year, $15 billion international economic free zone near the port of Incheon. Developers hope the zone will house a bevy of foreign and domestic technology and finance companies. Envisioned as a sort of mini-Hong Kong with its own tax and legal codes, the development is projected to lure a white-collar workforce of 70,000 residents, virtually all of whom will speak at least two languages.
South Korea's top companies, Samsung and LG.Philips, have begun conducting job interviews partly in English. Philips is gradually moving toward an English- only corporate e-mail policy, company officials said.
The number of elementary school children sent to study English abroad has increased more than tenfold over the past five years, according to government statistics. South Korean housewives in their 30s and 40s are registering in record numbers to learn English in adult-education programs, mostly to teach their children proper English at home, officials said.
"English is the universal language, and with limited Korean speakers outside Korea, being bilingual is clearly a top priority," said Lee Eui Kap, a research fellow at the Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation.
South Korea stands out as a rare example of how a drive toward literacy can transform a nation. A generation ago, South Korea was an underdeveloped country with a 1953 GDP per capita of $67 after the brutal occupation by the Japanese and the aftermath of the Korean War. But a campaign to build schools and improve teaching standards, coupled with a deeply ingrained culture that prizes education, fueled South Korea's industrial revolution. It is the world's 13th-largest economy, with a $12,499 per capita GDP and a 98 percent literacy rate. Its workers are among the most highly skilled in the world, churning out high-tech cellphones, LCD flat-screen television, and popular vehicles.
But critics have said the emphasis on education in South Korea has gone too far, as many parents push their children to attend extra hours of night school that last until 9 or 10 every weeknight. To escape the pressure, some South Korean families have begun moving abroad -- to Canada, the United States, and Europe in search of educational systems that are less competitive.
The competition is evident in South Korea's quest for English proficiency. Yet the English Village concept was developed this year in part as an antidote to the highly structured, school-based English programs. The Kyonggi governor, Hak Kyu Sohn, who honed his English while earning a doctorate from Oxford University, championed the concept as a way to bring English alive outside the classroom. "We need to be more creative, change the educational environment," he said.
