[EDLING:222] Who Needs English?

[Francis M. Hult]

The World; Column One ; Who Needs English?; As South
Korea's Economy Grows Closer to China's, More People Are
Studying Chinese. For Some, the Choice Is A Rejection of
the U.S.

Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times
Mar. 29, 2004
Main News; Foreign Desk; Part A
1

After years of slogging through her English lessons,
stumbling over impossible pronunciations and baffling rules
of syntax, Chae Chang Eun came up with a better idea.

The 33-year-old science teacher switched to Chinese.

It wasn't that the language was easier. But studying
Chinese felt like a homecoming, a return to a culture and
way of thinking closer to Chae's roots as a South Korean.
Besides, with China on its way to surpassing the United
States as South Korea's largest trading partner, she
figured its language would be more advantageous in landing
a job in the business world.

"When America was leader of the world, we all studied
English," Chae said. "Now that China is rising to the top,
the interest is swaying toward the Chinese language."

South Korea is known as one of the United States'
staunchest allies and is host to 37,000 U.S. troops. But in
what might be a sign of things to come, China is the object
of infatuation at the moment.

The phenomenon isn't limited to South Korea. Chinese
studies are booming throughout Asia. At the largest chain
of private language schools in Japan, enrollment in Chinese
in 2003 was double that in 2002 -- displacing French as the
second most popular language after English.

For most students, the motives are strictly mercenary: They
believe that command of Chinese will give them an edge in
the job market, and they don't develop much of a
corresponding interest in Chinese culture. Some study
Chinese -- once scorned by a society intent on Westernizing
-- as a conscious gesture of rejection of the United States.

"The interest in Chinese does reflect some antipathy to U.S.
hegemony and arrogance," said Suh Jin Young, an
international relations professor at Korea University in
Seoul.

In the last two years, half a dozen private Chinese schools
have opened in downtown Seoul, and posters for new ones are
plastered throughout the subway system. In December,
prestigious Seoul National University announced that
Chinese had replaced English as the most popular major
among liberal arts students. The country's largest
electronics companies recently started offering free
Chinese lessons for their employees in anticipation of
expanded operations in China.

Since 2000, the number of South Koreans studying in China
has more than doubled. There were 35,000 as of the end of
last year, making South Koreans the largest nationality of
foreign students in China. Meanwhile, the number taking the
entry exam for Chinese universities has increased threefold,
according to the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

At the same time, student visa applications to the United
States are down about 10% this year from the year before, a
U.S. diplomat said. He attributes it to a combination of
tighter security requirements and what he calls "the
competing pole from China."

"People are sending their teenagers to China to learn
Chinese. They are really crazy about China," said Nam Young
Sook, an economist with the Korea Institute for
International Economic Policy. "After all the hype about
English, now everybody wants to learn Chinese."

In Thailand, so many students are taking Chinese that one
university official calls it an epidemic of "China fever."

"They see that the future belongs to China," said Prapat
Thepcatree, director of Thammasat University's Center for
Policy Studies in Bangkok.

Prapat says it is not unlike the rage for learning Japanese
in the 1980s, when Japan's economic might was at its zenith,
but he believes that anti-American sentiment is also a
factor. As a matter of simple practicality, more Chinese
tourists are visiting Thailand while Westerners, fearful of
terrorism, are staying home. The tilt toward China comes at
a time when American policymakers are increasingly fretting
about the U.S. image abroad.

"Net favorable sentiment toward China has since caught up
with -- and on a number of occasions even surpassed -- that
for the U.S.," warned a report on South Korea released this
month by the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank.
"China's growing economic importance to South Korea and its
increasingly important role in influencing North Korean
behavior could portend more favorable attitudes toward
China, possibly even at the expense of the United States."

Scott Snyder, a senior associate with the Asia Foundation
think tank in Washington and until recently head of its
Seoul office, said the U.S.-declared war against terrorism
has alienated Asian allies not because they necessarily
oppose it, but because they believe it is not relevant to
their concerns.

"The Chinese are coming and essentially saying, 'Let's get
rich together,' and that is a more compelling message for
Asian partners," Snyder said.

At the moment, with the U.S. and China basking in
relatively warm relations, South Koreans do not have to
choose between the two. But they may in the future -- and
it is not a given that they would side with the United
States.

"We have to ask ourselves, at what point does South Korea's
economic relationship with China impinge on the U.S.
alliance? Can we imagine, for example, that South Korea
would vote for a U.S.-introduced human rights resolution
condemning China?" Snyder asked.

For South Koreans, the simple fact of the matter is that
China is much closer and much bigger than the U.S.

China has been the dominant foreign power for most of
Korea's recorded history, and many aspects of Korean
language and culture -- from chopsticks to the Confucian
family structure -- are derived from China. Although South
Koreans have their own alphabet, they often use Chinese
characters for names and in newspapers.

Historians say that the close relationship is natural and
that the half-century estrangement during the Cold War was
the anomaly. China intervened on behalf of the Communist
North in the 1950-53 Korean War, and relations with the
South were severed. Ties were reestablished in 1992, and
since then, the relationship has blossomed.

Last year China surpassed the United States as South
Korea's largest export market. Bilateral trade between
China and South Korea was worth $63.2 billion last year and
is expected to reach $100 billion within the next year or
two, according to the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

Yang Houlon, deputy chief of mission at the embassy, said
that China is the biggest importer of South Korean products,
the biggest destination for direct foreign investment and
the biggest tourist destination, with about 2 million South
Koreans visiting annually.

South Koreans, meanwhile, make up the largest population of
foreigners in China, many of them students of the language.

"The Chinese economy is growing, so demand for Chinese
speakers is increasing. These are simple market rules,"
Yang said. "Chinese and Koreans share a lot of values. It
is easy for us to communicate."

Virtually all of South Korea's top corporations -- Hyundai
Motors, LG, Samsung and SK Corp. among them -- have made
significant investments in China in the last few years.
Tsingtao, just a commuter flight across the Yellow Sea from
Seoul, has become a "little Korea" of sorts, with about
4,000 South Korean companies having set up shop.

Companies that a few years back were attracted by the vast
reservoir of cheap labor are now setting up research-and-
development facilities to take advantage of Chinese
technology and to better understand the Chinese consumer
market.

"You can pay $100 or $200 per month for a well-educated
scientist," economist Nam said.

"Whatever business you're in -- whether you run a small
drugstore or build golf courses, you have got to think
about doing business with China," said Kim Jo Han, a 57-
year-old textile company manager who said he was studying
Chinese because of his company's plant in Tsingtao.

Until recently, South Koreans studying Chinese were
primarily scholars, not unlike Westerners who learn Greek
or Latin. There was little interest in the modern Chinese
language.

"People would ask me, 'Why are you teaching Chinese?' Even
if I was sitting on a bus reading a book in Chinese, people
would give me funny looks," said Song Jae Bok, a teacher at
the Koryo Chinese Language Institute.

Eighty percent of the students at the school in downtown
Seoul are women, mostly looking for jobs in trading
companies. One reason for the boom in private Chinese
institutes is that Chinese is not offered in most public
schools. English is still the mandatory foreign language.
Virtually all South Koreans taking Chinese lessons have
also studied English, although many have had difficulty
mastering it.

"Somehow students in the Chinese department are not
interested in English. It seems they did not like to learn
English and they see Chinese as an alternative," said Seo
Kyong Ho, associate dean of humanities at Seoul National
University and one of the few academics who is fluent in
both Chinese and English.

Chinese popular culture has not made dramatic inroads into
South Korea -- there are no signs that it will push aside
the influence of Hollywood. But South Korean music, soap
operas, film and fashion are increasingly popular in China.

Chae, the science teacher, started Chinese lessons four
years ago after reading a book predicting the rise of China.
It was something of an epiphany, and through the language
she started exploring the Chinese roots of Korean culture
that had been forgotten in recent years.

"Whereas the American influence is only 50 years old --
since the U.S. military occupation of 1953 -- Chinese
culture goes back 5,000 years. We just didn't realize it,"
Chae said.

She also came to support China with the belief that it
could be an important counterbalance to the United States
should the Bush administration consider preemptive strikes
against North Korea.

"There are a lot of us who feel that by befriending the
Chinese we can prevent the outbreak of war on the
peninsula," Chae said.

Not all of the students have as positive an attitude toward
China. In fact, a few say they need to learn the Chinese
language to protect their country from being swallowed by
China's rapid economic growth.

"We don't really trust the Chinese," said Kim Min Joo, one
of the few students at the Koryo Institute in their 50s.
She complained that some of her young classmates are naive
when it comes to China.

"A lot of them have rushed into studying Chinese because
it's a fad," she said, "without knowing much about China,
its history or its system of government."

*

Jinna Park of The Times' Seoul Bureau contributed to this
report.

>>From the Language Policy Research Unit News Archive
http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/LPRU/newsarchive/mar04.htm