It is a common sense that Korean parents today are investing millions of wons into teaching their own children English. No wonder, just take a look around us and the first thing to come up from any place in this very KMLA is EOP. Now while I'm not trying to say that English education is meaningless or that we have to reject the fact that English is the no. 1 international language, I do think that we sometimes have to look back on our own language; we have to realize how ignorant we have been to our own language.
Compared to English, how indifferent have we been to our own language Hangeul? Think of Hangeulnal. About two decades ago, the Korean government drew down the day from the long list of annual holidays since the government believed there were "too many" anniversaries to celebrate. Now, what I'd like to question is this: why Hangeulnal, not other days like Christmas? Strictly, Christmas is something Christians would celebrate by their own; Hangeulnal, however, is something very original to us Koreans only, and it simply doesn't make sense not to celebrate the day our very own language is born. This is only a small fraction of our ignorance toward our own mother tongue; there are hundreds of signs all written in English (most of them are so poorly spelled out that even I am hard to recognize, by the way) if you walk out on Seoul streets. Also, institutions which teach English outnumbers any other kind of private education institutions in Korea as far as I know. Seems like everyone is trying to convert their mother tongue into a totally disparate one. This is not even our own case, by the way, since there have always been criticisms that English is encroaching on sphere of influences of other language groups. Linguistic imperialism, we should say: partly to blame the invasion of Mcdonald's, but equally to blame ourselves.
To emphasize again, I'm not saying that we should abolish EOP. I'm not even trying to claim that we should close down every one of English institutions currently present in Korea. Studying English does have a point, considering that English is one of the most frequently used languages nowadays all around the globe. However, there is a huge difference between thoughtlessly abusing English and wisely using English while keeping the importance of our own language in our mind. English education is important as it has always been, but again, we should remember where we are and who we are, at least.
