By Brian Deutsch
Contributing Writer
The Korea Times recently reported the phenomenon of Korean students participating in English-language Seoul City tours aimed at foreign visitors.
One mother boasted that her child had taken the tour four times, saying that her daughter can understand the English-speaking tour guides and can now ``talk to foreigners without fear."
The president of the company running these tours, Cosmojin, said they're becoming more and more popular with Korean children and their parents, and said of the tour's advantages that ``students can learn how to introduce Korean cultural heritage in English and they can naturally mingle with foreigners."
The article closes with the president saying that in the future tours will be organized with the purpose of English instruction in mind, though the number of Koreans participating will be regulated ``so that foreigners are not annoyed."
It's clever that parents would figure this out, but as a foreigner and frequent tourist I have to object to this practice.
First of all, nowhere on the Cosmojin site does it say anything about its clients serving as teachers, or of being joined by customers interested less in the city's sites than in the language used.
There is no advance warning given that the tour's paying customers will potentially be subjected to talkative children pushed into conversation by their parents.
Allowing Koreans to use unwitting foreign tourists for English practice is an imposition on those who would most likely prefer to enjoy the city's sites in peace.
Many foreigners living in Korea are subject to spontaneous ``English practice" on a regular basis from strangers on the street, in the supermarket, at the gym, from passing vehicles, and just about everywhere else.
Perhaps a tourist new to East Asia would find the extra attention cute or charming, and misinterpret it as sincerity, but it would be better were these visitors not imposed upon by children or their parents during the foreigner's free time.
A likely reaction can be anticipated to these objections is ``so what?" It doesn't take any effort for an American tourist to speak English, right, so why be so uptight? Moreover, what's a few children to a person like me, who's supposed to be a teacher anyway?
Of course, most teachers want their students to improve, want them to learn about English-language culture and etiquette, and want them to be innovative in their approaches. Most teachers in Korea, too, are pleased when Korean students show improvement and a willingness to speak that was perhaps not there a short time ago.
However, many native speakers are not in the mood to be called upon to be teachers anytime they leave their house. You wouldn't likely approach a doctor in a park and ask that she take a look at your blister, or go up to a pianist at a restaurant and insist he listen to your kid play Chopin.
The big difference, of course, is these professionals don't always look the part, whereas it's generally assumed that any light-skinned foreigner in Korea is an English teacher, one hired after all solely because he or she is a native English speaker.
Foreigners do tend to resent, though, being seen as mere English machines able and willing to teach English whenever pressed.
From a Korean perspective, they are only spending a few minutes in small talk with whichever foreigner happens across their path, but for the foreigner who is spending a few minutes with many passersby each wanting a few minutes, the demand can be exhausting.
Let's remember that there are countless opportunities for Koreans to use and improve English every day that they don't need to resort to this type of over-the-top enthusiasm around foreigners on their vacation.
On the Internet, there are billions of Web sites in English, tons devoted to English instruction, and thousands written in Korean for Koreans of all levels. Turn on the television and you'll find at least a half-dozen programs either using English authentically or teaching it in a classroom setting.
Then of course there are the hundreds of language academies in every town and city, billions of won spent annually in each school district on English, and a native speaker in just about every school.
Koreans genuinely interested in using English could use it with each other, since nearly everyone has studied the language since grade school. This may seem unlikely, what with shyness, fear of making mistakes, and class-consciousness.
But I know that it's a great help to me when I speak Korean with other foreigners, whether ``correctly" or otherwise, because it gives me the opportunity to use a language I wouldn't have were I to hold out for native speakers.
Moreover, I find non-native speakers to be quiet patient with my meager skills and sympathetic to my mistakes, and I suspect the same attitudes could emerge among Korean learners of English.
In the case of this particular tour, we find two important issues at a crossroads: the scramble to learn English through any means available, and the oft-expressed desire to make Seoul more accommodating to foreigners and foreign tourists.
While I am pleased to see students noticing more and more the English around them, I'd prefer they not be encouraged to bother tourists trying to have a nice time.
The writer is an English teacher in South Jeolla Province. He can be reached atdeutsch.brian@gmail.com