Robert Fouser

"Korean is a romantic language with so much variety in expression," says Robert Fouser, a professor teaching Korean language education  at Seoul National University. The 48-year-old American is the first foreign professor to teach Korean language education in any university in Korea. He has been teaching Korean students how to teach the language to foreigners since 2008.     

"While majoring in Japanese language and literature in undergraduate, I developed a great interest in Asian languages. A friend recommended Korean, saying it is similar to Japanese and Chinese yet quite unique," he says. "When I first encountered the language, my first impression was that it was easy. It was a new language that was grammatically similar to Japanese but without Chinese characters."

From the perspective of a linguist, Korean is "a very economical and scientific language with various ways of expressing the same things both directly and indirectly."

What are his thoughts on the English craze sweeping the country? "There are people who need to speak English at work for business purposes, but not everyone in the country needs to speak English well," he says. "In fact, I believe the emphasis should be on classical Chinese in order to improve Koreans' understanding of their own language. Learning Japanese or Chinese seems a lot more effective for Koreans than struggling to learn English. This is the very reason why Latin is regarded as so important in France and Germany, because Latin forms the basis of their languages."

Fouser points to the lack of a systematic approach to Korean language teaching despite increasing numbers of foreigners who are interested. "There needs to be a more professional and comprehensive body for Korean language education to spread the language," he says.