A professor at a private university was dismayed by a request from a government agency to recommend a foreign language expert. In the request, French was classified among the lesser-spoken foreign languages in Korea, along with African and Southeast Asian tongues. The professor was sad to see that French had dropped so low, as France, along with Germany, has been the source of many of the Western world's literary masterpieces.

German and French were once the preferred foreign languages among Korean high school and university students. Knowledge of German was required for students seeking to study literature at university during the Japanese colonial period, and German and Latin were required courses for university students. Until the mid 1970s a substantial number of Korean students could speak at least a few sentences in French and German, because they were among the subjects included on university entrance exams. In 1998, some 79 percent or 1.11 million high school students in Korea studied French, German, Chinese, Japanese or Spanish, with French and German the most popular.

After 2000, globalization bolstered the popularity of English, and Chinese and Japanese also grew in popularity as trade with China and Japan increased. German and French dropped off the radar screen. Fewer high schools offer the languages, and Russian and Arabic have been added, increasing the number of foreign languages studied at high schools from five to seven. But only 46.6 percent of high school students studied foreign languages other than English in 2007. Some 62 percent of them chose to study Japanese, while 26 percent opted for Chinese, with German and French growing ever more unpopular.

According to the results of the 2010 College Scholastic Aptitude Test announced on Monday, 42.3 percent or around 50,000 high school students chose Arabic in the second language section of the test. On the surface it may seem as if Korean students have finally realized the need to understand Muslim culture, with Arabic following Chinese and Japanese in popularity. However, this is not the case  -- in fact not a single high school in Korea teaches Arabic. The explanation is that the Arabic test only covers around 400 to 600 relatively easy words, so students signed up for it in the hope that it would be easier and they would earn high scores for less efforts.

The popularity of foreign languages ebb and flow according to varying trends and needs. But the preference for a particular foreign language is especially extreme in Korea. It seems wrong to discard our interest in certain languages simply because others could be more useful in the job market.

By Chosun Ilbo columnist Kim Tae-ick