A publishing company chief identified by his family name of Chung received a call on his cell phone from a woman in her 20s living in Yanji, China.

Introducing herself as a Korean-Chinese who graduated from Yanbian University, she asked Chung if he would like to learn Chinese from her over the phone for 15 minutes a day at W50,000 (about US$50) a month, using textbooks available at Korean bookstores.

Chinese conversation lectures over the Internet phone are becoming widespread through telemarketing calls from China to Korea.

Person-to-person Chinese conversation lectures over the phone cost at least W100,000. But Koreans can learn Chinese directly from native speakers at lower costs if they use Internet phone connections linking China and Korea.

A Korean-Chinese woman said, “Four female teachers aged 26-27 are teaching 20 Korean students. They use standard Chinese since all of them graduated from Yanbian University and Jilin University. Since we use the Internet phone, tuitions are not high. There are a lot of people who speak Korean and Chinese in Yanbian.”

Cho Young-ok, an official of Samyoung Network, a Korean agency of such Chinese teachers, said, “If you pay W49,500 to an Internet phone company a month, you can make unlimited fixed line and cell phone calls from China. There are several Chinese language institutes that teach the language over the Internet phone.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )