Those who didn't quite make it into the top 200 out of the 1,000 who annually pass the state-administered bar exam can still land a job with a major law firm if their English is excellent. The same is increasingly true in courts and prosecutors’ offices. One judge says, "Your English has to be good to take on major cases involving multinationals like Lone Star. Simply put, some cases will be out of reach if your English is poor." A typical example of the English divide in the medical field is in the recruitment of university hospital professors. A major factor is how much a candidate has published in prestigious medical journals. One thesis published in an international journal registered on the Scientific Citation Index is worth 20 papers in a domestic journal. Given similar medical ability, that means the candidate who can write better English is in a far better position.

The English divide affects not only individual but national success, since English is the language of the knowledge industry, which is the key to national wealth creation in the 21st century. Eight percent of the global population have English as their mother or official tongue. But 73 percent of international journals registered with the SCI are published in English-speaking countries, together with 85 percent of journals included on the SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index). Seventy-five of the top 100 universities chosen by Newsweek last year were in English-speaking countries. Seoul Chamber of Commerce & Industry data show that 1,167 multinational companies had their Asian headquarter in Hong Kong as of late 2005, 350 in Singapore but only 11 in Seoul -- a startling indication of where Korea stands in the English divide.

The Judicial Research and Training Institute (JRTI) sent 80 of its trainees to the Paju English Town for the first time this year to help them hone their language skills. For a week, they learned from three native speakers how to write e-mails, introduce themselves and converse with a client in English.

Korea is not alone. Such divisions are prevalent around the world. Francoise Grin, a researcher at the joint German-Danish government think tank European Center for Minority Issues, says English fluency results in a 30.7 percent difference in annual salary for Swiss men and a 21.6 percent difference for Swiss women. For Indians, wages differ between the upper middle class, who are widely educated in English, and those who do not speak the language, a fact well demonstrated by the thick personnel ads section in English-language dailies versus the thin ad section in the vernacular papers.

Jeon Hyo-chan (43), a senior researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute, says the English divide exists among nations. The more advanced and involved in the global economy a country is, the more English influences national competitiveness, he said. Competitiveness and progress are now seen as depending on how an individual or a nation addresses the English division.

(englishnews@chosun.com )