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Korean companies are offering high salaries to talented young people who can speak less-common foreign languages such as Arabic and Czech. Help-wanted ads on Internet job sites and university websites call for people with a strong command of Arabic, Central Asian and Slavic tongues.
As they advance into the global community, Korean businesses are searching out new markets hidden behind the big ones. These searches put them in dire need of talented "multicultural" people who have experience in minority cultures. Corporate competitiveness is increasingly determined by how well companies can recruit such people and embrace cultural diversity.
Trendwatching, a Dutch consumer trends researcher, rates multiculturalism as one of four trends that will lead the future consumer market. Examples of multicultural trends include growing tastes for various "ethnic" foods of places like Indonesia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Morocco, and the use of traditional patterns and designs from Tibet and Africa by famous fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton in their own creations.
For the same reason, alternative travel programs, such as stays in Mongolian yurts and cultural trips to India and Nepal, are gaining popularity. As these trends grow more pronounced, enterprises from many countries are trying to enhance their competitiveness in their multicultural endeavors.
Korea has been swept up by this trend, too. In just the past two weeks, jobs website JobKorea has posted 58 help-wanted ads looking for people with a good command of Vietnamese, 12 ads looking for people who can understand Indonesian, and five ads seeking Slovak speakers.
An official with the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said, "Over the past two to three years, demand for people who have a good command of specialized foreign languages has risen remarkably. As they advance into various foreign countries, enterprises are in dire need of workers who can speak these languages."
Hong Soon-nam, a professor of Arabic at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, said, "We've increased the number of classes in our Department of Arabic as more students are becoming interested in specialized foreign languages. Professors are stunned to find two to three times more students in classrooms than last semester."
Job seekers are also determined to enhance their multicultural competitiveness. Internship programs with foreign firms and organizations serve as training programs for talented people to build multicultural experience. Around 80 percent of former interns of the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) in Korea have found jobs at AMCHAM member companies, making the most of its global network. They work in about 20 countries and regions around the world, including Wall Street in New York, other American cities, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore and Brazil.
HP operates a regular global learning program for its interns. Motorola Korea runs its "Business Leadership Development Program (BLDP)," in which each employee is required to work in rotation for six months in four different countries over a two-year period, training staffers to become global leaders.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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