Kim il, 201020709

Professor Vincent Gilhooley

English Composition 2
26 May 2016
<Why Korean job seekers study Japanese?>
In recent times, because youth unemployment rate have been losing in
Korea, one of the most important issues is learning a second foreign language.
56.6% of people who are job seekers in Korea are studying a second foreign
language or already have studied a second foreign language. 35% of people said
they have studied English, 22% of people said they have studied Japanese.(Incruit,
2015) In case of English, because Korean compulsory education required students
to learn English, percentage is reasonable. However, Japanese is not mandatory but
optional. So, people who want to get a job need to have the question why Japanese
is chosen by a lot of job seekers. And the one of answers is that Japanese is easy to
Korean for some reasons with the point of word, letter, and syntax.
One of the most important reasons is Korean and Japanese share a lot of
vocabularies because of Japanese colonial era. From 1920 to 1945, Japan had
forced Korean people to use Japanese as a mother tongue. And numerous people
kept using Japanese words after the liberation because Korea accepted advanced
technology through a Japanese book (Lee, 2014). Some words in Korean and
Japanese have a similar pronunciation with a same meaning. In case of Gyosil in
korean and Gyositsu in Japanese, and both words mean a classroom. Furthermore,
some words in Korean obviously come from Japanese. In Korean,Nogada is come

from Japanese Nogada, and both of Nogada have the same meaning which is a
hard work, because Nogada is obviously different from the characteristic of Korean,
such as a common combination of syllables and a way of sound (Lee, 2014).
And another reason is Korean and Japanese used Chinese character. In case of
Japanese, even though it has used its own characters called Hiragana and
Katagana, but these Japanese characters express only pronunciation, thus, it has
borrowed many Chinese characters. For instance, Japanese Hashi has three
meanings. One is a bridge, another is an edge, and the other is a chopstick. So,
Japanese use Chinese characters to recognize each meaning. Also in case of
Korean, many nouns have a connection with Chinese character, although these are
written as Korean character. Actually, following the statistics, about 70% of Korean
nouns have connection with Chinese character (Heo, 2015). For example, Hakgyo
and Jadongcha, which mean a school and a vehicle in English, come from Chinese
character. Additionally, because Korean compulsory education contains an education
of Chinese character, Korean can easily study Chinese character. Following annual
report of the Ministry of Education, 78% of Korean high schools opened Chinese
class (Kim, 2010).
Third reason is that the structure of Japanese sentence is same to Korean.
Japanese sentence follows order of SOV like Korean. In Japanese sentence
Watashiwa Haraga Heru, which means I am hungry in English, Watashi means I,
Hara means Stomach, and Heru means decrease. In the same way, in Korean
sentence Naneun Baega Gopeuda, which means I am hungry in English, Na
means I, Bae means Stomach, and Gopeuda means be hungry. Additionally,
Japanese use postposition like Korean. At the mentioned Japanese and Korean

sentence, postposition wa that follows Watashi in Japanese has an exactly

identical meaning and role with the postposition neun that follows Na in Korean.
Amazingly, the postposition ga that follows Hara has perfectly same pronunciation,
sense, and function with the postposition ga that follows Bae in Korean. What is
more, making structure of Japanese sentence is as free as a Korean. If each word in
sentence is mixed, context is not changed. In Japanese, Watashiwa Heru Haraga
and Haraga Heru Watashiwa do not generally used but have same meaning with
the original sentence Watashiwa Haraga Heru. Likewise, in Korean, Naneun
Gopeuda Baega and Baega gopeuda Naneun have same meaning with the original
sentence Naneun Baega Gopeuda.
As a final point, it is the reasonable situation that many Korean job seekers choose
Japanese as second foreign language because Japanese have some similarities
such as using Chinese character, word, and grammar. But Easiest one do not mean
competitive one. A company wants to hire competitive and special one. In the second
half of 2015, many companies which preferred second foreign language did not
focus on Japanese but Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Russian.(Gong, 2015).
Therefore a job seeker should watchfully choose a second foreign language with
thorough a pre-investigation.

Reference
Gong, T Y. A person who can speak a second foreign language, 'Precious' in the labor market.
http://jobnjoy.com/portal/jobtip/self_intro_atoz_view.jsp?
nidx=49599&depth1=1&depth2=3&depth3=1. Campus JOBNJOY. JOBNJOY. Article. 24, May, 2016.
Heo, C. Examination how many using compound of chinese character words and investigate the
frequency of use by using analysis of Modern Korean, Research about education of Chinese
character. 2010.
Incruit, How many times is needed to study a second foreign language,
http://people.incruit.com/news/newsview.asp?newsno=2002473. A news release. Incruit. News. 22,
May, 2016.
Kim, J A. The present situation of a subject in normal high school,
http://www.edpolicy.net/EpnicForum/Epnic/EpnicForum02Viw.php?
PageNum=4&S_Key=&S_Menu=&Ac_Code=D0010203&Ac_Num0=12625. The statistics of
education. Korean Educational Development Institute. Statistics. 22, May, 2016.
Lee, S H. The dictionary of Korean words coming from Japanese, A publish department of Korea
University, 2014. Print