English craze

Even though you are armed with a great depth of business expertise and insights, you will never be able to impress Nam Young, CEO of LG Electronics, without fluent English.

Since he took the helm of the company, he has embarked a set of very aggressive plans to make LG ‘a truly globalized company, which is true since 80 per cent of it profits come from overseas.

One of the measures managers find most challenging about is using English as their ‘official in-house language.’ Meetings chaired by Mr. Nam are done in English, and the company plans to gradually change all company files and documents into English. Even it encourages employees to speak only in English during phone conversation.

No wonder, a 40-something executive join his 13-year-old daughter late night to study English and rank-and-file employees hurry to take up online English lessons not to be left behind in an increasingly competitive promotion battle.

In Korea, people with work irrelevant to English, not to mention those often use English during work, feel pressured to get at least OK-level of English, if not fluent.

Kim Ki-joon, a software programmer, seriously considers taking up phone-English course which offers him a chance to freely talk to a native speaker for 10 minutes a day, though he rarely uses English during daily work.

“The fact that I can’t speak English has been always bothering me. And I would be better to be prepared. Who knows if I might be offered to work in a foreign company?”

“For me, speaking Japanese is not enough. English is some kind of a general culture,” said Kwon Ju-hee, a Japanese translator, who has recently quitted her job of 5 years to go to Canada to learn English.