ELT In Korea History

The history of ELT in Korea can trace its roots to the late 19th century. Until 1876, Korea was an isolationist ‘hermit’ state, and had little contact with non-Asian nations. It wasn’t until the Japanese forced King (later emperor) Gojong to sign the unequal Treaty of Ganghwa that Korea opened her doors to Western and Japanese influence (Dittrich, 2013).

The Chosŏn Dynasty, which had historically espoused the Confucian ideal of learning as a way of gaining status (Seth, 2006), then initiated educational reform. By 1883, the country’s first ELT institutions had been inaugurated, following the Korean-American treaty which had been signed a year earlier (Kim, 2011). The tongmunhak (common script learning school) and Wŏnsan Haksa (Wŏnsan academy) were the first such establishments, and were set up in order to train interpreters and offer private education, respectively.

The faculty mainly consisted of American Protestant missionaries, with the college being used to Christianise Koreans in addition to teaching them language skills. On May 16th of the same year, the bilingual Tongnip Sinmun (The Independent) became the country’s first newspaper (Dittrich, 2013).

Within a single decade, Korea had transformed from an isolationist state into one besieged territorially, politically, culturally, spiritually and academically from colonialist nations. If Korea has fallen prey to linguistic imperialism, then this point is almost certainly ground zero.

Japan slowly began to exhibit its military might and, by 1910, had tightened its grip by annexing Korea. Prior to this, many Korean scholars and government officials were open to Westernisation, due to the increasing belief that Confucian teachings were ‘backwards’ (Estok, 2013). During this period, the Japanese attempted to subjugate Koreans by assimilating them into their own