Korean Americans Cross-Train in Language Classes
Adults Try English; Kids Explore Motherland's Tongue

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 19, 2008

In a Fairfax church basement, a dozen Korean-born men and women squeezed into blue kindergarten chairs one evening last week, struggling with their elusive R's and H's.

"Thursday," the teacher said. "TOOS-DAY" the class responded in unison.

"Not Tues-day, Thurs-day," she tried again, enunciating slowly. "The H sound has air in it. Put your tongue against your teeth. And don't forget the R."

The students, most in their 40s and 50s, nodded and frowned in concentration. They giggled, murmured to each other in Korean and tried again.

"THOOS-DAY," they announced on cue, lips pursed, backs straight.

"Great," the teacher said with an encouraging smile.

The Washington region's large Korean American community, long one of the area's most organized and affluent immigrant groups, is moving belatedly but aggressively to break through its final barrier to successful immersion in American society. After years of living, working and shopping in suburban ethnic enclaves where they have little need to master English, many older Koreans are flocking to English classes across the region.

Their motives are a mixture of the practical, the pleasurable and the altruistic. Shop owners and professionals say they need to interact more fluently with American customers and co-workers. Homemakers want to better help their children with schoolwork. Older people with time on their hands hope to get more out of museums and movies, or to become useful volunteers for civic and charity groups.

"Koreans love to get involved and contribute, but they are embarrassed if they make a mistake. If you don't speak English, you can't serve the community," said the Rev. Yong Hwan Kim, a United Methodist pastor who organizes English classes in Fairfax.

He said one 81-year-old student was translating each chapter of the Bible from Korean into English and had already finished Revelations.

Kim said that because of the language barrier, many adult Korean Americans have never been inside the home of someone who is not Korean. "Their kids go to parties with their American friends from school, but they are ashamed because their parents don't speak English, so they don't want them to meet the other parents," he said.

The new popularity of English study also has a political component. As the area's Korean community has swelled to more than 150,000 since the 1980s, a growing percentage of its members have become eligible to vote. And as they take more active interest in public issues, candidates for county and state offices have begun seeking their support.

Joshua Lee, a reporter for the Korea Times newspaper in Annandale, said his beat was once confined to covering Korean community meetings and activities. Now, he said, it has expanded to covering regional political races. At the same time, in an effort to attract younger readers, the managers of his Korean language daily paper have started including a weekly English language insert from the New York Times.

"The stories we cover have totally changed. Our readers want to know more about American society, and we are getting a lot closer to the mainstream," Lee said.

Last year, for the first time, candidates "stopped by and volunteered to give interviews," he said. "They recognized our existence and they needed our vote. Our voice is a lot stronger than we realize."

The area's Korean American community is also a lot more diverse and stratified than many outsiders realize. Virtually all arrive legally, with student, business or family visas, and both their affluence and insularity have shielded them from the "why-don't-they-learn-English" complaint often made about Hispanics. Many are well educated, with university degrees from their homeland.

But among Koreans, as among other Asian immigrants with little past exposure to Western languages, educational achievement at home does not necessarily translate into English proficiency. Most understand basic English. But elderly shut-ins and new arrivals might know virtually none. On the other hand, U.S.-educated students often speak accentless American slang.

In between is a large group of people who have established a solid economic niche and a busy role in their Korean communities but often feel uncomfortable outside them. Thick accents and unfamiliarity with Western sounds make them reluctant to speak to Americans, while Korean culture does not encourage smiling or chatting with strangers. This can lead to misunderstandings with customers, bosses and bureaucrats, creating an image of Koreans as standoffish or ignorant.

"From the way my students talk about business and culture and politics, I know they are intelligent. But when they speak, some Americans may think they are stupid," said Soo Gung Kim, who teaches evening classes at St. George's United Methodist Church in Fairfax. "I tell them they have to get rid of the fear and keep trying. It's exactly like learning to drive for the first time."

The students at St. George's last week were neatly dressed and purposeful. Some were engineers or business owners; others were just off the plane. Many said they had learned to read and write English in Korea but not to speak or understand it when they hear it, and they were clearly frustrated by the unfamiliar grammar and tongue-twisting consonants. Like Chinese, Korean has symbols instead of an alphabet, and there is no equivalent for some English letters.

During practice sessions last week, the pupils often substituted "L" for "R," as in, "My favorite color is led," or added letters, as in, "I like to shing." But they also coached each other constantly and found resourceful ways to express themselves.

One student, 33-year-old Jung Shin, was asked why she liked living in the United States. She floundered briefly, pointing to the sky and struggling to form words. Then she whipped out a pocket-size, electronic Korean-English dictionary and came up with the answer in seconds. "No air porrution," she said with a triumphant grin.

Many Korean parents, although eager to become more conversant with American society, worry that their U.S.-born children will become too Americanized and lose touch with their ancestral tongue and values, especially respect for elders. To make sure they don't, thousands send their children to weekly Korean classes, held in more than 80 churches and other locations across the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

Every Saturday, the mammoth Open Door Presbyterian Church in Herndon becomes a noisy hive of learning, with youth classes featuring Korean martial arts, drumming, calligraphy, vocabulary, play-writing and nursery songs. One recent Saturday, a group of preschoolers performed calisthenics while counting in Korean, fourth-graders played "Simon Says" in both languages, and teenagers learned sophisticated vocabulary about dentistry.

"When I came here 33 years ago, I was not able to speak English at all. Now my daughter is doing the opposite and learning Korean," David Park, a 43-year-old Internet developer, said as he picked up his 6-year-old after class. "We speak only English at home, but people in my generation are starting to look back toward their native culture. I want to be able to take her to Korea to meet her cousins. We need to keep those relations strong."

The teachers at Open Door worked to impart values as well as language. One teacher passed around a laptop video of volunteers cleaning an oil spill on a Korean beach, then asked the students, "Would you volunteer to clean up oil if it was spilled on Virginia Beach?" All hands shot up enthusiastically.

The family of Dae Young Kim, the principal, typifies the varying linguistic skills that exist within the same immigrant households. Kim still speaks limited English after 30 years in the United States, but she understands most of what she hears. Her husband, Chong, who has a doctorate in chemistry, is outgoing and loquacious in heavily accented English. Their daughter, Lena, 23, a law student, speaks perfect English and views herself as a bridge between two worlds.

"I've always helped my parents out with taxes and government forms," said Lena, who plans to use her law degree to help other Koreans navigate the system.

"When I was young, I felt I was American and I didn't need to learn Korean, but my mom said it was in my blood and I had to learn," she said. "Now, in retrospect, she was right. I am both American and Korean, so I need to communicate well in both."