Countries with multilingual populations, such as India, China and many European nations often designate official languages for regions, but such designations are usually designed to protect linguistic minorities that have historical roots in the area. None of the above applies to Jeju Province. Of the two, most people are interested in the latter. Requiring government documents to be written in English as well as Korean is not an exciting idea because people have limited contact with government documents in the first place. Facilities for foreign tourists and business people already include English, so there is no need to legislate what is already reality.
Most people know that making English a second official language in Korea is impossible.
They would rather see politicians and the government debate a practical language policy that puts the needs of people ahead of the urge to legislate. The writer is an associate professor at Kagoshima University in Japan. Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. All rights reserved.