Ross King

In this article, I shall base my remarks primarily on my own experiences with the business of teaching Korean language in both North America and the former USSR. In North America, I have observed Korean language programs in action at Harvard and the University of California-Berkeley, and have taught for the past semester at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. In the former USSR, I have visited many Korean cultural centers and interviewed numerous ‘Koryo saram’ (the self-designation of ‘Soviet’ Koreans outside of Sakhalin) on six different field trips to Russia. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan as part of my ongoing research into the dialects of the Koreans in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Both my research in the CIS and my own experiences teaching Korean, first to European students at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and more recently to primarily Korean-Canadian students at the University of British Columbia, have sparked in me an interest in the role of language in ethnic identity, and in the problem of ‘language maintenance.' My experiences have also led me to wonder how ‘Korean Studies' at the university level might better contribute to Korean language maintenance for ethnic Koreans. Let me attempt to define now what I mean by ‘language maintenance,’ KHL and KFL The term ‘language maintenance,’ at least as it is used in the academic literature on the sociology and sociolinguistics of ethnic and linguistic minorities, covers a broad range of activities related to a heritage language in a minority setting: casual, restricted use at home, informal instruction in church or other ethnic community settings, more formal instruction, but outside an official school system, bilingual education programs within the official school system, university courses of instruction, etc. In this paper, I use KHL as a blanket term for any Korean language education activity pursued by ethnic Koreans still ‘in earshot' of Korean (i.e. 1.5- and second generation Koreans for whom Korean was a language heard and/or spoken at home). Furthermore, KHL is pursued under the presumption that Korean is p따t of these Koreans' ethnic heritage and identity, and should be cultivated and improved as such. By KFL I mean any Korean language education activity targeted at a group with no prior exposure to Korean language and/or culture -Korean language education for nonheritage learners. Obviously, there is potential for overlap or a gray area between what I am calling KHL and KFL. But to begin with a summary conclusion, it is my belief that the ‘Korean Studies' communities (broadly defined) in both the CIS and North America are confusing two overlapping, but nonetheless different concepts: ‘ Korean as a Heritage Language (KHL) and Korean as a Foreign Language (KFL). In both cases, this conceptual muddle threatens the quality and ultimate results of both types of activity