Koreans flock to Philippines to study English

MANILA, June 8: Ellie Sung and a friend are queuing at a Manila shopping mall to catch the film ''Mission Impossible 3'' for the second time.

It's not that Sung is a Tom Cruise fanatic or finds the plot difficult to understand.

''I like to watch movies. It's for my English practice,'' she said.

Sung, 28, is one of thousands of South Korean students at about 800 language schools in the Philippines who are trying to get the edge that translates into a good job, a higher salary or an acceptance letter from an elite university back home.

The importance placed on English in South Korea has driven high school students, graduates and unemployed degree holders to private language centres, or ''hagwon'' as they are known there.

Those looking for a more intensive experience move to countries where English is a main language.

The Philippines -- a former U.S. colony with a love of Hollywood movies, basketball and other icons of American culture -- is a close and relatively cheap choice. It is five hours by plane from Seoul and there are Korean communities in many cities.

While the government puts the number of Koreans living in the Philippines at around 70,000, Dr. Hyun-Mo Park, president of the Filipino-Korean Cultural Foundation, sees it closer to 100,000.

Last year, 524,000 Koreans visited for various reasons, including education, business and tourism. The tourism department expects 600,000 Korean visitors this year, growing to 800,000 by 2008 and 1 million by 2010.

QUESTION OF STANDARDS

A big draw for South Korean students is cost.

In the Philippines, they need 40,000 to 60,000 pesos (755 to 1,135 dollars) per month for tuition, room, board and entertainment.

For the same fee or less than for group classes in Korea, they can enrol in one-on-one lessons.

But standards vary widely.

Bernard Lee, an administrator at the Jungchul Academy in Manila, said unauthorised schools had ''mushroomed'' in the capital and other big cities since the English-language trend among Koreans started in the mid-1990s.

Lee estimated that only about one-quarter of the schools were registered with the government.

''In certain places, they're a dime a dozen,'' he said.

Philippine law encourages foreign-owned firms catering to the domestic market to take on Filipino partners or be directed in part by Filipinos, so many hagwons choose not to register as a way of remaining fully Korean-owned. ''As long as you pick a good teacher, that's the most important thing,'' said Julie Park, 25, who studies English with a private tutor.

For many South Koreans, immersion in the language is what they pay for with a ticket to Manila.

''Everyday I can practise English with almost everybody,'' Sung said.

But recent studies show the number of Filipinos who speak and understand English competently has fallen as the debt-laden government struggles to find money for education.

According to the European Chamber of Commerce, about 75 per cent of the 400,000 college graduates each year have ''substandard'' English skills.

THE HOSPITALITY FACTOR

Shiena Jaco, a senior teacher at the Jabez International Education Center, says the findings are misleading because they do not reflect the lowering of English ability among Filipinos as much as the rising standards all over the world.

''In many places in the Philippines, people can actually speak English very well,'' Jaco said. ''Many of our students end up staying longer than they plan to. It's the norm.'' South Koreans are also less threatened by the insurgencies and crime that can deter tourists from visiting the Philippines, said former Trade Undersecretary Gregory Domingo.

''They have hundreds of guns pointed at their country every day, so warnings of things like kidnapping and extortion probably don't scare them as much,'' he said.

For Park of the Filipino-Korean Cultural Foundation, the local welcome also counts.

''In other countries, racial discrimination is a big problem for Koreans but in the Philippines not so much,'' Park said.

''Filipinos are very hospitable people.''

REUTERS