Whether it's a trend or not, for 3 consecutive years now, the number of Korean students studying abroad is getting lower. There are many speculations about the said "phenomenon." Some argue that it has something to do with the global financial crisis while some think that it's connected to the changes made by local prestigious universities in Korea on its admission process. As I mentioned in my previous blog entries, English test scores (TOEFL, TOEIC etc.) are no longer decisive for college adimissions.
According to a report by the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the affluent Gangnam neighborhood in southern Seoul, which ignited and led the boom in the early 2000s, has shown reductions in the number of primary, and middle school students studying overseas for the third straight year after hitting its peak in 2006 when it stood at 2,517. It fell to 2,336 in 2007, further to 2,282 in 2008 and nearly by a third to 1,614 in 2009.
Among middle school students, the number fell to 550 last year from 1,247 in 2006. In the same period, the figure for elementary school students dropped to 1,064 from 1,270.
If Gangnam area residents are starting this downward trend, the rest of the country is likely to follow suit, the report said.
The total number of the nation’s elementary, middle and high school students studying overseas has also fallen. Hitting an all-time high at 29,511 in 2006, the figure fell to 27,668 in 2007 and 27,349 in 2008. The 2009 figure has yet to be tallied, but is most likely to be smaller.
English bubble burst?
Some analysts have suggested that the “English bubble” is deflating. “With more prestigious specialized schools putting less weight on TOEIC, TOEFL and other English proficiency test results in their admissions criteria, more parents are less likely to send their children abroad spend a lot of money and deal with the other side effects,” Kim Seong-cheon, spokesman of civic group “World Without Private Education” was quoted as saying to Yonhap.
Some agents taking care of overseas school admissions believe the shift in public school English education to speaking and other practical English skills from reading and writing is also helping narrow the gap between those who have studied abroad and those who haven’t.
“There were also reports that those who studied abroad are unable to smoothly re-adjust to the academic atmosphere in Korea. This may have impeded students planning to enroll at domestic high schools or universities,” an official from the education ministry said.
In fact, in a separate report by KEDI in 2007, more than 50 percent of the 418 elementary, middle and high school students studying in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and China said they wouldn’t recommend the academic sojourn to others.
On the other hand, some skeptics say the phenomenon is a temporary one, affected by the global economic slump and the low birthrate. “Most students are in elementary schools. Since the number of students in that bracket has been falling fast, it is natural that the number of students going abroad also gets smaller,” an education ministry official said.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/05/117_65201.html
In the article this was the situation: While buying a subway ticket in Boston, a Korean elementary school student asks an agent what direction she should take. Following the instruction, the student takes the train at the platform. The early teen checks a tour guide on the move to learn when she has to get off. She leaves at the right stop near the hotel where she is supposed to stay. 
nounced by the Korean Council for University Education (KCUE) yesterday.
This is an article written by Kim Eun-gyong is an associate professor of applied linguistics and Associate Dean of the Center for International Affairs, Information and Communications University (ICU) in Daejeon. She mentioned interesting facts about the developments of English education in Korea. This could probably explain and give us some points of view regarding Korea's obsession of the English language.
"According to a report by the Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI), Koreans spend about 15 trillion won ($15.8 billion) on English learning per year. Koreans also topped the applicant list of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) between 2004 and 2005 as about 102,340 out of the 554,942 applicants were Koreans. They also paid 700 billion won toward English examination fees. Enthusiasm for English study has also seen a large number of children, teenagers and even adults going to English-speaking countries like the United States, Australia and Britain to study. Last year some 250,000 under 29 years old went abroad for studying. The English frenzy saw the coining of the term 'goose father,' referring to a father who lives alone in Korea having sent his spouse and children to a foreign country to study English or some other form of advanced study. The goose fathers are estimated to be about 200,000 goose daddies nationwide. Most Koreans start to learn English from middle or elementary school. By the time they graduate, they have already spent about 100,000 hours on English studying, according to the SERI report." 
My article series will examine the ELE development from the beginning to the present from the perspective of government’s role in it. More precisely, the series will include investigations on the Joseon government’s introduction of ELE, the stunted development of ELE during the Japanese colonial rule, the expansion of ELE under the strong influence of the U.S. military government of Korea and during the Korean War, and the continual development of ELE led by the Korean government. 
