The Competitive Power of English/ Prologue

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Source: www.chosun.com

The Competitive Power of English/ Prologue

Editor's Note

Korea has, day by day, become isolated from the English-speaking world. Foreigners visiting Korea have difficulty and most international conferences and government meetings are held in bilingual modes to allow Koreans to fully participate. The Chosun Ilbo believes stunted English levels in the country could ultimately undermine the nation's economy on the crest of taking off into the next millenium. Thus, we will carry a feature series entitled, "The Competitive Power of English," because we believe in this new century, Korea can no longer stand apart from the growing global tide of English dominance.

Prologue

Sweeping changes are overtaking Internet-governed global industries. Observers say 78% of global homepages that allow access to Internet worlds are in English, not to mention 96% of e-commerce sites. It is self-evident that English will become the common tool for a digital global society and the Internet world. One can say that the infrastructure for the Internet industry can only be established through proper governmental budget allocations, and that a certain level of linguistic proficiency cannot be acquired in a brief period. Without overcoming these hurdles, we cannot surmount the Internet world and thus cannot take true initiatives towards the digitally dominant 21st century.
On Yahoo! Korea, only 30 registered government sites are in English, in contrast to 174 homepages of Singapore government offices. This suggests that many Korean government offices do not provide English services for their sites. In the business category of the American Yahoo! search engine, Korean firms' homepages total 999, while those from Singapore amount to 2,307, more than double Korea's. Taiwanese firms top 1,671 and Malaysian firms, 1,281.
The Internet is a key for the new millennium and English is the critical link for access to key words. It is clearly evident that one must have English abilities to move ahead into the next century

(By Yum Jin-sup, President of Yahoo! Korea)

Links:
http://yuldo.net/asian-eng/chosun.htm