II.

THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE PLANNING AND POLICY

Language planning and policy is a concept introduced by Christian Haugen in 1959 to aid
the country restoration of those affected by war. Christian Haugen thought that language has a
significant relationship in the economic, political and social aspects of the nation and in order for
a country to be restored again; language diversity must be suppressed to come up with one
language identity. It’s in the era of 1950‟s-1960‟s where LPP starts and it is an independent
academic discipline responsible for actual language planning process including implementing
language policies in different nations, developing and developed countries, and it is done not
only in state (macro) level but also in regional (meso) and community (micro) level.

Little did we know, before the creation of language planning and policy, Korea already
has language planning and policy prior to the creation of one of the well-known language in the
world and considered to be a language isolate or being the only member in its own family,
Korean language. Even though Korean language have different names for both South and North
Korea wherein it is called as “hangugmal” for the democratic side and “choseonmal” for the
communist side, its history started way back from the unified kingdoms of Korea.

At first, they are being colonized by China wherein some parts of the Korean peninsula
are in the hands of the Chinese Dynasty which resulted to the effects that their language was
greatly influenced by Chinese language and borrowed words from the said language. Just like
Japan, Korea has Chinese language roots due to long period of occupation in the Korean
Peninsula. During the Joseon Dynasty, King Sejong the Great saw that Chinese is only for the
elite and he felt empathy for the poor and lower class that can’t learn such difficult characters
and can’t express their thoughts, so he created Hangul. The emperor even ordered the use of
Hangul in their media and books at that time.

When the Chinese ruling become weak, Japanese Empire started to colonize the country
which put their language at risk due to the severe suppression of Korean language in Korean
Peninsula because it was treated as an opposite to the Japanese language. After the World War II
in 1945, when they are freed from the Japanese ruling by the United States, the language
planning and policy intensified in order to restore their language which became an important part
of their culture, history, tradition, and most importantly, identity. Even though they still has the
influence of Hanja or Chinese language and some Japanese traces at that time, little by little,
slowly but surely, Korea started to have an intensified promotion of their own language.

During the late 1980s and through the 1990s, South Korea faced a turning point through
major sociopolitical and economic changes. South Korea started hosting large-scale worldwide
events such as 1986 Asian Games and 1988 Seoul Olympics. This was a step toward
globalization that prompted the Korean government to feel the need to improve its people’s
English communicative skills (Spolsky, 2002). Moreover, as Demick (2002) explains, South
Korea’s undergoing the Asian financial crisis of 1997 “made Koreans realize how much English
was valued in the process of globalization” (as cited in Park, 2009, p. 52). Thus English started
to be considered a critical resource required for the country to survive and further develop
economically. Not only fast-paced globalization but also academia’s emphasis on
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Nunan, 1987; Savignon, 1987, 1991) contributed to
the Korean government’s awareness of the importance of English communicative competence,
and this operated remarkable changes in South Korea’s English language education policy. South
Korea begun to intensify its English language capability for the country to be able to survive the
wild flow of globalization, that’s why they carefully and thoroughly filter the English teachers
they hire wherein they strictly hire those teachers coming from a native English speaking
country. They also minimally erase the trace of Chinese and Japanese influence in their language
by using Hangul in their publications, media and in public use, but some Chinese characters are
used to avoid confusion on sound and pronunciation.