The opening ceremony of a Vietnamese language course for people in the Republic of Korea. (Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – An article published on The Diplomatmagazine has looked for the reason behind an increasing number of people in theRepublic of Korea learning Vietnamese, a less familiar language compared toEnglish.
It opened by showing that 800 Koreans took the languageproficiency test Vietnamese Oral Proficiency Interview in 2017, jumping by 15percent from 2016.
Meanwhile, a Vietnamese language course at the Seoul-basedonline language education Siwon School saw a 4-percent increase in the numberof students and an 11-percent increase in sales every month since it was firstlaunched in November 2016.
The article said the number of RoK people learning Vietnameseis not huge, but its growth is not a coincidence, regarding the context of thetwo countries fortifying their ties, particularly in trade.
RoK’s exports to Vietnam rose by 46.3 percent last year, andmore than doubled over the last three years. Vietnam is now expected to become RoK’ssecond largest export market by 2020.
At the end of 2017, about 5,500 RoK firms operated inVietnam. This makes the RoK the biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, with totaldirect investment reaching a record-high 7.4 billion USD in the first 11 monthsof 2017.
The article noted Vietnam’s rapidly growing economy playedan important role in the economic ties growth. It said Samsung is taking thelead of RoK investment in Vietnam, followed by other firms such as Lotte andCJ. Smaller players have also targeted the Vietnamese market. The Seoul-basedgeneral cooking and food company Ourhome has recently begun to provideVietnamese language courses for its employees ahead of its expansion to thecountry.
By the end of 2017, only 4.9 percent of high school studentsin RoK decided to take Vietnamese as a second language test for theiruniversity entrance exam, lagging behind Chinese and Japanese at 5.4 percentand 8.1 percent, respectively. However, the article said the situation mightchange soon.-VNA
