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South Korean here. My anecdata: some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x o

South Korean here. My anecdata: some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. Such tendency was remarkable to me, given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans. There is one thing I can't understand from the article: it says a low birth rate as a reason of an increase in migration. Why would a low birth rate lead to more migration? I can understand the unemployment rate as a reason, and SK surely has a serious problem of low birth rate.. but that's for new babies...

pojzon 7y ago
Younger people can think about their future too. Anyone should be free to seek better future for him/herself. Aging society is a big issue. When i was studing, alot of thought went into "my county has a lot of internal issues that doesnt seem to be solved anytime soon - mby its better to jump the ship before it sinks".
- throwmeback 7y ago
  Those are my daily thoughts about my country. The problem is that if I move away, all my friends will still be there and be miserable, which makes a tough decision to make.
  - badpun 7y ago
    Lots of people move abroad for a couple years, save a lot of money there, build strong CVs and then come back to their home country. With the saved money, they can easily start a life (buy house/flat without debt etc.) and strong CV presumably allows them to get a decent job. Of course, it is only suitable in countries that are at least somewhat developed, don't have wars etc.
umanwizard 7y ago
> given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans This surprises me a bit (I believe you; I am just surprised.) Why do Koreans think learning Japanese is easier than learning English?
- entelechy0 7y ago
  You're not considering the Korean perspective. If Korean is your native language, Japanese is significantly easier to pick up than English due to similarities in the grammatical structure and syntax of both languages. Your surprise is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding and stereotype about English because English is, I'm guessing, your native language. It is mine as well, but I considered the questions you're asking when I was teaching myself Japanese around age 9. I'm 33 now. The barrier of difficulty is all in your mind. You're the only limiting factor. You decide for yourself how difficult something is to do.
- asutekku 7y ago
  Some of the characters are similar as well as grammar. English follows a completely new set of rules.
- Zarath 7y ago
  Their syntax and grammar is very similar. Korean and Japanese are both among the most difficult languages for an English speaker to learn, so I would imagine the reverse is true for Japanese and Korean speakers as well. Consider the difference between English and Spanish vs. English and Japanese. If you look at a Spanish sentence, you can more or less translate it word for word to and from English so long as you know the vocabulary and verb conjugations. Japanese on the other hand has an entirely different grammar, uses the case (particle) system, has honorifics and levels of politeness, has entirely different parts of speech from english, is far less ego-oriented (I don't mean this in a judgemental way, just that objects are much more often the subjects of sentences)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mikkyang 7y ago
tanilama 7y ago
But Koreans are still required to learn Kanjis right? Even with many shared/loan words through history, learning several thousands characters still doesn't feel easy enough to me. While in many countries, people start learning English when they are in elementary schools. Upon until getting out of college, that is some decent years spent on English alone. While the language itself is significantly different, more reading and extension of vocabulary should the few pending items to master English from that point on.
- ezoe 7y ago
  You still have to learn a lot of irregular spellings in English or any other natural languages anyway. Even if the spelling is perfectly regular, you still have to learn a lot of words. At that sense, it's no harder than any other languages.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Koreans learn the hanja, which are basically identical to traditional Chinese characters (hanzi) in secondary school. Kanji are more divergent from hanzi than kanji and if you want to be able to read a newspaper or textbook you’d probably need to add about 700 characters to the 1800 generally taught in Korea but that is a massive leg up. Japanese and Korean have very similar morphemes and grammar. And English education in Korea is historically dire though improving. They are not going to be mastering English after secondary school, on average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja > South Korean primary schools abandoned the teaching of Hanja in 1971, although they are still taught as part of the mandatory curriculum in grade 6. They are taught in separate courses in South Korean high schools, separately from the normal Korean-language curriculum. Formal Hanja education begins in grade 7 (junior high school) and continues until graduation from senior high school in grade 12. A total of 1,800 Hanja are taught: 900 for junior high, and 900 for senior high (starting in grade 10). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Korean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Kor... > Japanese and Korean both have an agglutinative morphology in which verbs may function as prefixes[13] and a subject–object–verb (SOV) typology.[14][15][16] They are both topic-prominent, null-subject languages. Both languages rely heavily on turning nouns into verbs utilizing "to do" (する and 하다). > Modern Korean and Japanese share a similar system of demonstrative pronouns: i- (이), ku- (그) and ce- (저) for Korean corresponding to the Japanese ko- (こ), so- (そ) and a- (あ)(“this”, “that” and “that over there”). They both lack a compulsory distinction of plurality (for example "an apple" vs "apples" is usually not specifically distinguished).
ezoe 7y ago
The answer is, they need slaves. The foreign workers are suitable for slaves because they don't know the labor law well. As the birth rate is decreasing, there is a shortage of young slaves. It's a simple supply and demand situation. If you want to hire a worker, you have to pay more because there is not enough supply that satisfy the demand. I have no idea what the future Japan will look like, but for workers, it will be a good market until Japanese economy corrupt.
senozhatsky 7y ago
> There is one thing I can't understand from the article: it says a low birth rate as a reason of an increase in migration. Why would a low birth rate lead to more migration? Good question. My understanding is that (from the article) The low birthrate is leading to severe labor shortages ... prompting the country to welcome more foreign workers. So foreign workers (e.g. from South-East Asia?) make it harder for Koreans to find a job in SK? But it's all the same (severe labor shortages) in Japan, if not worse.
- kijin 7y ago
  "Labor shortage" in the context of high unemployment (edit: as in South Korea, not Japan) usually just means, from the point of view of employers, a shortage of suckers who are willing to accept low wages. Besides, the birth rate in SK hovered between 1.4 and 1.5 during much of the 80s and 90s, and only dropped to current levels (around 1.1) since the early 2000s. Most people who are looking for jobs right now were born in the 90s; the ultra-low-birth-rate generation is still in K-12. It's a lame excuse. Foreign workers are willing to accept the kind of crappy treatment that most young Koreans would not hesitate to report to the authorities. That's why they're hired and Koreans are not. Then the Koreans become foreign workers in Japan...
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Japan has low unemployment, not high. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate > The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Japan increased unexpectedly to 2.5 percent in March 2019 from a five-month low of 2.3 percent in the previous month
    - kijin 7y ago
      Sorry for the confusion. I was responding to the parent's last line where he asked about foreign workers and labor shortage in SK. Edited to clarify which country I'm talking about.
wodenokoto 7y ago
> some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. My thinking is that Japanese and Korean work culture is quite similar. So if you want to live in that culture, why not do it closer to your family? However, if you get smitten by a more western lifestyle in the US or Europe, it will be very hard to return home.
- neoflex 7y ago
  >However, if you get smitten by a more western lifestyle in the US or Europe, it will be very hard to return home. Anecdotal, but I can confirm. I work for a Japanese bank in NYC that has a lot of Japanese expats. A few weeks prior a new expat came over and he was in awe of being able to start work around 8:50 and leave at 6:00, and how easy it is to approach the managers. Meanwhile, the expats that have been in NYC for a while are dreading returning to Tokyo.
theredbox 7y ago
How come it's so easy for koreans to go to the US ?

pojzon 7y ago

Younger people can think about their future too. Anyone should be free to seek better future for him/herself. Aging society is a big issue. When i was studing, alot of thought went into "my county has a lot of internal issues that doesnt seem to be solved anytime soon - mby its better to jump the ship before it sinks".

throwmeback 7y ago
Those are my daily thoughts about my country. The problem is that if I move away, all my friends will still be there and be miserable, which makes a tough decision to make.
- badpun 7y ago
  Lots of people move abroad for a couple years, save a lot of money there, build strong CVs and then come back to their home country. With the saved money, they can easily start a life (buy house/flat without debt etc.) and strong CV presumably allows them to get a decent job. Of course, it is only suitable in countries that are at least somewhat developed, don't have wars etc.

umanwizard 7y ago

> given the difficulty of learning English and relative ease of learning Japanese by Koreans This surprises me a bit (I believe you; I am just surprised.) Why do Koreans think learning Japanese is easier than learning English?

entelechy0 7y ago
You're not considering the Korean perspective. If Korean is your native language, Japanese is significantly easier to pick up than English due to similarities in the grammatical structure and syntax of both languages. Your surprise is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding and stereotype about English because English is, I'm guessing, your native language. It is mine as well, but I considered the questions you're asking when I was teaching myself Japanese around age 9. I'm 33 now. The barrier of difficulty is all in your mind. You're the only limiting factor. You decide for yourself how difficult something is to do.
asutekku 7y ago
Some of the characters are similar as well as grammar. English follows a completely new set of rules.
Zarath 7y ago
Their syntax and grammar is very similar. Korean and Japanese are both among the most difficult languages for an English speaker to learn, so I would imagine the reverse is true for Japanese and Korean speakers as well. Consider the difference between English and Spanish vs. English and Japanese. If you look at a Spanish sentence, you can more or less translate it word for word to and from English so long as you know the vocabulary and verb conjugations. Japanese on the other hand has an entirely different grammar, uses the case (particle) system, has honorifics and levels of politeness, has entirely different parts of speech from english, is far less ego-oriented (I don't mean this in a judgemental way, just that objects are much more often the subjects of sentences)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mikkyang 7y ago

tanilama 7y ago

But Koreans are still required to learn Kanjis right? Even with many shared/loan words through history, learning several thousands characters still doesn't feel easy enough to me. While in many countries, people start learning English when they are in elementary schools. Upon until getting out of college, that is some decent years spent on English alone. While the language itself is significantly different, more reading and extension of vocabulary should the few pending items to master English from that point on.

ezoe 7y ago
You still have to learn a lot of irregular spellings in English or any other natural languages anyway. Even if the spelling is perfectly regular, you still have to learn a lot of words. At that sense, it's no harder than any other languages.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Koreans learn the hanja, which are basically identical to traditional Chinese characters (hanzi) in secondary school. Kanji are more divergent from hanzi than kanji and if you want to be able to read a newspaper or textbook you’d probably need to add about 700 characters to the 1800 generally taught in Korea but that is a massive leg up. Japanese and Korean have very similar morphemes and grammar. And English education in Korea is historically dire though improving. They are not going to be mastering English after secondary school, on average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja > South Korean primary schools abandoned the teaching of Hanja in 1971, although they are still taught as part of the mandatory curriculum in grade 6. They are taught in separate courses in South Korean high schools, separately from the normal Korean-language curriculum. Formal Hanja education begins in grade 7 (junior high school) and continues until graduation from senior high school in grade 12. A total of 1,800 Hanja are taught: 900 for junior high, and 900 for senior high (starting in grade 10). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Korean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Japanese_and_Kor... > Japanese and Korean both have an agglutinative morphology in which verbs may function as prefixes[13] and a subject–object–verb (SOV) typology.[14][15][16] They are both topic-prominent, null-subject languages. Both languages rely heavily on turning nouns into verbs utilizing "to do" (する and 하다). > Modern Korean and Japanese share a similar system of demonstrative pronouns: i- (이), ku- (그) and ce- (저) for Korean corresponding to the Japanese ko- (こ), so- (そ) and a- (あ)(“this”, “that” and “that over there”). They both lack a compulsory distinction of plurality (for example "an apple" vs "apples" is usually not specifically distinguished).

ezoe 7y ago

The answer is, they need slaves. The foreign workers are suitable for slaves because they don't know the labor law well. As the birth rate is decreasing, there is a shortage of young slaves. It's a simple supply and demand situation. If you want to hire a worker, you have to pay more because there is not enough supply that satisfy the demand. I have no idea what the future Japan will look like, but for workers, it will be a good market until Japanese economy corrupt.

senozhatsky 7y ago

> There is one thing I can't understand from the article: it says a low birth rate as a reason of an increase in migration. Why would a low birth rate lead to more migration? Good question. My understanding is that (from the article) The low birthrate is leading to severe labor shortages ... prompting the country to welcome more foreign workers. So foreign workers (e.g. from South-East Asia?) make it harder for Koreans to find a job in SK? But it's all the same (severe labor shortages) in Japan, if not worse.

kijin 7y ago
"Labor shortage" in the context of high unemployment (edit: as in South Korea, not Japan) usually just means, from the point of view of employers, a shortage of suckers who are willing to accept low wages. Besides, the birth rate in SK hovered between 1.4 and 1.5 during much of the 80s and 90s, and only dropped to current levels (around 1.1) since the early 2000s. Most people who are looking for jobs right now were born in the 90s; the ultra-low-birth-rate generation is still in K-12. It's a lame excuse. Foreign workers are willing to accept the kind of crappy treatment that most young Koreans would not hesitate to report to the authorities. That's why they're hired and Koreans are not. Then the Koreans become foreign workers in Japan...
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Japan has low unemployment, not high. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate > The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Japan increased unexpectedly to 2.5 percent in March 2019 from a five-month low of 2.3 percent in the previous month
  - kijin 7y ago
    Sorry for the confusion. I was responding to the parent's last line where he asked about foreign workers and labor shortage in SK. Edited to clarify which country I'm talking about.

wodenokoto 7y ago

> some of my friends went to Japan for advanced degrees. Most of them came back within a couple of years after their study. 10x or more people around me went to US. The majority of them are still in the country after a few years. My thinking is that Japanese and Korean work culture is quite similar. So if you want to live in that culture, why not do it closer to your family? However, if you get smitten by a more western lifestyle in the US or Europe, it will be very hard to return home.

neoflex 7y ago
>However, if you get smitten by a more western lifestyle in the US or Europe, it will be very hard to return home. Anecdotal, but I can confirm. I work for a Japanese bank in NYC that has a lot of Japanese expats. A few weeks prior a new expat came over and he was in awe of being able to start work around 8:50 and leave at 6:00, and how easy it is to approach the managers. Meanwhile, the expats that have been in NYC for a while are dreading returning to Tokyo.

theredbox 7y ago

How come it's so easy for koreans to go to the US ?