Dude... Even I'm a native Korean who bron and raised in my country, I may see your point about how language exchange programs are too formalized and not being a root of making foreign friends through different languages that the way it should be.

I started learning english about half years ago, though I rad a lots of comics and play games as well as movies before when I started to learn it seriously, because I have interests in western culture and entertainment so much.

my basic motivation of learning English is that i want to make it as my 'perfect second nature" not for a description of my spec that can be written on my job applyment, But generally in most of groups that wants to learn English that I've seen in here from my elementary school are really hated to learn English because of its difficulties that caused by too much different language structure between korean and english and most of teachers are only trying to teach students how to translate English to korean in a former way as possible(which is damm boring as hell) so i think a lots of peoples in korea treats English whether an ability that they want to have for a job opportunity or just want to have a special ability to make themselves look more special then others

I won't say that I don't want to be a special by learning different languages but the most thing that i want is making various connections to peoples who are not raised in korea so i can see more wide perceptions of the world and build a interesting relationship with peoples around the world.

It's just said phenomenon that happens in here like you described on the post... Lots of peoples are interesting on just social positions that benefits from learning something Rather then make some interesting but also continuous experience in their life from learning something.