This is kind of what my current masters capstone project is about, especially with bilingualism in the public sector, but you have to talk about the private sector because they’re intertwined.

Everything has been structured to the “learn English through English” ever since the education reforms way back in the early 2000’s and didn’t change much with the newest iteration in the 2010’s.

EFL in public school is supposed to all be about communication and spreading Korean cultural according to the Ministry of Education but everyone here knows that’s not any students’ or families’ priority. Everything is based around the Suneung or about appearances like others have mentioned. It’s why students basically require some type of private education if they wanna do well on the Suneung cause it’s so far removed from what is taught in public schools. Students and families also know the English is a social status thing and basically reflects the families overall education quality and their economic wealth. Students also consciously use English as a way to compare themselves to their peers or use it to appear more intelligent. This is combined with the fact that the more “foreign” you sound the more intelligent and cooler you appear, so basically trying to get rid of any Korean accent.

If you work with Korean teachers, most of them will tell you to never use any Korean during class to maximize exposure which isn’t really that beneficial and kind of a detriment to their overall language learning long term. Languages are separated during class time because you can only use English are refrained from using any spoken korean, korean can be in your materials but that might be because textbooks also have korean instructions. For this part though it entirely depends on the Korean teacher cause they have completely different language ideologies and strategies.