Will English Immersion System succeed in Korea? - In the light of disbelief

Last winter, the Korean government introduced a policy on English Education that all English classes would advance in English, promising all students’ fluent speaking abilities after a couple of years undergoing immersion classes. In response to this, some questions arose in my mind regarding with its infeasibility and effectiveness.

First, it will be out of the question if there are not enough teachers out there to be able to teach English in English. In reality, only 50% of incumbent teachers are reported to be capable of doing it. Even all 50% of teachers saying “yes, I can” put their thoughts that it would be a pain of the neck to carry out their classes all the time only in English. In similar vein, if the policy is forced to be implemented in two years as its policy says, how could a good deal of necessary human resources are recruited or trained in such a short period? The estimated number of teachers needed is over 500,000 a year according to the Korean Education Society (2008), and this number makes everything sound infeasible.

Secondly, its effectiveness is questionable because of Korea’s unitary language system which is not friendly to use/learn English. Korea has actively expanded foreign trades with all over the countries, but still less than 5% of people are placed to work where English is spoken necessarily, and most of Korean hardly speaks in English in their lives because they do not have any necessity or chances of getting them into a situation where they should speak in English. Given this situation, the mass of people are apprehensive that the immersion classes to all schools seem to be excessive invested.

Education issue is at high stake in Korea. Most of all, concerns about English education are relatively at peak because of its determining impacts on students’ future. Accordingly, it would bring us a chaos if this policy will get started on insufficient preparation periods and deliberation. Prior to the hasty execution, what should be done first? Wouldn't it be the discussion about development of human resources?

* I made up all figures and numbers to make my essay look likely.