Errr, I should be more clear: the Japanese public schools don't actually teach English as we know it and I assume this holds for the all important test to get into a university. I.e. you can get high marks in it but you will be functionally illiterate unless you seek additional education, and if you do that while you're still stuck in the Japanese educational system you have to keep the two dialects separate in your mind.
South Korea may teach it poorly, but if they're trying to teach something recognizable as English they still ought to be doing it better. And then there's the close ties between our countries of various sorts, your Samsung example may not be apropos given all the other ways Koreans learn and practice English, in the military, I assume to some extent, which is not small in South Korea, in the flow of people to and from the US, etc.
> Errr, I should be more clear: the Japanese public schools don't actually teach English as we know it
I'm fully aware of how the Japanese teach/learn English.
> South Korea may teach it poorly, but if they're trying to teach something recognizable as English they still ought to be doing it better.
The South Korean educational system is no better when it comes to teaching English than the Japanese system. They pretty much use the same methods, many of which were taken directly from Japanese practices.
> And then there's the close ties between our countries of various sorts
There are close ties between Japan and the US as well.
> your Samsung example may not be apropos given all the other ways Koreans learn and practice English, in the military, I assume to some extent, which is not small in South Korea
It is actually quite small. The only significant group of people in the Korean military that gets regular English practice is KATUSA[0], and they are expected to have a certain TOEIC score just to get in.
The fact of the matter is South Korea visibly scores lower on tests of English proficiency than Japan, so I don't understand why you're so eager to state that their proficiency is actually higher than that of the Japanese.
I'm not saying their proficiency is greater (since prior to this discussion I had no knowledge of it), I was just saying it's possible. I hope there is English proficiency outside of KATUSA soldiers (only 3,400 as of 2012 according to Wikipedia), i.e. how are higher level officers going to coordinate with their American counterparts? But then again South Korea is I gather more and more confident of being able to handle threats by themselves (and perhaps less and less confident of meaningful US help ... and I'd assume proficiency is higher in the Air Force (English being the official worldwide language for air traffic control) which is what we could surge the fastest).
Anyway, to clarify my point about Samsung, if there's a greater pool of good English speakers to pull from (even if in general the pool is poorer ... especially since in either case there's little to chose from being functionally illiterate vs. even more functionally illiterate???), it could explain their being able to pull it off. They must being doing something right....
> how are higher level officers going to coordinate with their American counterparts?
Oh, I wouldn't doubt that higher level officers have a better command of English than your average rank-and-file soldier. But that's a relatively small number of people, right?
> They must being doing something right....
They're obviously doing something right in terms of being commercially successful. My whole point is that English fluency is not all that important for commercial success. For example, they could have the software engineering done overseas, with only the liaisons between the hardware and software teams fluent in English. This is all speculation. All I can say for sure is that South Korea's English education system is no better than that of Japan's.
South Korea may teach it poorly, but if they're trying to teach something recognizable as English they still ought to be doing it better. And then there's the close ties between our countries of various sorts, your Samsung example may not be apropos given all the other ways Koreans learn and practice English, in the military, I assume to some extent, which is not small in South Korea, in the flow of people to and from the US, etc.