I wish I’d learned more while stationed there but I was awful busy both times.
Our cultural motivations are horrendous. You learn to speak Korean because of you dig their crap music and not kimchi?! Bizarre.
Freegards
I also think that K-Drama contributed to the popularity of the Korean language. It’s not just K-Pop.
There’s also Tae Kwon Do...as a door into the culture.
Type K-Pop women at google then click on Images.
Hmm...
나는 아주 작은 한국어를 말한다
na neun a ju jag eun han gug eo reur mal han da
Which means: I speak very little Korean.
However, I actually was taught a different expression for it: Na neun han guk mal reur cho kum ham ni da.
For which a very direct translation would be: I Korean language speak very little.
Korean is not the same in construction as either Chinese or Japanese.
Although westerners see the Korean script characters as though they were the same kind of thins as the Chinese ideograms (symbols that have a meaning), they are not.
What westerners see as each Korean script character is actually a phonetic script constructed to produce a single syllable. The syllable-characters are put together by parts that each represent a phonetic sound, just like our alphabet.
However, I think for most weasterners, learning written Korean, in spite of the phonetic alphabet nature of Korean script, is harder to learn than spoken Korean.
And besides, they do a really good job providing what is needed most (Ha Ha): English subtitles for modern Korean TV dramas and movies - available all over the world and almost as popular throughout Asia as K-Pop.