Sales staff take up study of Mandarin

As Chinese travel abroad at an unprecedented rate, South Korea, now the leading destination for its neighbor's outbound tourists, is scrambling to keep up with the growing inflow of wealthy Chinese.

Myeongdong, Seoul's bustling pedestrian street for shopping, teems with so many Chinese tourists each day that shop sales staff have begun learning Mandarin to improve service.

A National Public Radio report said that some schools in South Korea are filling up with skin-care salespeople, whose bosses are paying for them to learn Mandarin.

Soh Bor-am, a Korean who teaches eight one-hour classes of Mandarin per day, said the demand for Chinese-language classes is growing.

Liu Zheng, a postgraduate student from China's Liaoning province who is studying in South Korea and teaches Mandarin during his free time, said one of his students is a vendor who sells fashion apparel and gadgets.

"He owns a shop at Myeongdong and also deals with clothing imports and exports to and from China," said Liu. "Japanese used to be the most popular second language in the country due to trade, after English, but Chinese is more popular than ever now."