A year from now, Korea will host the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, a county in Gangwon Province.

However, the political turmoil surrounding President Park Geun-hye that began last fall has knocked PyeongChang out of the news. Recently, a few articles on the supposed low quality of English signage in the area were published.

The articles follow the same script that prevailed in the mid-1980s when Korea was gearing up for its big international debut through the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.

The script starts with a mythological English-speaking Westerner who visits Korea during the Olympics. The Westerner finds many things about Korea different from home and concludes therefore that Korea is inconvenient and not up to an assumed “global standard.”

Based on this, the script argues that Korea needs to change in order for the Westerner to become more comfortable.

The problem with these articles is that they assume all foreigners visiting Korea are Westerners.

In the 1980s, the overwhelming number of foreign tourists visiting Korea were Japanese. Korea’s large proportion of Asian visitors has continued into the current decade, with a surge in Chinese tourists propelling them into first place in tourist numbers. Throughout the same period, the number of Western tourists has remained steady, but has never come close to being a majority.

Based on the first assumption, the articles assume that all foreign tourists worry about the quality and quantity of English signage and English-speaking skills. Some do, of course, but most do not.

Most Western tourists to Korea have traveled to other countries, some of which are not known to have English signs available everywhere. They find ways around the inconvenience and for some the inconvenience is part of the excitement of travel.

Many Chinese and Japanese tourists can speak limited English, so the language might not be very helpful to them.

To be sure, basic signage in English and Chinese characters is a must for foreign tourists because, with a few exceptions, most cannot read Hangeul.

Korail and the subway in Seoul have signs and announcements in Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese for this reason. Many Japanese tourists find it easy to make links between signs in Chinese characters and the information in Japanese guidebooks.

In surveys, foreign tourists often rank communication as one of the main inconveniences encountered during their stay in Korea. Some of this might arise from signage and written information, but the main problem could be due to the limited English-speaking skills of those who work at shops and restaurants.

This is a problem hardly unique to Korea. Tourists might feel the same way after visiting another country where English is not widely used as a second language.

Every tourist destination, in fact, has some inherent limitations because nowhere is perfect.

Some places are expensive, some have petty crime, some have a harsh climate, and some, like Korea, have communication issues. Compared to, say, the petty crime targeting tourists in major European destinations, the inconvenience caused by communication issues in Korea is minor.

Most tourists quickly develop ways to deal with their new surroundings, often before even getting on a plane. Rather than pretending that all Koreans speak English, as Korea-based information often asserts, it would be more helpful to admit that English skills are limited but that Korea is safe and people are willing to help.

During a visit to Shanghai in the early 2000s, English was hard to find. I wanted to go to the former provisional government site of the Republic of Korea, so I asked the hotel to write the address and that of my next destination in Chinese on a card. The taxi driver did not speak a word of English, but took me to my destination. The next card worked to get me to my next destination and from there, I took the subway back to the hotel in the evening using a subway map in a guidebook.

Instead of worrying about language and thinking that all foreigners expect PyeongChang to be like Singapore, planners should focus more on finding and creating things for tourists to do. Instead of worrying about the quality of English descriptions on restaurant menus, how about food tours or cooking lessons? Or cultural events and excursions?

And instead of worrying about English, how about finding ways to go beyond it, to include more languages? French, after all, is one of the two official languages of the Olympics and is always used first in announcements in honor of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics.

By Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He can be reached at robertjfouser@gmail.com. -- Ed.