Dokdo bus in New York City

Ah, you’re referring to Korea Way, aren’t you? I’m surprised you don’t say the same about, say, Chinatown.

In any case, I do agree that there should be at least SOME English for native Americans (Not, Native native, but… you get my point. The folks who were here in the first place) rather than make it look like someone took a slice of downtown Busan and transported it there.

But to ask to take ALL the Hangeul down… that’s a bit extreme, no? Being a 2nd generation Korean-American, I can say how difficult it is for a person past the prime of his/her life to learn English, not to mention how near-impossible it is for an elderly person to learn English fluently (and according to a study done by the Census Bureau, almost a quarter of immigrants are over 55). I still remember my grandmother often getting yelled at at her former job as a custodian because of a failure in communication. Hell, the only way she manages to get gas nowadays is by memorizing the patterns of buttons she has to press on the terminal. For folks like them, they need the signs in Korean.

@Noir – I see what you are saying, and yes, Chinatown had Chinese signs all over the place (naturally), but from my recollection the majority of shops had signs that were bilingual or else they had 2 signs, one in each language. Now, Chinatown pushes tourism in a way that Flushing doesn’t, so having English signs is in part an economic necessity in Chinatown while it is probably not so in Flushing.

And yes, English can be a bitch to learn. But saying “well, mom is never going to learn English right, so let’s just put everything in Korean/Chinese/German/what-have-you” is hardly a solution. It doesn’t help that person at all, in fact it handicaps them by providing a crutch so that they never have to get better. Being on the “short end of the stick” myself, so to speak, I know this from personal experience and from knowing people who’ve been here for a decade or more and still can’t do anything by themselves in Japanese because everyone is “so nice” and puts things into English for them.

@Mr. Rabbit – New Yawkers would look up even then? I have an image in my head of a bus going by and the locals saying “What’s dat? Threesome with a midget? Fuggedaboutit. Show me something original.”