On my last flight over the captain could not even say the arrival time in English properly. Twice I heard him gabble and fake it.
The standard of English language of KE pilots has grown worse and worse over the 30 years I have flown with them, and now the SK govt is discussing cutting back on English teaching in schools.
The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea - Gov't to Cut Down on English Teaching in Schools
Their English is so bad that you think they murder the English language? Well their ever supreme and wise chairman cho deemed that English PA was so difficult for the Korean pilots that he embarked on a 5 year project, hiring NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKING ENGLISH TEACHERS, to remedy the problem. Instead of improving their English skills, they went the opposite way! They scoured the dictionaries and lexicons to find the SIMPLEST ENGLISH WORDS THAT THE KOREAN PILOTS COULD PRONOUNCE without causing murder, and incorporated them in the PA so that the PA would sound " nice "! So it was nursery school level English for you.
Foreign pilots are also forced to use this same nursery school English level scripted PA religiously to avoid making Korean pilots look incompetent. The chairman claimed that Korean passengers complained about differences in contents of Korean language PAs with any non-scripted English PAs made by foreign pilots. That made the Koreans feel inferior.
The strange thing is that they are also very hesitant and seemingly incompetent in their own Korean language! I was in the cockpit for the landing in one case when we were instructed to go around and hold over a fix because of a disabled aircraft on the runway. In the holding, the Korean captain struggled trying to find the correct scripted PA; he couldn't find one in the Captain's PA booklet, became very flustered and almost lost the plot snapping at the F/O ( who also couldn't find the proper PA )...I told him just to make a simple impromptu Korean PA in simple Korean everyday language! He just couldn't or wouldn't !!! Making any English PA in that situation is out of the question.
I had to calm him down, saying that I would take care of the PA together with the purser...they ( the skipper and f/o ) just concentrate getting us safely on the ground in one piece. The purser managed to come up with some suitable Korean PA modified from a page in his PA booklet whilst I just made a simple English PA off the cuff.
I heard that shortly after that, they came up with policy whereby the captain delegates most of the PA involving unusual events to the purser who has a booklet covering most expected delays, etc. By then I was already out of that cuckoo's nest!
