(hey, its the offtopic board afterall right?)

One day a korean fiend of mine came up to me:

Friend: "Justin! It can't believe how bad its getting in my office recently. . . "

Me: "why? what happened?"

Friend: "Major Lee is requiring all of us to speak ENGLISH in our office"

Me: ". . . . ?! . . . . ok, whats your point?"

Friend: ". . . ?! . . . He's making us speak english between us!"

Me: "yeah, and you know english, in fact you are speaking it to me right now just fine. . . "

Friend:"You just don;t understand. You are american, I can speak english to you, but we are
all koreans in there . . . . we're gonna try to come up with some hand signals for our office, so we can try to avoid it as much as possible. . . "

Me: ". . . ??????"

To be honest I still don't understand this one. . . its definitly not a "national pride issue", Its more of a fear of using it incorrectly issue. . . but how this can apply to speaking with other koreans and not apply even more to speaking with an american, i am not quite so sure.