Faster for Korean’s to learn Japanese?

I've been learning Japanese for years and it feels like my level is intermediate and my speaking level is not that great.
When I watch Japanese TV with k-pop stars, they speak Japanese fluently. I wish I could be like them.
Makes me wonder how do they do it. Would they go to an intense class?

Makes me wonder how do they do it. Would they go to an intense class?

My Korean friends say Japanese is easier for them to learn because the languages are relatively similar. But I've also heard that the K-pop stars take intensive Japanese classes to increase their marketability in Japan.

Thanks for the reply :)

That's interesting to know. Thank you!

Grammar is almost the same, so it's merely a matter of learning the corresponding words.

Kanji and such are also easy if they've learned Chinese characters in Korea.

You're absolutely right, from vocabulary to grammar and even peculiar discourse conventions, speakers of Korean learn Japanese more easily than speakers of European languages and Japanese speakers pick up Korean more easily.

The vocabulary that comes from Chinese is usually very similar and sometimes even exactly the same in the two languages. Examples of similar words (in the format J/K = Japanese/Korean): newspaper: shinbun/shinmun; address: jyusho/juso; baseball: yakyu/yagu; driver: untenshu/unjeonsu. Tons more examples like those. Some words exactly the same. Prepare: junbi/junbi; ignore: mushi/mushi.

Grammar. �gabout�h (I'm thinking ABOUT my family, I will talk ABOUT politics in Japan, etc.). In Japanese add ''ni tsu i te'' to a noun (family, politics in the above examples); in Korean add ''ae dae hae seo.'' Exactly the same nuance. No loss in translation at all. You get one, you've got the other. Done, bam. Next. Tons of other examples just like it.

Peculiar discourse conventions. ''Be quiet.'' If some kids are being noisy, in English you'd most often say something along the lines of, ''Be quiet.'' But in both Japanese and Korean, it's more common to yell at the kids, ''It's loud!�h to tell them to quiet down. ''Urusai!'' in Japanese. ''Shikkeureoweo!'' in Korean. Of course in English we could also say something like, ''Hey, it's a little loud in here'' to get kids to quiet down, but it's more common to be a little more direct and tell the kids to be quiet.

So yes, speakers of Korean learn Japanese more quickly than speakers of English and other European languages do, and vice versa. Also, people who learn Japanese or Korean as a second language also learn the other one as a third language faster. Korean helped me pick up Japanese faster than other North Americans and Japanese helped a former co-worker of mine pick up Korean faster than I did studying it ''from scratch.''