Learning Korean

I am at it again: trying to learn Korean to get it to the level beyond the ability to say to a taxi driver where I want to go, beyond asking "how much are the apples", and "I come from Canada."
It's a linguistic challenge unlike any other I encountered so far. I speak 3 languages fluently, stutter 2 if need be, and had 4 years of Latin in prep-school. All of these languages are Indo-European, while Korean is - according to Korean linguists - Altaic, having similarities with Hungarian, Mongolian, Turkish; according to Western linguists it's a langauge isolate, so profoundly different that cannot be included within any major langauge group.In my attempts to learn Korean I did the following: attended a Korean class at a church; found a language exchange club; found a one-on-one language partner; bought 8 (read EIGHT) expensive Learning Korean text books complete with tapes and workbooks, made heaps of Korean friends.... It'd be only natural that that by now I could speak Korean better than Kim Jung-il - alas, that's not the case. Korean is, simply put, sooooo different that studying it usually gives me a major headache and makes me feel so stooooooopid. It is different, trust me: I don't say this in lieu of excuse for not speaking it better. According to Dr. Alexander Arguelles and Dr. Jong Rok Kim, the guys who wrote a book called A historical, LIterary and Cultural Approach to Learning Korean , "Korean is one of the most difficult langauges in the world for a Westerner to learn" because its fonetic system is totally different, its vocabulary is totally different, not allowing to make any parallels or analogies, the grammar is built on a totally different structural and cultural principles. To put it simply: if you're a Bulgarian studying French, you will need two years to become fluent in French; however, if you're the same Bulgarian studying Korean you'd need 6 years - triple the time - to be at the same level of fluency. My primary problem is the acquisition and retention of vocabulary. Korean os a syllabic language; it recyles and combines a certain number of fixed syllables and creates words with new meanings; at the same time one word (or one syllable) can have numerous meanings. Illustration: wallet in Korean is jee-gap; job is jee-gob; now is jee-geum. Ahhh! It all sounds so similar. Then: ocean is dae-yang, but yang is sheep, dae is big, so, "logically" the Korean word for ocean is 'big sheep' - yes? naah! It is to me - I see "dae yang" and I say ' yep, this means a big sheep" and I look foolish. BTW yang appears in so many words like koh-yang-ee (cat); koh itself means nose and many, many other things. If I confused you, good - that was my plan 'cause I wanted to show you some of the difficulties. Why bother, then? It's not like you can really use your Korean once you leave Korea unless you go to the Korea town in L.A. or Toronto. I bother because I've lived here long enough and I am intending to stay longer. I also bother because it's a challenge and I think I can wake up my somewhat sleepy brain from the post graduate school slumber it fell in. I bother because I have so many Korean friends and I choose to live in this country. The least I can do to reciprocate the kindness of my host country and its people is to try and learn their langauge. So, wish me luck. Anyongheekyesaeyo (all of this translates to one single simple syllable: bye. Aeeeeeeeehgoooo! (means OOOOOOUUUUUUCH!)