Would love to agree, but I can't! At least in some parts :-))
My reason for studying gramamer structures is not even to use them (that is another story), but to understand what native speakers say.

How often we hear words that we know, but can't recognize because of the heavy modification like 알았어, 알았다구요 and 안다. Uunless I learn them all, I will enver recognize them!

And how about the phrasal structures? They are even more powerful! Miss them and you will miss the meaning of the entire sentence! It is like you know each word separately but can't put them together in your head! For example, the simplest  할 걸 그랬어요. My imagination can take me very far in guessing what that can mean.

However, having said this, I can't emphasize enough the value of talking and practicing the grammar structures and vocabulary through role playing dialogues, but I find most teachers utterly incapable of creating such a learning environment.

I agree wholeheartedly! My Korean class in university is very focused on grammar, which I actually like because it's the type of learning that my brain enjoys. Still, after learning the grammar concept it's hard for me to remember it when trying to speak Korean unless I've come across the concept naturally by listening to song lyrics, watching a Korean show, or trying to read the caption on an idol's instagram photo (this is actually really helpful for learning btw)!

I like studying grammar.  Crazy me.  And I do not find Korean grammatical structure particularly difficult.  I've studied French for years, plus Spanish, Italian, Latin, German & Anglo-Saxon, plus I learned the cyrillic & greek alphabets (oh, & the ELVISH tengwar LOL)

Believe me, just because the Korean conjugation of verbs is different, does not mean it's harder.  Having to learn myriad conjugation patterns in French, complete w/gender - that was a pain.  Really.  

I agree that using the language is different from understanding it's structure, and although I do understand, at this point in my studies, a lot of conjugation patterns it doesn't necessarily mean that helps my conversational abilities.

KDrama & KPop help w/that LOL

But the grammar helps me understand what I READ in Korean!

김도연, I agree with your article, I still think grammar is important, but only to 'structure' [but that is a linguistic for you though :)] The endings in Korean always get me, especially because i find Koreans tend not finish a sentence, it seems to go on forever lol! 고 everywhere!!!! I truly feel we believe that 'native speakers' will yell or scream at us if we make an error, but that has never been the case for me. After all, we are all human!

Out of curoisty, Do you feel there are many people studying Korean? I always assumed a lot of people were because of KPOP etc. But I realised that there are only 4 people (including myself) in my university grade that are studying Korean!

Look forward to your next article!