Why is Korean considered an isolated language when it clearly has similarities to other Asian languages?

by alejandro2121

I was reading about language families and found that Korean is considered a language isolate with no connections to other language families. It seems strange to me, an American who wouldnt be able to tell the difference between Korean and, say, Chinese if I heard someone speaking in the street, that these languages share no common ancestors despite their obvious similarities.

Searocksandtrees

Hi OP, this isn't a history question, but since there are a few historical linguists who frequent this sub, you might get an answer here. Meanwhile, it may be worth x-posting to /r/linguistics: they have a weekly stickied Q&A post for lay questions :

https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/9ygkxx/this_weeks_qa_thread_please_read_before_asking_or/