I was thinking as I read some of the posts that maybe there was room for an alternate view of things.
The kwanjang ("director") of our sword school, GM Hyi Koo teaches a style of Korean sword, HwaRang Kumdo which closely approximates Japanese tradition. In fact you will find that a great many practitioners follow such traditions to the point that just about everyone believes that Korean sword is nothing more than a Korean interpretation of Japanese traditions. To a great degree this is true but there are still a significant portion of Korean practiioners who follow traditions which only touch on Japanese work and owe as much or more to Korean and Chinese traditions.
The Koreans do not have a tradition that raised the use of a sword to the level of social icon as did the Japanese. In fact the Koreans had no such comparable warrior class, tending more towards the Chinese traditions which, again, had no distinguished warrior class. For the Koreans, the sword was a tool for accomplishing a task in much the same way as anyone else uses any other tool. That doesn't mean they didn't get good with the weapon, only that they didn't characterize it as "the soul of the warrior" as did many of their Japanese cousins.
In another vein it is also important to rmember that the Koreans did not subscribe to a particular sword architecture or design. In fact the Mu Yei ToBo Tong Ji identifies at least 4 kinds of swords including the Long Sword, Short Sword, Double swords and Cresent Sword and provides instruction in the minimal skills for handling each. And while the Koreans were famous for their metal work well into the Yuan (Mongol) domination, policies regarding mining and paying tribute caused the metal skills of the Koreans to degrade to a point that it became necessary to import skilled workers from Japan and Manchuria in the 15th century. All the same the metal working skills remained in the pits until recent efforts to resurrect those arts. FWIW.
BTW: Your teacher (seang sa) or instructor (sa bu) rate the honorific ( -nym) any time you address them. They for their part, following neo-cofucian protocols, don't owe you much more than polite informality, though anyone with class will always give as good as they get, right?
Best Wishes,
Bruce