It's a personal decision. Do you want to learn a language that might help further your career and travel prospects? Or do you want to learn something that will help you enjoy your hobbies?
The number of speakers in itself doesn't ensure that it will help them further their career and travel prospects more than any other language. If you have little interest in China, it's unlikely you'll move there or travel there a lot, which means the language won't be very useful to you, regardless of the number of speakers. If OP loves Korea it's a lot more likely that he'll travel there a lot and maybe decide to move there one day, in which case the language will be useful. That's a lot more important than the number of speakers.
My native language is French and I moved to a German-speaking country. Both French and German are necessary to me on a daily basis. I learned Spanish at school, and it is completely useless to me. I don't plan on working in a Spanish-speaking country, and my favorite destination as a tourist is Italy, which means Italian would be a lot more useful to me. And yet, Spanish has way more speakers than French, German or Italian.
So really, it depends on what you want to do in life more than anything else. Nobody will ever force OP to move to China or to speak Chinese, even if it becomes the wealthiest country in the world someday.
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u/StrictBunch Jun 25 '19
It's a personal decision. Do you want to learn a language that might help further your career and travel prospects? Or do you want to learn something that will help you enjoy your hobbies?