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I'm familiar with the argument you make, and was always curious: if Japanese and Korean aren't necessarily related, why do some people claim they are? The frustrating thing was that I could never get a clear answer. I'd ask seemingly knowledgeable people about the possible relationship, and would always hear both "Oh, sure, they're related; it's obvious" and "Oh, no, there's no relation!" Huh? Which is it?

So I did the only thing I could: I began classroom study of Korean, to find out for myself.

The result? After learning Japanese and studying Korean, my impression could be summed up with this: "Good lord, these are practically the same language. With different words."

Seriously: At the basic level, they're essentially the same language, right down to the same word order and the same particles (Korean equivalents of wa and ga and o and all the rest) and pretty darn similar verb forms. They aren't "kind of" similar; they are massively, overwhelmingly similar in structure/grammar (which for both is quite unrelated to Chinese; Chinese influence is not a possible explanation).

But some caveats: My Korean courses of a few months hardly took me to an advanced level. I can only claim that they're practically the same language at a basic level; how far they diverge at a complex, advanced level, I can't say. And clearly, my use of terms like "practically the same language" and "massively similar" is anything but precise and scientific. Until I can point to measurement criteria + data for making the related/unrelated claim, I'm just stating opinion.

Still, I remain quite amused by those speakers of the two languages who insist there's no relationship. (Who – if I let myself get all ad hominem about this – are largely older, politicized "patriots" with lots of personal emotional investment in the "my nation is oh-so-unique" meme and in ancient "the other guys are lame" rivalries.) Using the sprachbund defense, the Japanese side is essentially claiming that Koreans – the people just across that small pond, with whom Japan is most intricately tied, both ethnically and culturally – just happen to have a language that's nearly a structural/grammatical clone of Japanese (in ways that have nothing to do with their shared exposure to Chinese).

Or in other words: "My language is special! No one else can have one like it! Especially not those bums!" (I don't claim to be so familiar with the reverse claim made by similar parties in Korean, though I'm told it's similar.)

Well. It's much too big a topic for this comment, and please note that I claim no magical knowledge that tells me Korean and Japanese absolutely are close linguistic relatives. Maybe the amazing similarity is some cosmic coincidence.

I only say that a study of both languages makes the claims of non-relation sound awfully suspect. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you study both Korean and Japanese, and see for yourself!