I believe it's running at 50hz because that's what the PS2 is designed to run at. You would need to use PS1VMODENEG which runs through FMCB to change the hz. The swap trick you mentioned can be done with same video region (NTSC-J games on an NTSC-U console for example) but not for PAL to NTSC (or vice versa). If you do end up using PS1VMODENEG, the version you're running would be the version on the disk (so NTSC-U, in this case).

The time saves the language glitch gives PAL are negated by the faster loading times on NTSC. The two versions are virtually equal in non-driving related time. NTSC-U is now considered the faster version due to it being easier than PAL.