첫눈 First Snow

We had our first snow of the year in Suncheon on Sunday, and there's about a quarter-inch on the ground right now. The Korea Times tells us:

The weather agency forecast up to 30 centimeters of additional snow in the region by Monday.

The article, "Heavy Snow Hits Southwest," also tells us:

A heavy snow alert was issued for about 20 cities and counties in the North and South Jeolla provinces. Jeongeup had 22.5 centimeters of snow, with Gochang having 19 centimeters, Gwangju 18 centimeters, Imsil 12.5 centimeters and Gunsan 10 centimeters.

and:

Some 70 ferries remained anchored in port, and dozens of flights were grounded at airports in Gwangju, Muan and Yeosu.

and is accompanied by this picture:



From what I hear it's customary here to send a text message to your boyfriend or girlfriend when the 첫눈 arrives. Having neither, I didn't notice until I ventured out this evening. As I hate cold weather it's a shame, because it was in the 50s for Christmas.

Also from the Korea Times, Korea and China are fighting about Taekwondo (grow up you two), and an actress's suicide is the most shocking news item of the year.

Chosun Ilbo: "How Manga Reflect Resurgent Japanese Chauvinism"

Park Soon-ae, a professor of Japanese at Gwangju's Honam University is troubled by a trend she sees in Japanese comics. From the Chosun Ilbo:

“Postwar Japanese comics have been through several stages -- fear of war, nihilism and otaku-like obsession. Now, they directly analyze the war and even support imperialism.” So says Prof. Park Soon-ae at the department of Japanese Language and Literature at Honam University. Prof. Park's paper about how manga deal with war, was published in the latest issue of the biannual magazine Japan Space.

I don't know anything about that, but Wikipedia tells us that both On War, a recent comic mentioned in the Chosun Ilbo article, and its author Yoshinori Kobayashi are pretty out there.

As an aside, I wonder if anyone over at Honam U. is aware that, among the letter blocks they've used to represent "English" on the English Language Department webpage is a number 4. Funny/sad. I would suggest that one of six the foreigners there fix it, but they are designated as lecturers, not professors, and are thus probably not qualified to make such an executive decision.

Korea Times: Let's Take Pride in Korean Language

Here's a column in yesterday's Korea Times encouraging Koreans to take pride in their language and culture, even/especially while learning English or going abroad.

Ordinarily you'd use "let's" to suggest doing something you're not currently doing now. I have yet to meet a Korean who does not gush over their scientific alphabet, and the thought of a Korean woman going overseas and teaching her foreign friends her great language and culture doesn't strike me as uncommon at all.

I've met plenty, though, who confuse language with alphabet. King Sejong did not invent Korean, as many say, he invented Hangeul. I doubt there are many who confuse 한글 with 한국어, but it happens in English.

I also wonder where they get "scientific." I'm not being (too) skeptical, I'm just curious. Is it because the letters were designed to resemble speech organs? Is it because some think the language was designed by committee? Because it was simply an attempt at writing Korean without Chinese characters? When my former students were writing essays about their favorite person in history, those who didn't choose Yi Sun-shin and his Japanese-killing ways chose King Sejong, and they all mentioned how scientific Korean is. In fact, many of their opening paragraphs were nearly identical, so they clearly memorized the tract from somewhere else, and I suspect that nowadays it's a hollow phrase Koreans repeat, like "we have four distinct seasons" or "Korean food is so spicy." I'll have to ask about that, though I wonder if they think "scientific" is a synonym for "easy" or "efficient."

The author of the article, Ms. An, could very well be a nice young lady, and her alphabet could very well be a nice young alphabet. I've met plenty several a few nice, well-adjusted Koreans back home who didn't seem to have visions of language imperialism dancing through their heads. Hell, Ms. An's article looks more fantasy than fact . . . most Koreans I've associated with back home were too shy or too stuck-up to hang out with any barbarians, and this article's message strikes me as a way of kiling two birds with one stone: practicing English and spreading Korea's glory (not a euphamism). Or perhaps the stress of using English is dulled when used to talk about Korea, so mightn't that be admirable?

But I'll bet a lot of folks groaned when seeing the article's theme, something we come across just about all the time in a country plagued by both superiority and inferiority complexes. Every culture has its own ethnocentric beliefs, and I'm sure there are Koreans or Canadians who get pissed off with our Thanksgiving, WW2, or 9/11 myths. A big difference, though, is that one of our primary aims of learning foreign languages isn't to spread these cultural facts to others. Forget about the Jesuits, I mean that you don't have little kids studying Korean and, right off the bat, learning how to say "America is an industrial might," "The atomic bomb is a great deterrent," and "English is the global language."

Maybe hangeul lessons for Ms. An might be nothing more sinister than an ice-breaker, but the episode does reveal a bizarre attitude toward outsiders and outside things that are already pretty well exoticized. Notice how she even used "foreign friends" while refering to people she met overseas? Taken a little bit further you'll have books for learning Korean that operate on the following premise:

Language is the first precious intangible cultural properties in this world.
Writing is the first valuable tangible cultural propertie in this world.
Amog the rest, The Korean Language and Korean Writing are the greatest cultural inheritance of everything in the world.
Of course, there are only their language and writing in other country, too.
But their language and writing cannot express perfectly each and every.
The Korean Language and Korean Writing can express perfectly everything, everysound, all of thinking, and all of feeling of this world.
Like this, The Korean superior culture be Known to the general public, the foreigners are learning The Korean Language and writing, is getting more and more many.
This book is wrote for the sake of them.

You can see the scan and the rest of the post on Occidentalism.

So, yeah, maybe Ms. An just figured she'd teach the world a little about her little country. And maybe her intentions were just to convey something about South Korea beyond the War and the Olympics. But it's bizarre to be met so consistently with dual feelings of inferiority and superiority, and anymore I can't tell if people want to teach us about Korea or pity us for not knowing.

HAHAHAHAHA

From Lee Dong-wook in the Korea Times today, responding to an article I did a few weeks ago:

If Mr. Deutschland is still skeptical simply because of his ``impression,'' please feel free to contact my colleagues or myself and we are willing to provide more detailed information and explanation.

Really, really, really need an editor over there.

Yeosu's greens.

I apologize for a lack of hard facts in this entry. When I saw a post on Dave's mention a new golf course for Yeosu I thought the accompanying picture was interesting, and I've tried to Naver around for some information as best I could.

Yeosu resident kiwiduncan brings up an easily-missed point in all this hype about Yeosu's 2012 Expo. The idea of a "green" Expo is a goal as much as it is a theme. There are some projections about greening up the area, and you can find plenty of awkward English vaguely describing some aims on the Expo website, but I've seen little evidence of a commitment to the environment.

For instance there's the City Park Resort, an 18-hole golf course set for construction. According to this Dailan.co.kr article, the 1,163,458-square-meter site will also include a clubhouse and a 52-room tourist hotel, and will cost 90 billion won. And if I'm reading that article correctly---given my poor Korean that's unlikely---Yeosu wants to build 5 or 6 golf courses in town?


Drawing of the proposed 18-hole course, stolen from here.

Golf courses can be attractive, and some folks will turn on a golf tournament just to see the landscaping. But Yeosu and that area of the country prides itself on its natural scenery, so I don't think a new golf course---or five of them---will serve any great cosmetic purpose. And in a country like South Korea where open space is scarce, access to golf courses is a luxury, and an addition that won't serve the greater good.

Based on the following photograph, some homes and forest will be sacrificed for the new course.


Future location, perhaps, stolen from here.

I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly where this will go, but a couple of articles have said 봉계동, a small administrative division northwest of Chonnam University in old Yeocheon County. There have been protests against the displacement of homes and forests, but they were evidentally ineffective.

I don't live in Yeosu, and can't attest to these numbers, but based on Naver it looks like there are two golf courses in Yeosu already. Off the top of my head I know that nearby Suncheon has three country clubs and they're working on at least one more. And one of the article mentions a protester as saying, basically, that they're already putting in the 해양관광레저단지 (Haeyang Tourist Leisure Complex, roughly) in Hwayang-myeon, Yeosu, so why make more?

I have to guess that these additions are coinciding with Yeosu getting the 2012 Expo. But other parts of Jeollanam-do are developing as well. There's the Namak New City initiative going on in Muan, the Tourism and Leisure City in Haenam, the Gwangyang FEZ, and the Formula One tracks going into Haenam and Yeongam counties. The "Tourism and Leisure City" in Haenam, though, seems like it will be self-contained: people won't be visiting Haenam, they'll be visiting the resort. Same for other lesser-known resorts and waterparks in Naju and Jangheung. In Yeosu's case, these golf courses will have to complement the over developments coming over the next half-decade if the town will really become a popular tourist attraction. I mean, as the Yeosu Expo site says,

It is also an international marine resort tourism city in the new marine era of 21st century, developing into a beautiful port of Yeosu which is venturing into the world.

So there you go. But, as everybody knows, Yeosu doesn't have any attractions save for its quote-unquote natural beauty, and so while passing out construction contracts left and right will make some folks happy, I have to wonder if these plans aren't a bit . . . fucked up.

As kiwiduncan points out on that Dave's thread, it's unusual that, despite all the muddled Engrish about blue sea this and green environment that, all the upcoming developments thus far have been about expressways, airports, light rails, and distinctive landmarks. Given South Korea's track record on environmental issues---their reforestation efforts aside---I think that trend ought not to continue.


Future look of Yeosu? Stolen from here.

The Expo's theme deals with preserving the marine environment, so that's an easy excuse to build build build on land. So long as the golf balls aren't killing dolphins, I guess we're all right. I guess the only thing that could really screw up "The Massive Economic and Culture Event for Human" that is the Yeosu Expo would be if, like, a ship full of nitric acid crashed off the coast, or some shit like that. Oh, wait . . .

Merry Christmas.

Christmas decorations on display in front of Seoul City Hall, with Namdaemun in the background. Stolen from here.


Lights at Shinsegye Department Store, one block from Seoul City Hall. Stolen from here.

Christmas is a bizarre holiday in Korea, and I find it pretty depressing. It's a holiday for couples, apparently, a day when lovers go to the movies. Chain bakeries like Paris Baguette and Tous les Jours sell a lot of Christmas cakes, and Baskin Robbins sells Christmas ice cream cakes. A lot of stores will put up lights, decorations, and trees, but I know of at least a few cases where they just leave them up all year. Christmas music blares from speakers, and the most popular songs seem to be "Last Christmas" and "Feliz Navidad."

I have no idea how Christmas came to be what it is in Korea. It doesn't seem to be big with children, and Santa is more like a mascot. Korea already has Valentine's Day and White Day set up for lovers, and I guess you could throw Pepero Day and New Year's in there, too. Back home the holiday season between Halloween and Christmas has gotten way out of control, but at least it once had meaning and, if it makes you feel any better, is at least a perversion of tradition. It doesn't seem to be a celebration of anything here. To me, it's like Korean pizza, instant coffee, sugared garlic bread, and Konglish: it's something that's similar enough to appear familiar at a glance, but it's different enough to ultimately be repulsive. I'm sure there are books out there about such a cultural phenomenon, but the first thing that came to mind is the "Uncanny Valley," a hypothesis addressing human response to humanoids. Wikipedia says:

The phenomenon can be explained by the notion that, if an entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, generating empathy. On the other hand, if the entity is "almost human", then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of "strangeness" in the human viewer.

Haha, no, I'm not suggesting Koreans are androids. I admit I'm grumpy lately, and am probably not in my right mind, but I'm getting tired of hearing 메리크리스마스 on commercials, on websites, from microphones, and from the goddamn Wondergirls, who believe the meaning of Christmas is found in ice cream cakes. I wonder how Koreans would feel if we started celebrating Chuseok in the States with ice cream shaped like burial mounds and colorful yangban hats. Oh well, every culture has its own Christmas celebrations, and most of them probably seem weird to outsiders.

Well, at least it's a day off work. And I did put up a cute little tree. There are some Christmas-y movies on, and in Korea the commercial breaks are way more sporadic.

People in and around Seoul ought to visit the area around Seoul City Hall to take in some light displays. Hell, it's a small enough country that just about anyone can get there easily. There are a lot of impressive lights in front of the nearby Lotte Department Store and Lotte Hotel, so use 을지로입구 station on the green line. From there, head west to Seoul City Hall to see the big tree, the skating rink, and the "Crown of Light," then head north (passing City Hall on your left) a few blocks to Cheonggyecheon, the stream with light displays running along both sides. It's 2 kilometers from that starting point to Dongdaemun, although lights only line a portion of it. But, when you get to Dongdaemun you'll find a pyramid, a couple of stages, a mall, and a market. And, if you're like me you'll also find a motel with Russian TV channels. The lights around Seoul City Hall will be up until January 6th.

I recommended that my friend go there yesterday, because she was bored, but she declined, saying that there'd be too many couples. She's single. If I become president of South Korea, I'm going to make a holiday that doesn't involve buying something for your partner, or having a partner, or eating black noodles because you don't have a partner, or spending three days preparing food, or making an 8-hour car trip, or voting.


Pyramid near Dongdaemun Market.


Singing and dancing to the Pussycat Dolls. Seriously.

* Edit: Here's a recent article from the Korea Times' Jeffery Miller, "Christmas in Korea."

. . . really REALLY need an editor over there . . .

"The United States tapped Kathleen Stephens . . .," from the Korea Times article "US Taps Female Ambassador to Seoul."

Atticus Finch weighs in on English education.

The Korea Times ran another article about English teaching, keeping up the four-per-week average. The latest one comes from Atticus Finch. Today Mr. Finch is an English teacher in Seoul, though he is best known for his appearance in Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird.

They could really use an editor over there.

It's not as good/bad as the cartoon I saw on EBS a few weeks ago with the fictional character "Mike Vick." Last year a bunch of the dialogues they planned to use for the English Town had "Lonnie Smith," a former Pittsburgh Pirates baseball player and cokehead.

Anyway, the article sucks and doesn't really give any facts or new ideas. It just throws "held accountable" around a lot. I suspect it, in turn, will spawn about 12 more replies in that paper.

You look nervous.

According to some reports, one component of the new E-2 visa regulations will be a face-to-face interview at the Korean consulate nearest the applicant's hometown. For some reason I anticipate it will go something like this:

The Brian.

Introductory classes usually go pretty well because, in lieu of teaching skill, I have a ready-made ice breaker. I share my name with "브라이언," one half of the singing duo "Fly to the Sky." My first year my hagwon students would always write "I love Brian" on their desks, and I was afraid that the bosses would think I was compelling them to do that. The students, it turns out, did not love me at all but were actually writing about the crooner of the month.

While looking around for something else I found a video of Brian speaking English. I was surprised to see that he's fluent.



Turns out he was born in Los Angeles and raised in New Jersey. There are a few Korean pop stars who spent significant time overseas, including members of hip-hop groups like Epik High, Dynamic Duo, and Drunken Tiger. It also turns out that, like all Korean-Americans from Los Angeles, Brian speaks English like Rosie Perez.



Wikipedia tells us that he is only 21 days older than me and that, in 2006, he released an album titled The Brian.



I definitely have to work that into my lessons at every possible opportunity.

In October I read a little article wondering whether Brian was gay. The Chosun Ilbo's tabloid sports insert has the scoop on the incident, which stemmed from an appearance on a popular MBC comedy show:

During the broadcast on Thursday, the 16th, where Lee Sang-won participated as the guest performer in “Fire Engine”, Lee asked to Brian of “Fly to the Sky”, “you wear women’s clothes and made friends with the singer Eru, so what’s going on?” Brian was unable to hide his puzzled appearance and explained. He said, “I’m just good friends with Eru so you’ve misunderstood it. And yes, Eru sometimes comes to my house to hang out, goes to sleep and then leaves." (translated by Korea Beat)

The article continues:

In the end, Lee asked Brian to do push-ups to prove that he is a real man.

I guess the rumors that Brian was gay and dating his new singing partner were big news in 2007 among talk shows and 16-year-olds.

Brian's Wikipedia page also has a "controversy" section, which I found hilarious at first, but now seems timely in light of a recent post. He got himself into some trouble over the US military incident in 2002 in which two middle school girls were accidentally killed. Wikipedia tells us:

Joo's ties to the United States stirred controversy in 2002, when Fly to the Sky was the host of the radio show "1010 Club." At that time, the murder of two teenage Korean girls by an American soldier stationed in South Korea caused a surge in anti-American sentiment. Because of Joo's American citizenship, guest Hyun Jin Young asked for his opinion regarding this matter. In response, Joo stated that while the American soldier must be brought to justice, he did not want relations between Korea and the United States, his home country, to become strained. His comments were reported as "You can't talk badly about the United States in front of me.. I'm an American. Please only hate the American soldiers (responsible for the incident)." (내앞에서 미국에 대해 나쁘게 얘기하면 안된다...나는 미국인이다..(사건을 일으킨) 미군 부대만 싫어해달라).

I don't have too many facts about this controversy. Both links given on the Wikipedia page are broken. Googling around turns up different dates, different quotations, and interpretations like:

In 2003, Brian stirred up controversy when he was misquoted during a radio interview. At that time, anti-American sentiments were high because an American soldier had murdered two teenage girls.

I'm a little surprised that a guy could get misquoted so badly, but given the media bias here and the political expediency of fanning the flames of anti-Americanism, it's not surprising that a guy could get knocked around like that. I'm a little tempted to bring up the 2002 controversy in a teachers' workshop, just out of curiosity.

You can tell I have a day off today because I also want to bring up another little controversy that stems from Brian's dual identity as a Korean and an American. According to one K-pop site, Brian and other pop stars chose American citizenship over Korean for one reason:

The Koreans think that they gave up their Korean nationality to escape from the compulsory military service and that they should not make a fortune in Korea.

I don't know how widespread that belief is, but I do know the issue of dual-citizneship is a tricky one. According to the US Embassy in Korea's site, "[t]he Government of the Republic of Korea does not permit dual citizenship after the age of 21." It continues:

In addition, South Korean men over the age of 18, including American citizens of Korean descent, are subject to compulsory military service. A dual national may not be allowed to abandon his ROK nationality until he finishes his military service, or has received a special exemption from military service. There have been several instances in which young American men of Korean descent, who were born and lived all of their lives in the United States, arrived in the ROK for a tourist visit only to find themselves drafted into the South Korean army.

Internet searches will bring up examples and more information. I'm pretty ignorant on that topic. It does seem absurd that a Korean-American, who was born in the US and lived there until about age 16, and who acquired fluent English would choose American citizenship just to dodge compulsory military service. The idea isn't out of the ordinary, though, and Korea Times columnist managed to put together a decent article when he wrote about Yoo Seung-joon, the Korean singer who in 2002 was barred from entering Korea after taking US citizenship in order to skip military service. Lim also brings up golfer Christina Kim (김초롱), the Korean-American who invited some fan scorn here when she was seen cheering for the American team at a tournament. It's also worth remembering a quotation by golfer Michelle Wie's father, made while pandering to Korean audiences in a 2006 interview:

I’m well aware there that some say, since Michelle Wie is an American why is she making such a fuss. But you know what, the only thing about her that’s American is her passport, she is “definitely” Korean.

I tire pretty quickly of such Korean-American, American-Korean squabbles, and I normally skip any message board threads with "gyopo" in the title. It is interesting to think about Brian's case, though, because unlike Michelle Wie and Christina Kim (I guess), Brian Joo is entirely unknown in the U.S. I'm sure he's popular here for his looks and his voice, but I'll bet a huge part of his gimmick is his ability to speak English. That's what shows up on the talk show clips, anyway. I can understand how Koreans feel compelled to claim him as their own, given his bloodline and his fanbase here. But if you look at Brian's media miscue from a few years ago, and his statement that his Korean skills aren't 100%, it's easy to wonder how Korean he really can be.

The Negro Problem.

Looks like my students put their dictionaries to use, although part of me does wonder whether they were trying to spell "beach."

Negro seems like an odd word to write, and a surprising word to retain. The second-graders just finished a lesson on the singer Marian Anderson, and no doubt learned different ways of talking about black people. Grade 2's textbook, Lesson 12 tells us:

Anderson soon won a contest over 300 other singers. But she was black. People would say, "Wonderful voice! But it's too bad that she's colored."

I have no doubt that people said that, though I wonder if it's really necessary to teach about America's social ills in English class. I'm especially wary of cross-cultural education in the hands of textbooks and some Korean teachers.

For example, the government-mandated elementary school textbooks are designed for Korean teachers, and are accompanied by a Korean-language teachers' manual. The manual has a bit of English, including cultural tips. The cultural tips usually touch upon the chapter's theme, and can be a bit outrageous. From Grade 5, Chapter 4 (emphasis mine, errors theirs):

Western people show exclamation even over trifles. This phenomenon isn't found an oriental culture that appreciates people who control their feeling and taciturn. We can usually see Americans who are moved so easily by things that Koreans aren't effected by. This means they are accustomed to expressing feeling freely and frankly. In Western culture, they start a conversation about the weather when they meet someone for the first time: "It's a lovely day, isn't it?" This is reference to the inclement weather in England. The people who live in an area with nice weather like Korea aren't touched by this kind of thing but Englishmen can be impressed.

For those who don't know, Koreans pride themselves on thinking Korea is the only country in the world with four distinct seasons, and they don't hesitate to remind people at every opportunity. Also, Koreans talk to themselves constantly and are always exclaiming "it's cold," "it's hot," "it's delicious," "I'm hungry," "I'm full," etc., making this particular cultural tip a bit froginthewellish.

From Grade 6, Chapter 7:

Perspectives on jobs differ across the countries. There's no sexual discrimination in jobs in America. So we can easily see many women who are bus drivers or fire fighters. Also, women soldiers played a great role in Gulf War. But, it's not so difficult to find sexual discrimination in English vocabulary. In Korea, people have preferred to have jobs which end with 'sa' such as Ph.D,([bak sa]), a judge([pan sa]), a prosecutor([gum sa]), etc. However, people's perspectives on jobs have changed with the development of technology and science. Besides, sexual discrimination has disappeared and women choose jobs according to their ability and competence.

From Grade 5, Chapter 16

Usually, in America, the elderly live alone. Unlike the elderly in Korea, who are supported by their oldest son. In America there are certain care centers for elderly people unable to care for themselves called, nursing homes or retirement homes for the aged. These are not government supported centers. The cost to live in these centers is quite high. Therefore the people who live on a pension can't afford to live there without assistance. They envy the Oriental family system because their golden years can be very lonely.

From Grade 3, Chapter 8

American and British people tend to be less sensitive to cold than the people of Korea. Therefore, when Koreans travel abroad, they often asks for extra room heat or hot-water. From time to time, they can't get it for them before the temperature falls down to the prescribed limited temperature level of that country. In regards to perspectives on wearing clothes, people of western societies are usually dressed simply. Westerners tend to focus on practicality instead of trying to following the fashion trends.

If you've been to Korea, you'll know that they judge temperature based on the calendar, not on a thermometer. You'll also know that, in 2007, most Koreans dress like it's 1983.

If you can navigate Korean and can view .hwp files, you can browse all the teachers' guides online here.

Anyway, there's also a CD-Rom that goes along with the books, and there's often a small claymation skit at the end of each chapter. Grade 6, Chapter 1 dealt with "Where are you from?" and the characters put on an international fashion show (always a recipe for disaster). This is how Uganda was depicted:



Blackface turns up occassionally in 21st-century Korea, like when singing "What a Wonderful World," or when trying to amuse an African-American panelist on a talkshow, or as a gimmick for a pop group.


The Metropolitician has pretty extensive articles about race and The Bubble Sisters (must read), and this post won't even attempt any of that. Just seeing "Negro" spelled out with magnets in my classroom reminded me of a few things I'd been thinking about lately.

Getting back to it, Chapter 12, from the middle school textbook I mentioned at the beginning, continues with a little blurb about different ways of talking about black people:

흑인을 가리키는 표현에는 어떤 것이 있을까요?

미국에서 흑인을 가리키는 표현으로 가장 일반적인 것은 "black"이며, 그 밖에 "colored"라는 말이 사용되기도 합니다. 간혹 "negro"라는 말을 들어 보았을 것입니다. 그러나 이는 경멸감을 담는 표현이기 때문에 잘 사용하지 않습니다. 얼마 전까지는 "Afro-American"이 자주 사용되었으나, 요즈음에는 "African American"이 가장 널리 사용되는 표현입니다.

It's important to learn how to talk/write about black people, because any student will invariably have to deal with it during their studies or in the real world. But I wouldn't trust such education to a textbook, a Korean teacher, or a dictionary. Naver---the most popular Korean webportal---is infamous for its translation of "흑인," the word used to talk about black people in general:

a black (person), a colored person, a darky, a nigger, a Negro.

The entry also shows you how to say "black ghetto," "negrophile," "the colored problem," and "niggerlover." Nowhere on that page does it mention that four of the five words are offensive, which means students and non-native speakers will inadvertantly use them. If you click on the entry for "nigger" it does say

N-COUNT Nigger is an extremely offensive word for a black person. [[[ VERY OFFENSIVE ,]]]

but the warning is in English. The other words, by Naver's standards, are fine.

Daum's dictionary turns up the same results, but with a little explanation about which terms are in circulation today. "He goes to a Negro college" is no longer acceptable, but "The victim is a black male" is. (LMFAO).

If you click on Daum's nigger, it is indicated that the word is scornful (경멸), but the entry continues with usage examples like "nigger driver," "nigger in the woodpile," and "work like a nigger," then gives illustrative sentences like (LMFAO again):

”But you're a nigger, aren't you?” he asked.
”그렇지만 너는 흑인이잖아?”라고 그가 물었다.

충실하게 일하다
serve[work] faithfully;work like a horse[nigger]

a nigger lover
흑인차별대우

We don't keep niggers, we don't want social equality.
우리는 흑인들은 받지 않아요. 우리는 사회적 평등을 원하지 않습니다.

For any students reading this, Daum indicates that these are advanced phrases (고등), so don't worry if you haven't mastered them yet.

Dong-A's Prime Korean-English Dictionary (3rd edition, 2001) has the same five words and has a small useage guide for negro vs. black vs. Afro-American, the same blurb that appears on the Daum entry. There's no indication that nigger, colored, negro, or darky are offensive terms, and like the Daum entry one of the examples sentences is "The victim is a black male."

The issue isn't that these words are in the dictionaries. They are legitimate words with a long history of usage in English, and to exclude them would be revisionist and insulting. The problem is that they aren't accompanied with proper warnings. Look, for example, what accompanies the first search result from dictionary.com:

The term nigger is now probably the most offensive word in English. Its degree of offensiveness has increased markedly in recent years, although it has been used in a derogatory manner since at least the Revolutionary War. Definitions 1a, 1b, and 2 represent meanings that are deeply disparaging and are used when the speaker deliberately wishes to cause great offense.

When dictionaries fail to provide appropriate usage guides, and when textbooks and teachers lack the proper cultural grounding to give such lessons, you'll have non-native speakers causing great offense not only to the target, but also to the rest of the language community, who will be surprised that so little effort and thought went into acquiring English.

You'll also have more people like Lee Hyo-seon, the mayor of Gwangmyeong. In May he said, to a visiting delegation from Washington D.C.:

When I visited Washington D.C., I saw niggers swarm all around the city. How can you live in such a scary place? I was so afraid that I didn't come out of my hotel at night.

Boycott Korea?

Readers not in Korea might not know about Christopher Paul Neil, a 32-year-old Canadian who was arrested in October in Thailand. He was wanted by Interpol for molesting children in Southeast Asia, and had been working in Gwangju at the time. Police had been tracking him, sort of, for three years, but it wasn't until his photographs were un-doctored and released to the public that they got some leads. Neil fled the country on October 11, shortly after his photograph was released, and he was apprehended 8 days later.

It has turned into a huge story, as probably should have been suspected. As I mention in an upcoming Gwangju News piece (from which I will plagarize parts below), the English-language media in Korea was pretty silent at first, and it wasn't until October 17---six days after he left Incheon International Airport---that the first news article came out. (The Korean-language media was silent at first, and I remember watching the evening news a few days after I learned about the story, and after it was big news in the West, but it wasn't even mentioned. Because my Korean sucks and because I don't read or watch Korean-language news, I can't testify to how soon he became the lead story.)

It didn't take long after that, though, for the ugliness to show up. Two days after his arrest, government-owned KBS ran an "In-Depth 60 Minutes" program that, under the guise of investigative journalism, profiled the scum and villany that reside among the foreign community here. On October 19, the Chosun Ilbo ran a factually inaccurate article about the rise of crime committed by foreigners, accompanied by this image:



As is wont to happen, all the ugly stereotypes were trotted out and mixed together: foreigners as pedophiles, as drug-users, as academic frauds, as alcoholics, as skirt-chasers, as AIDS carriers. An October 25 Chosun Ilbo article, for example, outlining the new regulations, reported that

[o]ver the past five years, over 800 foreign English instructors have been caught with forged degrees or having worked in Korea without proper visas. Some have even been found to have taught under the influence of drugs.

And an October 28 Korea Times article, while reporting on the same regulations for E-2 holders, refers for some reason to “two alcoholics and five sexual harassment offenders” caught in Daegu in July. Other sensationalist headlines from this year have included the Chosun Ilbo’s “White English Teacher Threatens Korean Woman with AIDS” and the Chosun Ilbo’s sports insert’s “Beware the Ugly White Teacher.”

And it's really worth remembering this gem from last year. In 2006, two Koreans were charged with molesting students at English Villages in Gyeonggi-do, to which the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers Union replied “the English camp sexual assaults are a structural problem brought on by unchecked native speakers, [and] such incidents could potentially occur at any time.”

Shortly after Neil was apprehended new visa regulations were proposed, to take effect December 15 and ostensibly to clean up the industry and put a stop to the practice of hiring anybody and everybody. Foreigners wanting an E-2 visa would have to submit their diplomas, their academic transcripts, a criminal record check from their home country, a medical exam from their home country, a medical exam from Korea, and would have to interview at the Korean embassy or consulate nearest their hometown, and would have to be fingerprinted as part of the background exam. There are a few other requirements that have slipped my mind, but I do know some schools are demanding their teachers verify their own transcripts by logging onto their university's website and producing a list of students.

This all would be extreme even if it were applied to all foreign instructors, all foreigners, or all English teachers (domestic and international). However, as Neil was an E-2 visa holder---one of about 17,000, according to a November Joongang Ilbo piece---the restrictions were only aimed at E-2 visa holders and applicants, like me. (Neil was an E-7 holder but the legislation was aimed at E-2 visa holders.) In a November notice sent out to schools, immigration couldn't hold back from attacking on all fronts. Here is the choicest quotation (translated by Pusanweb):

The Korean Government will prevent illegal activities by verifying requirements of native English teacher and tighten their non-immigrant status [...] [and will] eradicate illegal activities of native English teachers who are causing social problems such as ineligible lectures, taking drugs and sex crimes. English teachers, who disturb social order during their staying in Korea such as illegal teaching, taking drugs and sex crimes, will be banned from entering South Korea.[...] [They will] prevent illegal English teaching activities and the taking of drugs and sexual harassment of English teachers, [...] teachers who disrupt the social order by taking drugs, committing sexual harassment and alcohol intoxication.

There's no reason to get into how inconvenient, expensive, time-consuming, short-sighted, xenophobic, and blatantly racist that all is. Moreover, anybody who follows the news a little will not need reminded how ubiquitous problems like forgery, alcoholism, sexual harassment, prostitution, child abuse, domestic abuse, corruption, rape, sex crimes, and private tutoring are among Korean society.

It is good to see that foreign embassies are telling the Ministry of Justice to fuck itself, as per the following Joongang Ilbo article. However, according to the December 14 piece, the MoJ won't ease regulations, and its spokespeople still have the gall to say shit like:

I just don’t understand why they cannot make some exceptions to accommodate the needs of their own nationals. In Korea, criminal records can be easily obtained online. But they don’t have a centralized system.

As if---when we remember the anti-American protests of 2002, the anti-FTA protests, the pardoning of convicted war criminals, the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the "Yankee Go Home" talk, the visa protests---South Korea has done anything in recent memory to justify any exceptions extended it.

I wrote on another messageboard that I didn't expect much of a backlash from Koreans. I wrote that a few days after the story broke, and while Korean media outlets hadn't yet picked it up. There were a few relatively recent stories of Korean teachers behaving badly---taking students to Chinese hookers while on a field trip---and of sex crimes committed by Koreans, such as the case from Gwangju of a middle school girl held captive in a motel and raped by 800 people, for example, that I thought Koreans might have been humbled a bit. And, I thought that a lesson might have been learned from the example of Cho Seung-hui and the Virginia Tech massacre, where Koreans and Korean-Americans feared reprisals that never came.

Koreans had good reason to fear widespread racially-motivated attacks based on a single incident because that's how they operate. In 2004 (or 2005, can't find the source now) the US Embassy issued an advisory for its citizens in Seoul, after Korean men became angry when images showing foreign men and Korean women dancing together at a bar surfaced on a website that also had some sexist content. In 2002, the country erupted in anti-Americanism after a US military vehicle accidentally struck and killed two middle school girls. (More on that incident here and here)

I've maintained that should these rules and all their ugliness go into effect, I would have to leave on principle. Obviously I'm qualified and I'm not a criminal, but I don't like it implied explicitly stated that I am. I've handed in my degree 7 times since arriving in July, 2005, I've handed in several sets of transcripts, and I've had to forfeit my passport a few times as well. In December, 2005, all foreign teachers in Seoul and Gyeonggi province were rounded up and sent to immigration for a degree verification procedure, supposed to be a "be all, end all" for such checks. Apparently nobody has any recollection of that, and nobody kept any records, because I'm still being asked for my diploma. This year I've refused to hand over my documents a few times, on principle.

Part of me feels silly forfeiting a chance to live, work, study, and travel abroad because of a few new regulations, and I know that many teachers would go along with the new regulations because, well, they don't have any principles. When I brought up the idea on waygook.org of standing up to our local education board, I was mocked, and I sense a lot of (uncle)tomfoolery going on in the name of "tolerance and acceptance." A lot of folks are so self-satisfied by their "When in Rome" attitude---until something infringes on their own pet issues like domestic violence, cats, or imported beer---that they are incapable of any perspective whatsoever.

The Metropolitician, one of the better-known bloggers in Korea and a resident since 1994, put up a few pretty angry posts today. Can't say I blame him, since he was arrested last month for assult for no good reason. One of today's posts discourages foreign teachers from coming here in the first place. An excerpt:

Let me just say right now that the only reason I'm staying in Korea is because I have an F-4 and am not subject to these requirements. But I am ever required to give drug and HIV tests in order to work, or rip out my single original copy of my diploma sitting in a frame in my mother's home in Ohio, it will be time for me to leave this country.

He continues:

I've got shit I need to do here, and shit I enjoy doing here. I'm grandfathered in. I've put too much energy into this country, society, and language to quit now. That's why I'm staying. That's the only reason.

But my patience with this country has worn pretty thin, and I'm having trouble right now not going over to the "dark side" and starting to hate this place. I might have to start looking for ruby crystals for my lightsaber soon. I'm struggling with another "dark time", just as I did in early 2003, when I would hear the word "nigger" more times in a week than I had in all the time I had spent in Korea to that point (more than 3 years, actually).

Things are changing, people, and it's for the worst.

My advice for newbies interested in teaching English as a means of living in Asia, I am sad to suggest:

DON'T COME TO KOREA. GO TO JAPAN OR CHINA.

Korea and Koreans, no matter what is said, doesn't really want foreigners here. We are treated like criminals by the law, and in the law. The media represents us as nothing more than drug fiends, AIDS carriers, and child molesters.

If you don't want to be treated as such by the law, required to submit a criminal background check, submit to drug and HIV tests, and have to submit your original diploma just to teach in some unprofessionally-run institute or elementary school in which whatever skills and ability you have won't be respected anyway...

DO NOT COME TO SOUTH KOREA TO LIVE AND TEACH.

Something to think about. My ideas aren't sophisticated enough yet to get into it, but I just wanted to pass his message along.

I also wanted to pass along a few nice links that give better timelines and overviews of all this garbage:

Gusts of Popular Feeling has an extensive timeline of English teacher scapegoating.

Jellomando incorporates the timeline and also gets into other areas of discrimination, such as foreigner-unfriendly banking restrictions.

The Metropolitician has a ton of good write-ups on race, education, history, etc., and I recommend reading his "starter posts" linked at the top-right of his blog, and also reading the articles in his "Korean Education" category.

US in Korea has a lot of entries on the political motivations for fanning anti-US feelings in South Korea, such as the above-mentioned 2002 incident, which was shelved until after the World Cup and exploited to curry favor with North Korea. Candlelight vigils continued two years later, and dwarfed the much bigger story of 2002: a skirmish between the North and South that killed 5 South Korean soldiers.

* Edit: I'm not well-travelled, but based on what I've read and heard I think it's a little naive to think that more tolerance is to be had in places like Japan and China. Even if these regulations go through, the start-up costs of Korea would be still be much less than Japan and Taiwan. I've had my fair share of days when I question what the hell I'm doing, and wonder how many of my acquaintances could give two shits whether I'm here or not. I'm not quite ready to give up, because I have a lot invested in staying here, too. Teaching EFL in Asia involves a lot of hard choices . . . just looks like making the decision to come to South Korea in the first place is becoming more difficult.

Searching for famous graduates.

For some reason I landed on the Hampyeong county Wikipedia page the other day, and saw that somebody added a line about Hakdari High School and its famous graduates. While trying to learn more about this I found an interesting feature on Naver: the ability to search notable people by the schools they attended. The search turns up 5 for Hakdari HS, and I don’t really recognize any of them. I was kinda hoping for a pop star or two. The most notable person is Lee Yong-sup, Minister of Construction and Transportation since December, 2006.

To find out how prestigious your school’s graduates are, do a people search on Naver and select 출신학교 from the drop-down menu. The search will also turn up public servants, doctors, and the like.

Gangjin High School (강진고등학교) produced one notable person, the actor 박노식, who was in movies like The Host and 200 Pound Beauty. Maesan High School (매산고등학교), a private Presbyterian school in Suncheon, turns up 58 names (a lot of public servants, lawyers, and businessmen). Daewon Foreign Language High School (대원외국어고등학교), one of the most prestigious high schools in the country, turns up 14 names, including actors and singers, and Gwangju's International High School (국제고등학교) turns up three, including the insufferable Mun Geun-yeong and the model 조희.



Mun Geun-yeong, the "nation's little sister" and spawn of Gwangju's Kukje H.S. Her most notable film role is 어린이신부, in which she plays a high school student betrothed to her cousin.

Name change.

I changed the name to "Brian in Jeollanam-do." If I am on your blogroll, could you please update accordingly? Thanks.

I'm using the handle "Smee" less and less---especially after Galbijim faltering and after getting an involuntary "vacation" from Dave's ESL Cafe for dodging the swear filter---so it'd probably just confuse people. Plus, it sounds stupid to say "I'm Smee."


It is become a little bit changed.

Dodging the swear filter is a particularly heinous act, and I am truly sorry for the damage I've caused to the foreign community. Oh, by the way, if you'd like to read the Dave's forum posts by Christopher Paul Neil, the target of a three-year Interpol investigation and currently facing 20 years in a Thai prison for molesting boys, please go here. Again, I'd like to apologize to everyone.

Juno and Jenny, Juno

Evidentally one of the higher rated movies of the year is Juno, a comedy about "whip-smart teen confronting an unplanned pregnancy by her classmate Bleeker," according to Wikipedia. IMDB says: "Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, an offbeat young woman makes an unusual and bizarre decision regarding her unborn child." I don't know what that decision is because I've never seen the movie.

When I saw the trailer on TV here I immediately thought of the 2005 Korean movie Jeni, Juno (제니주노, can be romanized Jenny or Jeni). A summary from a blog on Koreanfilm.org (via Gusts of Popular Feeling):

Yesterday was the press screening of Jenny, Juno, a story about a 15-year old boy and girl who discover that, after having things get a little out of control one night, they are expecting a baby. This film from the director of My Little Bride has stirred up a little controversy of its own these days. The Korea Media Ratings Board originally gave it an 18+ rating, despite the complete absence of any onscreen sex, nudity, violence, or foul language (distributor Show East was expecting a 12+ rating). The ratings board instead cited the very idea of the film itself as being potentially damaging to young viewers -- one board member reportedly said, apparently seriously, "If we let this through, soon they'll be making films about elementary school students having sex!"

The writer of Juno addresses the coincidence on her blog:

Unbeknownst to me, we had another spiritual cousin out there, a Korean movie called Juno Jenny. This time, the cousinry goes one step further and the movie is about--seriously--a pregnant teenager and her cute, sweet boyfriend. (The guy character is named Juno, not the girl.) There's no adoption subplot and apparently the film is otherwise dissimilar to mine, but how fucked up is that? I bring this up because a journalist drilled me about it recently--awkward!--and also because I saw someone on our IMDB board wondering if Juno was a remake of the K-flick. So for the record, 1.) it isn't a remake 2.) I haven't seen Juno Jenny, though I want to now, and 3.) I don't think anyone would even bat an eye about this if my film was called Jenny. The name Juno is just so darned distinctive that confusion is inevitable.

Actually, I think Jonny addressed this in the most succint way: "Like you'd watch a Korean movie."

Yeah, well, I'm not sure I buy that it's a coincidence. The plots deviate in a few key areas, although I find the similarities too. . . similar.

Anyway, here's a portion of a review of Jenny, Juno from 2005 from the blog All For The Love of Movies:

What I'm afraid of is the impression that this movie might give to young audience. Raising children by children isn't like raising puppies that only need to be fed and played with. It takes more than that. The film failed to emphasized that or even mention it. Aside from that, what saddens me is that abortion becomes part of the choices. Shouldn't it be not mentioned at all?

Anyway, as a romantic/drama movie, this one had surely soared high! It's great! One of the best, I should say, especially for being so bold in tackling such topic. However though, I'd advised parents to see this films with their teens and not let them get the impressions that teen pregnancy is cool! Despite that, this one tops my favorites list!

Take a look at the Popular Gusts post I mentioned earlier for some social context on teenage sex in Korean movies. In case you were wondering, UNICEF---in A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich Nations---has data on "births to women aged below 20 per 1,000 15 to 19 year olds." South Korea has 2.9, the lowest out of all nations examined, while the US has 52.1, the highest. Elsewhere in the report it says that 5,621 births to women under 20 in South Korea in 1998. There were 494,357 in the US. Even adjusting for the great population difference (roughly 48 million to 300 million), South Korea has 93% fewer such births in comparison to the States. You can read the document here, in .pdf form.

That's not to say that there aren't bizarre attitudes toward teengers and sex in South Korea (see here and here, for example), but based on the numbers I think it's a little inappropriate for a country with the highest rate of teenage pregnancy among "rich nations" to use the words "comedy" and "teenage pregnancy" in the same sentence.



* edit: As if you needed further evidence that I should never be a math teacher, I just realized that there's no reason to account for the population difference, because the stats out of 1,000 would---duh---still be the same.

Sisters of Charity

No disrespect intended, but when this first popped up on their website I thought they were worshipping an electrical box.

Foreigners were scarce in Gangjin county, and I was thrilled to meet a fellow American there last year, a nun, working at a girls’ high school. Turns out the school was affiliated with the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill (사랑의씨튼수녀회) and Seton Hill University, located an hour or two east of Pittsburgh.

Volunteers were first invited to the Jeonnam area in 1960, and in 1962 St. Joseph’s Girls’ High School opened in Gangjin.

Google didn’t bring up too much on the Sisters of Charity in Gwangju or Jeollanam-do, although I did come across two interesting pieces. One is a Seoul Times interview with Pittsburgh native Sister Jane Ann Cherubin, who first came to Korea with the Sisters in 1976. I also came across a collection of poems (in .pdf form) “physically and visually impaired children attending schools run by the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill in Gwangju and Chungju,” translated by Brother Anthony of Taize.

According to this page the Sisters of Charity operate a few community centers in Gwangju, about which I couldn’t find much. Koreabeat does translate an article about the “Blue Eyed Guardian Angel,” Patrick O’Neal, a 75-year-old Irish priest who has been in Korea since 1957. An excerpt:

He came to Korea in 1957. The Priest from Ireland came to Korea the year following his ordanination as a priest assigned to the Saint Columbanus Church. Starting his post as the head priest at Gwangju Cathedral in 1969 he realised the condition of the mentally handicapped people housed in the Mudeung Rehabilitation Centre with unfavorable facilities and made a new resolution. He was especially sad about the death of a mentally handicapped young girl in 1979. “As soon as the girl with the name Yoa died from acute pneumonia instead of the funeral expenses the hospital demanded the body for dissection.”

Accordingly the Priest rejected this in one line “as she lived she couldn’t receive humane treatment and even though she has died you can’t do this.” Despite this after she was buried in the Yangsan Church Cemetary he said to the grave “Are you going to forgive me? Are you going to forgive society? For a long time he impressed on himself the words “I disregarded you” and repented through tears. The priest still tidies up Yoa’s grave with his own hands.

Merry Christmas from Boseong.

They put Christmas lights on the Green Tea Fields in Boseong county. There's also the outline of a Christmas tree made against one of the hillsides. The above photo is from last year, although I'm sure there will be more recent ones in the weeks to come.



There are a couple of news stories on it, and if you go here or here you can read them and watch short videos.

Michelle Wie and Jangheung.

I rediscovered an article from February, 2006, on Michelle Wie that I posted to Dave's before I even heard of Jangheung county. The article talks about an upcoming tournament, and contains this interesting paragraph:

Wie's parents are from South Korea. Her grandfather Wie Sang-kyu lives in Jangheung, a remote South Korean city where a few locals used to pass the hat to support his granddaughter in her earlier days playing as an amateur in Hawaii.

I saw another article that said there were plans to build a Michelle Wie golf course in Jangheung, incorrectly listed as her hometown, but apparently those ideas were the work of an imposter. From the Donga Ilbo, November 15, 2005:

Police have arrested a Mr. Wie (46) on November 14 for posing as 16-year-old American professional golfer Michelle Wie’s close relative and swindling hundreds of millions of won.

According to police, Wie courted investors beginning in late 2004, saying, “a ‘Michelle Wie golf course’ will be constructed in her hometown of Jangheung, Jeonnam, and we will build a shoe sterilizing factory there, which will give a 940 percent rate of return in just four months.”

He is suspected of gleaning 14.7 billion won from some 970 investors by promising principal and interest, and embezzling 300 million won outright.

Police reported, “Wie introduced himself as Michelle Wie’s relative and printed pictures of him and Michelle Wie taken together on advertising fliers.” Police noted that Mr. Wie was an unacquainted remote relative of Michelle Wie’s.

Sunchon Tunnel Massacre - October 30, 1950

Suncheon is also the name of a city in North Korea, something I was reminded of while googling "Sunchon" in order to find older mentions of the South Korean city. The North Korean city has a population of 437,000, and though it is spelled the same in Hangeul, it, along with the rest of the DPRK, uses the McCune-Reischauer spelling of Sunch'ŏn. Anyway, I bring it up because while I was googling I came across a few sites talking about the Sunchon Tunnel Massacre, which I had never heard of before. According to U.S. Senate Report no. 848 on Atrocities of January, 1954:

In October of 1950, at Pyongyang, when the fall of that city appeared imminent, the Communists loaded approximately 180 American war prisoners into open railroad cars for transport northward. These men were survivors of the Seoul-Pyongyang death march and were weak from lack of food, water, and medical care. They rode unprotected in the raw climate for 4 or 5 days, arriving at the Sunchon tunnel on October 30, 1950. Late in the afternoon, the prisoners were taken from the railroad cars in alternate groups of approximately 40 to nearby ravines, ostensibly to receive their first food in several days. There they were ruthlessly shot by North Korean soldiers, using Russian burp guns. One hundred and thirty-eight American soldiers lost their lives in this atrocity; 68 were murdered at the tunnel, 7 died of malnutrition while in the tunnel, and the remainder died of pneumonia, dysentery, and malnutrition while in the tunnel, and the remainder died of pneumonia, dysentery, and malnutrition on the horror trip from Pyongyang.

You can also find the above report here, in .pdf form. According to another report, almost two-thirds of American prisoners of war who died in Korea died of war crimes. I found that report through a link from Wikipedia's Korean War page which, to me, seems a bit biased against the US.

Anyway, it's fairly timely because apparently a book was just released which documents the accounts of eight survivors. It is called They Came Home - Sunchon Tunnel Massacre Survivors.

MIssionary Wilson's House, Gwangju

I'm in the process of writing a longer entry on missionary work carried out in Suncheon during the early-20th century, but as a little introduction I wanted to write-up Missionary Wilson's House (우일선선교사사택), located in Gwangju. Built in 1920, it is the oldest example of Western architecture in Gwangju, and was designated as Gwangju Monument no. 15 in 1989. Galbijim ate my pictures, so instead here are a couple stolen from Naver's encyclopedia entry:





It was home to the American missionary Robert A. Wilson, about whom I've been able to find no further information. It is located on the campus of the Honam Theological University and Seminary, on the other side of Sajik Park. On the site of present-day HTUS, the Honam Bible School was established in 1955 by American Presbyterians. In the early 1960s, the Honam Bible School merged with the Gwangju Night School and the Suncheon Maesan Seminary to form the Honam Theology Institution.

According to the HTUS site, the Reverend Thomas Dwight Linton served as principal of the Honam Theological Seminary from 1973 to 1978. The Linton family, it turns out, has an interesting history in Korea, especially in Suncheon, that continues to this day.

The above-mentioned timeline also tells us that George Thompson Brown was the first principal of the Honam Theology Institution, from 1961 to 1967. I don't know anything about him either, but google says he published a 30-page pamphlet titled "Not by Might: A Century of Presbyterians in Korea" in 1984. While stalking googling around I found mention of the Kwangju Christian Hospital, established by Presbyterian missionaries in 1905, and whose first building was erected in 1909 as the Ella Lavine Graham Memorial Hospital (not sure how that works). Further stalking googling led me to the mention of a book titled Kwangju Christian Hospital, the Missionary Years: 1905-1976, by Ron Dietrick who, according to his Amazon.com bio, went to Gwangju in 1958 and stayed there long enough for his children to be raised there. Oh, and according to the Kwangju Christian Hospital timeline, the missionary Dr. Robert M. Wilson became the hospital's second director in 1908.

Wilson's house is on the campus of HTUS. It is on the left side of this map, although I don't recall if it's the "Missionary Compounds" labeled 17. If I remember correctly it is located further down the path, beside a cafe, and is really quite isolated. It is not open to the public and, in spite of being a monument and historical site, is in pretty bad shape, with broken windows and litter inside the first-floor rooms. The basement door was wide open when I was last there, though it was empty of anything besides spiders and trash.

TIME magazine on the 1948 Yosu-Sunchon Incident.

The TIME magazine website has two little articles about the Yosu-Sunchon Incident, both from November, 1948.

First is an article from November 1, 1948, titled "From One Source."

One day last week, Radio Moscow announced that Russian troops had begun to pull out of North Korea. On the same day, a Communist-inspired revolt broke out in Korea's southern tip.

The Russian withdrawal in the north worried South Koreans more than did the vest-pocket southern uprising. The Russians were leaving behind them a firmly installed Communist regime with a well-trained army of 150,000. The departure of the Red army was intended to bring pressure on the U.S. to withdraw its troops, leaving a South Korean constabulary and militia totaling about 60,000 to face the far stronger northern force.

Dr. Syngman Rhee, President of the two-month-old South Korean Republic, was in Tokyo visiting Douglas MacArthur at the time. Said MacArthur: "I will defend Korea as I would my own country—just as I would California."

With MacArthur's words to encourage them, the South Korean army energetically set about crushing the revolt. It had begun one morning before dawn, when 40 Communist members of a brigade stationed in the far southern port of Yosu shot their officers and bullied their sleepy comrades into attacking the city police station. They took over all of Yosu, then headed north, picking up confused recruits along the way. By the time they reached Sunchon, a city of 75,000, their force had grown to
around 2,000.

Brigadier General Song Ho's loyal troops quickly drove the rebels out of Sunchon, and chased them back into the rough, hilly country to the south. It was hard to tell friend from foe. Both loyal and rebel troops wore U.S. uniforms and carried U.S. weapons. Loyal troops finally put on white armbands. Said young Lieut. Colonel Kang Yung Noon: "What sadness that we had to fire our first bullets against our own brothers."

At week's end government forces had retaken most of the territory won by the rebels; they expected to recover Yosu soon. Asked who was responsible for the revolt, President Rhee said: "We really do not know." Then he pointed a finger to the north and added: "But all of our troubles come from one source."

Next is a report from November 8, 1948, filed by Carl Mydans, who was accompanying the government troops.

The pretty little valley of Sunchon ("Peaceful Heaven") rests neatly at the bottom of the rugged Chiri Mountains, twelve miles north of the port of Yosu. On the morning of Oct. 20, Sunchon's farmers were harvesting their rice, when they heard a siren and the rattle of small arms from the railroad station. They looked up to see 2,000 rebel soldiers and 400 civilians swarming off a train from Yosu.

The rebels approached Sunchon city peacefully; but as soon as they entered the city, police opened fire. Joined by a company of soldiers guarding the city bridge, the rebels fired back. After a short, sharp battle they were in full control. The hundred or so cops who surrendered were lined up against the wall of the police compound and riddled. Then the rebels, joined by part of the citizenry, paraded through the city under North Korea's Communist banner, singing "Ten thousand years to the North Korean People's Republic!"

Star-Spangled Shirt. When darkness came, Communist execution squads went from house to house, shooting "rightists" in their beds or marching them to collection points where they were mowed down. In 2-3-days, 500 civilians were slaughtered. U.S. Lieuts. Stewart M. Greenbaum and Gordon Mohr, Army observers in Sunchon, narrowly escaped death. The rebel sergeant assigned to kill them was an old friend, who had drunk beer with them in their billet many times. He took the two officers into a field, fired into the ground and then led them to the Presbyterian Mission of Dr. John Curtis Crane, who was barricaded in with his wife and four other missionaries.

From one of the doctor's shirts and a few colored rags the ladies made a 16-star, eleven-stripe U.S. flag and put it up. The rebels began pounding at the compound gate, yelling: "Let's kill the Americans!" Suddenly one shouted: "No, no, not them; they are my friends." It was the lieutenants' friend, the sergeant. The rebels went away.

For the first few hours the loyal troops who retook Sunchon were as savage as the Communists had been. On the big compound of the Sunchon Agricultural and Forestry School we found what was left of the entire population of Sunchon. Women with babies on their backs watched without expression as their husbands and sons were beaten with clubs, rifle butts and steel helmets. They saw 22 of them marched away to the primary school nearby, and heard the volley of rifles which killed them.

"Get the Americans Out." Two days later, entering Yosu, the town where the revolt began, the government troops were much better behaved. The Communists' occupation of Yosu revealed the pattern they would like to impose on all South Korea. After arrest and murder of police and loyal leaders, the rebels took over all communications, banks, schools and food distribution. They established a "People's Committee" as the new government. The "People's Committee" announced: "Our two-point program: 1) to oppose, to the death the killing of our brothers, and 2) to get the Americans out of here."

Though the recapture of Yosu has temporarily stalled the revolt, most of the rebel troops have, melted off into the countryside and mountains with their weapons. Yosu's fall was not the end of a war; it was only the beginning. The general civilian point of view was expressed by one woman we found squatting in a shack on the outskirts of Yosu just after the fight had gone by her door. When we asked her whom she was for she replied: "I'm for you. You are the strongest."

The Suncheon Agricultural and Forestry School is present-day Suncheon National University. A few days ago I posted about the placards around Suncheon that mark notable sites during the rebellion. The one on the campus reads:

At the time of the Yosun Incident, the quell force, made up of police and defense guard troops, used the Suncheon Middle School of Farming and Forestry (the predecessor of the present Sunchon National University) as their camp and headquarter when they attacked the insurgent forces in downtown Suncheon on Oct. 22th. The nearby Suncheon Northern Elementary School was the site of questioning and executing of civilians who were suspected of taking sides with the insurgents. The victims were executed without trial on the levee of a rice paddy behind the school's auditorium.

There are a few articles on the rebellion from the New York Times. I thought their archives were free, but since they're not, I can't get to them. Anyone interested can comb through these search results.

Gangjin's temples, part 2: Nammireuksa

Update, February 19, 2008:

I finally made a trip out to the temple yesterday. The site is fairly large, and is definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. I copied some of my original write-up and paired it with a small profile on Omcheonsa, another temple in Gangjin that I'll be blogging about shortly, for the upcoming issue of Gwangju News.


Nammireuksa is out in the middle of nowhere. Here's the street leading up to it (facing the other way). There is a small village next to the temple, but I didn't wander through it.

Buses do go toward Nammireuksa from the terminal in Gangjin-eup. They are bound for some of the tiny villages in eastern Gangjin county and will drop you off at an intersection 700 meters away from the temple. The site is kind of split into two sections: there's the half with the huge statue and the two large pagodas, and then there's the half with the various prayer halls. After you pass the elephant statues at the gate, walk down the path and bear right to visit the various halls. There are hundreds of small stone deities along the way, and another few hundred elsewhere around the site. Practicially everything on the grounds is brand new, which gives it a kind of tacky look, as if they went out to one of the stone masons you'll see out in the country and just bought one of everything. The stupa and statues are shiny and white, and the paint on the halls is colorful and vibrant. Inside the halls the decorations are a bit gaudy compared to what you typically find in Korean temples. There are tons of gilded dieties, and the main hall (대웅전) has a fairly large (gilded) reclining Buddha, a (gilded) multi-headed deity, and a (gilded) mural along one wall. There are also protuding dragon heads along the ceiling. So it does look a bit . . . much, and defies the Western stereotype we have of the unassuming, self-sacrificing Buddhist. As if any temple that builds a 36-meter-high Buddha would be confused with austere. But, hey, foreigners who visit temples in Asia aren't really looking for austere, and it should be said that at least the stuff at Nammireuksa is sort of unique, and doesn't resemble every other temple in the country.


The area leading up to the statue.

I'm not just saying this to cover my inadequacies, but I don't think it's a site that photographs well. The placement of the trees, buildings, stupa, and statues means it's hard to get a decent shot. Trying to photograph an entire building or statue, for example, meant backing up into some immovable object or other.

The area between the two halves of the site was filled with crumbling bulidings, boulders, building materials, and . . . trash. It was very strange. The statue is huge, as 36-meter-high statues are wont to be, and is lined along the bottom with prayer wheels and reliefs. There are statues popping up all over the place, and there are mantras (I'm assuming) carved alongside the stairs. There are two giant pagodas in front of the statue.

They pipe Buddhist music into the gates and halls, but other than that I didn't see or hear any evidence of inhabitation until I was just about to leave. One of the residents chatted with me a little and gave me two free calendars. As I was leaving I did see another interesting site: two caged turkeys.



Original post:

I'm in the process of profiling some of Gangjin's notable people and places. Earlier entries were on "Gangjin: Its People and Their Places" and "Gangjin's temples, part 1: Baekryeonsa, Okcheonsa, Yongmunsa."


Seated Buddha at Nammireuksa, April 2007 (stolen from here).


One of the more interesting places is Nammireuksa (남미륵사, 南彌勒寺, map) in Gundong-myeon. It has what is among the largest sitting-Buddha statues in the world. At 36 meters high and weighing 670 kilograms, the statue is the largest Buddha in Korea. It is 3 meters taller than Beopjusa’s standing Buddha, and 6 meters taller than the figure of Jesus standing over Rio de Janeiro, though roughly half the size of the Leshan Buddha in China, and a mere toddler next to the 152-meter-high bronze Maitreya planned for Kushinagar, India. You’ll see Nammireuksa’s statue from the highway on your left if you head from Gangjin to points east, like Jangheung, Boseong, Suncheon, and Yeosu.


Brass Seated Buddha (stolen from here).

As the statue was finished in 2006, Nammireuksa is still off the beaten path. Few foreigners know about it, even fewer have been there, and it doesn’t even have an encyclopedia entry on Naver. The temple's head priest has high hopes for it, though, saying that the statue will make the temple one of the region's representative tourist spots, and will revitalize the area and its people. Others have told me, though, that people sneer at the expensive (10 billion won) and gaudy donation magnet.

The statue depicts Amitabha (아미타), "the principal buddha in the Pure Land sect, a branch of Buddhism practiced mainly in East Asia," according to Wikipedia.



(Stolen from here.)

Photos of the statue’s construction are available here, and there are a bunch of photo albums available through a Naver search, including this and this.

Other points of interest at the temple are prayer wheels, pagodas, stone elephants, and springtime flowers.


Pagodas in front of the large seated Buddha (stolen from here).


Elephant statues at the gate (stolen from here).

It is, according to Naver, a little over 11 kilometers away from Gangjin-eup, the main town in the county, and a taxi there will cost a little over 8,000 won. The telephone number, should you need it, is 061-433-6460.