Hey, you can't just press the buttons any old way you please.

I really can't stand when a Korean text will throw in random English words to dress it up and make it seem smart. Not only is it unabashedly elitist---especially since most readers will have no idea what the words actually mean in authentic English---and haughty, but the words are generally misspelled or totally out of place. Mild case in point with a little relevance to the old country, the February issue of the Chosun University News, still on stands in the Gwangju subway, talks about Penn State, the alma mater of my brother, father, two of my uncles, and, like, a quarter of people from Pittsburgh. The article is here, pages 32-33, in .pdf form, and here's an excerpt:

주립대학의 단과대학과 대학원의 거의 모두가 State Collage City에 있으나 의과대학(Penn. State University Medical College)은 펜실베이니아 주의 Capital city인 해리스버그의 인접 도시이면서 허쉬 초콜릿으로 유명한 허쉬에 있다. 이곳 허쉬병원 응급의학과에는 International emergency medicine의 fellowship 과정이 있고, 응급의 학 분야에서 세계적으로 유명한 Dr. Jholliman이 있어 방문 교환교수의 Supervisor로서 연구와 진료에 많은 배려를 하고 있다.

Now, I'll admit that I do often lobby for Koreans to just write the word in English rather than put it in Hangeul. Makes sense, and might eventually improve some of the atrocious pronunciation we've got around here. But in this article we've got spelling errors, factual errors, random punctuation, and arbitrary capitalization. Everything we've come to expect from every single scrap of English in this country. There is no State Collage, as you can probably guess, capital should't be capitalized (sorry), and the Dr. Jholliman refers to Dr. James Holliman. Nitpicking? Hardly. While this isn't the most face-slappingly stupid case of bad English we've probably seen even this week, there's no reason to ignore this one, and I don't think it can be stressed enough that the strange caveman symbols that take up half of a Korean keyboard actually have meaning to, like, hundreds of millions of people. Moreover, I know people throw "English" into words and songs to try to sound smart and cultured, but---and I have no fucking idea why this hasn't caught on yet and why nobody can be convinced of this---when you fuck it up, it makes you look even dumber than if there were no English at all. Sorry, rough day at the office.