Undercover report on "john school."

A Hankyoreh reporter went undercover at one of the "john school" classes for Korean men busted for soliciting prostitutes here or overseas for the first time. It's an opportunity for attendees to empathize with the victims of the sex trade, as the reporter recounts:

We are told that in the morning there will be classes on the criminality and harmfulness of sex crimes and testimonials from women victimized by prostitution, followed in the afternoon by classes on AIDS education and sociodramas to improve sexual awareness.


Finally, it is lunchtime.

In the photograph above the men are reenacting the moment of their arrest. Whether the reporter realizes it or not, his story reveals the emphasis entirely on the men and the aspect of shame, with little exploration into why what they did may have been wrong. After a day-long, eight period course the men are given a certificate of completion.

I go out first and wait in the smoking area to ask my “classmates” if their sexual consciousness has really changed after completing the course. But nobody approaches me. Even the people I smoked with before are ignoring one another and hurriedly moving toward the darkened street.

Already snowing on Seoraksan.

According to this Chosun Ilbo gallery.

Winners of Korea Times Dokdo Essay Contest revealed.

The second-place writer is head of the Korea Objectivist Club and runs this blog. He's written on Dokdo before, including in this piece which shares the name of his entry.

Old department store building collapses in Gangnam.

An old, unused department store collapsed in Gangnam today, with reports saying one person is hurt and one is still missing. The bullding was the former home of a Nasan Homeplace Department Store from 1994 to 1998. Above photograph taken from here, with the photo below taken from this longer article.



A Dave's user who frequently takes photographs of old and abandoned buildings posted this one from May showing the building intact, as well as loads of other pictures from the site. It had sat unused since 1998. He has also posted photosets of the abandoned Woncheon Lakeland, a dead mall in Bundang, and other abandoned buildings in Seoul.

Maybe my students could study this for their next dance competition.

Perfect time as any for this video:

Guam Pacific Daily News on Korean anchor baby tours to the island.

On October 29th the paper ran an article on the Korean websites that organize tours for pregnant women to Guam for the purpose of giving birth there and acquiring US citizenship for their children. The next day the paper reported that one of the websites went down. Actually, now that I checked both websites mentioned in the article are no longer working.

I've heard that the term "anchor baby" is considered offensive these days. Well, I'm much more offended by women stealing US citizenship for their children, so once we put a stop to that we can work on terminology, k thx.

October 31st is Ace Day, so . . . yeah.

I was going to write the first post about Ace Day, but somebody beat me to it. It's a day for giving Ace crackers. Feel free to insert your own explanation. "Anything to steal the thunder from a Western holiday" is mine.

Even dead foreigners can't eat spicy Korean food, I guess.

Korea Sparkle has linked to an article by historian and Marmot's Hole contributor Robert Neff on stories of hauntings in Korea. An excerpt:

According to him, many of the Korean residents of Seoul were convinced that there were Japanese ghosts haunting the streets of Seoul. For some reason the people called them "Yobosang," a derogatory name for Koreans used by the Japanese during that period, and believed that Korean women were especially susceptible to these ghosts. At night, if a woman had to go out into the streets, she carefully packed a packet of ground red pepper and placed it in the roomy sleeves of her jacket to be used as a weapon against the Japanese ghost. According to the local belief, the ghosts could not endure the fiery taste of the red pepper.

Mr. Neff has written about ghosts before; here's another article. The Marmot's Hole post in question seems to be this one, which has plenty more tales of hauntings in Korea. A recurring theme seems to be to avoid apartments and houses with cheap rents, because something very grisly happened there.

There are a couple more experiences with Korean ghosts recounted here and here. From what I've read on Dave's, the "sitting ghost," or sleep paralysis, seems to strike with some frequency over here, sometimes accompanied with an apparition of a demonic-looking old woman. Even my girlfriend has encountered something like this, but she wisely kept her eyes closed.

In addition to my fear of spiders, I'm also very afraid of ghosts, so if you have any ghost stories, feel free to keep them to yourself. My coworkers were not as obliging, and told me about a haunted house in Suncheon that was featured on a TV program a few years' back. They didn't remember where it was, and poking around the internet didn't turn up anything.

Not necessarily related to Halloween, but one story that my students were very afraid of a few years ago had to do with the "red mask lady." Apparently, and this is based off what I've read from other foreigners and on the testimony of ten-year-olds, a woman suffered a mishap during cosmetic surgery leaving her with a "Glasgow grin" similar to Heath Ledger's Joker. She---whether still alive or as a ghost, I don't know---would wander around at night with a SARS mask asking children who happened to be out "do you think I'm beautiful?" If you said "no," she would take off her mask and abduct you. The story is a little muddled here because I heard that if you said "yes" she would say "what about now?" and take off her mask and kill you or abduct you or whatever. There's another account of her here. A Naver search will turn up some books and pictures on the topic. It also turns up a Japanese movie from 2007 whose profile is protected by an age-verification screen. A few pictures below, and a rather unpleasant one here from the movie, 나고야 살인사건.




Wikipedia has more on the original Japanese version of the urban legend:

The legend is said to originate with a young woman who lived hundreds of years ago (some versions of the legend state the Heian period) and was either the wife or concubine of a samurai. She is said to have been very beautiful but also very vain, and possibly cheating on her husband. The samurai, extremely jealous and feeling cuckolded, attacked her and slit her mouth from ear to ear, screaming "Who will think you're beautiful now?"

The urban legend picks up from this point, stating that a woman roams around at night (especially during foggy evenings), with her face covered by a surgical mask, which would not be especially unusual, as people with colds often wear masks for the sake of others in Japan. When she encounters someone (primarily children or college students), she will shyly ask, "Am I beautiful?" ("Watashi kirei?"). If the person answers yes, she will take off her mask and say, "Even like this?" At this point, if the victim answers "No," she will slay them (in many versions, her weapon is a pair of scissors). If the victim tells her she is pretty a second time, she follows the victim home and slays them in their own doorway, due to the fact that "kirei" (きれい), Japanese for 'pretty,' is a near homophone of "kire" (切れ), the imperative form of "to cut". In other versions of the myth if you reply yes again she will give you a large blood soaked ruby and walk away.

During the seventies, the urban legend went that if the victim answers "You're average", they are saved. When the urban legend was revived around 2000, the answer that would save you was changed to "so-so," with the change that this answer causes the kuchisake-onna to think about what to do, and her victim can escape while she is in thought.

Korea to send gunboat to Somalia, Somalia to say "thank you."

Ah, wait, I think I got that wrong. South Korea is looking to send a gunboat to Somalia to help prevent piracy. Ah, you never can tell.

Also from the Chosun Ilbo today, Koreans are drinking more because there's a recession on. And it's always curious how old news stories will get bumped up to Chosun's most-viewed list. Today it's one from 2005 about a naked dairy fight.

“The law defines ‘licentious or lascivious acts’ as behavior that stimulates the sexual desires of ordinary people and incites arousal, and this behavior may damage or distort the normal sense of shame that should accompany such acts,” the court said in its ruling. “This applies to the obscene act of young nude female models whose bodies are caked in wheat flour spraying each other with yogurt from vaporizers until the naked form underneath is revealed.”

I see. It's a little late to be telling you this, since you already clicked on the link, but the English-language version of the Chosun Ilbo went ahead and posted pictures of that promotion, presumably to illustrate what constitutes a lack of artistic merit. I really have no objection to attractive women or to staring at pictures of them, but it kind of sucks that the because of the large number of bikini-clad or nude models even the biggest portals or news sites are often unsafe for work.

Ten-year-old student in Gwangju kills himself.

With a note saying "Mom, dad I really don't want to live in this world, so I'm going to kill myself. Take care." So reports The Hankryoreh. His father found him on Tuesday, but I haven't seen the story elsewhere. It wasn't very long ago that we learned about some of the objections a teachers' union and others had to standardized testing among elementary school students.

Kim Sena has the perfect body.

So says the Chosun Ilbo. There's all kinds of not safe for work galleries on that site, so go enjoy yourself. There's also crap like this, which is perfectly safe, but dude.

Not trying to pick a fight, but I'm curious what the advantages of using "퍼펙트 바디" are over a Korean equivalent. I know throwing around English words makes the user sound more sophisticated and trendy, but it kills me to see people mangling "peopekteh badi" or other words that readers won't even understand when Korean words would do just fine.

Riot policeman found dead, probably a suicide.

As per the Korea Times "Riot Policeman Kills Himself," a 19-year-old riot policeman was found hanging in a stairwell. The article says he was a suspect in a theft, but by wording the title the way they did they're drawing an implicit connection between his death and the violent protests that took place this summer, in which riot policemen were attacked with weapons and were subsequently falsely accussed of killing and sexually assaulting protestors. The family doesn't believe a suicide likely and is demanding further investigation.

Six English hagwon franchises fined.

From the Korea Herald, "The Nation's No. 1 English Newspaper" that you can't link to and from which you have to pay to read poorly-formatted articles over two weeks old:

Six hagwon franchises, including Wall Street Institute Korea, were slapped with fines yesterday for misrepresenting fees or issuing false ads.

The Korean Fair Trade Commission ordered them to pay a total of 167 million won in fines, a month after President Lee Myung-bak called for measures to curb excessive hagwon fees.

Five hagwon chains specializing in preparing students for admission to elite high schools were found to have coerced its offline students to take online courses as well.

A Ferma Edu branch in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, for instance, charges 88,000 won for an offline math course for eighth graders. But it required students signing up for its offline lessons to pay for its 182,000-won online courses as well.

Wall Street Institute Korea advertised a three-month course that did not exist for 1.55 million won to delude students to think it was giving a 46 percent discount for its nine-month program at 2.49 million won, the FTC said.

Four other hagwon issued false ads saying they had the largest number of elite high school students.

Some 66,421 people were found to be paying for lessons at 168 branches of the six chains - Ferma Edu, Topia Education, JLS, Yes Youngdo and Koreapolyschool - which teach elementary through high school students, and WSI which teaches adults English.

Awww. good morning.

Naver has also been running pictures of baby pandas in Sichuan's Panda Protection Center. I don't think you can get much cuter than that.

TKD in the NYT.

Currently the third-most-viewed story on Naver is a photograph of this advertisement which ran in the New York Times.



Naver also has a look at the Korean and Japanese words in English dictionaries. And from Yahoo today, this story. *cough*

Good idea, bad idea.

It's Halloween season, which means it's time to contemplate all the parties I wasn't invited to and time to do an obligatory costume post. Last year taught us some important lessons. As this Jeollanam-do teacher demonstrates, it's a good idea to dress as a traffic cone and win $500 at a costume contest in Seoul.



But as this anonymous partier in Seoul shows us, it's a bad idea to dress as Christopher Paul Neil less than two weeks after he was arrested in Thailand for molesting children.

>

Residency restrictions for international schools.

As reported in the Chosun Ilbo:

Only those who have lived abroad for more than three years will be allowed to enter a domestic international school next year, regardless of their citizenship or status. The Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology announced the new law regarding the establishment and operation of international schools on Monday.

The regulation says Korean nationals must have resided for more than three years in a foreign country to acquire admission to an international school. Furthermore, only 30 percent of the entrance quota will be allocated to Koreans.

In what I consider one of several disgusting trends in education here, Korean parents have been purchasing residency in another country to allow their children to attend international schools in South Korea. The Chosun Ilbo took a look at Ecuador in May:

The easiest way to get your child into a foreign-language school in Korea is to obtain permanent residency in Ecuador. Five days in Ecuador is enough, since all the paperwork can be done in a day. This is what five parents were told by a study-abroad agency in Gangman, Seoul, last week. One mother who gave her name as Han (41) decided it was worth it so her six-year-old daughter can beat the prohibition on Korean children studying in international schools.
“By investing only five days, you can save a lot of money and send your child to an international school here. Your child can learn English without having to go abroad for years, and you don’t have to spend enormous amounts of money overseas,” Han said. Since it costs at least W40-60 million (US$1=W1,049) a year to study in Canada, Europe, or the U.S., international schools in Korea are a tempting option for Korean parents.

. . .

As the merit of going to international schools in Korea is being spotlighted, Ecuador is gaining popularity as the easiest country to get permanent residency. There are plenty of adverts for such offers as Ecuadorian permanent residency for only US$9,000. To promote the economy, the Ecuadorian government amended laws at the end of 2005 to encourage investor immigration. An official at the Korean Embassy in Ecuador said Korean parents with children who came to get permanent residency can frequently be spotted in the lobby of hotels in downtown Quito, the capital.

That article says the number of Koreans studying in South Korean international schools is over 25%, while the article at the top of the page said the quota will be set at 30%. You can read a little more about this trend on The Marmot's Hole.

Having a large percentage of Korean students in an international school not only keeps foreigners' children out but could turn the school into a glorified ESL academy, where the curriculum is adapted to meet the needs of language learners rather than the demands of the subject. That isn't to paint all Korean students with the same brush, because there are special cases, and a three-year residency requirement will get rid of a lot of the slimy ones, but I cringe when I learn of parents buying residency from another country so their kids can attend schools set up for foreigners. That's not only an indictment of English-hungry parents, but also of the rigorous life of a Korean student and the dismal reputation of Korean public schools that parents would take such measures to avoid both foreign-language high schools and mainstream public schools. Your thoughts?

Another fake letter in the Korea Times?

Now, I don't know for sure if the name attributed of the latest "Dokdo for pussy" piece in the Korea Times is fake, but I wouldn't put it past anyone over there. It's written by an Aziga Johnson; titled "Unite in the Spirit of Dokdo," here it is:

Recently it has come to my attention that Japan has claimed the Dokdo islets for herself. Dokdo is part of South Korea and this is indisputable, as it has been known to Koreans since 512.

Everyone knows that this bellicose and irresponsible claim made by Japan is nonsense. Plainly speaking it's too extraordinary and improbable to believe.

It is an outrage that Japan would make such an unbelievable, unfounded, inexplicable claim that is totally without merit, evidence or facts. It is beyond question or dispute who is the rightful and true owner of the ``lonely rocks.''

Hearing this extremely disturbing news caused me intense displeasure, disgust, and resentment toward Japan.

I call on one and all to unite in the spirit of Dokdo, and educate 10 friends on the true owner of Dokdo. Teach your friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers about Dokdo; its beauty and history. Together we can do it. Together we can accomplish real change!

Dokdo is closer to Korea than Japan, this itself should end all debate and discussion of such an absurd and irresponsible claim.

That's pretty awful, and I was going to comment on it, but I decided to check on the author first. Interestingly, if you switch his name around to Johnson Aziga, you'll learn that he is a Ugandan-born Canadian

notable as the first person to be charged with first-degree murder in Canada for spreading HIV, after two women whom he had infected without their knowledge died.

Certainly quite an unfortunate concidence if this author is legit. However, the KT has used fake letters slip through before. Most recently a piece by a "Hunter Davis," and last year a letter about English education from an "Atticus Finch," the main character in To Kill A Mockingbird. Moreover, there have been a number of truly awful Dokdo pieces in that paper since the latest diplomatic row, and just last week was practically the same letter on Korea's claim to the rocks written by a foreigner in Daejeon. Given the topic of this letter, that it is rather sparse and one-sided, and that it is proportedly written by someone overseas (hence giving legitimacy to the Korean side), I wouldn't be surprised if it were fake.

Oooh, I'm gonna get some.

Looks like some massage parlor in the US used the lovely Ha Ji-won in its advertisements. Usually it's Asian countries using photos of celebrities and random foreigners without permission, not the other way around. I won't tell you where I got this, since that site has never cited a source in its entire life.

This weekend: Hampyeong Chrysanthemum Festival, Namdo Culture Festival, Suncheon Bay Reed Festival.

This weekend is the start of the Chrysanthemum Festival (대한민국 국향대전) in Hampyeong county, which also hosts the Butterfly Festival each spring. I saw some brochures for this a few weeks ago and it looks absolutely gorgeous. Take a look at some photos from this blog, from whence I stole the above photo, or run a Naver search for more. It starts on Wednesday the 29th and runs through November 23rd.

Also the start of the Bay Reed Festival (순천만갈대축제), which actually will start on Tuesday and will go to November 4th. Held at Suncheon Bay, accessible via city bus 67. I wrote a little about it for the Korea Times a few days ago, so have a look at that and drive up my readership to learn more.

In an example of ridiculous overlap, in Suncheon there's also the Namdo Culture Festival (남도문화제), held at Palma Stadium (팔마체육관) from Wednesday the 29th through Friday, a little bit down the street from Homever. It will feature traditional performances and games from the province's cities and counties. You can find some pictures and stuff from years past via a Naver search; the festival seems pretty sparsely attended. Maybe because it's held during school days.

Koreans distorting American currency, culture.

At the Gwangju Folk Museum there is a small display on currencies from around the world. They have a selection of American bills, including the following:



I first read about that distortion of American culture on the Galbijim forums last February, but didn't see it for myself until the Kimchi Festival last weekend.

A few days ago I was browsing a local bookstore's magazine section and came across one for kids to acquaint them with other countries and cultures. This particular one had a significant portion devoted to the US.



The flag on the cover is incorrect, as our flag has fifty stars to represent our fifty states, rather than the twelve stars and two orbs depicted above. What's more, our flag has thirteen stripes to represent the original thirteen colonies from when England occupied our land; implying fourteen is just insulting. There was a little section about currency, and below you'll see the one-, five-, twenty-, and fifty-dollar bills, our four pieces of paper money that have presidents on the front.



Two of the four are the latest editions, but as every American knows that twenty-dollar bill is a 1929 edition, as pictured below.



The fifty-dollar bill is a 1997 edition, and not the most-recent 2004 one. All this comes shortly after I discovered a 2007 Korean movie was using 2001-edition five-dollar bills for action that takes place in 1971, suggesting that Koreans were able to travel through time and bribe officers with currency from the future.



I told my parents about this problem and they said that our eight-year-old cousin came home from school crying because of what the other children said about him and his ugly currency. My dad, who can find both Koreas on a map, is afraid of what these representations will do to our country's reputation. With the dollar as weak as it is, we mustn't allow it to be devalued any more in the eyes of foreigners who believe we cannot afford new money.

Following the example of South Korean outrage at a Singaporean textbook, I encourage all Americans to tell their government to aggressively protest these distortions of our currency and culture. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice must pressure the magazine and the museum to remove this incorrect information at once. I also think the American embassy would be interested to know that Korean adolescents are getting a warped view of the United States from these examples, and that the ambassador should adjust her behavior accordingly. As a developing nation it is our duty to protect our image from powerful countries that wish to do us harm by controlling our history and misrepresenting our culture. We must work to correct the opinions foreigners have of our country, and we have to fix the mindset of yellow people like that.

Spider catches, eats bird.

Fuck you spider.

According to this article it's a Golden silk orb-weaver spider, of which there are many species including the "banana spider" we routinely see in Korea---living at my school god damn it---and its more colorful relative the nephala clavata. The bird is a Chestnut-breasted Mannikin, which are about four inches long.

Private kindergartens hiring "questionable foreign teachers."

In an article that says 96% of private kindergartens offer English classes, a politician with the Democratic Party said:

Choi said there are many unqualified English-speaking teachers at the kindergartens. ``We’ve found that many kindergartens are hiring questionable foreign teachers,’’ Choi said.

jasfoj3wa98euf9dqewu. That was frustration, by the way, for those confused by how I express it in words. 44% of these kindergartens employ foreign teachers, according to the article. Some of them may be questionable, I dunno. I mean, you flip through the news and it looks like Koreans and Iranians and Africans have no problem passing themselves off as native speakers. Oh, you mean of questionable quality? Maybe. But that'll happen whenever you approach random white people in your building and offer them preschool classes at 30,000 won per hour, as happened to me and several other foreigners at a former hagwon. After all I don't suspect many certified kindergarten teachers from the US are lining up to teach over here, and there are of course no training opportunities provided foreign teachers here for any level. Throwing the anti-foreigner crowd a bone is a hell of a way to distract readers from the "keeping up with the Kims" mentality that dictates 96% of private kindergartens teach English. The article doesn't say anything about "questionable owners" who don't put any thought into who they hire to teach little kids.

Kindergartens seem to be a favorite target of whomever does the targetting; a few months ago we read about a crackdown underway in Daejeon, the city that seems to deeply resent its native English speakers. I don't have a transcript of Choi's remarks, so I don't know if he also painted Korean teachers with so broad a brush. You know, the young women who tape the mouths of their students shut? Or who lock them outside naked on a January day? That's two cases of "questionable" Korean preschool workers, two more than the number of "questionable" foreign teachers that've turned up.

Might also want to add another zero to the end of the monthly tuition figure of 25,000 won. For $20 bucks a month, shit, they could learn English from a parakeet for all I care.

Vietnam War Memorial Village opens in Hwacheon.

The Chosun Ilbo has some information about a Vietnam War Veterans memorial village (베트남 참전용사 만남의 장) dedicated in Hwacheon county, Gangwon-do yesterday. It is built on the site where some 300,000 Korean soldiers trained for their service in Vietnam, and includes replicas of the tunnel network used by the Vietnamese.

The governments of Gangwon Province and Hwacheon-gun began construction of the memorial village in 2000, in the belief that it was necessary to build an educational center offering lessons about war. The provincial and county governments spent a total amount of W18 billion (US$1=W1,363) on a 140,000 sq. m lot in Oeum-li, to build a memorial hall, a monument, mock barracks, and six traditional Vietnamese houses, an exhibition hall for field combat equipment, a mock training camp, a drill ground, and a picnic site.

Early this month, the local governments completed a replica of a 157 m-long tunnel furnished with six exhibition halls, including an armory and war council room. Gangwon Province and Hwacheon-gun said they have agreed with a nearby Army unit to operate mock training classes, including a ranger school and a rifle range. At the dedication ceremony on Thursday, the flags of the eight military units that participated in the war will be hoisted, with troops to be attired in combat fatigues of the period.

Here are a few photos stolen off the wire.












South Korea lost 4,407 soldiers and had 11,000 wounded during the war. South Korean soldiers earned quite a reputation for brutality while in Vietnam, a holdover from their abuse of Allied prisoners-of-war in World War II. But as always, "war crimes" remains redundant, and you'll find stories of savagery among any group of civilized people forced to murder for a living. Worth pointing out that South Korean politicians have made overtures of peace toward Vietnam following the war, including President Kim Dae-jung who in 1998 "expressed regret" over atrocities.

Nowadays we find Vietnam in the news over here most often because of the young Vietnamese women sold to South Korean bachelors. For an interesting collection of contemporary articles on South Korea in Vietnam, and a little on its lingering influence on the put-down of the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, take a look at Gusts of Popular Feeling's "South Korean troops in Vietnam."

Labor violations at Kiryung Electronics Factory.

The Hankyoreh ran this photo today outside the offices of Sirius, whose satellite radios are built by Kiryung Electronics Factory in Seoul. The above demonstration took place in New York on Tuesday because of "Abusive Sweatshop Conditions at the Kiryung Electronics Factory in South Korea." You can find a long summary of grievances from the National Labor Committee; an excerpt:

* Over 250 production line workers at the Kiryung Electronics factory have no rights and are held under conditions of constant fear.
Married women are limited to just three-month contracts so they can be fired if they become pregnant.

* Workers can be fired for using the bathroom, requesting to leave “early” when the regular shift ends at 5:00 p.m., for arriving a few minutes late, for asking for a sick day, or being unable to work on a weekend or national holidays.

* Forced to work 13 to 14-hour shifts, six or seven days a week, sometimes going for up to three months without a single day off. There are also grueling all-night 24-hour shifts two or three times a month. After toiling all night, workers must still report for their next shift at 8:00 a.m. the following morning, leaving them working a 38-hour shift. Workers report toiling 100 to 120 hours of overtime a month.

* Workers making Sirius Satelite radios earn just $145 a week, despite the fact that the cost of living in Seoul is just as high, if not higher, than in New York City.

* Paid below-subsistence wages, workers and their families must subsist on rice and kimchee (pickled cabbage).

* The work pace is so grueling that workers cannot even raise their heads, talk or use the bathroom. The women must learn to “hold their bladder,” but report that they sometimes “leak.”

* In the face of discrimination against pregnant women, the lack of rights, grueling hours and below-subsistence pay, the workers organized a union in July 2005. Management immediately threatened to fire the women, who then occupied the plant staging a sit-down strike. The sit-down lasted 55 days before the workers were driven from the factory by riot police.

* Kiryung management informed the workers that at the insistence of Sirius Satellite Radio, production of the radios would be relocated to a low wage factory in China.

* Hired goons also attacked the strikers, stomping, kicking and beating the women.

* For 1,160 days, the women have continued their strike, setting up a tent city in front of the main gate of the factory. Over 1,000 supporters joined a one-day hunger strike to support the workers. The head of the local union at the Kiryung factory went on a hunger strike for 94 days before being hospitalized in mid-September 2008.

* The struggle for justice continues, as a delegation of striking workers travels to the U.S. on October 15 to confront management at Sirius Satellite Radio and to seek the support of the American people in their just struggle.

The Hankyoreh is to journalistic integrity what a crackhead is to responsiblity, but it nevertheless has painted a pretty damning picture of the factory and its union.

Singaporean elementary school text shows picture of Korean homeless.

*Gasp* Naver has the story, brought to us by Michael.



Some exception might be taken with using a foreign country's homeless rather than their own, with saying a country has insufficient housing for everyone, or with writing something like "even with our limited land, our government is able to provide sufficient housing for the people." Hell, I'll bet many are just upset because Korea makes Korea look bad, and other countries oughtn't be airing its dirty laundry. Ironically today's lesson in my English textbook has the following passage:

My father says that Koreans are one of the hardest working peoples in the world. And I think it's true. I live in Dallas, and I have some friends from Korea in my neighborhood. Their parents work very hard. They usually start work early in the morning and come back home late at night. And they do their best for their children to have a better education. They know what's important in life.

The not-so-subtle implication is that other cultures don't work for their children and don't know what's important in life. Looking through foreign textbooks is a popular pastime of many government officials and private citizens. Looking through domestic textbooks for similar distortions, though, doesn't inspire the same passion.

"Global Love of Reed and Hooded Crane."

The Korea Times has a really great article on the upcoming Suncheon Bay Reeds Festival. *cough*

While I was looking up stuff I looked at the Suncheon Bay website, but it doesn't make any sense. Right off the bat it has some weird bullshit on the page:



Swampy? It's perhaps the most significant place in the city and you go with "The five coastal Swampy land of the world" to lead off? The only time you see something called Swampy is when a porn star has a bad manager. Even I have no idea what that means. Actually, okay, I think it refers to the bay being the fifth-largest in the world, which I've seen reported by the Suncheon city website (click entry 22). I haven't, however, seen that confirmed elsewhere, and Suncheon Bay never turned up in any books on the significant wetlands of the world. For instance, neither Suncheon nor Korea are even mentioned in this book The World's Largest Wetlands. Matter of fact it's only the second-largest wetlands in Korea. You can take a look at the list compiled by the Ramsar Convention and see that tons in just the first couple countries are larger than Suncheon Bay. That's not a knock against Suncheon, because it is extraordinarily beautiful there, but you can't just say whatever the hell you want because I'm fixin to call you on it.

I sent off an email a while ago to Suncheon to offer my help as a copy editor. It's nice that they do make the effort to include some news on their websites, but Christ, the English portions are either unreadable or factually wrong. I haven't heard back, just as I hadn't heard back from Gangjin, but it occurred to me that there are, like, a few dozen native English speakers working through City Hall plus scores more working in Suncheon public schools. If getting it right were a priority they wouldn't have to rely on unsolicited emails.

Actually, I came across something else interesting while spending Tuesday afternoon writing up the story. From the piece:

The festival's namesake the hooded crane is especially beloved, and practically every exhibit of the Eco-Museum is devoted to it. Classified as a vulnerable species there are roughly 10,000 left in the world, and its numbers are being further reduced by the constant reclamation and development of wetlands in South Korea and China.

However, very few of these birds actually spend time Suncheon, as an estimated 80 percent in 2005-2006 wintered in southern Japan, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The IUCN Red List page looks to be down now, but I do recall some of the figures on the site, including one which said only about 110 of the 11,000 hooded cranes in the world make their home in Suncheon at some point of the year, compared with the over 10,000 in southern Japan.

World's largest sun-tracking solar plant now operational in Shinan.

Stolen from here.

According to the Donga Ilbo. It is the size of 93 soccer fields, and will provide energy to 10,000 homes. Shinan, or Sinan, is a county in Jeollanam-do comprised entirely of islands. About 830, 111 inhabited, according to Naver, and 1,004 according to the official site. There are only 21,636 households in the county, and 46,137 people. Lots of gorgeous islands and beaches over there. There are some boat tours of the islands leaving from Mokpo; anyone have details?

Double-d in the place to be.

Hip-hop group Dynamic Duo (다이나믹듀오) will be playing a concert in the "Hub City of Asian Culture" on Saturday, and it's too bad I won't be able to make it. They seem to come through a few times a year, so maybe next time. Youtube has a few of their songs online, which I'll include as an introduction to the group.

"Insomnia" with Bobby Kim is one of my favorites. Youtube has two versions: the video and a live performance.





One of their better-known songs is "Ring My Bell." It samples the music and the chorus, but it's in Korean of course, so I'm not sure if that's considered a remake or what.



The video for "Go Back" has a couple of weird white people including, I'm pretty sure, the Russian woman 아냐 from the "lingerie fashion show" titled 5 Girls.



There are also a couple of decent live performances featuring the group and other members of "The Movement": Lee Ssang, Drunken Tiger, Bobby Kim, Yun Do-hyeon, and others. That Eun Ji-won joint is tight.



Drunken Tiger is sick, too.



Lee Ssang is probably my favorite, but even they can remind us why it's a bad, bad idea to try an English song phonetically.

A couple other good Dynamic Duo songs:





The last one is "Funk the World," but their pronunciation is a little off so I'd maybe leave it out of the office.

I pooped in my pants a little bit.

I'm not sure how I missed these two poems on Dokdo that ran in the Korea Times in August. They're by Amanda Meeker who, as the KT explains, " is a Korean-American poet who was adopted in her age ." Maybe that means a genius before her time, I don't know. I think the opening of "Solitary" would be right at home on the list of "worst analogies ever."

Dokdo,
meaning solitary,
like a single person in an apartment,

That's the part where I pooped my pants. Her second installment is called "Metaphor," and casts the rocks as a bastard a child looking for a home.

You are tired of the legal hassle
and of documents that tell you
who owns you,
who has rights to you.
You do not want to be adopted;
you want to be the legitimate child
of Joseon.

Ouch, I think there are some issues here below the surface. You'll remember the KT also ran two poems by some other guy, which I have to say are much worse because they're so much longer.

Anything we can do for these women?

I'm just talking out loud because I have no idea what resources already exist for the thousands upon thousands of foreign brides bought by Korean men every year. Women, and men, the world over marry for money and to better themselves, and plenty marry not out of love but rather out of need, so the plight of these women here isn't unique. Moreover, you'll find women all over the world willing to move to other countries to support themselves or send money back home, so that South Korea is exploiting its poorer neighbors isn't, again, unique. It just turns your stomach, though, to read stories like this:

The 44-year-old Hamyang County farmer, identified only by the surname Kim, married a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman last December. Kim has a speech impediment because of his mental disability and lived with his parents until he got married. According to Lee Sang-do, a police offer at Hamyang’s Seosang Police Precinct, it was the second time he had married a Vietnamese woman.

The marriage, however, didn’t last. Kim’s bride ran away a few days after the wedding. Not knowing why his wife left him, Kim decided to make the journey to Vietnam to find her. Despite his mental disability, on Oct. 16 he took a bus to Incheon International Airport and boarded a plane to Vietnam.

Unable to speak Vietnamese, he quickly ended up on the streets. He was found by Vietnamese police last Saturday night, after two days in the country.

It turned out his wife is still in Korea, although the article makes no mention of what did, and will, happen to her. How desperate a situation do you need to be in to sell yourself to a disabled man in rural South Korea? How about the man's family who had no qualms about letting their 44-year-old man marry a 20-year-old woman when he obviously couldn't provide for her or take care of her? And who knows what will happen to her now that her visa is in jeopardy.

According to a New York Times article from last year, in 2005 marriages to foreigners accounted for 14% of all new marriages. The number is higher in rural areas, for example, in Hampyeong county where 37.6% of marriages were international in 2004. While that Joongang Ilbo article says that "104,290 foreign women had married Korean men as of June," it doesn't put that in context or give a starting date for that figure. It becomes a little tricky because during the Vietnam War some 300,000 Korean soldiers and staff brought back Vietnamese wives, a figure that seems really high. An estimated 5,000 Vietnamese women marry a South Korean man every year and settle in Korea, but as you can imagine not many of them are happy. 3,665 international marriages ended in divorce in 2007, and there are a couple recent shocking stories involving Vietnamese brides and their suspicious deaths. Earlier this year a man in Daejeon was given a "relatively heavy punishment" of 12 years in prison for beating his 19-year-old Vietnamese bride to death. And in February a 22-year-old Vietnamese woman fell to her death from an apartment building, and though her death was ruled a suicide---and her 46-year-old Korean husband had her body cremated before any forensic investigation could be done---the woman's diary and other circumstantial evidence suggests homicide. Remember that earlier in the year a KT editorial started a profile on these two cases with the following introduction:

One killed herself. Another was beaten to death. A third was divorced after her duty as a surrogate mother was fulfilled.

No, these are not stories about ill-fated black women before slavery was prohibited in the United States.

There was a Joongang Ilbo opinion piece in May titled "End the marriage industry" which implores South Korea to end the trade of immigrant women, citing among other things the staggering discrimination foreigners face here. The piece concludes:

A country is globally rejected or respected for its policies and behavior towards women. Korea must legislate against the business of buying and selling foreign wives.
The government should immediately crack down on this shameful practice.
At the same time, the government must grant quick citizenship to the foreign wives already living here so that they can have full equal rights under the law.
It is time for Korea to protect its minority citizens.

And it's my duty to repost the following banner any time a story like this comes up. It was hanging in Jeollabuk-do, and advertises that Vietnamese women won't run away. Rather ironic when we consider today's story.

Very ambitious violence.

If 10,000 bees ever gather at your house, this is one way to handle it. Excellent photographs, too.

KOTESOL conference this weekend in Seoul.

Any teachers in Seoul or able to visit easily might want to attend the KOTESOL conference this weekend at Sookmyung Women's University. In kimchi-icecream's words:

It is a great time to network with other teachers (foreign and Korean) and meet people who care about teaching, and want to improve their teaching skills and resources.

His massive blog entry has tons of information including registration info, directions, and an overview of the last conference, so please give it a read.

Of local interest, sort of, is presenter John Linton, MD. The KOTESOL website is down right now so I can't take a look at the gist of his presentation, but he is the director of Yonsei University Medical Center's Severence Hospital, is perhaps the most prominent foreign doctor in the country, and is a descendant of the first missionaries to arrive in Suncheon and Jeollanam-do. The Linton Family continues to fight tuberculosis in Suncheon today, and continues to make trips to North Korea to perform medical work there.

Want some Halloween cake?

Suncheon's own A Food Journey in Korea has a recipe for a delicious-looking Chocolate Whiskey Cake.

VANK to lose government support.

The Volunteer Agency Network of Korea will lose government money from next year. According to the Chosun Ilbo:

The Academy of Korean Studies, which has been providing the support to VANK, said it has become difficult to support civilian groups since the total budget this year for efforts to publicize Korea abroad has been whittled down by 30 percent to W890 million next year, from W1.28 billion this year.

There are opinion pieces on this in both the Chosun Ilbo and the Korea Times today. There's also a write-up in the Donga Ilbo, and though sympathetic it contradicts the information from the Chosun Ilbo article. VANK's priorities are to quote-unquote rectify distorted Korean history and culture as presented in foreign countries, and its two favorite topics are the Liancourt Rocks and the Sea of Japan.

Not that they care, but they often incur the ridicule of foreign bloggers here because of their tactics and their rhetoric: they bombard organizations and individuals with form emails until some finally relent, and they employ the thesis "______ needs to change because Japan was bad." They seek to change the accepted English-language geographical names of places for no other reason than they believe Japapn did some bad things once. They also firmly believe, for instance, that Japan is lobbying agencies like the CIA and the US Library of Congress in order to have its interests reflected in maps and literature. People tend to get annoyed with the "I'm right because I'm loud" line of attack, especially when foreigners see this directed at other foreigners and foreign countries. Of course that's in practice all over the world, but I'll remind you of the topic of this blog, and will refrain from posting 20 entries on the US Election a week, if it pleases the readership.

I've written a little on VANK here, here, and here.

"I throw, you catch. It's not that hard."

Do you ever catch yourself acting like this around your students? I don't mean the drinking, tattooing, and cussing, I mean having such high expectations of them and getting pissed when they don't do what seems to you like the simplest of tasks? I do sometimes, but not to such comedic effect.

More about Jeju's foreigner ghetto.

I wrote about Jeju's foreigner ghetto, or rather "English Town," last month, and yesterday the Joongang Ilbo put up an article telling us more about this 1.4-trillion-won project.

It’s a highly ambitious plan and one fraught with challenges, especially given the uncertainty of the global economy.

But, if it works, the English Education City on Jeju Island could transform the island into an education hub.

God damn it, the h-word.

JDC hopes to collaborate with known international schools in building the city in Jeju.

“I can’t say the specific names of all the schools interested at this point but several schools including [in the U.S.] Phillips Academy, Andover; Phillips Exeter Academy, Milton Academy and others are showing interest. Officials at the schools like the idea and we’re currently in the process of holding talks,” said JDC’s Kim Seung-kwan.

“We’re asking the schools to allow us to use their names for the new institutions, though many are reluctant at this point. For example, New Songdo International City reached an agreement with Milton Academy but failed to reach an agreement on the name,” said Kim.

LOL, I'm sure they'll go ahead and use them anyway, it's not like anyone ever checks up or holds anyone accountable. They're also coming up with some innovative schemes to round out the white population:

To create an English-speaking environment, JDC has some interesting plans. “We hope to attract seniors from English-speaking countries to live on Jeju Island either for the short term or long term. They can do a variety of jobs around the English Town,” said Kim of JDC.

We heard a similar line of thinking with the Muan American Town, where retirees could come live and teach English for free. I've written plenty about why English Villages and Towns suck, the chief reason being a lack of commitment to truly learning the language. Moreover, in the case of the Paju English Village, an investigation found that it's not an English-only environment at all. The novelty wears off quickly, and people realize that they could have had the same education with a phrase book and some quality time in front of Youtube. We already read that these village are losing money all across Korea, so why the impulse to build an even bigger one?

Above all, these are built to stem the tide of Koreans who travel overseas to study, but what people really don't realize is that these towns and villages are hardly authentic. You'll know what I mean if you've ever tried to install an English-only policy at school: nobody follows it and you yourself have to simplify the language greatly to be understood. What you gain in comprehensibility you lose in authenticity, so that I wonder how often students and teachers have ever heard a foreigner speak Engish at a normal pace. That problem becomes amplified when you create foreign community of retirees, professors, teachers, and whomever else they import, a community that wasn't allowed to form organically. And it points to the ambivalence of English education here, the lack of a clearly defined reason for learning the language. People might study a language to enter that language community and share information with its speakers, something best accomplished by going abroad and actually meeting them. However, since English is essentially a domestic product here---used for domestic job interviews, to enter domestic colleges, and used on domestic tests---the native speaker is superfluous, as we've seen in the schools. If that's the case---and nothing really wrong with that since people study languages to simply read and write texts, too---there's no need to create an English-immersion community or to, ironically, isolate it on an island.

To sum up my thoughts, I'll plagiarize myself:

Anyway, when I first began following this trend in 2004 or 2005 I thought to myself "Why would people want to build English Villages in a country where don't talk to the foreigners they already have?" What's with always having to compartmentalize English---and foreigners---and make it something you have to go out and study? What's with the need to make it self-contained, whether in a school, in a town, or on a tour bus? The hundreds of hagwon in your own town aren't enough? The native speaker at your school isn't enough? The foreigners you pass every day on the street and yell "HellOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO monkey" at their back after they've walked by aren't good enough? The white guy you ignore all day at school and then approach for private lessons later isn't good enough? The half-dozen channels devoted to English education aren't good enough? The thousands upon thousands of Korean-language websites devoted to learning English aren't good enough? It's come to this?

There's nothing wrong with building and going to theme parks, which is essentially what these villages are, though again I find them to be like using sledgehammers to kill mosquitos. I think they'd be fun for a visit once in a while, but they're not as authentic as they're cracked up to be, and they're not going to churn out millions of English-speakers. Decades of decades-long English study hasn't done that yet. I was going to include a line about building a hypothetical Chinese Village in Pennsylvania and hiring spitters and rude shopkeepers, but I'll leave that out. You get what I mean, though. The English Education City is to an authentic language community what "Love Story in Harvard" is to the Ivy Leagues.

Dog meat ramen.

Swiped this off Naver, by popular demand. This is a Chinese product, I believe, but interesting that the label is also written in Korean.



I'm getting hard just by looking at it. Of course, if it's ramen, or Chinese, we ought to write "dog" "meat" ramen.

Cole Bridges writes about Dokdo, winds up knee-deep in pussy.

Cole Bridges, a teacher from Daejeon, has written a letter to the editor criticizing Japan's claims on the Liancourt Rocks. He really knocks it out of the park.

While Japan appears to have some legitimate claims to Dokdo, they all fail when placed under even light scrutiny. In fact, most of Japan's assertions are ridiculous.

They range from allegations that Koreans were unaware of Dokdo's existence to allegations that Dokdo could not be found on Korean maps: ridiculous.

It makes my face hurt. I wonder if this is what we can expect from the Korea Times Essay Contest.

More Nobel nationalism.

Last week we read about the Seoul National University President eager to create a homegrown Nobel Prize winner for the sake of creating a homegrown Nobel Prize winner. Today in a Joongang Ilbo editorial we hear from Oh Se-jung, a physics professor at SNU who gets to the real heart of the matter: Japan has 13, South Korea has zero.

We can beat Japan in football and baseball, but why can’t we do so in science? We beat Japan at Go as well, despite Japan’s claim as the origin of the game. In women’s golf Japan doesn’t even come close to us. But why can’t we catch up with Japan in scientific fields?

God, what a fag. To be fair he is asking why South Korean research isn't as developed as Japan's, but when you write something like that you don't really deserve fairness. I dunno why Korean scientific advancements lag behind Japan and others, or why the international scientific community might be a little cautious for some reason.



Also, yesterday the director of the Korea Literature Translation Institute wrote in to the JI calling it "unfair" that another European won the Nobel Prize of Literature.

I want to see the Korean people’s interest in and hopes for a Nobel in literature in a positive light, not just because of my job. Some have a cynical view that our desire for recognition is an aspiration of a developing country, but I am of the opinion that beneath it all, a love for our mother tongue and national pride in our creative accomplishments are in the background of our longing for Korean writers to be acknowledged internationally.

In other news, a Korean jazz artist has planned to release a CD internationally next year, prompting the Chosun Ilbo do write the only natural thing: is this the beginning of a Korean Jazz Wave? See, stuff like this is why people here enjoy seeing Koreans fail.

Gwangju's "Hub City of Asian Culture" plan struggling.

Well, raise your hand if you couldn't see that coming. Phil's the only one? See, I told you he was the biggest douche in Jeollanam-do!

Remember I said yesterday that Gwangju was calling itself the "Hub City of Asian Culture"? Well, that whole thing is expected to yield a 100 billion won loss this year.

``It is not desirable for the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Gwangju City government to spend taxpayers' money for a plan which is expected to generate massive losses in the future,'' said Lee [Bum-rae of the Trade Federation Grand National Party].

. . .

Since 2004, the culture ministry and the Gwangju city have pushed for the single largest cultural project in the country's history, a campaign pledge of former President Roh Moo-hyun in the 2002 election.

Under the plan, the two are scheduled to establish an Asia Culture Complex by 2012, and the Asia Culture Institute and other cultural sites by 2023 in the southwestern city.

The government will finance 52.8 percent of the money needed to complete the project and the private sector and the local administration will pay the remainder. Completion of the entire project is slated for 2023.

Well, actually, I don't know enough about this plan to make educated comments on it. Unlikely anyone does, actually, given the incongruity of long-term planning with what we've come to know, but I must say I do enjoy ambitious projects like this, and am a big fan of all the development going on in Jeollanam-do. That area of Gwangju, in front of the Old Provincial Office, will be radically different when this is all finished. Here are some pictures from the official site; there's an English version, too, but it doesn't make any sense.






And let me just say to all these Naver bloggers that if you're going to steal photos from another site and put them on yours without attribution, don't be even more of a dick by disabling right clicks. It just means I have to spend another four seconds of my time playing with the print screen button.

Also related, I was down in that area a couple weeks ago and I snapped a picture of the name of one of those under-construction buildings so I could research it a little later. I love what these children are doing (click to enlarge):



Just like the City Hall in Seoul, the Provincial Office in Gwangju will be getting a new look, as you can tell from the pictures above. You can also see that the rotary in front of the Hall will be gone, and it looks like vehicle traffic will be directed elsewhere to make way for the large pedestrian areas. Some people (1, 2) aren't happy about the demolition of the city's history to make way for the Culture Complex. Lots of photos you'll see of the Gwangju Massacre show scenes unfolding in front of the Provincial Office and along the main street leading up to it, and as a matter of fact every May 18th they march a parade down Chungjangno to the Provincial Hall and hold recreations of the combat. It was also the site of large protests against American beef and some massive cheering during the 2002 World Cup, and remains pretty much the center of downtown Gwangju.



Here's a shot of the Provincial Office and surrounding area taken in 1999. The area looks a little different already, as many of the buildings around it have been torn down. Below that is a shot of the Provincial Office in 1909, though it's not the same building.




Unfortunately I can't find too many decent shots of the area prior to 1999, but here's a really neat gallery of a set used for a movie about the Gwangju Massacre. Quite eerie, considering how much of the area still looks the same.

This weekend: Gwangju pop concert, Naju festival, Boseong pansori festival.

A couple of events going on this weekend. There's a big concert going on in Gwangju, the Gwangju Pop Music Festival, featuring the hip-hop group Dynamic Duo and people I've never heard of like Super Kid and Pia. It will start at 3 pm on Saturday in front of the bus terminal. The Gwangju Biennale is still on for those looking for something else to do.

Also a festival in Naju, the Yeongsan River Festival. A while ago I found a blog entry about this written by some missionaries in the area, but I can't find it now. The festival looks all right, and to have some pretty typical fare, but if you've never been to Naju it might be as good a time as any to make the trip.

Finally, in Boseong on Saturday and Sunday is the Seopyeonje Pansori Festival (서편제보성소리축제), devoted to the region's ties to the pansori style of traditional music. It's going to be held at the indoor gym, on the one side of town.

"You are a doggy poo."

Koreans are obsessed with poop and rear ends, everyone knows that. Give ten of your students a wad of clay and eleven of them will make an poop swirley cone. Not sure why you'd go around giving out clay, but whatever, poop is in the news again after a local newspaper broke it down by nationality, and created a nice illustration to show which people poop the most.



In Korea, African is a nationality, and all of them wear loin cloths and chuck spears. Zen Kimchi has compiled some examples of poop obsession, but if we're going to broaden to asses in general I might suggest the Turtles video for "Sing la la." Pretty tame compared to what you'll find on BET, now that I think about it.



It's also necessary to direct your attention to the greatest example of all, a short animated film called "Doggy Poo" (강아지똥). It's based on a book with the following plot:

After being "created" by a dog, Doggy Poo meets various living and inanimate things. No one wants to be his friend, and Doggy Poo becomes sad because he believes he is worthless and has no purpose. However, after a plant grows out of the ground and tells him that she needs him to grow into a flower, Doggy Poo realizes his purpose and he becomes absorbed by the flower. After being absorbed by the flower, Doggy Poo lives "a happy life".

I've made a few half-assedhearted attempts to find the book, but haven't come up with anything. It seems like a nice story, though, one I'm sure Confucius would enjoy. One of my old schools had each of the pages painted onto the wall outside the library, so I had a chance to read through some of it. It really is a cute little story. I'm sure you can find the full-length film on the internet somewhere, but for the time being here are a couple of clips. The first one is of the main character being born:



And this one is a music video with a nice little song played over it.

So everybody feels validated now, right?

A map that labels the Sea of Japan as both the Mer du Japon and the Mer de L'est has made the news over here. But . . . they spelled Korea wrong. *cough* Trying to convince foreign mapmakers and publishers that the Sea of Japan is actually the East Sea is a goal of both the Volunteer Agency Network of Korea and many ordinary citizens. Here's a little more of VANK's position:

The name "East Sea," besides its neutral character, has an additional advantage

Jesus Christ, that's it, we're done. I'm going to say it again, just to practice my English: if they want to call it 동해 in Korean, fine, but the campaign to manipulate other languages needs to stop. Moreover, can we please evolve beyond the "it should be called 'East Sea' because Japan was bad" line of thinking? I guess those pleas are really all I can do, because not many realize the irony of countering what is considered residual Japanese imperialism and ethnocentricsm by naming a body of water between two countries after its geographic relationship to one.

Jeollanam-do news and notes.

Here are a couple little blurbs about Jeollanam-do that have been in the news recently. I don't feel like writing a bunch of different posts, especially since I've got a ton more coming up this week.

** We learned two weeks ago that Jindo wanted to register its shamanistic rite as a UNESCO World Heritage, and now Jeollanam-do's dinosaur fossil sites are pushing for World Natural Heritage designation. Five sites in the province are regionally well-known for having fossilized bones, eggs, and footprints, and there are dinosaur museums and tourist sites in Haenam and Suncheon, among other places. The Korea Times has the story; an excerpt:

Prof. Huh Min, from Chonnam National University and director of the Korea Dinosaur Research Center, is initiating the campaign. He stressed that having a natural heritage is somewhat different from having a cultural site. Korea has eight cultural sites, including old palaces.

``Unlike cultural sites featuring their comparative value to different cultures, the natural sites have to be the `only one' valuable to the world. It has to be academically, culturally, and in every way the best in the world,'' he said.

To receive the UNESCO Natural Heritage listing, support from local residents and the administrations is critical. The preparation committee has established safe and protective pathways for visitors as well as straightened roads to preclude any possible destruction of the sites. ``We have streamlined the region,'' Huh said.

Preparation has been underway for more than three years, and he expects UNESCO inspectors to recognize the value and importance of the ``Korean Cretaceous Dinosaur Coast.''

And a little more:

``We have seen dinosaurs in Western movies such as Jurassic Park and picture books. But here, we also had flying reptiles, and all kinds of dinosaurs walking, drinking, laying eggs and living just like any other creature,'' he said.

Um . . . okay. On the topic of dinosaurs and tourism, I saw a "Jurassic Adventure" bus in Suncheon last week with the Jurassic Park logo. I didn't know they were filming the latest installment in Jeollanam-do. *cough*

** Jindo county built the country's largest statue of national hero Yi Sun-shin, and unveiled it on October 11th.

It took three years and 1.8 million dollars to build the giant statue of Korea's favorite war hero. The statue is 30 meters high and is a dynamic and realistic portrayal of Yi in battle. The eyes of the statue are directed at the Pacific Ocean.
A county official said Nokjin-li will be developed into a leading tourist attraction of the South Jeolla province.

** I wrote on Friday about the consultations that are going to be held at immigration offices around the country. Though the Korea Times story came out the same day as the Gwangju meeting, somebody in Gwangju told me that they sent out invitations to foreigners registered through the immigration office . . . invitations in Korean. Ms. Parker commented that all hell broke lose, sort of, last year when some in attendance actually asked questions of the presenter. Like I said it's a nice gesture, but since immigration policies vary from location to location and person to person, it's unlikely any answers will come from it.

** A lighthouse in Wando dating to 1909 will be restored in anticipation of its 100th birthday. Another colonial-era lighthouse of note is located in Yeongsan-po, Naju, a formerly-significant town home to quite a few examples of Japanese architecture.

** There's a childrens' museum scheduled to open in Gwangju in 2012. A minor error, but Gwangju is a city, not a province. Not as bad as the atlas I saw at my university that had it labelled as "Gwangyu." I was going to do a post about that back in August and alert the proper authorities to this gross distortion of Korean culture and history.

** This article doesn't make any sense, but apparently there's renewed debate on the constitutionality of the death penalty. You'll see people sentenced to death every once in a while, but as the article says the last executions were carried out in 1997. The article makes mention of the 70-year-old man who killed four people in Boseong last year---and probably more over the years---who was appealling his death sentence.

** In case you weren't aware, Gwangju is billing itself as "Hub City of Asian Culture."

** I had a neat little surprise on Saturday while watching a little report on the Namdo Food Festival. I was on TV for like three seconds as they were filming the guy make art out of melted sugar. I tried to track it down online but I haven't had any luck. As far as I can tell, though, I made it through the Kimchi Festival without attracting any attention.

Big pop concert in Suncheon on Wednesday.

This Wednesday the 22nd there will be a concert at Suncheon National University at 7 pm. Acts include Shinee (샤이니) and 별, the former being one of the most popular boy bands with middle school girls right now. Wikipedia's got a lot more information on them, including the following in the introduction:

SHINee's official fan colour is pearlescent sky blue.

They were in town last week for Suncheon Citizen's Day. If you're bored, curious, or 14, you might wanna head on over.

Whoa, a Korean woman dating a white guy on TV.

Caught part of this show on TV this morning with a foreigner out on a date with a Korean woman. Upon further review it turns out she is Lee Pani (이파니), a Korean playboy model who, apparently, has a show that involves dating a bunch of guys and stuff. The guy, 크리스, speaks what sounds like pretty good Korean, so big ups to him. You can catch the episode on the show's site for the time being; click here and click on number 7 and wait a few minutes for the latest episode to start. With a little work you can, um, "learn" more about Lee Pani, too.



From my limited TV-viewing experience this might be one of the few times we've seen an attractive Korean woman with an attractive white guy on TV. He certainly comes off a lot better here than those assholes on "Sexy Mong" who portrayed drunks and date rapists. She's a nude model, though, and it was hard to find a picture of her remotely work safe, so that might account for why it's acceptable for her to be with a white guy, even for just one episode, considering the sexist depictions of Korean women who sully themselves with foreign men.

The Chosun Ilbo has a little bit about her appeal, from a 2006 article:

With fantastic curves -- 174 cm tall and weighing 49 kg with measurements of 34-23-36 -- she was clearly top among the 17 women who made it to the final. Her hottest asset is a waistline that would make even Lee Hyo-lee jealous. Personally Lee is proud of her formidable chest and hips, which make her quite literally stand out from the crowd. But she also won the singing competition with her rendition of the Whitney Houston classic “I Will Always Love You.”

Oddly enough, she was married in 2006, but I'm gonna guess that didn't last. Off topic, but whenever I hear "Korean Playboy" I always think back to this article from a few years ago:

A Playboy model search for pretty boys? No, but even so, five men applied for the "Playboy 2006 Korea Model Contest" sponsored by the Cable channel, Spice TV, the local network of Playmodel Media Group. These male applicants, 6 feet (180cm) or taller with movie star-good looks, are in their early 20s and judging by their attempts to apply for the contest, courageous too.
The reason behind their endeavor to enter a women-only model search event? Reportedly they had never heard of the world-famous nude magazine, Playboy. While pretty much any male who grew up in the 70's or 80's had seen the magazine at least once, the younger generation is, in reality, not familiar with the publication as they have little interest in sex-related magazines due in no small part to more easily accessible internet sites of that nature.

The sponsor said that they have returned the applications of the five men, speculating that they may have interpreted the word "playboy" literally and thought it would be a contest for "playful men."

LOL, just another case of English miseducation ruining lives.

Government still hasn't decided what "unqualified" means.

It drives me crazy how "unqualified" is used as a catch-all term to refer to teachers who lack the proper documentation, who lack teaching credentials, who have a criminal record, or who are simply Caucasian. The latest example of conflation occurs in a Korea Times piece from today about the possibility of requiring ethnic Korean teachers to undergo criminal checks and drug testing to get a visa.

``We understand hagwon (private language institutes) and after-school programs lack the system of weeding out unqualified teachers among those ethnic Koreans and foreigners holding visas other than E-2,’’ said Seo Myung-bum, director general from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

. . .

There are diverse ways to block ``unqualified’’ foreign teachers with F-type visas, the director general said. The ministry will revise related rules to require schools and hagwon to receive criminal records and medical documents from ethnic Korean teachers, he said.

. . .

However, the government has not come up with any steps to ease underlying concerns over unqualified English teachers.

Look, the requirements to teach English in Korea are: a 4-year degree, a passport from a select group of English-speaking countries, and in some cases medical clearance and a criminal background check. These are the requisites for obtaining an E-2 visa, which enable one to teach English at a private academy or a public school. These may be more or less negotiable depending on how thorough the school or recruiter is. A teacher who can meet these requirementst is "qualified" according to the letter of the law. Given these relatively low standards, handed down from the government itself, don't turn around and bitch about teachers who lack teaching certification, or post-graduate degrees, or extensive experience. Because there are practically no incentives in place for teachers who do have these extra garnishings, don't bitch about attracting teachers who pretty much don't have anything beyond the bare minimum. This particular article is talking about teachers who may or may not have criminal backgrounds or postive drug tests, but hearing about "unqualified" teachers again is like listening to your grandfather talk about that "colored" man running for president. Given the way those terms are thrown around, you have to wonder if anybody knows what they're referring to anymore.

The article goes on to mention the TaLK program, which recruited college students over the summer to teach English. One hand clearly has no idea what the other is doing, since over here they're bringing in students to teach where, reportedly, there are shortages, while in other places they're blasting teachers for being quote-unquote unqualified.

It's also worth repeating that Christopher Paul Neil, the man they mention in the article as being the inspiration behind the latest moral panic and visa regulations, was completely "qualified" by whatever definition you'd prefer. He had no criminal record, he had teaching experience, and even had teaching certification in his home country Canada. And please, can we get some articles calling for further testing on Korean teachers who are quote-unquote unqualified? I'm not even using "unqualified" to talk about the thousands who can't use English whatsoever. I'm talking about those who beat students and molest students yet who escape with little to no punishment, and in many cases are permitted to keep their jobs. When you read about a teacher given a warning for beating a student with a bamboo sword, for example, or getting a three-month suspension for molesting elementary school students, or getting probation for raping a student, you don't read about government officials blasting the whole demographic. If this constant stereotyping weren't such a tired topic, and one so fit to be ignored by just about everyone, I'd consider writing it up further.

Ransom paid for kidnapped Korean sailors off Somalia.

According to the International Herald Tribune, among others, a Korean shipping company paid a ransom to Somalian pirates in exchange for 22 sailors---8 Koreans, 14 Burmese---kidnapped last month. Piracy seems to be the second-favorite pastime of Somalis, behind starvation, and it remains to be seen how others will react to this direct funding of terrorism.

Considering the large number of ships and sailors taken in those waters it's unlikely the Korean ship was targetted, but this payoff calls to mind the hostage crisis in 2007, when South Korea paid a ransom to the Taliban in exchange for the release of the boneheaded missionaries who tried to convert the masses.


Missionaries mocking the danger signs at Incheon Airport prior to departure.

60th anniversary of the Yosu Rebellion (여순반란사건)

I've combined two posts I wrote back in December on the topic of the 1948 Yosu-Sunchon Incident---or Rebellion---a military insurrection that was part of a number of bloody clashes that would foreshadow the coming Korean War. The rebellion started when a battalion of soldiers from Yeosu refused to go to Jeju to put down the insurrection taking place there. They marched from Yeosu to Suncheon, their numbers swelling to roughly 2,000. The resultant crackdown on communists and "communists" resulted in, depending on the source, the murder of hundreds or thousands. I don't want to get too much into it because I don't have access to anything beyond the few mentions on English-language websites, and don't know much outside of what I've posted here.

But before I get to the reposts, I'd like to direct your attention to a small excerpt on the rebellion from The Korean War 1945 to 1953 by Hugh Deane. The book actually appears to be a compilation, with some authors---Bruce Cummins in particular---of questionable impartiality, but nevertheless it's worth a look considering how little information on the incident is available in English. You can find a few relevant pages here, but I'll quote a bit below.

The civilian rebels included at least 70 teachers. The head of the Yosu's People's Committee was Song Uk, prinicipal of the Yosu Girls' Middle School---the girls were described as "redder than the inside of a watermelon" and proved it when, armed with Japanese rifles, they fought in the vain defense of the city.

In Sunchon some people were summarily executed, but others were tried by a People's Court. While some were found innocent or merely castigated, most were beaten and then executed. The police chief got the worst of it. His eyes were plucked out and he was dragged by car along the streets. Shot, his gas-drenched body was tied to a pole and set on fire. Some 900 people, among them 400 police, were killed in Sunchon by the rebels.

. . .

Yosu was defended house-to-house and the city suffered devastating damage. The entire city "is in ashes, still surrounded by horrors and terrors," according to a graphic account. "All kinds of notices cover the walls of the town in the form of orders, appeals, and threats issued by both sides. Dead bodies and broken furniture are scattered over the rice fields and house lots . . . Many groups of beggars are digging in the ashes for whatever they can find . . . The police station and martial law headquarters are crowded with suspects awaiting trial . . . We learned that more than 1,200 persons were killed as of November.

Syngman Rhee declared that Korea had "never had as amny triators in its history" and seized the opportunity to get a repressive and conveniently vague National Security Law enacted. Immediately aimed at what remained of the South Korean left, from the beginning it victimized also many thousands without left links or thoughts. All major organizations were scrutinized and purged. By the spring of 1950 nearly 60,000 people had been jailed, of whom 50 to 80 percent were charged with violations of the National Security Law. The constabulary was purged; over a thousand officers and enlisted men were arrested. The National Assembly was not immune. By October of 1949 sixteen assemblymen were in jail.

But the cities and towns were more easily dealt with than the countryside. A thousand or more participants in the Yosu uprising escaped into the nearby Chiri Mountains, which rose 6,300 feet and were capped by hundreds of acres of thick forest. They became part of a guerrilla war organized principally by the South Korea Workers Party that soon engulfed large parts of the south.

Some of the TIME magazine accounts that follow confirm what was written in the book, and the author actually references one of the articles. Also on the topic, you can find a few pictures via a Naver search, though be warned they are unpleasant.

The first repost is on three placards around Suncheon that mark points of significance during the incident. The second contains two TIME magazine articles from November, 1948.


* * *




I've come across a few placards around Suncheon marking notable places during the Yosu-Sunchon Incident of 1948 (which also known as the Yosu Rebellion, the Yosu-Sunchon Rebellion, and other variations). I haven't found many internet sources in English on the internet, so I find these placards kind of useful. I'd also be interested to know what happened during this time---between World War II and the Korean War---in other areas of Jeollanam-do (specifically Gangjin). Anyway, for a little background on the incident, there are two articles here and here.

I've come across three placards so far: at Suncheon Station, at Dongcheon River, and at Suncheon National University. I originally assumed 관련지 meant "placard," but looking in the dictionary I see "관련" means "relation, connection, association." All three of the placards marking sites associated with the incident are two-sided, and all three contain the following text on one side:

The Yosun Incident broke out on Oct. 19, 1948, when the 14th Regiment of the National Defense Guard of South Korea refused to move to Jeju Island on a mission to put down an armed uprising protesting against the estasblishment of the government by South Korea alone. When about 2,000 soldiers marched into downtown Yeosu, the civilians,students and local leftists, who were suffering from economic distress after the establishment of the new government, joined the soldiers. The insurgent forces instantly occupied eastern areas of Jeonnam Province, i.e., Suncheon, Gwangyang, Gurye, Boseong, Goheung, and Gokseong. The government established the quell force headquarter in Gwangju and defeated the insurgent forces in Suncheon on Oct. 23 and in Yeosu on Oct. 27. During the search operation against the civilian collaborators, many innocent civilians were executed without trial. The number of victims of the Yosun Incident is estimated to be about 10,000 including policement, soldiers, and civilians, though the exact number is not known.
The Yosun Incident served as a momentum for establishing 'anti-communism' as the national idiology for South Korea and fixation of the partition of the Korean peninsula.

I didn't change any errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, or spacing, and I didn't alter any of the romanization.

On the flip side of the placard in front of Suncheon Station is the following:

Suncheon Station bore witness to the early stages of the Yosun Incident. The insurgent forces used Suncheon Station as a base to attack downtown Suncheon while they were extending their influence outside Yeosu. At 8:39 Oct. 20, 1948, abotu two thousands of the insurgent forces left Yosu by train and other vehicles, and arrived at Suncheon Station at around 09:30 without facing any resistance. Two companies of the 14th Regiment, which had been dispatched to Suncheon, joined the insurgent forces under the command of 1st Lt. Hong Soonsuk. The joint forces were able to easily break through the resistance of the police troops who were defending Gwangyang Saguri (a three forked road) and the bank of Dongchun Stream, and advanced toward downtown Suncheon. The current building of the Suncheon Station was rebuilt in October, 1960.

The placard on the banks of Dongchun/Dongcheon is about 15 minutes away. From Suncheon Station, walk west toward the river. Follow the pedestrian on-ramp to your right and start walking north along the river. It is on the east side of the stream, along the walking path, tucked under Suncheon Bridge (순천교).



The placard reads:

The Suncheon Bridge (Jangdaedari) and the bank of Dongchun Stream witnessed the first fierce combat between the police and the insurgent forces at the time of the Yosun Incident. On October 20th, the Suncheon police and right-wing youths from adjacent regions established a defensive line at Gwangyang Samguri, but failed to keep the insurgent forces from advancing to downtown Suncheon because the 4th Regiment, a support troop from Gwangju, joined the insurgents. During the combat, most of the policement escaped from the spot, some were killed, and only about 50 retreated to the Suncheon Police Station.

The third placard I found is located on Suncheon National University, behind the graduate school / language center (대학원 / 어학원), number 2 on this map. If exiting the building, turn left and at the street turn left, and the placard will be visible a few meters on your left.

The placard says "여순사건관련지 - 순천농림중학교 (현 순천대학교), or Suncheon Middle School of Farming and Forestry (presently Suncheon National University). According to the Suncheon University site, the Farming and Forestry middle school was established in 1946, became a high school in 1951, a vocational high school in 1965, a technical college in 1973, a college in 1979, a four-year college in 1982, and finally Suncheon National University in 1991.

The placard 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.

Suncheon Northern Elementary School (presently 전남순천북초등학교) is located about a half-kilometer south of Suncheon University.


* * *


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.

Chonnam National University creates robot flower.

Gwangju's Chonnam National University has developed a robot plant that emits oxygen and a fragrance.

Just like real plants, the robot emits oxygen, moisture, and aroma. It also responds in various ways to stimuli from outside, such as approaching persons, music or light. When a person comes within a 40 cm radius of the flower, its supersonic sensor perceives the approach, the stem bends towards the person, and the buds come into full bloom. When the person leaves, the plant returns to its original state.

If a person's voice becomes louder than a certain level, the flower buds will come into bloom, and the stem shakes slightly to suggest a greeting. When the room lights up, the buds open and close, and when music is played, the plant dances.

The article doesn't mention that the plant debuted yesterday at a Robot Festival at Seoul's COEX Mall. Oh, I almost forgot:

"American universities and Japanese manufacturers have produced toy-like robot plants, but ours has various new kinetic and electronic functions,” project leader Park Jong-oh said. “It’s a fresh attempt to introduce the concept of plants, rather than humans or animals, to robot making.”

The photo up top comes from this article and the one below from this one.



Also from the Chosun Ilbo today is a link to a 2007 article about Chinese netizens who are upset by pretty much everything by Korean dramas that they feel distort history, something I talked a little about yesterday. It's cute to watch two nations who put history in quotation marks battle it out over distortions. Also from that site is news about Han Chae-young, an actress who is large enough to have her breasts referred to by geographic designations:

Reynolds said, “New Zealanders love Korean movies. For example, ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ by Kim Jee-woon was very popular. Han, who combines the beauty of both East and West, is a perfect fit for this movie.

That one was excessive, I'm sorry.


Wait, what?

She's cute.

A winner is you.

Here's a video of a guy doing the damn thing the way it should be done in front of a Lotte Mart.



Taken by, and stolen from, The $ynchronizer.

Got an immigration question? Here's the meeting for you.

The government will hold consultation sessions at immigration offices around the country in order to address any questions or problems foreigners may have.

The Ministry of Justice said Thursday it has teamed up with five other ministries ㅡ education, public administration and security, health and welfare, labor and gender equality ㅡ to organize the annual sessions starting Friday in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, and Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. The sessions will be held in 14 cities till Nov. 2.

``No matter what kind of difficulties they face, they will find the right solution with help official help from the concerned ministries,'' said Chung Young-seop, justice ministry official in charge of the program.

As you can see from the chart taken off the KT site, the one for Gwangju is coming up . . . today and Saturday. The one in Yeosu is next weekend. It's a nice gesture, and one that I take it is aimed more at foreign migrant workers and international brides. Pardon the cynicism, it's not my main theme I swear, but we learned through all the new visa regulations, the numerous degree certifications, and the inconsistent policies toward criminal background checks that immigration offices are not always on the same page. What gets said at one of the meetings may not hold true at another location, or even for another officer or another day.

Andy tells it like it is.

Andy in South Korea has a nice summary of how native speakers are generally used in schools around here:

It's like someone saying, I want ice-cream, and they want you to go to Baskin Robbins. They don't tell you what kind of ice-cream they want, or how much they want, or if they want different flavours in the same bucket, or just all of the same one. Also, you just know that when you get back with the ice cream, they don't like it, or you chose the wrong size, and then say it's your fault.

For me, that is pretty much Korea in a nutshell.

And, yes, it is always your fault, nevermind that you have no guidance or support whatsoever. Jangseong-based Andy will be escaping Korea in a few days, and I feel bad for not finding out about his blog until a little while ago. Another interesting entry that had me nodding is the one immediately following the above one. After some students said "shit" in class, which my students always do but it comes out like "shed," Andy got upset and got this reply from them:



The post continues:

So, this went on for about a minute. I'm wrong, because I'm not the Korean teacher. Shit is okay, because the Korean teacher said it's okay, and I'm wrong, because I'm the foreigner. But, I'm the native speaker. Children really shouldn't say shit. I'm sure that a Korean teacher would be pissed off if a student was saying 씨발 and 개세끼.

Yeah, that happens pretty much all the time. Just today the coteacher disagreed with my pronunciation of "Saturday" in class. Apparently I was saying "Saturday" instead of "Saturday," and confusing the students. I typed them the same because she pronounced them the same, though she told me the students are used to the British pronunciation which goes "Saturday" (I dunno, I guess she was referring to a tap, but students and teachers can't do it). I was like "British? WTF, no they're not thinking of British English. Jesus Christ." Well, I thought that, but just ended up saying "um . . . nooooooo." And I can't even count the number of times a teacher has asked me a question only to have my answer trumped by "the textbook says . . ." Just last week, against my campaigning, the teachers were unshaken in their belief that "What do you like to do on Saturdays" and "What do you like doing on Saturdays" are different because the former implies what you want to do rather than what you usually do.

What do you like doing?은 일반적으로 좋아하는 것을 묻는 표현이며, What do you like to do?는 무엇을 하고 싶은지를 묻는 표현이다.

Um . . . no, that's "What would you like to do?" but I had the misfortune of not being born a textbook. I'm all for input, since Korean English teachers are of course professionals too, but jeez, the unflinching pride of some people.

Worth pointing out, too, that the lack of support in the classroom is a big reason why native speaker classes aren't as effective as they might be. Ironic, considering the push to teach all English classes in English in the next few years, and the format of our classes will need to be adopted by all English teachers. The disinterest in our classes on the part of bosses and colleagues never seems to come up, though, when we're getting slammed in the media.

Old English textbook finds new readers.

I mean a textbook many in years, not a textbook on Old English. I'm talking about a little something from the Chosun Ilbo that reaffirms my belief in keeping it simple in the classroom:

An English textbook over 60-years-old has belatedly gripped Koreans eager to learn the language.
The book "English Restart" has been sold in more than 40 countries around the world since being introduced by influential English literary critic I.A. Richards, a professor at Harvard University back in 1945.
The picture-heavy publication features simple words, phrases and sentences without translations, unlike most contemporary English textbooks that often overwhelm readers with too much information.
Fans of "English Restart" are drawn to its simplicity and straightforwardness, and the recent upsurge in the books popularity has been amazing. Many readers rave about how it is helping them learn English in a short time span.
The book's local publishers are astounded by the response to the revived edition, with people clamoring for additional editions.
One domestic internet survey group says this is the first time an English textbook has become a bestseller in Korea. To date, the book has been on the bestseller list since July.

HT to Galbijim. It's important to always try new things as a learner, but I don't get the need for all kinds of fancy gadgets and gimmicks when a little bit of effort will go a longer way. I've likened some of these gimmicks to using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito, especially when many students in the public schools have very little in the way of functional English, and I think a lot of students and coworkers would benefit greatly from a little time in front of a simple, bare-bones phrasebook like this. More importantly, they would benefit from an interest in learning and actually using the language, rather than simply paying it lip service.

The book must have been modiified into a series, since I found both "basic" and "advanced" editions. Here are some pictures of the advanced one, click to enlarge:



And here are pages 22 and 23 from the "basic" one, with plenty more here:

Sports Day.

I had the nice surprise of going to school last Thursday and sitting down to plan the day's classes only to learn that classes were cancelled because of Sports Day. Sports Day is an annual event at public schools where the students run races, play games, and do dance numbers. No pictures today because I didn't have a camera, but I just wanted to bring up some things I said during my post on the Christmas festival, which contains many truths that still hold . . . um, true.

My students are good kids, and I had a nice time watching them perform and I was impressed by their pottery, paintings, and model homes on display on the first floor. It must be said, though, that in spite of weeks of practice, a lot of these performances were about as organized as a lesbian clusterfuck.

The students had a month to prepare their dances this time, working on them during gym class. The effort, though, was distributed the same way it is in my classes. A few students are really into it, about half are sort of doing it but are looking around and chatting with their friends, and the rest are just kind of moving around arbitrarily.

I bring that up because it's interesting to think about what goes on in the classroom in light of what goes on at a school festival. At the festival the MC---a teacher on a mic---spent about ten minutes getting all the students to a reasonably quiet level before proceeding. If a Korean teacher, with microphone, giving directions in Korean, is largely ineffective against chattering Korean students, it makes me less ashamed at the rowdiness of some of my own classes. Hell, during the principal's opening speech there was a noticable chatter in the background, and even teachers were chatting and playing on their phones.

Like the chronic aversion to punctuality, I think the inability for many Koreans to be quiet for more than two seconds is cultural difference, and one to which I've had to adapt. There was a thread on Dave's a few weeks ago, "shut up, shUt Up, SHUT UP" that really hit close to home. An excerpt from the original post:

I can't take it anymore. I teach in an elementary PS and all the kids do is talk, talk, talk. Then talk. Shut up. Just shut up. They had to give presentations today and the whole class just talks through it all, I can't even hear anything. When I speak, there's 15 different full blown conversations going on. When the Korean teacher speaks they don't stop. I tell them where I come from, if a 10 year old dared to out volume a teacher in class...I don't know what would happen. Because it wouldn't. I had to sit through 6 hours of school and couldn't speak unless spoken to. Sure, I didn't go to hogwans, but I also didn't talk through them either. No wonder they 'study' for 10 hours a day. Maybe if they stopped talking long enough to listen, they wouldn't need to.

And it's not just the kids. During meetings here, the teachers just chat the whole way through when the Principal is talking. They chat through the national anthem, they talk through weddings and funerals and movies and sleep. Shut up. Just shut up. This is just one indication of the total lack of respect Koreans have for other people. Just shut up and listen. Or just shut up and don't listen, I don't care. The important thing is that you shut your little pie hole long enough for someone else to express their ideas, you ignorant little selfish princes and princesses. Your mothers might tell you you're important, but you're not. You're really not. No one cares what you have to say. Shut up.

LOL, that's awesome. As I said it's not just the students. The teachers are always clucking away, even during speeches by the principal or other dignitaries. During staff dinners when the principal gets up to make a speech many don't even interrupt their meal.

It's also put some of my efforts in perspective. I sometimes get frustrated when my students seem incapable of doing the simplest of tasks. With their Korean English teachers they're reading stories, writing letters, learning pretty complicated grammar, and taking difficult standardized exams. In my class trying to get through a basic question-and-answer session is a chore. But watching the performances and the rehearsals made me rethink my expectations a little bit. A lot of students struggled with their dance moves---what an absurd sentence---even after all that preparation, a lot of the students just weren't into it, and a lot of students just made arbitrary movements with no regard to coordination or rhythm. So maybe it's asking a little much to expect students to come into English class and perform the language, and maybe I'm expecting too much when I want them to do a role play or something after a 30-minute lesson. I don't think it's a coincidence that the sharpest students and the most enthusiastic English learners were also the best dancers---what an absurd sentence. Seeing that at least half of each class was equally indifferent toward English as toward dancing---what an absurd sentence---makes me feel a little better.

For those who haven't experienced a school festival, much of them are devoted to dance numbers put on by each class. They'll pick a song---usually everyone does the same song or chooses from among a couple popular ones---and the whole class does what is supposed to be a coordinated routine. I posted some grainy videos of the Christmas festival, and you can find tons by going through Youtube and Naver. The Christmas festival featured no shortage of "sexy dances" by middle school girls to Ivy's "A-ha," "Tell Me," and Destiny Child's "Lose My Breath." You can also find a ton of those kinds of videos on Naver if that's your thing. This time we were spared the booty shaking. The songs used in the show were Lee Hyori's "Listen Mr. Big," another one I can't remember, and that goddamn annoying "Energy" by Mighty Mouth, complete with that goddamn annoying hoduken everytime they approximated "energy."

I was happy to learn a few things about my students and pick up a few tips for the classroom next year. I was also really impressed that everyone participated. Nobody had the too cool for school attitude that accompanies 86% of North American students. Even if they did it poorly, everyone---the smart kids, the dumb kids, the short kids, the fat kids, the shy kids, the bubbly kids, the nevertalktoanyone kids----got up and did their dance. It was cute that nobody was embarassed to get up there and embarass themselves, because everyone was embarassing themselves, hence nobody was embarassed.

The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, but they are of course quite competitive and were really eager to win the 5,000 won gift certificates. Like what happens when you try to play a game in class, the winners are happy and the losers complain and complain and complain, making you question the advisability of trying a game again in the future.

I've blogged a lot about teaching English here, and the challenges native speakers face in the public schools. I think a lot of the problems are endemic here, and you'll find them in hagwon, too. If it's not one thing, it's something else. There are a lot of benefits to working in a public school, though, including the chance to try different things like picnics, volleyball tournaments, and festivals. I don't have nearly as much class time with students as I did in my hagwon, but I'm in the same place with them for eight hours a day. There are also lots of random surprise holidays and cancellations, meaning I often have more days off in a month than I was given all year at my former hagwon, which would count national holidays as contracted vacation days and which wouldn't allow me to take a sick day when I lost my voice.

While I was watching the festival and outlining this post, I got to thinking about the generally-accepted notion that Korean students, among others, have a huge advantage over their American peers because they attend school all year round. It's true that they don't have a two-and-a-half month break each summer, but when you add up all the class cancellations, I wonder how much more instruction they're receiving. For instance, after the final exams in December the students had three more weeks of school---followed by a one-week stretch in the middle of winter break---during which they did nothing but watch movies, practice for the winter festival, and have free time. The teachers usually didn't even attend class because they were preparing the final grades. The week or two between the midterm and the end of the spring semester was the same thing in many cases. There are, as I said, tons of random cancellations for holidays, picnics, and school festivals, plus cancellations for cram time before the major exams. Then when you add the ten weeks of so for winter vacation and the five weeks or so of summer vacation to all this downtime, I don't think you're too far behind what goes on in the US. You do have to factor in the time students spend at summer camps and intensive sessions at their cram schools, but while those are part of the culture those aren't part of the schools.

I still like the idea of attending school all year round, or "all year round," but the three-month summer break is ingrained into American culture---like the importance of testing here---and I don't think you'll see it go away in most school districts.

Some foreign English teachers do private lessons illegally, earn 30K per hour.

Oh, and by the way, 40,000 government employees and 6,000 at government-funded companies pocketed rice subsidies intended for farmers last year. Moreover, 170,000 of the nearly one million who received rice subsidies last year weren't farmers. I also hear that some foreign men put their erections inside Korean women.

Did you finish your Dokdo essay?

Tomorrow’s the deadline for the Korea Times “Why is Dokdo Korean Territory?” essay contest, so get those entries put together. Remember, the Korea Times is looking for heretofore unpublished maps and other evidence, and I know most of you public school teachers have volleyball this afternoon, so why not use that time to whip something up?

A few weeks ago I was asked by someone over there to submit something. After I cleaned coffee off the computer screen I started writing back saying why foreigners don’t really give a shit and are pretty turned off by the whole thing. Moreover, I wrote, it looked like the KT was just being lazy by asking foreigners to produce evidence that would likely be plundered and stolen by local academics to further whatever quote-unquote research they’re doing.

As I was writing that, though, it occurred to me that that'd be an interesting essay to submit. I personally don’t care who gets the Liancourt Rocks, but I like a lot of foreigners am repulsed by the hypernationalism these territorial dispute brings out. Mutilating birds, cancelling student exchange programs, planting flags on embassies, putting babies in danger, fostering hatred in schoolchildren, and forcing a biased point of view on everyone both here and abroad (1, 2, 3, 4), all while telling foreigners here not to get involved in quote-unquote Korean affairs. What’s more, this summer popular attention shifted away from the anti-Americanism of the beef imports to the hatred of Japan, an old stand-by, pretty much overnight. We’re well aware of how easy it is for that anger to be directed toward foreign teachers again. As foreigners, angry protests against foreign countries doesn't appeal to us or make us feel welcome.

More to the point, I always make fun of those Dokdo columns in the papers that use the thesis “Dokdo is ours because Japan is bad" but provide no evidence and do nothing to counter the equally-strong evidence presented for the Japanese claim. This is a generalization, but I think foreign readers will be easier swayed by a well-researched, well-cited piece that thoroughly confronts and disputes the Japanese side, rather than one that bitches, moans, saber-rattles, passes along half-assed historical evidence, and tries to play on an ingrained hatred of past Japanese imperialism that just isn't there for a lot of us.

A few days ago I decided not to put anything together, though, because I'm pretty busy with other stuff. More importantly, since I almost got fired for offering my opinion on such sensitive quote-unquote domestic issues as the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement and the 2002 anti-American riots, you can damn well bet I'd be kicked out of the country for bringing up the D-word. My offer of a reward still stands, though, to any foreigner who gets his or her fake essay published.

I'll give any foreigner 20,000 won if their fake essay wins. I'll give them an extra 5,000 if they include "Hub of Asia," "Yi Sun-sin," or "the Japanese government must acknowledge this fact" in their remarks, and a further 5,000 won if, upon receiving their tickets to Dokdo, they ask if they'll need a Japanese visa.

You know what, let's make it an even 50K. The more I think of it, though, the more objectionable I find this contest. And I think in large part it goes back to the hypocrisy of squashing our opinions when they’re negative, yet fawning over us when we say something complimentary about Korea. Look below, and see how many pictures of white people at the Kimchi Festival went across the wire today, and look at the photos and videos of big-noses you’ll find on practically every domestic festival and entertainment website. Now, I know you’re going to remind me that they've been running articles about Korea's image in the KT all week, some pretty critical, by relative experts who aren’t some young, no-name English monkey. I have to wonder, though, when it comes down to it how many of those names and opinions will be paid any mind when the big meetings are held. Hell, the government just announced that Bae Yong-joon will be the new Ambassador for Korean Tourism. He was famous among Japanese people, like, six years ago, and while the numbers of Japanese tourists to Korea are slipping, last I checked that's not the demographic Korea's looking to attract.


Bae Yong-joon starred in the wildly popular drama "Winter Sonata," which still draws tourists to Chuncheon, Gangwon-do.

Anything submitted in this contest will be used to further support Korea’s position in this land dispute. Yes, of course it will, that's the point of the contest, but see I’m not talking about any evidence compiled, but rather the perception that large numbers of foreigners care about these rocks. Remember a few months ago when some nobody teacher in Minnesota wrote about Dokdo on his Geocities blog? It became a big story on the major papers and websites and was interpreted to be representative of the American opinion. And you'll often read about foreigners and ethnic Koreans overseas making stops to Dokdo or Ulleung-do as part of their indoctrination into Korea’s history. You know, it really wouldn’t surprise me if the winner(s) of this contest---there are six, I believe---turn out to either be Korean-American high school students or non-native speakers of English. You’ll notice, for example, that many of the glowing reviews of Korea that appear on the VANK website are by non-native English speakers totally swept away by the Korean Wave. How about that metaphor right there?

On the topic of VANK, a government agency devoted to addressing distortions of Korean history and culture overseas, heres a reason why I don't want to get mixed up with them and a contest like this. I wanted to devote a whole post to this, but I'll just append it here. VANK takes Korean history pretty seriously, and wants you to do the same. In fact, the group's website suggests role models appropriate for overseas Koreans and other readers who must do their best to confront not only the dormant imperialism just across the Sea of Japan, but also the global conspiracy to slight Korea at every opportunity. Here is an excerpt of the standard email VANK has posted that readers are encouraged to copy and send to book publishers, teachers, and whomever else happens to not give a damn.

On the contrary, though there were several times of invasion by China and Japan through 5,000 years of Koran history, there was no period when the independence of Korea was damaged, but for the time of the Japanese Occupation Period.(1910 - 1945) You may find systematically well grounded information at the following website.
The reasons why you think of Korea as a shrimp between whales, in spite of this sound historical evidence, are because under Japanese Occupation, Japanese scholars twisted and bended Korean history to destroy the national pride and national identity of Korea, and after the independence of Korea, Japan spread wrong information about Korea to the world.
Truth in scholarship
http://www.prkorea.com/english/e_truth/e_truth1_1.htm
Above all, the fact that such a credential publisher like you has distorted knowledge about Korean history because of the influence of Japanese scholars who neglected the academic truth, hurts all Koreans of the past, present and future. Many people in the world will be influenced by the distorted knowledge about Korea from the books of your company.
Therefore, we, cyber diplomatic mission VANK, hereby, request with our sincerity and courtesy, you to correct the afore-mentioned statement of "a shrimp jammed between whales" from a textbook published by your company and reflect the true national image of Korea to the world. You may be able to find numerous references to introduce the true national image of Korea to the world by a visit to the website below.
Korea history
http://www.prkorea.com/english/e_truth/e_truth4_4.htm
We will remain in silence while we wait for your sincere reply at your earliest convenience. VANK's Dream is for all people in the world to learn about Korean history and culture, become "familiar with Korea" and "make friends" that share dreams and friendships with everyone in the world. This can be done though our own effort to make a good image of Korea.

Unlikely they’ll “remain in silence” or refrain from unnecessary quotation marks.

But back to the role models, the three they suggest overseas Koreans emulate are: King Gwanggaeto the Great, General Eulji-Mundeok, and General Soo-hee. Readers ought not only emulate them, but spread the word about their greatness, as they are generally unknown among most non-Koreans. If you’ve made it this far, you can probably guess I have to take exception to the parallels they’re suggesting.

The VANK website tells us about King Gwanggaeto:

After the King Gwanggaeto the Great (375~413)became a king of Goguryeo(37BC ~ 668 AD), he expanded the largest territory and brought the golden age of Goguryeo. He expanded his territory toward all 4 directions and confirmed Goguryeo as the strongest country and the owner of Manchuria. We now want to have you to inherit his spirit and extend the territory of Korean culture toward the entire world in the 21st century. A King Gwanggaeto the Great of the 21st century is the one who conveys massive volume of the publication materials of Korea published by the VANK to Koreans in the entire world. Well mail various publication materials published by the VANK to introduce Korea to those whom we select as a King Gwanggaeto the Great.

A major military figure in Korea’s history, the King’s reputation is now considered vulnerable because of claims by China and Japan on this part of Korean history. Wikipedia tells us a little:

Today, King Gwanggaeto the Great is one of two rulers of Korea who were given the title 'Great' after their name (the other one being King Sejong the Great of Joseon, who created the Korean alphabet). He is regarded by Koreans as one of the greatest heroes of their history, and is often taken as a potent symbol of Korean nationalism. Recently, the People's Republic of China launched its program of attempting to incorporate the history of Goguryeo within the context Chinese history, which has resulted in popular opposition from Koreans.
The Gwanggaeto Stele, a six-meter monument erected by King Jangsu in 414, was rediscovered in Manchuria in 1875 by a Chinese scholar. Although the stele gives us a great amount of information of his reign, it also caused a controversy about historical view. This is because it contains several references to Japan.

I love these lines, too:

Most people find it odd that an artifact dedicated to the great achievements of Goguryeo would mention a Japanese achievement not related to Goguryeo or King Gwanggaeto. Also, historians indicate the technological difference between Japan and Korea at that time. It would have been almost impossible for Japan to have subjugated a country which had superior technology. That would have been like saying a country in Africa came across the Ocean and subjugated the USA or Canada.

That’s a good encyclopedia right there. King Gwanggaeto's reputation was in so much jeopardy that the local entertainment industry did the only thing it could: brought in Bae Yong-joon, out new Tourism Ambassador, to star in a drama about the king.



The casting doesn't seem accidental, considering his relative popularity in East Asia makes him among the most influential Korean stars. Perhaps it was thought he could thusly attract Japanese and Chinese viewers and "correct" their distortions.

I’m sure this will draw heat from some of my readers in the military, but I don't think a warrior and imperialist should be emulated in this day and age as anything other than an anachronism and a representative of his time. War is still fashionable, but celebrating it and exalting its quote-unquote heroes does nothing to lament its destructiveness or extinguish old regional grudges. For a country that spent much of the past century fighting itself, it sure has a bizarre love affair with death and murder (see Jinju Lantern Festival).

It is with that in mind, then, that I was really shocked to come across the following page a couple of months ago. On General Eulji-Mundoek:

In 612, three hundred five thousands soldiers of Soo from China invaded Goguryeo(37 BC ~ 668 AD). General Eulji-Mundeok by himself infiltrated into the quarter of Soo at the Aprok river and spied on the weakness of the camp of Soo. And the Soos force knew his spying and chased him. General Eulji-Mundeok lured them out to the distance of 30 ris from Pyoungyang City.
As the soldiers of Soo realized that they were imposed, they attempted to escape back to their camp.
But the forces of Goguryeo attacked them from ambush and defeated them at Salsu, currently Cheong-cheon river for the victory over the war.
Wisdom, intrepidity and patriotism of one person, General Eulji-mundeok, placed our pride as Korean in high and Goguryeo as a grand key nation in the Northeaste Asia.

Japan claims the right to describe as the sea of Japan because 97% of the maps in the world does so. We now need an Eulji-mundeok of the 21st century who has his intrepidity to confront against Japanese claim. It is an activity to confront against Japanese claim by increasing distribution of the maps with East Sea and Dokdo described on in the means of attaching the world map in English describing as East Sea and Dokdo at home, school and work places.

What the article doesn’t mention is that the Battle of Salsu is considered the bloodiest battle in history, as those 300,000-plus Chinese were murdered when the general opened a dam on them. Frightening that he's a character whose actions people would want to model themselves after. It's arguably purely symbolic, those 300,000-plus deaths, but I don't think extermination is a viable parallel to a present-day territorial dispute over an outcropping of rocks, although as we’ve seen there are certainly plenty in the “Dokdo is ours because Japan was bad” camp who make that connection.

I had been saving some of these excerpts for the “Why Do Expats Complain So Much” submission that is now in developmental hell. Though the third historical figure on the site, Soo-hee, is ostensibly celebrated for being a diplomat and avoiding war with the Chinese, the amount of aggression and anger that goes in to these historical grievances is disgusting and not conducive to friendly relations across borders. I don’t want to spend much more time on that site because it hurts my brain, but as you browse the pages I've linked and anything else on that site you'll see that the aggression is paralleled in the way students comport themselves in trying to “correct” differing opinions and in spreading their propaganda to friends, teachers, and strangers.

A few days ago I linked a thread about a foreign university professor here whose picture was unwittingly used by his own school's newspaper to compare him with notorious pedophile Christopher Paul Neil, and we talked a little about what happens when foreigners' photos and liknesses are used in ways unapproved and unintended. I don't know if anything bad would come from this; on the contrary, if I actually won a trip to Dokdo I'd be getting all kinds of tail thanks from my coworkers and other Koreans. However, any foreigner mixed up in this will be nothing more than decoration, a pawn used to add legitimacy and a global vantage point to help validate South Korea's claim. The point of view of one person would be distorted to be representative of that of his or her nationality. Anything submitted here would be used to further the campaign of aggression and imposition that so turns off so many foreigners in the first place. And participating as a foreigner in such a violent war of words between nations and cultures is antithetical to the spirit of open-mindedness and tolerance many of us settled overseas to pursue.

Congratulations, you're famous.

What the fuck did I just get done saying?










Well, one of these monkeys better win the LPGA. All of it. Those were all pulled off news stories collected by Naver on the Gwangju Kimchi Festival, which opened yesterday. All except one, I guess.

I like the signboards, too.

I don't know if Robert Koehler was joking or not when he said that he likes all the signboards hanging on Korean buildings, but I actually do like them. There's talk, again, of taking them down to make them less unslightly. I don't have it in front of me, but I know in one of the conversation textbooks at my school there's a unit about signs that dominate a building. More recently there's this Korea Times article.

Seoul seeks to promote the city as a world center for design but it is struggling with messy and garish shop signboards and confusing street signs, which were installed without any proper standardized system.

To tackle the problem, the city has introduced guidelines for signboards and street signs as part of its project to upgrade the cityscape.

``The outdoor signboards of stores have long been visual pollution. The building's outdoor wall doesn't simply belong to the owner of the property but also to citizens,'' Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said.

The city's guidelines are simple ― signs should be smaller and more moderate in color and font.

Seoul has been divided into five zones ― including commercial, residential and tourism ― and each has standardized regulations on outdoor advertisement signboards, most importantly with one signboard for one shop. It will remove unauthorized street signs.

I don't find the signs ugly at all, but I guess the bigger worry should be the amount of energy it requires to light up the city like that. In fact, I prefer all the colors to what would otherwise be unsightly, polution-stained buildings. I appreciate that the reporter asked a few foreigners their opinions, but, seriously, are the signs so distracting that hard to figure out what's where?

The picture up there is from Bundang's Sunae 2-dong, stolen from here. See, I don't think that looks bad at all. Actually that building and neighborhood have a special place in my heart. My first hagwon was there, and on my first day of school---the day after walking off the plane and the morning after spending my first night in Korea in a Yongin love motel---I had to find my way to the hagwon. I did okay, and stopped in that Crown Bakery to ask directions to the bank---the first time I spoke Korean in Korea---that I knew was across from the school. I ended up in Bundang's Central Park, and if you're familiar with the area you'll know how lost I was. Anyway, I find that back end of Sunae kind of charming, especially when you walk past all those nice villas back there. Here's a little photo gallery I took a couple years ago.


Old Downtown, Suncheon's answer to Myeongdong. Shut up.

If you never need to produce "f," "l," "r," "th," v," or "z" I've got the perfect alphabet for you.

A group of linguists are looking to globalize Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, to groups who have no written alphabet of their own.

``We've found that there is a great deal of interest in learning about the Korean writing system," said Chun Tai-hyun, professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and vice president of the academic group, the Hunminjeonguem Society. Seoul National University (SNU) Professor Kim Ju-won serves as president of the group.

Professor Chun explained, ``For instance, when we visited Bau-bau, a city in Buton Island, Indonesia, we realized that the indigenous communities in the region ― communities without their own writing system ― were very receptive to learning the Korean alphabet."

He noted the Korean alphabet could easily be used in conjunction with the local spoken language and that it can actually be used to help preserve and record the indigenous culture and language.

``In Indonesia, ethnic minority communities are losing their own spoken languages. We realized that the Korean alphabet could actually help preserve these endangered local languages."

Chun said, ``In December or January, representatives from Bau-bau will visit us in Korea and learn our writing system. They will then return to Indonesia to teach the Korean writing system in their communities."

kimchi-icecream is starting to piss me off.

Roboseyo's Blogger of the Month for October is wearing out his welcome, after posting a gallery of a nephila clavata colony living at his school. Nephila clavata are huge yellow, black, red, and white spiders that are, like, three feet across and live in groups of ten thousand. You'll see them a lot in fall, hanging in webs between trees, in awnings, and in your pillows. Here are two photos I took of one in Beolgyo, the first you'll also find on Wikipedia because I put it there I'm a big deal.




Then kimchi-icecream goes ahead and takes that shit too far:

I find myself imagining what it must be like for Korean soldiers when they're on exercises in the forests and on the mountainsides of Korea . . . at NIGHT, when they can't SEE very well . . . imagine walking into a colony web of these spiders

Ass.

I kid, I kid, somewhat, he's got some great posts and photos on the lovely town of Chuncheon and Gangwon-do. I was this close (holds up fingers) to taking a job there back in 2006, meaning you almost had to deal with a second Brian in Gangwon-do.

Festive mood at the Goseongsa Music Festival.

Six more photos here, from a cheerful but chilly-looking concert on the 11th. For the one reader of this blog who knows Gangjin, Goseongsa (고성사) is the temple on the otherside of Boeunsan, that mountain up against town. I talk a little about it and its historical significance here. Part of a pleasant hike, if you're ever in the neighborhood.

Oh Jesus Tapdancing Christ, are you serious?

You see this picture from the Daum "photo of the day" gallery? It's of a guy giving on-the-spot guidance to some 외국인 during today's air raid drills. Notice anything about it? Look carefully. I'll tell you tomorrow. HT to Mike.

I knew "East of Eden" sounded familiar.

At my gym they always turn on the popular drama "East of Eden" (에덴의 동쪽), which had some scenes filmed at Suncheon's Drama Set. I have no idea what's going on, but it looks interesting. There are yakuza, geishas, old-timey settings, old-fashioned clothes, some bad English, some really bad English, and women doing mediocre Maggie Cheung impersonations. A pretty typical weekend for me, from the sounds of it.

One of the songs they use in the background sounds awfully familiar, but unfortunately I can't find a clip which features it now. If you've seen the show, especially the episodes they've had on the past few days, give a listen to the theme song to Wong Kar Wai's film In the Mood For Love:



*cough* The song used in "East of Eden" sounds pretty damn close, but nowhere near as pretty. As if you'd expect anything different from a drama that stole the name of one of the great American novels and a classic American film.

Foreigners eligible for tax break.

From East Windup Chronicle comes news that foreigners are eligible for a tax refund authorized by President Lee Myung-bak. It is to offset the rising costs associated with the price of oil, and the 240,000 won refund is available for taxpayers who earn between 24 and 36 million won per year, with more or less available for those outside that range. The form is available in Korean, and has most likely be distributed only to the Koreans at your school so ask about it. It's called the 유가환급금 신청 의뢰서 and the deadline for the school or company to submit it is this coming Monday, October 20th. Some qualifications may apply, and some teachers may not even be paying taxes yet, but at least look into this today or tomorrow. You can also take a look at the form and instructions, in Korean, through a Naver search.

Anti-English Spectrum, irony, in the news again.

The Marmot's Hole brings us a story from the Chosun Ilbo that says Dave's ESL Cafe contains loads of threads demeaning Korean women and Korean culture. Because women are usually afforded plenty of opportunities for advancement and enrichment in South Korea, and aren't sexually exploited in the least by Korean men and women. I'll let you read his post on your own.

The part worth drawing attention to is that the group "The Citizens Group for Proper English Education" (his translation) was contacted for comment. Don't be fooled by the new name, this is the online cafe that was established as the "Anti-English Spectrum," and the url name reveals that fact. Today there's a wholesome picture of a child studying at the top of the page, but the earlier banner was less friendly.



The misuse of the hyphen makes it seem like they are opposed to English, rather than just the website English Spectrum which attracted their ire and which launched the cafe in the first place. You can read up on "Spectrumgate" here, but basically in 2005 a bunch of netizens came across some threads on a previous incarnation of EnglishSpectrum.com that talked about sexual adventures with Korean women, and which featured pictures of Korean women dancing with foreign men at bars. Pretty objectionable posts, yes, but the netizens launched a campaign of hatred and violence that resulted in the US Embassy in Seoul issuing a warning to foreign-looking men to avoid certain parts of Seoul.

Recently, inflammatory sexual content was posted to a website for English language teachers in Korea. That posting together with subsequent postings were taken by some to demean Korean women. We have noted recently, strong reaction in the form of web postings threatening attacks in the vicinity of Hongik University and the Sinchon area against Americans and other foreigners who speak English. All Americans and their families (especially young adults) are encouraged to exercise prudence and caution when visiting these neighborhoods. The Embassy advises that inappropriate social behavior in public may be seen as provocative by Korean nationals.

As an example, The Marmot's Hole cited an online petition and a "Counter-Yankee Strike Force":

The Korean portal site Daum has also started a petition signing campaign to expel “low-quality foreign teachers.” They’re looking for 10,000 signatures, and they’ve got about 3,931. The campaign is also recruiting a “[Counter-] Yankee Strike Force.” They say the use of violence is prohibited, but they’d like to get together and hold a protest demonstration. There targets are 1) the “Yankee bastards” who put up the instructions on how to molest female students, and their accomplices; 2) the “Yankee bastards” who threw the wild party in Hongik; 3) the club owner; 4) institute owners who hire ex-cons or under-qualified teachers; 5) as a “bonus,” drunk GIs who might be in the Shinchon area starting fights with local citizens. Membership is open to all Korean nationals (no kyopos allowed, apparently — perhaps the organizers read this) with “wholesome thoughts (more like worldview).” They’ll meet at 6:00 p.m. Saturday near the front gate of Hongik. Be there… or be square.

The group was given some attention earlier in the year from the Korea Times, which ran a glowing review of the "Citizens' Association for Lawful English Education," which said its aims were to improve the quality of English education in Korea by removing unqualified native speakers.

A Civic group said that its actions to expel illegal English teachers will help upgrade the image of legal foreign educators.

As part of this campaign, the article said that some members follow foreigners around to see if they're doing anything illegal. Something illegal like stalking and harassment, I guess. Korea Beat translated the group's statement of purpose, in which their passion to end foreign teachers seems to outstrip their goals to improve English education:

We gather here to do two things for that journey.

Anger at the arrogant English Spectrum, alive and well as ever despite criticism for its debasement of Korean women, and the expulsion of illegal, low-quality English instructors.

The small but powerful country, the Republic of Korea!

We are Anti-English Spectrum, fighting for justice for a land whose heart is not yet shriveled up.

Our work holds meaning for our country and our society. We do it together!

This is the citizens’ movement for the expulsion of illegal foreign language teachers.

Regardless of your opinion on foreign teachers as a whole, or on some demographics in particular, keep in mind what factors are going into fueling the resentment against them felt by too many Korean English teachers and parents. And regardless of your opinions of Dave's ESL Cafe, don't forget what kind of group is out there leading the charge against foreign teachers. Like the violent anti-American protests of 2002 and 2003, "Spectrumgate" is a chapter of "our" history we shouldn't forget, and a reminder of how ugly our neighbors can be.

Rather than doing it for the love of the game . . .

Seoul National University is setting out to produce a home-grown Nobel Prize winner for the sake of producing a home-grown Nobel Prize winner.

In a speech to celebrate the school's 62nd anniversary, SNU President Lee Jang-moo said university members should seek to win the award as neighboring countries Japan and China have already seen many Nobel Prize laureates. ``If our faculty, alumni and supporters closely network and put their hands together for the goal, I’m confident that SNU faculty and graduates can attain the award, which all Korean people are dreaming of,'' Lee said.

If he were a baseball player everyone would hate him. But ambition is important, and I can see nothing wrong with his plan.

However, the president’s address lacked a specific action plan and ways to raise funds for the project.

More brooding from the Chosun Ilbo, and as you probably already guessed, there is a "Nobel Prize of Korea." If I work really hard I think I can win.

The Prizes in all categories are awarded to people of Korean ethnic origin.

Oh. Since I have you here, here's a KT article from 2004 copied to North Korea Watch which tells us of these Nobel Prize ambitions back then.

South Korea plans to shell out big bucks to foster a number of candidates capable of garnering the prestigious Nobel Prize, according to a senior official in Chong Wa Dae Sunday.

Park Ky-young, presidential adviser for science and technology, reported the grandiose scheme to president Roh Moo-hyun in August and it will be fully operational next year.

Under the plan, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) will handpick around 10 promising scientists, who grab international attention with epoch-making expertise or research, and financially support their studies.

The MOST looks to provide at least several million dollars to scientists who have the potential to bring in the nation's first bona fide Nobel Prize.

"We want to support basic scientists who retain global competitiveness rather than spending money on applied scientists," Park said.

Former president Kim Dae-jung snatched the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his diplomatic efforts to bring peace to the Korean peninsula, as well as in promoting democracy and human rights here.

But aside from Kim's award, the nation has yet to gain a Nobel Prize especially in the fields of science or medicine.

Seoul National University professor Hwang Woo-suk could be the first candidate for the plan.

*cough* The article says the government had paid, at the time, 26.5 billion won for is "attention-grabbing" work, which pretty much sums it all up.

This picture cannot be explained.

That was on the Korea Times website just now. Actually, it's a little embarrassing, because pop artist Nancy Lang, posing in the picture above, used the same get-up and sidekicks in a photoshoot from last year:





She's quite an attractive woman, and you can find more, um, "artistic" photos of her with a little effort. Hot damn. You'll notice, too, that she does that same pose in 86% of her photos. There's a biography of the New York born artist on her official site, and it's very stated, if that's the opposite of understated. She did an interview with blogger and regular Dave's poster (Tiberious aka Sparkles) Psychedelic Kimchi here, but it doesn't really teach us anything except that he's a bad photographer.

Just say no.

The Gwangju Kimchi Festival is coming up next week, and I'm sort of obligated to attend. I'm not looking forward to it, mostly because I know I'll have cameras all up in my face as professional and amateur photographers alike will want to get some shots of goofy foreigners elbow-deep in kimchi. It's a kimchi festival, why is it so remarkable that we're eating kimchi? This past weekend I met a woman who was photographed shoving kimchi into another foreigner's mouth and doing other goofy things, and the photo was circulated around the news sites, and even turned up in my festival preview. When you search for "광주김치축제" on Naver her photo turns up at the top of the page. Out of all the thousands of pictures at kimchi festivals gone by, they chose that one. So I guess now you know who I'm talking about.

Although some enjoy the attention and consider it harmless, I know many foreigners despise having to ham it up for the cameras. I've written before about people and places using foreigners to add legitimacy and sophisitication (lol), whether it's white women in bikinis or big-nosed backpackers fawning over whichever old cultural material made in 2001 is on display at that particular event. I remember at last year's Chungjangno Festival a young man kept getting within a few feet of my face as I was looking at the photo gallery on display. Each time I turned to the side he moved, and when I looked back at the wall, he returned. I chased him a little bit and he told me it was for a school project. jafwauf38qj823. Many of us have stories like this. I was going to do something about this for the Korea Times, especially as it concerns privacy issues related to photographers and those who appear in photographs, but I couldn't link everything together coherently. Sound familiar? Other bloggers have touched on this a little more, and can better explain why the privacy rights don't extend to foreigners here, and why someone can unwittingly have themselves the face of a major tourist attraction.

Maybe I'm a mean guy, but I don't care to play the token foreigner in photo galleries, and don't oblige interviewers who try to take my picture without permission or who force themselves into my space. Who knows, maybe once in a blue moon a foreigner is photographed out in public not looking like a complete ass, or like a goofy muppet, but I don't like my chances.



Roboseyo also reminded me of a good point in his comment to this post: photographing random foreigners for the sake of photographing random foreigners. For example, a woman in Mokpo I know was on the ferry to Jeju and woke up to find a woman taking a photo of her sleeping. It's irritating, but I can't get too bent out of shape over that, because how many times have we all photographed a Korean doing something interesting, or strange, or wearing a ridiculous shirt?

On Dave's ESL Cafe today we've got another reason why it's good to just say no to being used for publicity. You never know where the photo will end up. I know several of my former coworkers have had their photos used on our hagwon's website. An old neighbor had his photo stuck on flyers for his hagwon and sent all through town. And I remember reading about one woman who walked into a subway station to find her face looking at her from a billboard advertising her school. Combine the need to use foreign faces to validate local products with the ubiquity of shoddy journalism, and the results can be awful:

I work at a small private University in Seoul. A few weeks ago, one of my former students came to me and asked if she could take photos of me in class. My gut feeling was to say "no". She said it was for the campus English rag, and that I would get to see it before it went to press. She was one of my better students, so I said "yes". Big mistake.

Fast forward to today. I pick up a copy of the rag, and there I am, sharing the cover with Christopher Paul Neil. They are implicitly comparing me to a pedophile in the mass media. The issue is all about migrant workers and visa issues. There is a hatchet job of a story on the inside about the CPN case, and some random interviews with my coworkers.

I complained to my department, so they hauled in the student editor of the paper. She apologized profusely and promised to withdraw all of the issues. When I left at 8 PM, students were still recollecting copies all over campus.

Anyway, the moral of the story is always say "no". Say no to anything in which you lose control of the process because there is an excellent chance you will be used to forward someone else's agenda. Even if you think it is no big deal, say no to ingrain the habit.

Disgusting. Apologies and withdrawls shouldn't cut it, as the student and the editor knew what they were doing, and I hope the guy follows up . . . somehow. I know from personal experience there's no interest in cases dealing with character defamation of foreigners, and nobody really willing to help, but I'd hate to see him just let this slide.

Who the fuck is doing the cartoons over there?

Yeah, okay, the guy was extreme, but on what planet is this Korea Times cartoon titled "Austria's Far-Right Leader Joerg Haider Died at Car Crash" appropriate?



As the title indicates the Austrian politician died in a car crash, on October 11th. More on him from Wikipedia.

Foreign professor at SNU does a runner?

Front page news on the Korea Times homepage, as a professor of art history hired last month has left her post without giving any notice, apparently.

Andrea Pearson, 45, American professor of the department of archeology and art history at Seoul National University (SNU), abruptly left Korea late September. Majoring in northern Renaissance art, with research interests in gender and sexuality, Pearson came to SNU a month ago for the position of tenured professor.

Her fellow professors, school staff and students remain perplexed. ``We have no idea right now how to deal with this situation. We have been unable to contact her yet,’’ SNU spokesman Chung Min-ho told The Korea Times.

Well, those two paragraphs contradict one another. Is she refusing to come back, or has she not yet been in touch with the university? And the last paragraph might be true to some extent, the part about trying to get as many foreigners as possible to offset past neglect and discrimination, but the dig is a little unfair:

Some SNU professors point out the university has been negligent in a screening system to recruit quality professors and only focused on attracting as many foreign professors as possible. Currently, SNU has some 80 foreign professors and among them, 20 faculty members have permanent professorships.

A bit of googling around shows me that she used to work at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, and has gotten mixed reviews on RateMyProfessor.com. Last month there was a big write-up on her and the other foreign imports on the Seoul National University homepage. An excerpt:

Barely a decade ago, the sight of a foreigner in Seoul would have induced whispering, gawking, and maybe even some frenetic pointing. Even a year before the 2002 World Cup, foreigners in Seoul rarely ventured beyond particular pockets near military bases or hakwon-filled neighborhoods. These days, it's a whole other story.

Are you serious? Forget it, I'm done. Well, I'll give you one more excerpt:

But why, you might ask, is it so important that SNU acquire more foreign professors? Bringing in professors from abroad will no doubt lead to the development of a more diverse and specialized faculty, giving students both a broader and more in-depth education that is essential to survival and success in this age of globalization. For example, Professor Pearson was already recognized in the United States for her sexual-sociological approach to the interpretation of 16th century Western art in her book The Portrait and Women in the Early Europe, which earned her associate professorship here at SNU.

So it looks like they actually did hire somebody qualified and "quality," and didn't just pick up a guy like me off the waiver wire. The KT article says Dr. Pearson was having trouble adjusting to life in Korea. That could be a number of things, but keep in mind the discrimination many foreign professors feel, and the professional dissatisfaction I suspect would come with the territory. Here, for example, is a lengthy translation by Robert Koehler of a piece that ran in the Sisa Journal about foreign professors in South Korea. Here are two lengthy excerpts, but I recommend reading the whole thing plus the comments at the bottom:

Journalist Noh visited four other Seoul universities, but the foreign professors were very reluctant to talk, fearing reprisals from their schools should their identities be revealed. Once they agreed to talk, however, they poured out their concerns about their failure to receive proper treatment. Prof. Yuri (fake name), a German literature professor, said not all, but most foreign professors working at Korean universities wanted not special treatment, but rather to be treated equally.

Prof. Marcus (fake name), who has worked for eight years at another Seoul university, said he’s never received — not even once — notification to attend a professors’ meeting. This, he said, was because he was a foreigner. He said he didn’t even expect a personal office; all he hoped was that the foreign professors wouldn’t be left out of the department meetings. He hoped that the foreign professors would be thought of as colleagues, just like the Korean professors.

A Professor Lee discussed the exclusion of foreign professors from the department meetings. He said the department could not hold the meetings in English for the benefit of the foreign professors, the minority, but if the meeting were conducted in Korean, the foreign professors would feel ostracized. So they aren’t notified at all. The reporter noted that Lee’s explanation meant that foreign professors received no consideration from the school.

. . .

The foreign professors complained that they are treated like hagwon teachers. They said they are sometimes told by the school to teach foreign languages to students outside their department, leading many professors to feel like they’re hagwon teachers.

Foreign professors are also being discriminated against in terms of hours and wages. Prof. Gabriel (fake name), who teaches at a certain university, said Korean professors teach an average of seven hours a week, while the foreign professors teach at least 12 hours. Prof. Karlson (fake name), who teaches at another university, said there were differences in wages, too, although he could reveal specific amounts. He also said Korean professors get bonuses such as research fees, but he didn’t know a single foreign professor getting such bonuses. He claimed that Korean professors get all sorts of allowances that foreign professors could only dream about. Prof. Michelle, who majored in Australian literature, said there was even one foreign professor who was earning only 2.2 million won a month teaching 20 hours a week. The professor eventually returned to the United States out of dissatisfaction with his pay.

Then, of course, there’s the issue of job security. Foreign professors sign contracts of 2-4 years. Yet they are often disadvantaged by the terms and/or timing of their contracts. Prof. Josephine (fake name), who teaches French literature, said there are many cases where schools sign their professors just three days before the start of the semester. If you can’t sign a deal by then, you have to leave Korea immediately. She said it would be nice if schools decided on their contracts at least one month in advance, and that she couldn’t even think about job security. Another professor said the contracts were simple, one-page documents with only the duration of employment, salary and date. Far from honoring the professor, he said, the contracts felt more like slave papers.

About this, the Ministry of Education said the hiring and administration of foreign professors was carried out in accordance with the regulations established by each school. Or, in other words, everything was up to the universities.

Jeong Gyeong-won, the dean of academic affairs at HUFS (where 113 or the 505 professors are foreign), said foreign professors were not assuming positions of responsibility, and because of this, there could be a difference between the way they and the Korean professors are treated, but the school would try to improve this situation. Hong Jong-hwa, the dean of academic affairs at Yonsei University (where 61 of 800 professors are foreign), said foreign professors would unavoidably experience difficulties due to cultural differences, and that work needed to be done to maintain smooth relations between them and their Korean colleagues. In the case of some universities, the journalist couldn’t even get the number of foreigners were employed at their schools.

The situation being such, a growing number of foreign professors were expressing their discontent with their feet. Yonsei’s Dean Hong said one professor even left after just one six-month semester. He said the failure of foreign and Korean professors to harmonize was his school’s biggest problem. Professor Peterson (fake name), employed at a certain university, said he wanted to leave upon the completion of his contract next year, even if the school asks him to stay.

I also quoted that piece in a March entry on a Korean professor who killed herself after she was unable to land a tenured position at a university here.

Wednesday is "Global Handwashing Day."

October 15th is "Global Handwashing Day." As you were.

If you're interested in doing a little reading on the matter as it relates to South Korea, there are a number of abstracts which mention hand washing, usually in hospital settings, available from a KoreaMed search. In the first draft of this post I put up a few excerpts, although I don't want to get a reputation. Find the alarming ones yourselves. For what is proclaimed the first comprehensive study of handwashing in Korea, click here for the .pdf file. It's in Korean, though the abstract and the figures are in English. The "results," from the abstract:

Although 94% of the survey respondents claimed to mostly or always wash their hands after using public restrooms, only 63.4% of the observed participants did wash their hands after using public restrooms. Significant factors related to increased adherence to hand washing were female gender, approximate ages of 20 to 39 years by their appearance, and the presence of other people from the observation. About 79% of the survey respondents always washed their hands after using bathrooms at home, 73% washed their hands before handling food, and 67% washed their hands upon returning to their home. However, 93.2% and 86.3% of the survey respondents did not wash their hands after coughing or sneezing and after handling money, respectively. Although most of the survey respondents (77.6%) were aware that hand washing is helpful in preventing communicable diseases, 39.6% of the survey respondents did not do so because they were ‘not accustomed’ to washing their hands and 30.2% thought that washing their hands is ‘annoying’.

For the hypersensitive expats who will no doubt take offense to writing something unpleasant about Korea on a Korea-related blog, I have to point out that the statistics here aren't a whole lot worse than back home, and Google will be your friend for those numbers. I hope you're satisfied, then, and will let me wallow in quote-unquote negativity while you return to bitching about pushy grandmothers and the lack of obscure Western foodstuffs in your mid-sized town. Korea is very exotic, you're right, and boy is that kimchi smelly, so go ahead and write about that some more.

You know what I don't understand about Korea? At every store large and small you can buy liquid soap dispensers, but in 39 months I've never seen jugs of liquid soap for sale so I can fill the dispensers. Where can I find some?

More information about the benefits of handwashing are available here, in a .pdf file, from the official site. Might be worth bringing up, since pink eye is going around the schools and since, um, nobody washes their hands after using the bathroom. If you poke around you can find multilingual posters like this one (.pdf) that remind people to wash their hands before handling food. But since my coworkers get upset when I fix mistakes on the English exam, you can bet they'd beat me like a deaf kid if I brought up hand washing in any but the most delicate manner.

I've been looking for a way to protest Canada somehow.

And the Lord smiled down on me with news that Korea will resume negotiations on Canadian beef imports.

Korea banned Canadian beef in May 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was reported in the country. Canada was previously the fourth-biggest exporter of beef to South Korea, behind the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

. . .

[Said a ministry official] "We expect Canada to accept a proposal to allow the import of bone-in beef less than 30 months old, with certain specified risk materials excluded.”

Specified risk materials, or SRMs, refer to brains, eyes, tonsils and intestine parts which run the highest risk of transmitting bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, to humans.

Canada has demanded that Korea lift all restrictions on beef imports after the World Organization for Animal Health in May last year gave Ottawa a “controlled risk” classification, which technically allows it to export all beef parts with the exception of certain SRMs.

Between this and the FTA talks between South Korea and Australia, I'll have a chance to get rid of all these surplus flags and plenty of opportunities to demand Ted Lipman and Peter Rowe OUT. I don't know anything about them, but judging by the color of their skin I'll bet they don't understand Korea's unique sentiment.

To the Namdo Food Festival.

It was a weekend with a lot of festivals in the area, and the first one I went to was the Namdo Food Festival at Nagan Folk Village in Suncheon. I thought I'd be the first person to blog about it, but A Food Journey in Korea beat me to it. I've got a collection of over 120 on my Flickr page, so have a look there if you'd like. I've picked a few of the ones I like best and included them below. The set isn't extensive or exhaustive, since I was only there for a few hours and didn't see everything, and because I'm not a food guy, but whatever. There wasn't as much food-related stuff as I expected, but it was still a pleasant day.




It was unseasonably warm on the 11th, and was a lovely day for walking around. The pictures I took of the scenery turned out pretty good I think, but I suck at photographing people and things. Just like Hitler. Anyway, the only trick I know how to do on my camera is to use the flash during the day to produce a old-timey, yellowish tint. See below:




Persimmon and cosmos:




This guy was there, making things out of melted sugar.





These figureines were crafted out of hanji, Korean paper, as were the other things on display at the tent. Really quite impressive. The artists' website is here.




I had expected to find little restaurants or something devoted to each of Jeollanam-do's counties and cities, because as you know every single spot in the country is "famous" for something or other. The bibimbap in one place is so distinct from the bibimbap you'll find right down the street, after all. I was a little disappointed not to find anything like that during my first go-round, but on my way back through I found booths devoted to regional specialties. They were arranged in a semi-circle around this little eating area.



Gwangyang offered its traditional specialty: sandwiches.



And this meat, not sure what it is.



LMFAO, poor Yeongam county. Had to be the least popular booth of the day. Yeongam was making and selling jam, which of course attracted all kinds of bees. The woman spent most of her time swatting them away, to no avail. I was just brave enough to ask her what she was making, before I had to retreat. If you enlarge the photo you can better see the struggle.




Muan had the most colorful table:



Mustard kimchi (돌산갓김치) from Yeosu.



Other regional specialties included 굴비 from Yeonggwang and pears from Naju. Not pictured was some incredible sponge cake from Hampyeong. The Hampyeong booth produced one of the day's many interesting moments. Let's backtrack: I'm a white guy, so any time I go out I get hit with all kinds of "hellOOOOOOOOOO"s, "where u prom?," and "어 . . . 외국인이다." Now, I spend just about every weekend with Girlfriend in Jeollanam-do, a Japanese woman who is mistaken for a Korean woman by, seriously, every single person we ever meet. She definitely gets more positive attention, as people in markets and shops will always talk to her, and gets no weird stares or catcalls. Even when I speak Korean, people will usually respond back to her, as if she understands. Anyway, whatever, it does get annoying, and I wish I wouldn't get either ignored or taunted. But walking around with her does highlight some interesting behavior I get, too. For example, when we walked into the park there was a guy passing out informational pamphlets about conservation efforts in the region. She got one, of course, but when I went up he didn't give me one. Instead he gave me this wood pendant. I didn't know what it was, until I looked around and saw every kid wearing one around his neck. Yes, every kid. And when we stopped to look around all the booths, the attendants always asked her where I'm from. At the Hampyeong one the guy asked her where I was from, and I answered that I'm American. He beckoned me over and gave me a piece of the greatest-tasting cake I've had in Korea. My girlfriend said "저는 일본사람이에요" and the guy said "응" and went back to talking to me. I just about pooped my pants. But as I explained, I deserve a little cake once in a while for having to deal with being a conspicuous foreigner and all that entails. As I explained to my girlfriend, she's not a foreigner, she's Asian. *cough*

In the middle of the village was a group of tables where chefs from local universities were participating in a cooking contest. After the judging the food was auctioned off.



LOL, this is just weak:



The students from Honam University are over it.



The festival organizers were going for a world record: the longest string of red peppers in the world. Actually, it was the "longest pepper line of love" (세계에서 가장 긴 사랑의 고추줄). It started around the tables I just showed you and continued around the fortress. I asked one of the students charged with holding up one of the poles how long it was, and he said 1.5 kilometers. It ended up being just under 1.4, and had some 29,000 peppers, according to this article. I contributed three.









The bull is pulling a child in a cage. The first and last time you'll ever read that sentence.



Here's a white guy photoshopped in.



And, to provide some continuity with the last post, here's a Jindo in a cage.


One kind of annoying thing was the transportation situation. When I wrote my list of Jeollanam-do festivals, the Namdo Food Festival website said there would be free shuttles to and from Gwangju, leaving about a half-dozen times a day on the weekend. However, when I checked back on Friday the only shuttle left Gwangju at 10 am and left the village at 4 pm. There were several shuttles to and from Suncheon Bay, though, but no shuttles between the village and downtown Suncheon. The buses, which run pretty irregularly, were filled to the brim, and while I guess they were effective, I kind of wish they'd run more often during the festival.

Nagan Folk Village is one of Suncheon's top tourist sites, along with Suncheon Bay, and is a pleasant place to visit at any time. Take a look at my first write-up on the area this past spring for more information about the village. And if anybody has any entries of their own about this festival and would like me to link to them, please leave a comment. Or, any entries on anything else going on in the area, for that matter.

Guess where the Jindo dog show was.

Waygook Next Door visited the Jindo Dog Festival World Dogshow last weekend and took a few pictures. You can find more on the official website and via a Naver search. I was interested to read some of her comments.

These dogs are everywhere on Jindo. Because the breed is protected as a national treasure, only Jindos that are bred on the island can be considered “pure”, and so everyone and their mother has a small kennel in the backyard because of the premium these puppies go for. On top of that, it is illegal to take them out of the country, and so most Jindos are microchipped at 6 months old, and yes, they do check, both at the airport and the checkpoint on the bridge to the mainland.

I've done some writing on Jindos before (here, too), remarking on the distance between the high regard they're held as a symbol of national pride and the way we seem them treated in real-life. If you read up on Jindos, or check out the Jindo county government site, you'll see that the chief reason the dogs are so prized is because they are considered uniquely Korean, and the promotional material goes out of its way to remind the reader of that time and time again.

there are concerns of which the rumors, verbally passed down, is believed to be true by our people: that the ancestors of the Jindo Dog are the Mongol dogs or dogs from Song dynasty, China.

Considering these points, we wish to make clear that the Jindo Dog is our nations native dog as a result of document analysis and scientific research.

Sounds familiar. Go ahead and read my first two posts on the topic for some more links and information.

I was also disturbed to read of another bit of news from Jindo:

The good: the weather was gorgeous, and I got to take “my dog” for a nice walk. The bad: I was sick, and so the whole day felt a little off, and I didn’t feel up to going to Mokpo with the other Jindo waygooks for the farewell festivities for one of them. The really bad: While said group was hiking, they came across a girl who had committed suicide on the trail by hanging herself, and they had to deal with the police all afternoon.

A little more on Cho Joo-hee, including a hell of a KBS write-up.

I came across an undated KBS story on Cho Joo-hee, the woman who wrote that nasty, uninformed, sensationalist hit piece for ABC.com on foreign English teachers here titled "English Teachers Bring Drugs to South Korea." Here's a big excerpt under the subheading "Striving for balanced reporting," and brace yourself, this is really, really bad:

Westerners have as strong a prejudice against Asia as their aspirations for the region. Worse yet, the provocative nature of foreign media tends to further inflate existing prejudice against Asia. Korea has many characteristics which draw keen media attention, because what most people recall about the country is that it is still a Cold War frontier and remains divided, with an unstable security situation. Having knowledge of only the Korean War and intense political confrontation, the Western audience doesn't try to see and analyze the overall situation in the nation. The foreign media is apt to exaggerate the situation in the most provocative way to attract readers and viewers. Unfortunately, it is a fact that not many foreign journalists in Korea try to report the actual situation in the nation.

Under the circumstances, the way Cho, who is concurrently serving as Seoul correspondent for ABC News and The Washington Post, reports on South Korea vividly stands out. Her reporting has the power to prompt foreign media outlets, with their biased views on the nation, to strike a balance in their reporting on Korea. She is affiliated with the foreign press, but can maintain a viewpoint that sets her stories apart from reports made by other media agents. This is because she is a Korean national living in Korea, and can therefore describe the actual situation on the scene better than anyone.

Journalists are apt see issues and affairs in Korea with curiosity and sensationalism, rather than objectively. Unfortunately, they more often than not write stories on the domestic situation through a biased and subjective perspective. Foreign media headquarters often instruct their Korean correspondents to cover incidents and trends in Korea that even the correspondents themselves are not aware of.

In one such example, Cho was requested by her company headquarters to file an in-depth story on a fashion trend in which South Korean men reportedly were trying to mimic Bill Gates' style. She was momentarily perplexed when she received her instructions. She had never heard of such a trend, nor was she aware of anything remotely like it even though she lived right here in Seoul. But her foreign headquarters firmly believed that the "Bill Gates style" was in vogue among Korean men. She recognized what course of action she needed to take and what role to play as a correspondent going forward -- to accurately report the actual situation in Korea to the world.

"This is what I realized I should do: correct biased views on Korea by the foreign press, which is unaware of the actual reality here, and make it my duty to accurately and objectively report issues and affairs in Korea," she says. It was something that she could do because she is a Korean national as well as a correspondent for foreign media outlets stationed in Seoul. It was something possible only for someone with Cho's unique background.

Pretty broad generalizations there. I'll keep it short: the local media has no business criticizing the journalistic standards of Western reporters, that's for damn sure.

When she turns up elsewhere on the web, it looks to be either as a special correspondent to a hard-news story, or as the main author of a fluff piece. You'll find her name attached to several pieces on Cho Seung-hui, the man behind the Virginia Tech Massacre. You can also find some biography pages in English and Korean, as well as a few fan sites, in Korean. The biggest one looks to have the name "insideherjjh," so that's pleasant.

Not sure how helpful it will be, but if you'd like to complain to ABC.com, they have a comments and suggestions box here. I don't know what type of outcome one could expect with enough effort---apology, retraction, or what---but nevertheless that piece was offensive, insulting and plain old unacceptable. Let's just hope the Korean outlets don't pick it up and run with it, because who knows what kind of damage they'll be able to do by distorting distortions.

재미있는 할머니

I wanted to re-share this little video I took during my last visit to Nagan Folk Village, where the Namdo Food Festival will be held this weekend. It's of a woman out of the crowd who came in to pound the ddeok (not a euphamism). It was going pretty well until, as is to be expected whenever a camera is out, somebody decided that out of all the space around the display, the best spot to stand was directly in front of me.



For anyone going from Suncheon, buses 63 and 68 run to the Folk Village. You can get a timetable here, by clicking on 시내버스; the consensus at the office is that the time represents when the bus leaves its starting point, so I guess add ten minutes if you're taking it from the terminal or Suncheon Station.

Neat letter art.

Here's a cool website, "Bembo's Zoo," which puts our alphabet to entertaining use. Put your speakers on for it, too. Roboseyo jogged my memory with his comment to my last post. I've said it before and I'll say it again: The English Language and English 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 English Language and English Writing can express perfectly everything, everysound, all of thinking, and all of feeling of this world. Like this, The English superior culture be Known to the general public, the foreigners are learning The English Language and writing, is getting more and more many.

Foreigners, Koreans love the hangeul (some disconnected thoughts, with swear words)

Thursday was Hangeul Day, held in commemoration of the founding of the Korean alphabet. More about the script, which has four distinct seasons, on Wikipedia.


If you can't get any photos of white people eating kimchi, the next best thing is white people writing Korean.

The Korea Herald had a little article about Hangeul's increasing visibility in fashion and art, but since that generally unreadable paper doesn't permit links to articles and forces you to pay to read anything older than a couple of weeks, I'll direct you to a reprinted version here. A few excerpts, out of order for my convenience:

"I wonder how many people have their own writing system and language. I think sometimes Koreans forget how precious and beautiful their language is because they take it for granted. I wanted to let all the people in the world know its beauty through my design," [fashion designer] Lie said.

. . .

"The lines found in Korean are very different from those of Japanese or Chinese. They are subtle and elegant. And these are great advantages when developing a typography and other product designs," he said.
Lee Sang-gyu, director-general at the National Institute of Korean Language, says the geometric beauty of the Korean language is broadening the influence of Korean culture.

. . .

The number of Korean speakers has also grown among non-ethnic Koreans. Applicants for the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIC) grew to some 150,000 people in 2008, up more than 100 percent from 72,300 a year earlier. The test, which started in 1997, is conducted twice a year in 31 countries, including Turkey, Laos and Indonesia.
These days, Korean is not only a means of communication but also an inspiration for artists and manufacturers. Wearing a T-shirt or a dress with Korean on it is now considered cool among many hipsters.
Lie Sang-bong, a renowned fashion designer based in Seoul and Paris, features Hangeul in his design. He said it is not only a language but also an entity that represents the nation and its civilization.
"When I was at the Moscow collection last year, clients came to see the show in clothes featuring Hangeul," Lie said. "I can't express how touched I was to see them. Can you imagine people walking around with our language printed on their shirts and pants?"

. . .
Um . . . Yes, actually. Knock it the fuck off already.







Here's one more:

He also urged the need to preserve and protect the language amid an era of globalization and multiculturalism.

점점점 You can read that a couple of ways. It sounds problematic given Korea's increasing multiculturalism and its role as a player in the global economy. In fact, I wouldn't put it past anybody to want to protect the language from barbarian use. But to look at it another way, the way he'd say he intended it if he was ever pushed for clarification, I'd like to see more hangeul used on signs and stuff, rather than English letters or random gibberish.


The Starbucks in Insadong, the only one with the name written in Korean. Popular opinion says it's because of restrictions in the neighborhood to keep the traditional feel of the street intact, but I could have sworn I saw an article disproving that theory. Anybody have it?

Hangeul is nice and convenient and everything, but these kinds of articles turn people off. Yes, we occassionally see Hangeul used on designer clothing, but it's not necessary to constantly compare it with Japanese and Chinese, as if it's a contest. The journalism gets even worse when it comes to comparing traditional clothing, with little jabs thrown at Korea's two neighbors. Given the sometimes strained relations between all three countries, throwing in a line or two that makes the Korean product look good by making the foreign product look bad isn't an accident.

The commentors on that Expat Korea thread raised a few good points. It's a little condescending to always attribute foreigners learning Korean to the quote-unquote Korean Wave of entertainment. Moreover, foreigners aren't studying Hangeul, they're picking it up along the way as they study Korean. And no doubt there are some interested in it purely because of its design, but I'll bet most people don't really think about it, and just use it as a means to an end. In fact, and given Korea's relationship with English I'll bet many don't want to hear it, but Korean is becoming an economic necessity to the increasing number of migrant workers and international brides who go on to become residents and citizens.

I don't want to editorialize too much here, and make it look like I can't let a holiday pass without comment. But, the love affair with the Korean alphabet can feel pretty over-the-top. Take, for example, the dance troupe whose act is based on writing the letters with their body. What type of insecurities do you need to have in order to turn the ABCs into high art?



And, it goes without saying that every textbook, in English and Korean, and just about every website gushes about how scientific Korean is. I'm tired so I'll just plagiarize myself here:

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."

From that same December post comes this introduction to a textbook for learners of Korean, brought to us via Occidentalism:

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.

Holy fuck, dude!!! And, a recommended blog post on Yahoo Korea this afternoon tells us that Korean is superior to Japanese and Chinese for representating foreign languages. An excerpt:

McDonald Hamburger

중국: 麥當勞 漢堡 (마이당로우 한뽀우)

일본: マクドナルドハンバ?ガ? (마꾸도나르도 함바가)

한국: 맥도널드 햄버거

(보다시피, 한글은 중국 일본어의 엉터리 영어 발음까지 정확히 표기해 주고 있다.)

Hanbbou, hahahah, such 엉터리 영어 발음, and clearly nowhere near as cosmopolitan-sounding as "haembeogeo." The paradoxic focus on poor Japanese pronunciation of English was featured in the rap song "Fuck Zapan," big a few years ago:

I am Korean! (I am a Japanese!)
Hey, you, try saying “Al lo byu!” (I rob you!) *1
No! It’s “I low byoo!” (I rob you!)
Are you retarded? Can’t you even pronounce that? (Hai!)
Are you really retarded? (Hai!)
Isn’t your country just fundamentally retarded? (Hai!)

But, I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, or ruin anybody's black panther party, so I'll leave you to your own thoughts on topics, and plagiarize myself again:

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.

I was saving a lot of that reasoning for the "Why do expats complain so much" meme, now in developmental hell. Regarding hangeul in fashion, here's a more informative article on the topic from Korea.net last year.

Anyway, my Hangeul is pretty good for a white man, but a little on the messy side I guess. I know I write better than my middle school students, though.



I'm pleased with my penmanship, but some of my friends are annoyed because I don't follow the stroke order you sometimes see proscribed. I learned about it in one book ages ago, but found it cumbersome, so I made a few adjustments. When I write "ㅆ" instead of writing two "ㅅ"s side-by-side I draw two diagonal lines first and cross them both with the same stroke. Same for the "ㅉ." When I draw "ㅈ" I write "ㅅ" and then add the horizontal line to the top. Back in the day I thought my ㅈ looked too boxy, plus I remember reading somewhere that ㅈ evolved from ㅅ, so I guess that's why I do that. When I write ㅃ I start with three vertical lines and cross them with two horizontal ones. I also write ㄹ with one stroke.



In conclusion, Korea is a land of contrasts. Thank you for reading my paper.

ABC: "English Teachers Bring Drugs to South Korea."

I don't have time to break this ABC.com article down, please just let my middle finger suffice. Here's the subtitle on that overblown, uninformed piece of garbage: "Tourists Gone Wild: Influx of Foreign-Born English Teachers Contributes to Increased Drug Use in South Korea." Um . . . I guess that second part is true, but I strongly resent the "tourists gone wild" tag. Sorry, I promised I wouldn't get into this, so here:

Ministry of Health official: "We would like to rid ourselves of the international stigma or disgrace of being a baby-exporting country."

As per this New York Times article, South Korea wants to increase the number of domestic adoptions and

decrease what officials consider the shameful act of sending babies overseas for adoption.

The former is admirable, the latter is insulting and xenophobic, considering the successes so many overseas adoptees have had. The two quotations I've chosen are out of context here, but still carry the same weight in the article. Please read the rest yourself. HT to Hub of Sparkle.

Brian's Food Journal goes to Han's Deli.

Old Downtown's Han's, stolen from here.

Two recent additions to Suncheon's dining experience are the new Han's Deli locations. You big-city folk might think I'm lame for even mentioning them at all, or think it's cute for writing about a restaurant that'd go in and out of business in about seven minutes in Bundang. But these little restaurants are indicitave of the increase in Western-ish restaurants and coffee shops in Suncheon, and while I like to eat Korean food most of the time, and while there's a lot to choose from, it's nice to have some other options to break up the routine. Suncheon's own A Food Journey in Korea tells us about a sandwich place that recently opened behind the Yeonhyang-dong Holly's Coffee. It's no Quiznos, but the menu looks pretty good.

Anyway, the Han's Deli in Old Downtown opened up in April, and second one on September 25th in the Geumdang area, sort of behind the 유심천 sauna. On that same day one opened in Gwangyang, and interestingly enough one opened in Bundang and is now the second, LMFAO, Han's Deli outside of Seohyeon Station now. I went to the one in Old Downtown this week and had the Fresh Chicken Fajitas. It doesn't sound like much of an endorsement to say "wow, you know, it wasn't bad at all," but it wasn't bad at all, in spite of what you think Mexican-inspired food might taste like here. A little light on the chicken, as you can see, but otherwise pretty tasty.





The rest of the menu is available online here. The motto is "Delicious food for all tastes," and there's a decent enough selection.

Most of you are worried about the kimchi situation if you try a Western-ish restaurant, but Han's got you taken care of.



Interestingly, Han's Deli seems to draw inspiration from New York's famed Carnegie Deli, at least according to this print ad.


Um . . . really? I wonder how the Carnegie would feel about that. In spite of the reference, Han's Deli was, mercifully, free of asshole New Yorkers on Tuesday, and let's hope it stays that way.

Brian's Food Journal also went to Ti Amo across from Suncheon University and had a mocha latte. Aww, isn't that cute?

Standing room only at National Sports Games for the Disabled?

Hardly. Attendance was very low at the National Sports Games for the Disabled held in Gwangju from October 5th to . . . today. An article in the Korea Times, titled "Gwangju Demoralizes Disabled Athletes," calls attention to that, but also unintentionally makes us wonder how uplifting it is to call these athletes "disabled." Anyway, an excerpt:

Despite Gwangju local government vowing to make the games harmonious between the disabled and the non-disabled, the players encountered double difficulties ― public indifference and systematic problems.

The bowling game was held at Hami, a private bowling center on the second floor of the building, which made it very awkward for players to get around. Though there were lifts to carry them upstairs, it seemed clear that their mobility was limited.

Inside, the players had to share with the volunteers since there was hardly room, and they were drinking and eating on the floor.

``I know that we cannot play in the same environment as the non-disabled people, but this is far less than what we deserve,'' a player, who declined to identify herself, said.

At the athletic events, the 42,000-seat stadium was empty.

Holding a bowling competition for wheelchair athletes on the second floor. That's even worse than my joke in the title. Worse than the time Suncheon Bay put in handicapped parking spaces. Regarding the empty stadium, doesn't that happen a lot? They're talking about the World Cup Stadium, and the ten Korea built and used for the 2002 World Cup go unused most of the time anyway.

I think I recall coming across something about these events, but I don't think it was well-advertised outside of the city. Certainly not at all in English, although I know the English-speaking community is not the target audience. Not too much of a presence on the internet, either: a lot of the search results turn up pages and pictures for SS501 and Girls' Generation, two of the popular groups that performed at the games.

Left-leaning teachers' union tells its students to cheat in protest of exams.

Claiming that standardized tests are "suppressions against students' human rights," the Korea Teachers' and Eduation Workers' Union reportedly encouraged students to cheat on the national exam held today. Here's a couple takes from the Chosun Ilbo and the Korea Times.

That union is a regular target of the Chosun Ilbo, and has been discussed several times here as they were heavily involved in getting students involved in the protests against US beef imports (1, 2, 3). The union is especially active in this part of the country, and Jeollanam-do has, at 35%, the highest percentage of membership in the union out of all provinces and cities in South Korea. In one of my teachers' rooms---we have several---all the teachers are members and receive the paper and monthly journal. The intensively political climate is quite off-putting, actually. We have banners protesting this or that hanging outside the school, and every so often I'll have some promotional materials on my desk. Today it was a sticker on the computer monitor, which lasted about three fucking seconds before I took it down. After almost getting fired for making public my opinions, while union teachers in the area were photographed attending protests with students and have written their opinions in Korean-language publications, I'm understandably not pleased with the organization whose members pushed me around.

Amnesty sides with protestors.

One can only wish the Korea Times headline reflected reality. Look closely.



Amnesty has been out of touch throughout their entire quote-unquote investigation. Not surprising why:

For the report, the human rights watchdog dispatched its inspector Norma Kang Muico in July. She interviewed 56 civilians including detainees, lawmakers, journalists and human rights lawyers, all of whom were present at or directly involved in the protests.

For a quick look at the other side of the issue, the side Amnesty chose to ignore, have a look at the following video of protestors attacking cops with shovels and metal poles.



I won't speculate on any excessive police force that went on during the protests, because I'm sure there were cases of it. But, and this is just me recalling what I saw on the news and in person, the level of violence was exaggerated in order to add credence to the cause. What was downplayed, certainly by people I deal with on a daily basis down here at my union school and in the Protest Hub of Korea, was the ugly brutality displayed by some of the demonstrators, which calls into question how "excessive" any police force might have been. The video is an example, as is this photo gallery compiled by ROK Drop, whose whole US Beef category is worth a look. I know writer and commentor here Scott Burgeson posted some first-hand accounts on his page, though I can't seem to find any save for this excerpt on Gypsy Scholar. An excerpt of that excerpt:

As the police were retreating, many protesters started charging at them and actually hitting them with their fists. There was the usual media frenzy, of course, flashes everywhere and whatnot. The most hilarious part was that the protesters were actually shrieking "Violent police!" as they were hitting the police! I thought this was just absurdly ironic and nothing else until I saw that one slight young policeman had been knocked unconscious by the protesters and had to be carried to the sidewalk and laid down. He was out for a while and eventually regained consciousness (volunteer protest medics and other police were attending to him), but couldn't stand up, so after waiting about 15 minutes an ambulance finally came and took him away.

Of course, none of the usual suspects were there to document all this, like Hankyoreh, MBC or KBS. I asked several protesters why they were complaining about the violent police when they were hitting police first, and they all whined, "The police started it!" like third graders. Remember: THE POLICE WERE RETREATING when this poor young guy was KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS!

Yeah.

Another Korean celebrity commits suicide.

The suicide of 23-year-old model Kim Ji-hoo on October 6th is the fourth celebrity suicide in South Korea in the past month.

Maybe I'm being oversensitive, but I wish they wouldn't have titled the KT article "Gay Actor Found Dead in Apparent Suicide," just as I wish they wouldn't have titled the article on Jang Chae-won "Transgender Commits Suicide." Those lifestyles are certainly uncommon in the media in South Korea, hence the interest I suppose. But the titles show an obsession with the celebrity's quote-unquote deviant sexuality, and ironically draw attention, unintentional perhaps, to significant contributors to their deaths. Anyway, a little from the above article:

Police said his suicide reflects public prejudice toward gay people and their difficulty in succeeding in the entertainment industry.

Following the announcement of his sexual orientation, Kim's management agency did not renew his contract and many TV programs and fashion shows cancelled his appearances. His blog was bombarded with numerous messages denouncing his sexual orientation.

``He underwent many professional and personal difficulties following his coming-out,'' Kim's mother said during police questioning.

Hong Seok-chun, Kim's aide and also homosexual, said, ``Like me, he suffered from numerous discriminations against him.''

Bet you 1,000 won that you can guess what foreign textbooks are doing to Korean history.

They're distorting it, that's what they're doing! The Korea Times has the story, so does The Marmot's Hole:

During a parliamentary inspection of the ministry Tuesday, Rep. Rhee Beum-kwan said many inaccuracies are regrettably shown in history textbooks of 25 countries.

According to the lawmaker, a Uruguayan textbook states that Korea uses a Chinese language as its mother tongue and a Singaporean one says the nation was a colony of Russia and then Japan.

An Italian history book describes Korea as still under military dictatorship and a Jordanian schoolbook published in 2003 says Buddhism is a state religion in Korea, he added.

Rhee showed a Paraguayan textbook which says Korea used to be a colony of Portugal, which made members of the National Assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification and Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan chuckle.

The punchline:

The legislator urged Minister Yu to fix the wrong content and make an effort to monitor the history textbooks of foreign countries, stressing the need to give proper information to foreigners.

``According to education ministry reports, people become biased toward foreign countries based on what they learn and experience between six and 14 years old,'' he said. ``That's why we have to pay attention to schoolbooks of other nations.''

Indeed.







I know it's none of the foreign minister's business, but maybe he could direct one of his colleagues to check out his own country's books and presentation of foreign cultures. I'll direct your attention again to an old standby, the "culture tips" in the elementary school teachers' guides and the black face used in the sixth grade fashion show skit.


Presenting Uganda. Clearly a distortion because the spear is missing.

The context is a skit demonstrating the traditional clothing of various countries around the world. Korea had hanbok, the US had a cowgirl, and Ugunda had that. Also might want to check out what VANK is doing with foreign cultures. Ironic coming from an organization so hypersensitive to what foreign countries think about South Korea. Or, rather, so hypersensitive since foreign countries don't think about South Korea.

Run a search in the local papers or in the blogs for more cases of miseducation in Korean schools. For example, 57% of students don't know when the Korean War started or who started it, and half of high school students failed their National History Exam a couple years ago. I've touched on the topic of textbook miseducation earlier here. Yes, it happens all over the world, but I'll remind readers that this isn't Brian in McCandless Township.

Getting rid of the cities and counties?

There's talk of rearranging the country's administrative divisions, with the Korea Times bringing news of a referendum planned for next year on the topic of getting rid of the existing cities and provinces and merging everyone into a few big ones.

Currently, Korea has 230 counties and cities, nine provinces and seven metropolitan cities, including Seoul.

The presidential office reportedly favors a plan whereby the nation is divided into seven large districts called the ``Five Plus Two Zones'' plan.

Meanwhile, GNP and DP leaders are known to be reviewing a proposal to merge the current 230 counties and cities into 60 to 70 counties.

These discussions apparently has been going on for a little while: Wikipedia cites two articles on the theme from April 2005, though both are currently unavailable.

The existing provinces (do) and metropolitan cities (gwangyeoksi) would be eliminated. The current gu, si, and gun units would be reorganized into about 60 "metropolitan cities" with a population of roughly 1 million each. Beyond this, the details of the reform have not been decided.

I can think of no benefits to such restructuring, but I would be interested to hear some. I mean, first of all, you'd have to redesign all the websites, signage, stationary, and promotional material, and it sounds funny but I don't think that's a trivial matter when you're talking about nationwide changes. I thought about potential disconnect people might feel if they were reorganized under different place names, but then again this kind of movement has been very common, though not to such a radical degree. Then again, given the marked regionalism we find, what are the chances of people from one area, who pride themselves on their own unique character traits, will coexist with citizens from another, who by popular opinion are always attributed labels like "sneaky," "corrupt," "two-faced," "pretentious," or whatever. I, for one, would hate to see the current divisions go, given they usually have some historical or geographical significance.

I've previously mentioned the potential Suncheon-Gwangyang-Yeosu merger, and considerations to merge Yeongam-Gangjin-Jangheung counties. County and township borders have been reshuffled a lot over the years, though I can't find a readable history of all the moves. Whenever this topic comes up I like to cite this passage from the Jeollanam-do government's website, which reads more like the list of who begat whom in the Bible. Here's the history from 1980 to 1989:

Suggog and Jisan branch offices in Gwangju-city were reorganized and then Pug-gu ward office was created by reorganization of the administrative district in accordance with Presidential Decree No.6930 on Sept.26, 1979. Samil-and Dolsan-myeons of Yeocheon-county were promoted to each Samil-up and Dolsan-up, Gwansan- and Daedeok-myeons of Jangheong-country to each Gwansan-up and Daeduk-up. Ilro-myeon of Muan-county to Ilro-up, Gumil-and Nohwa-myeons of Wando-county to Gumil-up and Nohwa-up, Jido-myeon of Shinam-county to Jido-up and 9 myeons of 6 counties were promoted to up by Presidential Decree No.10050 on Oct.21, 1980.
Gumsung-si was created by integrating partial areas of Naju-up and Yeongsanpo-up by Law No.3425 on July 1, 1981(promulgated on Apr.13, 1981), and Daegeom-myeon in Gwangyang-county, Dodeog-myeon in Goheong-country, Pukil-myeon in Haenam-country.
Unnam-myeon on Muan-country, Jindo-myeon, Palgum-myeon and Sineui-myeon were created in Shinan-county on Feb.15, 1983 according to the reorganization of administrative districts by the regulation to alter the districts of city, county, ward, up and myeon and to alter myeon boundary by Presidential Decree No.11027 on Jan.10, 1983.
Ssangam of Seungju-county was promoted to Seungju-up and Hongnong-myeon of Yeonggwang-county to Hongnong-up by presidential Decree No.11772(promulgated on Sept.26, 1985) on Oct. 1, 1985. Yeocheon branch office was expanded to Yeocheon-si and Gumsung-si into Naju-si by Law No.37985(promulgated on Dec. 28, 1985) on Jan.1, 1986 . Gwangyang branch office was established by Jeonnam provincial Law No.1554 on Dec.30,1986.
Yangsan branch office of Junam-myeon, Goheong-county was promoted Sanae-myeon of Goheong-county and Hoijin branch office of Daedug-up of Jangheong-county to Hoijin-myeon of Jangheong-county, Gumdong branch office of Gumil-myeon, Wando- county to Gumdang-myeon, Wando-county and Bokil branch office of Nohwa-up, Wando-county to Bokil-myeon, Wando-county by Presidential Decree No.11814 on Apr.1, 1986 and the existing Gwangju-city was promoted to Gwangju Municipal city and separated from the province, and the administrative districts of this province were changed into 6 cities ,22 counties and I branch Office,(29 ups, 208 myeons) 96 dongs, 33 branch offices of up and myeon and 6,491 dongs and ris).
Samhyang-dong of Mokpo-si was established by Jeonnam Provincial Law No.1081 on Jan.1, 1987, Songjeong-si and Gwangsan-county were included in Gwangju-city by Law No.3963 on Jan.1, 1988.
Jugpo branch office(area 31.30) of Yeocheon-county and Pyungpoongdo branch office( area 3.34㎢) of Jeundo-myeon, Shinan-county were established by Jeonnam Provincial Law No.1177 on March. 5, 1988 and Gwangyang branch office was promoted to Donggwangyang-si by Law No.4050 and Taeun branch office(area 5.01) of Hugsan-myeon and Goyido branch office(area 0.5㎢) of Ape-myeon, Shinan-county were established by Jeonnam Provincial Law No.1284 on Jan.1, 1989. Sengil branch office of Daeju-myeon, Gangjin-county was changed into Mary-myeon and Sannae-myeon of Goheong-county into Yongnam-myeon on Apr.1, 1989.

Slightly related, the government has talked about designating each part of the country as a "hub" of something; more on that topic here.

Taebaek Mountains Literature Hall almost here.

Interesting news from the Chosun Ilbo: Boseong county will open a museum dedicated to a famous novel set in the area. Called the Taebaek Mountains Literature Hall, it will open on November 21st and, it is hoped, will attract tourists interesting in learning about the work of art and the historical events that inspired it.

Boseong-gun is holding the opening ceremony on Nov. 21. Ground for the W4.5 billion (US$1=W1,269) project was broken in October 2005. The aim is to turn the Beolgyo area, the main background for “The Taebaek Mountains,” into a tourist attraction and to shed light on the saga’s celebrated author Cho Jung-rae, who hails from the province.

I made a trip to Beolgyo-eup last fall, and turned it into a pair of posts:

* Beolgyo (벌교)

* Beolgyo Walking Tour

The town is noteworthy for the locations associated with the novel, many of which still remain as examples of Occupation-era architecture. It was also the site of many executions during the a period of anti-Communist crackdowns in South Jeolla province between Liberation in 1945 and the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. Robert Koehler has one of the best English-language write-ups about the town; here's an excerpt:

If you’ve got an interest in contemporary Korean history, there’s plenty to see and feel in Beolgyo, a town that is, for all intents and purposes, a product of Japanese colonial policy. The town was developed as a transportation center to ship agricultural goods from the Jeolla provinces to ports like Yeosu. The Japanese also engaged in a number of ambitious but divisive land reclamation products in the area. The Japanese penetration of the region and the colonial projects they pursued intensified class and ideological conflicts in the Beolgyo area that long outlived colonial rule. Jo’s The Taebaek Mountains examines this colonial legacy and the tragic conflicts that ripped South Korean society in the years between Liberation and the end of the Korean War.

Beolgyo’s downtown area is a place only a Japanese colonial administrator could love. Which, in a way, makes it kind of interesting. Like Gunsan, there are a number of old colonial-era buildings maintained as reminders of Korea’s difficult past. The town does get a fair number of visitors who come looking for the different places described in Jo’s book. Many of them, including the old Japanese Financial Collective building, Kim Beom-woo’s home, the Japanese-style Boseong Inn (now called the Namdo Inn), and the Sohwa Bridge, where mass executions took place during the 1948 Yeosu-Suncheon Uprising and, in the novel, rightists and leftists apparently traded turns executing political opponents.

Here's another little one from a Finnish scholar. I'm hoping to compile a little more information over the next week or two as we're nearing the 60th anniversary of the bloody Yosu-Sunchon Incident, or however you prefer to call it. Here are a few pictures from my trip, with others on my flickr page:

Joongang Ilbo feature on soldier summer camp.

Um . . . yeah, here's a little write-up on life in the military, and how it has become a kindler, gentler experience. An excerpt:

Another senior commander explained that in today’s world, where most of the soldiers have grown up as an only child or the only son and thus are often accustomed to a pampered childhood, a new approach to discipline is inevitable. “When more than 40 percent of the draftees are the only son and don’t like the idea of having to live with a bunch of guys under the same rules, we need a tailor-made approach to get each soldier combat-ready,” said the officer, adding that the spread of the Internet has made officers extremely cautious about handing out punishments.

What is also different is how soldiers follow orders. Nowadays, compared to the past, the draftees are not shy about asking a lot of questions. One wrote to Yeo arguing that running in the early morning fog is bad for one’s health. The lieutenant colonel could have dismissed the letter as a petty complaint by someone who maybe needed some heavy-duty military discipline. Instead, Yeo got the battalion’s medical officer to explain to his soldiers that the early morning runs were not exposing anyone to any health risk.

I'm a pacifist, am no fan of conscription, and am disturbed when cultures are so flippant about designating its male population as cannon fodder. I'm also bothered by teachers who say things of their unruly students like "the army will straighten him out," or when they make homophobic observations on the quote-unquote feminized men like "Korea needs the army to make men of its boys." That said, South Korea remains technically at war, and is in one of the hairiest spots in the world, geopolitically. Not sure I want the fellas to take a day off because it's a little chilly outside.

The article would be less open to ridicule if it presented more information about the abuse that soldiers face at the hands of their comrades and superiors, the abuse we routinely read about in the papers. A newsworthy consequence of one case happened three years ago, when a 22-year-old private killed eight other soldiers with a hand grenade after undergoing extensive hazing. The BBC website did a little follow-up, with further information on life in the military. And here's a report from Yonhap that same year; two excerpts:

Despite its fame as one of the best trained and disciplined in the world, South Korea’s 680,000-member military has been marred by a long history of human rights abuses of rank-and-files. Song’s son surely fell victim to the system.

Military records show that 134 South Korean soldiers took their own lives last year in the face of harsh discipline such as beating and verbal abuse. The military again came under public fire earlier this year when an Army captain was found to have had 192 trainees eat human feces as punishment for not flushing toilets.

The incident, coinciding with a string of suicides by enlisted servicemen, further tarnished the military’s image and prompted calls for reform.

. . .

Lee cited other records showing that the number of soldiers who suffer from mental diseases or are kept in on-base detention centers without trial remains unchanged.

According to a Defense Ministry report, 1,299 soldiers were discharged from military hospitals in 2001 after receiving treatment for mental problems, compared with 1,110 in 2002, 1,170 in 2003 and 1,440 in 2004.

A separate ministry report also showed that the number of soldiers who served in military confinement facilities, called "yongchang," stood at 10,690 in 2000, 11,580 in 2001, 11,525 in 2002, 12,074 in 2003 and 11,921 in 2004. Soldiers who commit minor offenses can be temporarily detained for up to 15 days without trial.

“The suicide rate is lower than that of civilians in the same age group, but we have to realize that the suicide percentage in relation to the total casualties in the military is rising. Also, they killed themselves for single reason, which is hardship in their military lives,”said Lee, who participated in a 2003 government investigation of human rights of rank-and-file soldiers.

The suicide endemic in South Korea---which has the highest suicide rate in the OECD---is surely as much to blame for these deaths as the abusive treatment. Or, perhaps another way to look at it, maybe the rigid, regimented lifestyle so many students, young people, and housewives lead has something to do with the high number of suicides among the civilian population.

James Turnbull doesn't make that point, or attempt to, but for some information related to the ubiquity of militarism in contemporary Korean culture, please take a look at this post he did on the subject.

A while ago I came across another article about the latent militarism in Korean schools, which cited, among other things, the communal morning exercises as an example. An interesting point, but I wonder how one would extend that to Japan, which is now nominally pacificst yet which has retained the smae tradition. I don't want to get into how voluntary that embrace of pacifism was---mostly because it was involuntary and a disgusting spin job---but it's something interesting to consider the next time your kids line up in the classroom and move in unison to the piped-in march.

Lots of festivals around here this coming weekend.

Six big ones, to be exact. Sucks that they overlap. I have an ambitious plan to hit three, so we'll see how that pans out.

* The Jinju Lantern Festival is still on through October 12th, and is absolutely a must-see if you're in the area. During the three-day weekend a couple days ago an estimated one million people attended. Buses run there every hour from Suncheon, and several times a day from Gwangju.

* The Namdo Food Festival will be held from October 9th through the 13th at the lovely Nagan Folk Village. There are free shuttle buses to and from the village from Gwangju; people in Suncheon can reach the village via city buses 63 and 68. I'm gonna try and catch this one on Saturday, too.

* The Chungjangno Festival is on from today through the 12th in downtown Gwangju's Chungjangno district. The title is actually the "Gwangju Recollection Festival' this time around, and attractions include traditional food and snacks, and relics and photographs from earlier in the century. I know it sounds ridiculous to think stuff from just one generation ago is really neat and old-timey, but you don't find much of it in Korea these days. Speaking of old things in Gwangju, Missionary Wilson's House is a short walk away; it dates to 1920 and is the oldest Western-style house in Gwangju. Also on that university campus is a cemetary that is the resting place for many of the country's first missionaries. So there you go. I'm going to try to swing by this festival, too, if it's logistically possible.

* The Japanese Bloodbath Celebration Festival will be held in Myungnyang Strait, between Jindo and Haenam counties, from the 11th through the 14th. Notable attractions include a reenactment of the famous naval battle and the public debut of a solar-powered turtle ship that will ferry guests across the strait.

* The Gwangyang Sutbulgogi Festival will be held from the 10th through the 12th. The dish is pretty good, so I guess the festival will be okay, I dunno. I'm a little annoyed with Gwangyang because it didn't release the festival information until a few days ago. I wanted to include it in my Korea Times article about festivals down here, but since the folks over there couldn't be bothered to, like, make plans for its second-largest gathering of the year, I just said fuck it. Why the hell they scheduled it for the busiest weekend of the fall is beyond me. Gwangyang's not the only place that pulls stuff like that, and trying to compile an exhaustive list was a pain in the ass because so many festivals were scheduled for "October." Well, maybe next year my Korean will be good enough to call around and double-check.

* Also this weekend, on Sunday the 12th, is the International Community Day put on by my old friends at the GIC. It's held at Chosun University and has the theme of "World Street Food." I'm sort of obliged to attend, though don't expect me to smile. Ask me if there will be a stripper. "Will there be a stripper?" It depends how drunk I get. But, anyway, it will be a little nice because I wish I knew more foreigners in Jeollanam-do who weren't English teachers. It's easy to forget how much diversity there actually is down here since the ethnic communities are pretty well hidden.

* There's also the National Sports Festival held in Jeollanam-do from the 10th through the 16th. Apparently it's based in Gwangju, but as a friend found out recently, some of the baseball events are held in Yeongam and Yeosu.

* The Gwangju Biennale is still going strong at the Biennale Exhibition Hall at Jungoe Park in Gwangju's north side.

I compiled a lengthier list of Jeollanam-do festivals earlier, though after this weekend a lot of the main ones will have wrapped up. I'm pretty pissed that my write-ups on local stuff aren't turning up at the top of Google anymore, so please excuse any gratuitous internal links you find. Goofy Youtube videos, half-assed research, ordinary travelogues, and information lifted from my page without attribution don't cut it anymore around here. Anyway, sort of on-topic is an article from the Hankyoreh today about all the festivals that are going on and that overlap both dates and themes. Of regional interest:

One example is the Simcheong Festival, held yesterday afternoon in Gokseong County, South Jeolla Province. The festival was overwhelmed with crowds and enough cars to fill a parking garage able to accommodate 2,000 vehicles; entry from the entrance one kilometer ahead was difficult. Gokseong spent 400 million won to prepare the festival, but its distinctive character was lacking in comparison with its size. Tourist Kim Ho-geom, 35, who is from Dongnim-dong, Buk-gu, Gwangju, said that the landscape of the festival’s location, the banks of the Seomjin River, was beautiful, but that the festival’s content -- including fireworks, performances by popular singers, pumba performances (performances by village buskers) and a 100-song challenge -- was monotonous. Kim also said that he wished there were more memorable activities or sights, even if it meant the festival was smaller in size.

I really wanted to go to that one in Gokseong, although not after reading that review, but was at the Lantern Festival