Vagina Monologues in Gwangju.

If you're in Gwangju and you want to hear strangers talk about their genitals, or are interested in seeing what I think is the first performance in the region, then you're in luck. The Vagina Monologues (버자이너 모놀로그) will be in town from March 6th through the 8th. In Korean of course, at the Gwangju Culture & Art Center.

Who the fuck is Dave Franklin and why the fuck is he writing about teaching English in Korea?

It's been a while since I've lived up to my reputation as angriest Korea blogger, and it's high time I defend my title. Today's target is Dave Franklin. So back in January, Franklin, a 37-year-old former "teacher" in Korea, put out a novel English Toss on Planet Andong. It was mentioned in passing on Rate My Hagwon at the time, but I don't read that site so I didn't learn about this book until last week. Here's what an Australian article has to say about it:

The 37-year-old Alderley resident spent more than two years teaching English in South Korea, using his often surreal experiences as the basis for his fourth novel, English Toss on Planet Andong.

“I turned up and saw all the Korean teachers carried sticks,” he said.

“No one had bothered to mention that whacking kids was as commonplace as giving homework. But then again, I never received any training, guidelines, feedback or supervision.

“I was just on my own in a baking hot classroom with up to 40 teenagers laughing at me for looking like a bald, big-nosed alien.”

English Toss centres on a wildly dysfunctional expat teaching community trying to make sense of each other and the local culture.

“I think it’s a recipe for disaster but it’s undeniably big business,” the city-based ESL teacher said.

I'm inclined to believe that review was written by Franklin himself. Anyway, the book is absolute garbage, an embarrassment and disgrace to any self-respecting teacher here, and clearly the most dysfunctional member of his expat community is Franklin himself. You can find just about all of the book available from Google Books. Here's the opening paragraph:

The red dragonflies reversed, zipped forward and hovered outside the hagwon window. Paul Taylor stared at thte sexually conjoined insects, their wings a furious blur, wondering what it'd be like to fly and fuck at the same time. No doubt more fun than filling out student evaluations, a bi-monthly task that again needed completing. He glanced at the unmolested pile of one hundred and fifty or so papers on his desk, each one representing an individual human being whose young mind he was supposedly dedicated to nurturing.

Throughout the book the main character Paul refers to Koreans as Dollies, calls his students Dogs and his classroom the Kennel, and says kimchi looks like an abortion. A one-line summary from an online retailer says

English Toss on Planet Andong is a biting black comedy that centres on a wildly dysfunctional expat community teaching English in South Korea.

though I find the book is to comedy what the author is to education. From page 6:

'OK, time for my gare hokseng.'

She snorted, 'Dog students! You must not call them so!'

Paul shrugged. 'I'll stop when they stop behaving l ike dogs. If you gave me a class of actual dogs the only way I'd be able to tell the difference is the dogs would probably fart less. The only words I've managed to teach them so far are sit and walkies.'

Well, thankfully the dolly translated "gare hokseng," for otherwise I wouldn't know what the fuck that means. Just a note to teachers and potential authors, if you're going to demean and dehumanize your students for not knowing a language, it's best not to fuck up basic vocabulary yourself. From page 9:

Paul dragged himself up the flight of stairs and pointed to the Kennel down the narrow hallway. 'IN' he growled, making them scamper away. Brian slid two metres along the tiled floor in his football boots, banged into the water cooler, dived into the classroom and slammed the door shut in Vincent's face. Vincent turned and grinned, unfazed that he'd almost lost his nose. He yanked the door open, shouted, ran into the Kennel and slammed it so hard the glass wobbled. Paul rubbed his temples and leaned against the weall. Billy [teacher] lounged in Banana's doorway at the far end of the corridor as he eyed two approaching pig-tailed girls. 'Hello, my little wingless angles,' he said in his warm, upbeat voice. 'Please leave your clothes by my desk. It's time to meet Uncle Salty.' Billy leaned closer hissing: 'He's your only family now!' He ushered the giggling girls into the classroom and winked at Paul. 'What . . . ? You know I don't mean it.' Then he rubbed his hands and wandered in after them.

An example of student-teacher interaction from page 15:

'Teacher, marry?'
'You asked me this, Amy. Remember? About a week ago. Sorry to be pedantic, but how many marital statuses of foreign teachers are you tracking?'
Amy wasn't that easily put off. 'Teacher, marry?'
He smiled, the air leaking out. 'No, teacher, not married. Used to be, but not now.'
'Teacher, girlfriend?'
'No, Amy. No girlfriend. If you've got an older sister or aunty perhaps you can help me out Act as a chaperone, even. Shall we say something in the twenty to thirty-five age range? That's nice and broad, isn't it? Oh, and I like them busty.'
She frowned. 'Why?'
He smiled. 'Why, what?'
'No girlfriend, why?'
Paul pointed at his chest. 'Teacher poor and ugly.'
Amy nodded, indicating his ginger hair. 'Very ugly. Are you crazy?'
'A little, Amy. Are you crazy?' A bug-eyed Amy shook her head and scampered back to her desk.
'Page-e, teacher?' Brian called.
'I just told you. Try listening.'

A bit of the classroom atmosphere, from page 18:

[Paul] looked at Sally, coming back to his senses. 'Yes, OK. We see with our eyes. Let's say see.' Two Dogs managed while copying his actions. He tried again. 'See.' This time more than half of the class responded, a good enough percentage. Tommy was one of the abstainers. The child-sized waste of space had retrieved some objects from his bag. However, a miniature pack of cards and a plastic four-legged monster seemed unlikely to aid his quest to master a foreign language.

And dealing with disruptive students on page 20:

He got a black marker pen from his basket, marched toward one of the twins and stabbed a finger in the boy's face. 'Name?'
The child swallowed, 'Joey.'
'Joey? You're Joey?'
'Yes, teacher.'
'Right.' Paul grabbed the lower half of his face, holding him steady as he printed a large 'J' on his forehead. The Dogs found it hysterical. The branded Joey blinked and looked around. Suddenly the centre of attention, he didn't know whether ot join in with the laughter or burst into tears. He touched his forehead as Danny cowered, obviously believing he was next.

Most of the rest of the book focuses on the misadventures of the expats around town, and each character's flawed personalities, and is in all a very poorly-written exercise in navel-gazing. As if there is any other sort of exercise in navel-gazing. By all indications anybody can get published these days provided they struggle with paragraphs and have no sense of style. For characters who hate their lives so much they sure pass comment on the smallest of detail, whether it's the hunchbacked grandmother, the student named Camel Toe, or the quartet of nine-year-olds named Jiggle, Those, Little, and Titties.

Teaching English in Korea can be challenging, and browsing any if not every teacher's blog will reveal that. This one is no exception, and I've spent considerable amount of time and energy writing about the difficulties we face in the classroom, in the teachers' office, and in the neighborhood. In fact, this isn't even the first book published about shitty hagwon; take a look at Prisoner of Wonderland: An ESL Misadventure for what can go wrong. But what we find in Franklin's book is evidence of perhaps the most damning charge against us: that we don't care, that we're unprofessional, perhaps to the point of being dangerous.

The English education business in Korea just might be in bad shape: English test scores are down, private education costs are up, schools are having trouble finding teachers. And all the while native speakers are struggling to fit into a system that teaches almost exclusively toward standardized placement exams, which don't play to our strengths and which make English purely a subject to analyzed rather than a language to be used. Hell, half the time we can't figure out why we're there at all. Those are legitimate issues, and even if blogging about them isn't your thing, we ought to keep them in mind as we try to do our jobs. But "bad shape" is certainly relative; people who earn a comfortable wage and an apartment doing a job for which they have no qualifications perhaps have little else to complain about besides nose-pickers or Koreans who can't speak English.

The one theme that pervades the book is unrelenting maladjustment. Paul's description of Hangeul as

[what] appeared to be the brainchild of a pot-smoking computer game programmer who'd fused Tetris and Space Invaders

or a serving of kimchi as

the slimy pile of vegetables, half submerged in red liquid and speckled with spices, looked like a tiny abortion

or the appearance of Andong, or "Planet Andong" rather, as

one hell of a higgledy-piggledy place, suggesting a contingent of constipated 1950's Eastern Bloc town planners had been given carte blance

or the reason he calls Koreans "Dollies"

Koreans pretty much look the same, eat the same stuff and do the same things. As if cloned

and the descriptions of his job quoted earlier leave the reader wondering what the point of it all is. The other characters aren't much better, or any better-developed---one roomate speaks in uppity prose to confuse Koreans and the other is a fussy, hyperpatriotic 58-year-old Canadian---and Franklin himself in the book reviews gives the impression that he wrote the book 'cause some hagwon done him wrong. If the aim of the book is to make Korea look like an uncivilized wasteland, or rather an alien planet, the perfect setting for exploring the bleakeast and blandest people can half-form he succeeded, but only through rendering his characters so obscene and so ridiculously out-of-touch that you wonder why they never put bullets in their heads and ended the book 375 pages earlier.

I actually have no idea who the fuck Dave Franklin is. This book on Korea is his fourth novel, and Google turns up mention of a Dave Franklin born in 1971 who released a book through the same publisher. In an interview talking about an earlier book, this Franklin says something that touches on a point I'd like to make.

So how important, then, would you say it is for a writer to know his or her subject? "Well, it certainly helps, but it’s a mistake to say a writer has to know his subject. I doubt HG Wells was au fait with invisibility, alien invasions and time machines but he seemed to get by. Some critics argue that "Lolita" is the twentieth century’s greatest novel but Nabokov wasn’t a kiddie fiddler. It’s much more important to simply be interested in your subject. That interest can even be negative e.g. a fear or obsession with something. You just have to write about a subject that’s on your mind a lot. Hence, I write about alienation, popular culture, violence, humour, sex and an abiding hatred of Bryan Adams – often in the same paragraph."

I understand how fiction works, and that by writing characters the author doesn't necessarily vouch for them. Franklin may be no more a dysfunctional sadist than Nabakov, well, than Nabakov was a "kiddie fiddler." You have to question why Franklin would choose to paint this picture of Korea, of teaching, when his audience will have no other concept of either, and thus no basis to pick up on whatever satire he thinks he's attempting. In fact, such fantastic characters should make you read between the lines and explore their loneliness, their emptiness, their pun-sort-of-intended feelings of alienation, but there's really nothing in the novel to persuade the reader to work that hard. Simply put, it's not a smart book.

This brings up earlier discussions the blogosphere has had about expats in Korea and negativity. Me and pretty much every other active blogger has received comments or emails telling us not to write bad things about Korea, trying to correct our "wrong information," or discrediting our opinions because we were foreigners who didn't understand Korean culture. A lot of ink has been typed on the topic, justifying our existence as critics and observers with every right to opinions as anyone else. So I'm not here telling Franklin to somehow unwrite the book, or saying that he's wrong, or suggesting he write about something nice like temples, four seasons, and hanbok instead. I'm wondering why he went the route he did, and what if any goal he had by rendering teaching in Korea as an otherworldly experience. It certainly has no resonance to anyone who actually, as he put it, knows his subject or is interested in his subject. It does pander to those who hold the basest opinions of Koreans and who have no regard for their responsibilities as teachers. Or, since the average person hasn't the faintest idea of Korea, it panders to those who wish to hold the basest opinions of the country, its people, and its English students.

We can debate the term "unqualified teachers" all day long and get nowhere. We can talk in circles about the hiring policies of Korean schools, about how they'll pretty much hire any Caucasian with a pulse and a degree, about how demand trumps discernment. But what we really shouldn't debate is that regardless of our motivations for coming to Korea we owe it to everyone to behave like professionals, like teachers. That doesn't mean don't drink, don't go out, don't travel, don't date, whatever, but that does mean remember why they're paying you in the first place. That doesn't mean don't complain, don't be homesick, don't try, and don't make mistakes sometimes, but that does mean do your best, use your head, and work through it. In other words, you're an adult, fucking act like it.

I'm fully aware that by writing this entry I'm giving more publicity to this small-time book and its nobody author than they'd ever receive otherwise, but it's important to call out attitudes like this when we find them, and distance ourselves from the people who preach them. Everybody talks about getting respect for foreign teachers, about standing up for our rights and fighting back. But we also need to stand up and accept our responsibilities as well, and rather than demanding this and that from Koreans, start holding ourselves up to the standards befitting professional teachers. And to Franklin: great, you got paid, now fuck off.

A woman bought a puppy that ended up being too noisy, so what does she do? Puts a rubber band around its snout for three days. From Kuki News via 100% Perfect Us; pictures pixelated but still disturbing.

Sad story out of Gwangju, where a young woman apparently committed suicide because her boyfriend didn't have her back in an online quarrel.

Even more rough stuff at the National Assembly.

This dude is fixin to fuck you up.



Two guys got double-minors two days ago for shoving inside the National Assembly---and then there was a huge melee back in December---and now this outside the Assembly today. Here's what the KT has to say about their picture:

With “No Admittance” to the National Assembly, a member of the opposition Democratic Party tries to force his way through a crowd of police to enter the building. National Assembly Speaker Kim Hyung-o placed the keep-out order to block the opposition party’s protest against the media bill.

Democracy in action. More pictures from around the internet. (1, 2, 3)




And in other news, Chun Yu-ok (전여옥) of the Grand National Party was attacked today by, reportedly, five or six people, and one 68-year-old woman was arrested. From a gallery from the Chosun Ilbo:

Korea Penetrating!

Here's an awesome excerpt from another one of those books that helps Koreans introduce their country and culture to English-speakers, something I looked at before. It's a sample Q&A from the chapter on soccer:

Did Korea penetrate the soccer world during their recent World Cup co-hosting with Japan?

- Of course. Did you not watch how Korea took the World Cup by storm beating Italy and Spain, two major heavy weights in the world?

- Considering how the Korean soccer team was a mess back in January, and how they barely squeaked by the quarter-finals and still ended up beating Italy and Spain, penetration is an understatement for their mind-blowing performance. Our Korean soccer boys have made us all so proud.

A look at one Korean English teacher's discipline problems in class, a response and commiseration to one woman's book lamenting the abolition of corporal punishment in school.

Foxlife has English subtitles for the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" (or, for some reason in Korean, 아이 러브 프렌즈) during its 1 am airing Monday through Thursday. Now, who do I have to screw around here to get KBS World and its English subtitles? If it's Suh Ji-young, I'll do it.

Brian's K-blog of the month? A long time ago when a tiger smoked a cigarette . . .

NC State considering a campus in Incheon FEZ.

North Carolina State University, among a few other American universities, is considering putting a campus in the Incheon Free Economic Zone.

The University has been invited by the South Korean government to open a campus in South Korea's Incheon Free Economic Zone, Larry Nielsen, provost and executive vice-chancellor, said.

The Incheon Free Economic Zone is a $200 billion dollar project the South Korean government has created to build a business, residential, and educational city that is "basically Research Triangle Park on steroids," according to Nielsen.

The South Koreans have also invited Stony Brook University, the University of Southern California, the University of Missouri and Georgia Tech University to open campuses in Incheon along with South Korean universities Seoul National, Yonsei, Inha and Hanyang.

"We think this is a really interesting possibility," Nielsen said.

The South Korean government is agreeing to pay for all the universities to take part in feasibility studies to explore the options of opening campuses there.

So far only Stony Brook University has signed the agreement, according to a presentation Chancellor James Oblinger made to the UNC Board of Governors.

However, the University is looking into becoming the second to sign on to this program. On Jan. 8 Oblinger, Nielsen, and Vice Chancellor Charles Leffler proposed to the Board of Governors a request for the University to take part in the feasibility study of a campus in South Korea.

"We hope to get started in the next month, we are just waiting for the papers to be signed by the South Korean government and NCSU," Nielsen said.

That could be very interesting. The article mentions offering biotechnology, engineering, managment and science, though I can't help but think having an American, English-language campus would be a great opportunity to provide MA TESOL programs. Perhaps some type of local distance-learning program could be set up, one that native speaker teachers could take advantage of given their busy schedules, similar to the Teachers' College Columbia University in Tokyo and the three campuses comprising Temple University Japan.

Here's a short video of a "trashout squad," a group that has to remove and throw away all personal items in a home after abandoned from foreclosure. It's hosted by Lisa Ling and it came to my attention because the first house was occupied by Koreans, judging by the soju bottles, ramen box, and red pepper paste. Exceptionally depressing to see how much gets left behind; makes me wonder if there were circumstances other than sudden poverty that forced such a quick exit.

Some details have come out about a 37-year-old Korean student at Oxford University who committed suicide last July, hours after learning his doctorate in Buddhism wouldn't be granted because his thesis wasn't good enough.

Immigration on the look-out for illegal private tutors in Suncheon.

This banner is hanging near one of my schools. Sorry for the poor quality of my cell phone pictures; it says:

Intensive Control Period of Foreigners' Illegal Extracurricular Work For Forced Repatriation
[원어민 불법 과외 적발시 본국 강제소환 집중단속기간]

And there are telephone numbers for the Yosu Immigration Office, the Suncheon Office of Education, and the Suncheon Association of Hakwon (순천학원연합회). It goes without saying that you should always be careful of whom you let talk you into giving private lessons, because word gets around, and even in my teachers' office my colleagues talk about who's teaching their children on the side. You should be especially wary of strangers in the area approaching you out of the blue, as happens pretty much all the time.

Happy graduation.

Congratulations to the men and women who celebrated their graduation this week at Seoul's Mapo Art Center, having completed their grade school equivalencies in a program designed for uneducated and illiterate adults. A few pictures from ceremonies that I think were spread over a couple days.

Seems like the only time we hear about Jeonju is when something bad happens.

A Food Journey in Korea warns us of the latest culinary disaster to hit Suncheon: Cone Pizza.

Some pictures of the 50,000 won note, set to come out in June.

More rough stuff in the National Assembly.

One of these days some legislation might break out. The Korea Times has some background the photo they ran (not above):

Rep. Lee Jong-kul . . . of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), scuffles with lawmakers as he attempts to block Chairman Ko Heung-kil . . . of the National Assembly’s Culture, Sports, Tourism, Broadcasting and Communications Committee from invoking his power to table contentious media industry-related bills in a conference room, Wednesday. The main opposition Democratic Party (DP), which has objected to the passage of those bills, claimed that the introduction of the measures was “invalid.”

Some video footage here, in Korean. The referees broke it up pretty quick, though, instead of letting the boys go at it.

This is nothing compared to the brawling that happened this December. Last week it, and 16 other politican brawls were ranked by Cracked.com; South Korea placed an impressive three times. I suspect Koreans aren't happy about that, though; footage from a brawl a few years ago was used in a clothing commercial in New Zealand. That drew a complaint from the Korean Embassy that said in part:

It depicted Korean politics and people in a negative fashion and was therefore offensive to the Korean community in New Zealand.

To the outside observer perhaps Korean politics depicts Korean politics in a negative fashion.

Suncheon to get classy hotel!

Construction of the "Ecograd" (에코그라드) is underway in Jorye-dong, in what will be Suncheon's first classy hotel. Take a look around the website for more information, in Korean, although it doesn't say when the hotel will be finished. Amenities at the hotel include a fitness club, spa, business lounge, wedding hall, seven restaurants, two bars, and nine classes of rooms.

Natalie White's singing in Korean.

*Update: She came to Korea about a week later.



Late to the party, I guess, because I don't follow K-pop sites. But I do like finding examples of non-Koreans using Korean, and using it well. This video of American Natalie White---aka Pumashock---singing Lee Hyori's "U Go Gull" was on the front page of Naver today, and has apparently been relatively big news for about a week. Between it and the Youtube upload it's gotten a little under half-a-million views. Girl group SNSD even saw her remix of "Gee," which has 1.1 million views. A bunch more of her covers on her Youtube channel.

ATEK in the LA Times

The Association for Teachers of English in Korea [ATEK]'s "Equal Checks For All" campaign has gotten some coverage in the LA Times today, in an article that talks not only about the legislation the group considers discriminatory but also about the smear campaigns waged against native speaker English teachers.

The big stories regarding ATEK happened while I was on vacation, so I didn't cover them at all. For some background check out their webpage, and for links to coverage in the news and on the blogs scroll to the bottom of their "ATEK in the news" page.

IHT article on gorosoi.

The International Herald Tribune has an informative article from Hadong today about gorosoi (고로쇠물), a drink made by mixing sap and water, and popular around here this time of year. I talked a little about this drink a few weeks ago here.

New Samsung phone to have safety features for women, children.

From the Korea Herald, which now allows right-clicks:

Samsung Electronics said yesterday it will release in mid-March a mobile phone featured with safety functions for woman and teenager consumers.

The SPH-W7100 phone comes with a safety pin on the rear which is able to emit a shrill beeping sound heard as far as 70 meters when pulled, Samsung officials said.

At the same time, pre-programmed emergency text messages are instantly and automatically sent to designated parents or friends, who can also check the GPS map of the site of the emergency.

When the phone is off during the emergency, the phone will send SOS message and the location information to pre-programmed numbers.

Hmm, too bad I can't use it. I don't like violence, either. Of course, the phones are also designed to be cute as hell.

"As mobiles are ubiquitous IT gadgets, the new phone's safety functions will be very useful," a Samsung official said.

Samsung officials said LED illumination on the phone cover stresses the sophisticated features of the mobile phone.

Why?

Recently, Koreans have become increasingly alert on street safety issues since serial killer Kang Ho-sun, who admitted killing eight people, made the headlines.

e-People, a potentially useful website.

On the SeoulPodcast with ATEK's Tony Hellmann a few weeks back he mentioned a government website, e-People, that he found useful for getting answers from government agencies. Here's a little description of its services from the site itself:

In the e-People service, you can file a petition with the Korean Administrative Agencies in regard to the following matters:

* Requests to explain or interpret administrative affairs - including laws, institutions and procedures - through inquiry or consulting
* Suggestions on improving government policies or administration systems and their operations.
* Requests to solve problems like administrative agencies’ unlawful acts, unfair or passive measures and unreasonable administrative systems, which infringe on people’s rights, cause difficulty or place unnecessary burden on people.
* Require administrative agencies to take actions on other matters

You submit your question, an e-petition, and it gets routed to the proper agency, and according to the interview it takes about a week for you to get a response in Korean and English. It is useful, he said, for dealing with conflicting and misinformation, and with the apparent policy of receiving 20 different answers to 20 different questions from 20 different government officials.

Thomas Friedman in Seoul.

New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman was in Seoul yesterday to give a talk at the Global Korea 2009 forum. Maybe he's still in Seoul, who knows, but anyway the Joongang Ilbo says that in his talk Friedman

emphasized green industry, which has the biggest potential for growth, adding that Korea has already secured advantages in the green revolution with talented human resources and industrial competitiveness. He said the major challenges today are climate change, energy poverty, reducing biodiversity and demand for resources.

The forum also had President Lee Myung-bak, the World Trade Organization head, and a former US Treasury Secreatary, all bigger names perhaps but I focused on Mr. Friedman because I happen to be a fan (sse here for example). Clips of his presentation at the forum were just on the news, and I suspect they'll be available online in the morning.

If you're unfamiliar with Thomas Friedman, Youtube is a good place to start, and on the theme of this forum I recommend some of his interviews from 2008 on America's need for energy independence and innovation. Googling around for this I found an interview with Friedman concerning his 2002 trip to South Korea during an especially prickly time for foreigners. Here's what he had to say about the relationship between the US and South Korea vis-a-vis the former's military presence there:

Well, I had a meeting with a South Korean professor one day, and I didn't really know what to expect, I asked to see a sociologist, and we sat down and he started in with the most virulent anti-American rant, and all I could think was, oh no I came here to get away from that, I've been in the Middle East for 14 months, please, no, not that! And what you find there is an anti-Americanism fed by really three sources, one is traditional old left pro Marxist Koreans who feel that we did prop up their autocratic regimes. Secondly, though, your people object to our military presence, two American soldiers were acquitted last week in a trial for running over and killing two young South Korean girls. It was an accident, but that produced a lot of anti-Americanism. And lastly there is that feeling that maybe Uncle Sam is standing in the way a little bit between our unification with our brother. So it's not the kind of vicious al-Qaida-like anti-Americanism which we've heard about here tonight. But it's there, it's underneath the surface. And just when you think you might have come to the one place where you're not going to hear it, sorry, there is no such place.

You can watch the short interview on the PBS site, an interview that touches on the North Korean nuclear program, South Korea's relative ho-hum attitude toward it, its role in the 2002 election, and the interest in the mesmerizing North Korean cheerleaders. This ROK Drop post is your best source for coverage of the tank incident, its spin in the media, and the resulting xenophobic backlash that echoed for several years and still resounds today.

Pictures above from here and here.

Name that rocket!

The government is looking for names for the first locally-made rocket, set to launch from Goheung, Jeollanam-do, I don't remember when. From now through March 31st you can go to the rocket's website, press the ctrl button to allow the pop-up, and put in your entry. First prize is three million won. I'd like that money, and am mulling over a few possible submissions:

* ROKet.
* Go! Heung.
* Space propose.
* 우주 like to go to space?

So don't touch 'em.

English-language legal services page rates poorly.

This is ironic to me in light of what I've post-dated to come out later tonight, but anyway, a government webpage that provides information and legal services to foreigners has been criticized by some in a Korea Times article for being unhelpful and shoddy. The page is here; an excerpt from the KT article:

``The biggest problem is that it doesn't do what it is supposed to do,'' Art Curtis, an American English teacher, told The Korea times. ``It is supposed to provide simple, easy to understand legal advice for foreigners here. But I find it pretty difficult to understand nearly everything on the site. Its has quite obviously been written by lawyers for lawyers.''

He cited the site's introductory paragraph as a representative example. Its front page says: ``This project builds a new statutory information infrastructure, which regroups complicated statutory relationships and presents them in the context of plausible scenarios, and provides clear interpretations of complicated laws and regulations.''

He said, ``I'm still not quite sure what it means. It feels like you need a law degree to understand this.''

Curtis also complained about its lack of detailed information.

``The site often mentions that if you have a complaint to lodge against an employer, you should contact the labor board that oversees the employer. But it never gives any contact information, or even the names of these bodies,'' he said, adding ``most importantly, they need to ensure that whoever we are told to contact speaks fluent English.''

Another foreigner said a wide range of contents available seem to be Korean-language statutory laws directly translated into English without adding further explanations. ``The site provides only brief and hard to find explanations,'' said Joseph Harte, a professor of law at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. ``Its goal of `regrouping complicated statutory relationships and presenting them in the context of plausible scenarios' doesn't seem to appear.''

Reviewing overall content, Harte said he had found numerous grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling and even typographical errors. ``Unfortunately, this suggests either carelessness or arrogance,'' he said. ``It also leads users to question not only the site's usefulness to its intended audience, but also, unfortunately, its reliability as well.''

Carelessness or arrogance indeed. Like with many English-language materials and services in Korea, you have to commend the idea but shake your head at the half-assed implementation.

Seoul is _________.

On Saturday there was "Discover Seoul Day" before a Manchester United game, where visitors could give their impressions of Seoul, I guess. On the webpage for the event sponsored by the Seoul government you can watch a short video of other MU players giving their impressions as well.

Hmmm, this particular promotion has been going on for a while it seems, because you can watch tons of videos of tourists doing the same thing. For example, "Seoul is karaoke." *cough*

On the international school front: palm, meet forehead.

The Chosun Ilbo has the latest from South Korea's newest international school:

The W150 billion New Songdo City International School will be dedicated in the Incheon Free Economic Zone in April, but nobody knows when it will open for business (US$1=W1,506). It was originally supposed to open in October this year, but that now seems impossible due to lack of foreign students in Songdo.

The school hoped to build its student body from children of all the foreigners suppposed to work at the companies in the Free Economic Zone. So I guess they'll just do what the normally do: let the international schools fill up with Korean kids. At least in Songdo's case it doesn't look like foreigners will be wait-listed or denied entry as Koreans unfairly take their places.

Actually, there was a similar article back in December, which said the school still planned to open, but that they need to ease regulations that put a ceiling---30%---on the number of Korean students.

Anyway, here's a little more information about the international school. Do give the city's website a test-drive; it looks quite modern and comfortable. Just that nobody wants to live way out there. There's an interesting anecdote at the bottom of this post, as well as some videos about Incheon's Tomorrowland Songdo.

Take the train to Jeju.

This is an ambitious proposal that would have the Honam Line extended not only past Mokpo to Haenam and Bogil-do, but clear to Jeju.

Korea Transport Institute, a government think-tank proposed an ambitious plan early January to extend KTX bullet train to Jeju, the largest island in Korea. To realize this grand vision, the institute says, it will need to build the longest underwater tunnel ever built in human history.

Two small islands-Bogildo and Chujado-located between the Peninsula and Jeju will provide convenient stepping stones for the Korean rail builder that will dig this grand underwater tunnel.

The institute says the constructor will first need to build a 28Km-long over-sea bridge connecting Haenam and Bogildo. The rest of the line will be completed by digging a 78Km long underwater tunnel down to Jeju using Chujado as a main drilling station.

If completed, Mokpo, the current terminal of Honam KTX line will be reborn as a departing station for the extended rail section, which will become the host of the longest underwater railway tunnel.

The article says if completed it would take 2 hours 26 minutes to get from Seoul to Jeju via the bullet train. A big problem is that this news comes right after we heard about how unsafe the existing KTX tracks are. An excerpt from a Chosun Ilbo editorial "KTX Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen":

Parts of the cement sleepers supporting the rails of the Daegu-Busan segment of the KTX high-speed train have developed cracks. If the sleepers, which support the weights of the trains and the rails, are damaged, then the rails themselves could twist, leading to catastrophic accidents as trains derail at speeds of 300 km/h. In other words, there are fatal safety flaws in the W7 trillion (US$1=W1,427) bullet train.

Out of around 153,000 sleepers that have been laid so far, 332 have developed cracks. And all of them pose dangers because all of the bolts that go into the sleepers have been discovered to be defective.

According to blueprints, waterproofing materials are supposed to be used to prevent water from seeping in between the bolts but they were not used, so the components absorbed rainwater, which expanded after freezing, causing the cracks to form. All 153,000 ties used the defective components, including the 332 that have developed cracks. So even those ties that seem to be in one piece could end up cracking any time.

Here's an interesting anecdote for you to chew on from Dave's; put as much stock in it as you want:

I was sitting in a bar with a friend in Itaewon speaking to this foreigner maybe three years ago. We started talking about what we were doing in Korea, and he says he's an engineer helping to build the KTX. This is a rough paraphrase of what he said:

That thing is a time bomb. Due to budget and time constraints, they're building it under specification. The tracks aren't made to handle those speeds. You'd never catch me riding that thing.

I can't remember the exact words, but he faulted the Korean side for the issues, citing their desperation to finish it as soon as possible, and at lowest budget.

And in other grand infrastructure news, there are renewed talks about a tunnel between South Korea and Japan.

This is what you missed at the Hamburger Festival.

So here's what they did at the Hamburger Festival in Gangwon-do this weekend:



No word on how much whipped cream, cherries, breaded shrimp, bell peppers, or broccoli they used to top the quote-unquote hamburger. Organizers of next month's Gokseong International Pizza Expo were caught off guard by this project and are wondering how to top this abominable fuck-up. Maybe they can ask Mr. Pizza for advice.

Korean TV to bring us more of America's worst "entertainment."

Korean MTV's latest addition is "트윈스인러브," which ran in the US through February 3rd as "A Double Shot at Love" and is

a bisexual-themed dating competition where 12 straight males and 12 lesbian females live in a house with Rikki (Erica Mongeon) and Vikki (Victoria Mongeon) and compete for their attention and affection.

The trailer running on Korean MTV is here. The first "A Shot of Love" show was with an Asian bisexual, and now . . . twins. What other oversexed fantasies can they explore? Maybe next season some girl will bring home a colored boy. So, this is what passes for entertainment?

Bird thought to be extinct ends up as food.

Here's quite a story from the Philippines.

A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.

Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester's buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.

Scientists had suspected the species—listed as "data deficient" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's 2008 Red List—was extinct.

"Hip Korea" to air on Discovery Channel tomorrow night.

"Hip Korea," a show about Korean pop culture with a focus on singer Rain, will air on Discovery Channel Korea for the first time on the 23rd at 9 PM, Korea time. The show followed around the singer for six months.

The Hip Korea crew filmed the star for six months, and the documentary reveals his down-to-earth lifestyle, including clips of Rain casually conversing with his close friend, entertainer Kim Jae-dong about his innermost feelings over a drink and reminiscing his departed mother at her crypt.

Here's what Korea's official website Korea.net has to say about it:

But there seems to be a Korean star who looks like he will stay with us for a very long time, if not forever. It is Korea's hot singer and actor Rain.

Thanks to his well-toned body and dynamic dance moves exuding masculine charm, the 26-year-old has ridden the crest of the Hallyu (explosive popularity of Korean pop culture abroad) or “Korean wave.”

Yeah, I'm going to stop right there.

Gangjin HS students, mayor, wrap up their study abroad in Washington.

12 students from Gangjin spent five weeks in a Washington state high school. The students finished the third grade of middle school, which would put them in the middle of 9th grade. The SnoValley Star has the story:

“Snoqualmie is so beautiful,” Haeun Kim said. “The environment and local culture are just perfect.”

“I think America is a very huge country,” Suin Oh said. She confessed that, before coming, “I was scared,” but after meeting other people her age, she began enjoying herself.

“Everything is cool,” Oh said. “I love America. I’m sure I will come back here.”

During their stay, the South Korean students met their host families and students around the Snoqualmie Valley. Senior Bethany Frieler said Hyeon Ju Kim taught her and other students in an art class how to write their names in Korean.

Regardless of age, all of the South Korean students took five general ninth-grade classes and an elective.

Here's an article from when the delegation of Gangjin dignitaries arrived. An excerpt:

To show his gratitude to the Snoqualmie host families, Mayor Hwang invited them all to visit Gangjin, and even offered to pay for their travel expenses. This drew a cheer from the host families.

“Why don’t you stop by to see Gangjin,” Hwang told the host families.

The host families responded with gentle instruction on making suggestions that don't use "why don't." Also some coverage, in Korean, from the Gangjin Shinmun here and here. The students are on their winter vacation, hence the free time, and picked that particular town because it is a newly-designated friendship city with Gangjin.

McRefugees in Korea.

A news show took a look at McRefugees (햄버거 난인), or people who stay the night in 24-hour fast food restaurants. Visitors will buy something to eat or drink, then sleep in the dining room; the 4,000 won you pay for a value meal is less than it'd cost you to stay in a jjimjilbang or a PC room. You can watch the video here, in Korean; article in English from the Korea Times:

``Those who frequent fast-food restaurants probably haven't been on the streets for long. They still look decent and can afford a cup of coffee,'' he said, adding that subway stations, which have long been popular among the homeless, are seen as dangerous and dirty by ``the picky folks.''

The same reasons gave birth to the buzzword ``McRefugee,'' which describes the new homeless generation in Japan and China who've been relying on the world's biggest fast food chain, McDonald's, to provide evening shelter.

Although these patrons have the courtesy to make minimum orders, businesses don't appreciate the shady-looking crowd camping out all night.

``We try to manage and control the growing crowd to help protect our brand image,'' said Chung, who stressed that Lotteria's general rule is to ban customers from using the facility as shelter.

My first thought? Grab a camera and send the pictures to Singapore.



In all seriousness, this phenomenon---unbeknownst to me already widespread in Japan---must be exasperating for restaurant employees and for patrons who actually came to eat. In the US many McDonald's have gone 24 hours in recent years, and in my own experienes dealing with late-night customers I know that would invite many undesirables. Fights, drugs, drunks . . . and that was just in suburban Pittsburgh. But the phenomenon shouldn't be that unfamiliar to Koreans and other Asians. If you're interested, give the book Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia a read. Part of it talks about how Asian cultures localized the fast-food experience to make it their own. Certain demographics would use McDonald's as a gathering place for meetings, or as a place to sit and talk for hours, which runs contrary to how fast-food restaurants are supposed to work. Here is the author, James L. Watson, talking about McDonald's in Hong Kong in a 2003 interview (.pdf file):

The book, Golden Arches East, outlines in detail how McDonald’s has been transformed to fit the local cultural systems it has encountered in East Asia. This is a process that I chooseto call “localization,” which to my mind is a force as transformativeas globalization itself. During the mid–1990s, for instance, highschool students were responsible for transforming many of HongKong’s McDonald restaurants into after-school social clubs. Late every afternoon hundreds of kids descended on their local McDonald’s; groups bought packets of fries and cokes. They packed them-selves into booths, poured the fries out on a tray and enjoyed a communal snack while gossiping and, supposedly, doing their homework. They stayed for approximately two hours, effectively closing down the ordinary business of the restaurant. Adults who were silly enough to arrive during this period were made to feeluncomfortable. The message was clear: “This is our place now, and we don’t want to see any adults while we are here.”

At first the local McDonald’s management tried to make the students eat faster and leave sooner, but they just sat there. Soon, however, management decided that this was an excellent development because it created the image of McDonald’s as a safe, andtherefore family-friendly, institution: No alcohol, no smoking, noprofanity, and most important in a place like Hong Kong, no triad gangsters. Management hired demobilized Gurkha troops, recently retired from the British Army, to stand at the entrance and followany triad tough who tried to infiltrate the restaurant. No one messes with Gurkhas; this was much more effective than hiring off-duty police officers. Local management began to promote their restaurants as after-school clubs, even in their television ads. Business boomed as parents gave their kids extra money to eat in a safeplace.

Meanwhile, during the mid-morning, post-breakfast period (9:30–11:00AM), another demographic group has taken over theirlocal McDonald’s restaurants. Retired people, predominantlyolder women who live alone, sit in clumps eating pancake break-fasts, talking, and reading newspapers provided free by the com-pany. These older people, like the students, are welcomed by McDonald’s managers. In both cases consumers have appropriated corporate property and converted it into public space. There arevery few alternatives in an overcrowded place like Hong Kong. Older people increasingly live on their own and enjoy congregat-ing in elder-friendly settings. McDonald’s has become a welcom-ing substitute for the disappearing parks, temples, and ancestralhalls that once sheltered Hong Kong’s older citizens.

I'll give you three guesses about what the chapter on South Korea entails. You can read parts of it here via Google Books. A couple of interesting excerpts; the first from page 144:

Since its introduction in the ninteenth century, bread has never been incorporated into the standard meal system; instead it is perceived as a snack food. The Korean term for snack is kansik, literally "in-between food." Meat, on the other hand, has always been a highly valued, desirable food, and it is eaten almost exclusively at mealtime. To attract a steady flow of customers who would make substantial purchases, McDonald's had to represent itself as a place where one ate a full meal, as opposed to a snack bar where people spend little money but stay for hours chatting. To the dismay of local management, most Koreans considered McDonald's restaurants to be snack bars . . . To change this perception, the "value meal" was introduced[.]

From page 146, in the section "Negotiating Gender, Space, and Meanings of Fast Foods":

The ratio of male to female customers in a Korean McDonald's is about 3:7. Eating a hamburger in what is perceived primarily as a children's place is not appealing to most grown men. The food-ordering process at fast food restaurants, where people have to order and pay for the food before they sit down and eat it, makes some Korean men feel uncomfortable. In traditional restaurants, customers pay after the meal is eaten, which usually results in everyone's competing to pay for the whole table. Some men told me that they feel awkward and stingy paying for just their own food. Even before the introduction of fast food, women generally felt more comfortable about dividing up the check. Another reason women like McDonald's is that, like most fast food chains and unlike most conventional restaurants, it does not serve alcoholic beverages. An alcohol-free and child-friendly environment is perceived as an appropriate and safe place for women unaccompanied by male family members or friends.

From page 153:

Management personnel I spoke with in Seoul were confident that McDonald's' could overcome the inherent difficulties of operating in such a complex environment. They were convinced that their company's efficiency and capacity to deliver good food at reasonable prices would overcome the anti-American and anti-import sentiments that inhibit business; they expected customers to put aside political concerns and make purely economic, "rational" choices. Consumers are therefore courted as individuals, not as representatives of political faactions or interest groups. Choosing McDonald's hamburgers over local foods, the management argued, should be taken as an economic decision on the part of an individual consumer rather than as symbolic behavior representing an overarching political ideology.

From page 157:

In Korea, even when friends purchase separate packets of fries, they often pour the contents onto a tray and together eat from the resulting pile. This does not, however, create the same powerful sense of commensality as sharing a rice-based meal. One can eat alone in McDonald's and not feel strange; eating in isolation at a Korean-style restaurant, on the other hand, generates feelings of loneliness and self-pity.

Those final excerpts have nothing to do with McRefugees, really, but the chapter is an interesting read nonetheless. In conclusion, Korea is a land of contrasts. Thank you for reading my essay.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton given Korean name by the ROK-US Alliance Friendship Society.

Introducing Han Hi-sook.

The surname “Han,” meaning Korea, is derived from the Korean pronunciation of the letter “H” in the name “Hillary.” With the conferment of the surname, Clinton will become the founder of the “Sejong Han” family. Secretary Clinton is the first “Han” from “Sejong-ro” or Sejong Street, the main street in central Seoul where the U.S. Embassy is located.

The name “Hi-sook” is a combination of two separate Chinese characters. “Hi” stands for “Shining,” while “Sook” is for “Clear.” “We believe that these are the attributes that have led to the appointment of Hillary Clinton as the 67th U.S. Secretary of State. Her clear vision and politicalinsight will make important contributions in setting the stage for peace on the Korean Peninsula,” added Suh.

Why can't foreigners use free wifi in Starbucks?

Gord Sellar is encouraging people to send a message to Starbuck's, letting them know that foreigners are prohibited from using the free wifi offered in South Korea's locations. Visitors wishing to use the service must login with a national ID number, though foreigners' ID numbers are incompatable with this and many other Korean websites. Gord calls it "discriminatory":

The fact it results from laziness or bad coding or whatever is one thing: the fact it has gone unaddressed although shop staff are aware of it — meaning its a zero-priority issue, where if the connection went down completely, for everyone, it would be a higher priority — makes it discriminatory.

And plus, it's, like, a foreign company to begin with.

* Update: Problem solved?

"The Westerner working in Korea needs to keep certain philosophic principles in mind."

A Gusts of Popular Feeling post from a few days ago that mentioned the book Korean Patterns jogged my memory a little bit. The book---the bits I've read---has been running through my mind since this past summer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In college I was interested in both Korea and TESOL, and knew before my senior year that I wanted to come here and teach. I read everything about the Korean EFL industry I could, though since I went to a mid-sized school in rural Pennsylvania with few journals on the subject and even fewer Koreans, much of what I was read came from the internet. An interesting source of information and insight, though, was and is the great number of dissertations done by Masters and Ph.D. candidates. Since Koreans did come to my university to study TESOL, and came to nearby Pitt and Penn State in even larger numbers, their dissertations were not only useful for their bibliographies but also for what the authors had to say about both Korea and the US.

One in particular stood out, probably because I knew the author. Passages of it stood out so much that when I visited my alma mater this summer I copied them down for use in a "Why do expats in Korea complain so much?" post that I never got around to finishing. It's a dissertation titled Extra consciousness : role of anxiety in the self-concepts of South Korean students in the U.S. from a cultural perspective written by Dr. Jungwan Yang. Part of the book talks about Korean students' experiences learning English both in Korea and overseas, and also the difficulties they've faced while studying in the US. I'm not interested in debating the responses or what they reveal to me---maybe I'll save that for a dissertation of my own---but will rather copy and paste a few excerpts of that section before moving on to the point of this post. The author interviewed a number of Korean students at the university---most were in the TESOL program---and included some of their responses. From "Minji" (pg 109):

After some meetings she cried at the native speaker students' unfavorable attitude to her because

"In Malay, they are Asian, but in here, there are Whites, Blacks...I am just shrinking. In small community, Asian is not many, so Americans watch me, which makes me feeling bad. I wonder why they are watching me. I am daunted of myself."

From the next page:

As another unique point she tried to understand her 'unkind' native speaking American people. She made an effort to find similarity between their negative attitudes toward her and her experience in South Korea about other foreigners: "I looked at foreigners in Korea, too... There must be some parts that I misunderstood... I find that first; I must participate in their communication by myself. At first, I wanted them approaching to me. I thought they hesitated in approaching to me because of me, Asian. But I find that Americans are unnatural to meet new person. So, I think that I need to start talking and approach to them first."

And page 111:

If I go back to Korea, I might not come back again to America. America is like a fantastic amusement park, which seems interesting when seeing that from outside, but actually, entering inside of that, finally I found that there are few things that I can enjoy. Outside is pretty, inside is nothing, different from my expectation."

And my, um, "favorite" respondent "Myungho" (page 123):

There is a limitation in relationships with American classmates. They have no Heart...I don't have any expectations of my American classmates. I prefer Internationals from the same Asian cultural background...It's not comfortable to Be around with Americans. They are too proud, and arrogant. Their smile and Kindness to strangers is good, but theirs are superficial.

The dissertation didn't include transcripts or the original Korean, but I suspect the heart Americans lack is "정," a *cough* uniquely Korean concept of compassion and feeling. The Joshing Gnome has an interesting and critical five-part treatment of that here. Anyway, back to Myungho, who in addition to having "the second highest anxiety score" also said that ""studying in the U.S. college is easier than in Korea." On pages 148-9 is this little episode:

Myungho totally withdrew from classroom participation when his South Korean identity was neglected, claiming that:

My history teacher explained about histories of China and Korea. She lectured Chinese history for almost whole class time. Before 5 minutes left to finish the class, she commented that Korea and China are similar. If there is one thing different, Korean people eat fish for their protein. I was dumbfounded at her ignorance of Korean history. I would like to raise my hand and to point out her wrong knowledge, but I didn't, because I felt that Korea is not important part in her history time.

Their and the author's perception of how Korea was being presented turns up in another significant passage on pages 217-8:

In other words, teachers' methods can make second language learners silenced rather than encouraged by their active participation, which can be found in MInji and Myungho's experiences when their teachers made inappropriate comments about Korea and its cultural / political relations: "Korean culture imitates Chinese"; "We, the U.S. should have attacked North Korea first than Iraq," which are totally based on the U.S.' subjective perspective. In fact, while reading many books realted to Korean history and culture, working on this study, I found many books about Korea written in English are out of date and depend on old information. For example, the Culture and Customs of Korea (Clark, 2000) uses old pictures taken in 1960s or 1970s in order to introduce Korean culture such as the 'traditional costume' (p. 109) or 'middle school students transplating rice seedlings in rows' (p. 122) which are so obsolete. No one can find those scenes today. In spite of the fact that this book was written relatively recently, I wonder why the author depended on stale information. This tendency is not limited to just a few books, but many about Korea written in English. That's why most teachers in the U.S. are stuck on old or inappropriate information of Korea. I think that for Westerners, the image of South Korea stops at the Korean War in 1950, and they don't want to see the current South Korea.

That's a very loaded paragraph, and indeed throughout the whole book I objected to much of what was both said by the students and argued by the author of the dissertation, even back in 2004 when I read it and observed her defense of it. When I revisited these passages this past summer the posts about hypersensitive Koreans and complaining expats---done by Roboseyo, Ask a Korean!, and others---were fresh in my mind. And I was only a week or so removed from school meetings on the topic of trying to fire me based on things I had written on this blog and in the local media. To keep my words brief here, I'll just write that I often feel exhausted by Koreans' need to dictate what information and opinions on Korea are quote-unquote correct and what are not, and all that process entails. In large part I understand why; though the topic merits a big ol' post I'm not prepared to do, so I'll just say I don't think I'd ever have the patience to be a professional Koreanist, knowing how uphill a battle I as a foreign scholar would have.

I was curious about the book she mentioned by name, so I took a look through Clark's Culture and Customs of Korea. I didn't read it, because honestly I find those types of overviews really tedious, but I did find the passages she was talking about. I even photographed some of the objectionable pictures, though a problem with my memory card means they're not available now. (You can find part of the book online here via Google Books.) However I can say with confidence that nothing from the photographs or the passages would be out of place in Jeollanam-do. To write that "No one can find those scenes today" is just plain wrong, and a line like "they don't want to see the current South Korea" is presumptuous, judgemental, and indicative of way more bias and maladjustment than she'd probably admit. I'll even be so bold as to write that perhaps some of the younger generation are not only ashamed of Korea's agrarian past, but for various reasons look down their nose at the less-developed regions outside of Seoul. In fact, rural life has become so foreign and strange to young people that it's the basis of a popular fish-out-of-water TV comedy show, 패밀리가 떴다.

Incidentally, in case you're wondering Clark's book focuses much on Chungcheongnam-do's Geumsan county, Boksu-myeon in particular. Readers who have passed through there can testify to its appearance and to how representative it is to Korea outside of major cities. But let's not forget, there are makeshift gardens planted across the street from Gwangju's City Hall, so let's not pretend South Korea isn't a land of contrasts.

Anyway, I looked around at some of the other books on Korea my school library had. I'll grant that the bulk were about the Korean War, and there were few if any written in the past ten years. But one book in particular caught my eye . . . basically because it was right next to Clark's! I'll bet if Dr. Yang had read it she would have included lots of "9823j9arawejfoi" and ㅅㅂ in her paper. It's titled Korean Patterns and is written by Paul S. Crane, who it turns out has some associations to the missionaries who settled in the Jeollanam-do area in the early 20th century. Anyway, the library's particular edition is from 1978, but as Gusts of Popular Feeling points out, the book is now considered valuable not for what it teaches about Korean culture, but what it reveals about the biases of Western. And there are some doozies! I'll leave it up to you to decide how many of them still hold some truth. From page 89:

In matters of state, the feeling has been that any intelligent man was as good as any other in deciding the future of the nation or the public welfare. An elementary school teacher usually feels quite confident that he could fill in for a college professor, and many young men feel that they could assume the duties of an ambassador.

Fortunately, with the development of more trained people in various fields, there is beginning to be an awareness that trained people can indeed perform more effectively than untrained people.

From page 64:

Although it is now being discouraged, some men still take care of their bodily functions along the street in view of the passing crowds. A woman, on the other hand, is not supposed to be seen in public, and thus must hide someplace to relieve herself. Public facilities are usually not segregated. Children may be observed relieving themselves whenever and wherever the urge strikes them. This practice leads to heavy infestations with hookworms.

From page 68:

Korean men are certainly not asexual. However, men do travel, socialize, and enjoy the company of other men. This does not mean that they are homosexual. A group of men friends go out together to wine shops, cabarets, or kisaeng (기생) houses where they are entertained by trained females. These women, whether kisaeng or barmaids are free and easy, and most uninhibited. They sit close to one at meals putting dainties into one's mouth at a feast, and caress their partners freely. These women exist as the socially acceptable means for all premarital and extramarital relations.

Not to frequent their company is considered by most Korean men to be missing one of the gentlemanly joys of Korea. To go outside this area of easy conquest is criminal and foolish. One, of course, would marry only a virgin. Virginity is often certified before the wedding by the bridegroom's womenfolk. An ageing kisaeng may graduate to being owner or manager of a kisaeng house. A fortunate kisaeng may become the "little wife" of a wealthy patron. Far too often, however, many of these women resort to suicide once their not-so-youthful charms can non longer compete with the new crop coming along.

From page 130:

Racially mixed infants fathered by foreign troops create a problem in a country which has a very strong sense of race. Racially mixed children have little hope of full acceptance in Korean society. Their probable future is in prostitution for the girls and crime for the boys. Many have been saved from this future by being adopted into homes abroad. Black eyes and black hair are considered the only true beauty in Korean society.

And from page 139, under the section "The Westerner Working in Korea":

The Westerner working in Korea needs to keep certain philosophic principles in mind. First, a Westerner can never become a Korean. He will never be completely accepted by Koreans as a "person." He may be accepted by a small group of people who look to him for leadership or benefits.

*cough*

WSI is blunt.

An advertisement for Wall Street Institute I found while navering for something else.



Via Ads of the World, which has scans of two more ads. The above campaign is evidentally out of Thailand. WSI is an adult English academy with locations around the world---and eight in Korea---and while they're correct that a gesture's meaning varies across cultures, I don't know what understanding how they're interpreted has to do with English. The ad says, after all, "Learn to speak English, the world language." Unless the actual aim is to sneak "motherfucker" into a magazine.

Admittedly the above series have more to do with language than a Korean WSI advertisement from a couple of years ago, which implies I guess that learning English will help you in the club.




Given the tagline at the end of the 30-second TV spot---즐기면서 배우는 영어회화센터---the gist is that with WSI you can have fun and learn English, too. Nothing wrong with that, but if that's an acceptable angle, perhaps foreign teachers might be forgiven for wanting to have fun and teach English as well. I'll leave it up to the individual to define what exactly "have fun" entails.



WSI has kept with the theme of "English is Fun at Wall street," throwing what the news sites called an "English Party" last spring at a Gangnam night club. The "Musical Night" brought out "Cats" cast members, and these models in bodypaint: