According to the Donga Ilbo, with Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) approaching, some parents are sending teachers "white envelopes" (cash) via mobile phones.
SK Telecom, the country's largest mobile carrier, operates Giftcon services that enable a person to send a gift certificate of up to 500,000 won through a text message. The receivers can use it for purchases.
This makes it easier for some parents to send gifts to teachers, making it unnecessary to check the addresses of teachers or hire delivery services to send the packages.
A representative of a teachers' association told the vernacular newspaper that teachers should not use mobile services for bribery, which he said is not helping teachers' efforts to halt the practice.
That's pretty bad journalism, not only because it just copies what another paper found. I did enjoy that last paragraph, though, even though it didn't say who the representative was or what union s/he was representing. Indeed four out of five dentists agree that accepting bribes is not conducive to not accepting bribes.
Here's what looks to be the Korean-language Dong-A Ilbo piece.
* Those who teach adults, can you please disavow them of the practice of either picking ridiculous email addresses or making ones that correspond directly to their names in Hangeul? Maybe we'll also work on the "Korean Thanksgiving" thing, too.
10 comments:
what's wrong with emails that correspond to the 한글? I can understand that names like "foolsdie" and such look unprofessional and stupid coming from an adult (another journalist I know has "smurf" as part of his ...good lord) but the name as typed in hangeul seems to me rather elegant. Easy to remember, quick to type, and avoids unfortunate romanizations.
I don't mind hangul corresponding ones, I guess, and romanized versions of Korean names are OK too, but I do wish I didn't come across so many professional e-mails named things like "cuttypuppy115" among my friends and students. Haven't come across anything like "swollenmember69" yet -- silly cute, yeah, cartoon character, yeah, but nothing ribald so far.
but you know, "foolsdie" might be a reference to that Mario Puzo novel. That's like, culture, right?
I don't mind "korean thanksgiving" - that's not too far off base, is it? "Korean pizza" is my real pet peeve. Jeon is nothing like pizza.
I've been at the same school for 3 years and I've yet to see my first bribe.
Best email address I've ever seen? A teacher named "Bae Jin-su" chose the email "bjs4u."
I was at the hospital and again they asked for my ID. They said they had to because "foreigners" share cards and defraud the health insurance system. To all of those who said to me before it was nothing- open your eyes.
촌지 is the Korean word for this kind of bribe, right?
I recently had a Korean english teacher tell me that there was no such thing as 촌지 anymore as she was eating one of several food gifts bestowed upon her by students entered in a speech competition she would be judging later that day.
Seems like theres some problems in defining what exactly constitutes a bribe and what constitutes an innocent gift...
@ Bfcdoors
From what I've seen, you're right, there is a certain tension involved in drawing the line between gifts and bribes. It seems to be a pretty complicated issue in the Korean school system. Several Korean teachers I worked with told me that they were very uncomfortable in these situations; they can be fired for accepting bribes, but if a parent gives them something, how can they not accept it without appearing rude?
I noticed that when a teacher was given food, or one of those econo-boxes of small bottles of juice, they would virtually always bring it to the teachers' room and let all the teachers help themselves - presumably, if everyone shares it, it seems less like a bribe for that particular teacher.
Even though bribery is officially frowned upon now, it seems like it's just too ingrained into the system to go away any time soon. I've been told by Korean co-workers that some (maybe more than some?) school principals still expect bribes from teachers, in exchange for better treatment or the chance of promotion. And I've heard that private companies running after-school programs in public schools pay both a fee to the school itself to use their space, AND a regular payment straight to the principal. Presumably this payment to the principal is a bribe, since the school itself is already being paid, and the principal has the authority to cancel the after-school program.
"what's wrong with emails that correspond to the 한글?"
Nothing, as long as they are written in hangeul. Much easier to remember 박유만@hanmail.com, than qkrdbaks@hanmail.net, especially since hangeul addresses are recognized and are deliverable.
This guy was also the one who wrote about a "fictional" war between Japan and South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima awhile back. Guess that his standards of journalism have not changed since then.
Just browsing Chonnam National University's site, I found a great one: "sentivirus." If that professor ever tried to email me I doubt I'd get it.
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