The M-word

I collect uses of "the _________ of Korea" on this thread---Tongyeong is the Naples of Korea, for example---and we've all witnessed the overuse of the word "hub." But in reading up on Jeju's new English education city, I realized there's another word to keep an eye on, a synonym people sometimes use here to give the h-word a break. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of the various meccas of and for certain things in Korea, planned, imagined, or implemented.

* Apgujeong-dong - Mecca for fortune-tellers' cafes (1)
* Apgujeong-dong - mecca for young trend-setters (1)
* Bucheon - comic book mecca (1)
* Busan - Asia's movie mecca (1)
* Busan - ocean tourism mecca for Northeast Asia (1)
* Changwon - Mecca for eco-tourism (1)
* Changwon - Mecca for science and culture (1)
* Changwon - Mecca of bicycle (1)
* Cheonan - mecca of contemporary art (1)
* Cheongdam-dong - Seoul's mecca for fashion-savvy hipsters (1)
* Chuncheon - animation Mecca (1)
* Chungmuro - Mecca of movie making in Korea (1)
* Daechi-dong - mecca of private education in Korea (1)
* Daegu - Mecca of Asian musical industry (1)
* Daegu - Mecca of knowledge-based industries (1)
* Daehangno - theater mecca, underground culture mecca (1)
* Daejeon - mecca of call centers (1)
* Daejeon - Mecca of space industry (1)
* Dongdaemun - Fashion mecca (1)
* Dongdaemun Stadium - Mecca for high school baseball (1)
* Edae-ap - mecca for beauty salons (1)
* Gangnam - Mecca for real estate speculation (1)
* Gimpo Airport - Kimchi mecca (1)
* Gimpo Airport - shopping mecca (1) (2)
* Gocheong-dong domed stadium - new baseball mecca (1)
* Gumi - Mecca for cell phone production (1)
* Gunsan - mecca for migratory bird watching (1)
* Gwanghwamun - Mecca for Korean soccer (1)
* Gwangju - Asian mecca for culture and arts (1)
* Gwangju - World Mecca of kimchi (1)
* Gyeonggi-do - a Mecca of cutting-edge industries second only to Silicon Valley (1)
* Hallyuwood - Asian entertainment mecca (1)
* Hantaek Botanical Garden - Yongin's horticultural mecca (1)
* Hoehyeon stamp shopping center - mecca for stamp collectors (1)
* Hongdae - mecca for clubbers (1)

Now, at 10 clubs in the area that play hip-hop or techno dance music, if you look like you may be a GI you must show identification to prove that you're not one before you can enter. And some other bars in Hongdae -- such as "Elvis" and "Doors," ironically -- have even banned all foreigners.

* Hongdae - mecca for tattoo artists who majored in fine art (1)
* Hong-ik University - the mecca of avant garde art in Korea (1)
* Icheon - Mecca of Korean ceramics (1)
* Insa-dong - a mecca for tourists seeking a taste of traditional Korea (1)
* Insa-dong - Seoul's cultural mecca (1)
* Itaewon - Seoul's restaurant mecca (1)
* Itaewon, alley behind Hamilton Hotel - mecca of fine-dining (1)
* IT Venture Tower - mecca for information security and non-memory semiconductors in Korea (1)
* Jangheung - Mecca of Korean Literature (1)
* Jara-do - Korea's camping mecca (1)
* Jeju - East Asian mecca of medical tourism (1)
* Jeju - Mecca for world peace (1)
* Jeju - Mecca of English education (1), (2)
* Jeju National Museum - the Mecca of research on island cultures (1)
* Jeonju - mecca of Korean cuisine (1)
* Jongno - mecca of jewelry industry of Korea (1)
* Kongju - Education mecca for ethnic Koreans (1)
* Korea - Mecca of cosmetic surgery (1)
* Korea Maritime University - Mecca for mariners (1)



* Milyang - Mecca of the arts (1)
* Muju - mecca of sports and scenic settings for the global community (1)
* Muju - Mecca of Taekwondo (1)
* Myeongdong - mecca for luxury items (1)
* Myeongdong - tourist mecca (1)

Min Byung-hwa, design manager for Koolhaas, said, "The common belief about their being a relationship between the skirt length and the economy seems to be true," adding that, "people tend to go for cute and active styles that take their minds off the faltering economy."

Min continued by saying that, "the 'school girl' look, which cropped up last Fall, has also fueled the popularity for the mini-skirt boom."

* Namhae - sports Mecca (1)
* Naro Space Center - Mecca for Korea's rocket development and space exploration program (1)
* New York City - a Mecca for the Dokdo campaign (1)
* Nonhyeon-dong - mecca for stylish furniture (1)
* Osong Complex - Mecca of Asia's biotech industry (1)
* Pagoda Cinema - mecca for the gay community (1)
* Pyeongchang - mecca for local skiiers (1)
* Pyeongchang - Winter sports mecca of Asia (1)
* Pusan International Film Festival - mecca of film (1)

Calling any cultural event a “Mecca” for its fans is one of the more tired cliches in journalism. However, for PIFF, the cliche has often been strangely appropriate.

* Rodeo Street in Munjeong-dong - hot shopping mecca for Southeast Asian tourists (1)
* Seogwipo - sports Mecca (1)
* Seoul - cultural mecca (1)
* Seoul - design Mecca (1)
* Seoul - Mecca for Oriental Medicine (1)
* Seoul, between Gyeongbokgung and the Han River - Mecca of culture (1)
* Seoul Plaza - Mecca for candlelit rallies (1)
* Seoul's convention belt - convention Mecca (1)
* Seoul's gallery belt - Mecca of culture and art (1)
* Seoul's waterfront towns - Mecca for business and tourism (1)
* Seoul's World Cup Stadium - shopping mecca (1)
* Seun Sagga and Cheonggyecheo 8-ga - shopping Mecca for porno from 1970s to mid-1990s (1)
* Songdo - mecca for knowledge and information-based industries (1)
* Sookmyung Women's University - world Mecca to train English teachers and experts (1)
* South Korea - e-sports Mecca (1)
* South Korea - Mecca for internet gaming elite (1)
* South Korea - mecca of the semi-conductor industry (1)
* South Korea - mecca for young Koreans (1)
* Suwon - mecca of Korea's electronics industry (1)
* Teheran-no - mecca for high-tech start-ups (1)
* Wondang Ranch - mecca of milk cows (1)
* Yeoju - mecca for product distribution (1)
* Yong-In University - mecca for Taekwon-do education in Korea (1)
* Yongsan - electronics Mecca (1)

Yes, I did LOL at some of these, and I nearly pooped my pants when I found this article, about the Business Mecca Advisory Group warning that Korea has a ways to go before becoming a "hub":

Foreign chamber of commerce officials and Korean officials involved in investment promotion work issued a warning yesterday that Korea’s vision of becoming a “Northeast Asian business hub” faces some daunting obstacles.
The group put out a statement under the rubric of the Business Mecca Advisory Group, a body set up by the JoongAng Ilbo, the parent paper of the JoongAng Daily.
“We send our support for the vision of the Korean government and the efforts of the Koreans to make Korea a Northeast Asia’s Business Hub,” the group said, adding that there had been “remarkable improvements in the business environments” since the financial meltdown of 1997-98.
But to get there, the group said, a lot of work was necessary. Leaders of the American, EU, Japanese, Australia-New Zealand and Canadian chambers of commerce, Korea’s investment ombudsman and the head of an investment promotion agency are among the group; it also includes a former Korean ambassador to the OECD and the chief executive of Owens Corning Korea.
The group dismissed, as part of its “friendly suggestions,” the concept that Korea could succeed in becoming a regional hub by being “as good as” its competitors. Capitalizing frequently for emphasis, the group’s report said, “Only when Korea provides significantly better conditions so that as a New Business Mecca, it could rechannel the flow of foreign investments toward itself.
“Among others,” the group said, “Korea should be made the Most Open; the Least Taxed; and Financially the Most Deregulated; and the Most Transparent.”

Curry pizza, elephants, at Mr. Pizza.

Curry pizza is at Mr. Pizza, brought to you by elephants, belly-dancing Koreans, and happy brown people.



If I ever open a Korean restaurant back home, I'm totally going to get dancing geisha and a parade of samurai in my commercial. Exotic introduction notwithstanding, any chance this is different than the "curry" you can already get at a million other restaurants?

To be fair, I've eaten at Mr. Pizza twice---even though it's "Made for Women"---and aside from costing about twice what I'd like to pay, it's not bad.

Fire at Yeonhyang-dong 유흥주점 this morning, and other local news.

A fire broke out this morning at one of those singing rooms in Suncheon's Yeonhyang-dong, burning for an hour and doing 43,000,000 won worth of damage. The owner and five customers escaped without injury. Along those lines comes news that Suncheon police booked 50 in a bust at a local massage parlor. In May, according to an article from the 26th, Suncheon police booked without detention the owner, six women, and 43 customers at an 안마 in Jangcheon-dong. In case you're curious, the article says that the women took in 160,000 won each "time," with 75,000 going to them and 85,000 going to the owner. If this happened where I think it happened, I'm not sure what stopped police from busting the whole goddamn street.

In other Suncheon news, a painting at Songgwangsa will be promoted from treasure to national treasure (difference explained here), and the body of a 61-year-old who drowned last January was pulled out of the water at Juam Dam yesterday. And, they broke ground on the new culture center, which will occupy the site of the old express bus terminal and army base, across from Suncheon National University. Here's what it will look like when it's done:



When I first wrote about this in December it was named "시민교육문화공간" and was to open in June 2010, but the latest article says the name has been changed to "순천문화건강센터," and the opening pushed back a year.

Banks see expatriates as ___________ (fill in the blank).

Well, I wouldn't have put "gold mine" in there, as the Korea Times did today. I'll mention, as I did the last time the KT gushed about foreigner-friendly banks, that foreigners are still denied basic services at banks. My girlfriend, for example, has been rejected several times for an international debit card at Gwangju Bank, and 47% of respondents on a Dave's survey I started said that they either couldn't get an international debit card or were issued one that didn't work overseas.

My latest piece is in the Joongang Ilbo today, pulled together from the post "Chairman of the Presidential Committee on National Competitiveness wants to tinker with romanization." I got a call yesterday evening from the paper asking me if they could rework a couple things because they could not reproduce two of the characters I used: ŏ and ŭ. They're from kushibo's comment, which has thus proven itself ironic:

The problem prior to 2002 was not the Romanization issue itself, but the inconsistency in using it, as Gomushin Girl mentions. The ŏ and ŭ were a problem for some on their computers and in doing searches, but it would have been a lot cheaper for the Korean government to work with Microsoft and Apple to make ŏ and o mutually searchable than to spend the tens of millions of dollars they did changing signs and everything else.

Foreigner-only prison coming next month.

From the Korea Herald:

The Justice Ministry will open a prison exclusively for foreigners in consideration of the increasing number of foreign convicts, officials said yesterday.

The prison will be available as early as next month and the Cheonan Juvenile Correctional Service is presently being refurbished to serve that purpose, said officials.

Though some local prisons, such as the Daejeon Correctional Service and the Cheongju Women's Correctional Service, have so far accommodated foreign inmates, a prison exclusively for foreigners is to be the first of its kind in Korea.

The ministry will allocate a maximum of 400 well-behaved convicts to this new prison, which will be equipped with some 24 professional staff members who are fluent in foreign languages including English, Chinese and Russian, said officials.

The Times asks whether Korean prisoners will thus face reverse discrimination, and looks at some of the issues foreign prisoners face.

According to a recent survey, trouble in a multi-racial cells takes place more frequently than in racially homogeneous cells, suggesting the necessity of a foreigner-only prison.

Human rights activist Hwang Myeong-ho, who conducted the survey on prisoners at Daejeon Correctional Center, said, ``Each racial group showed antagonism to others groups. In particular, disputes between hot-tempered Russian and Chinese prisoners, forming the largest racial group, were frequent.''

A lack of understanding about unfamiliar religions worsens the problems, Hwang said.

For instance, a foreign resident who practiced Islam faced complaints from his cellmates over frequent worshiping at the workplace, he added.

The government expects the prison will ease the difficulties faced by foreigners when they try to communicate with the embassies of their home countries or their families.

The reverse discrimination line comes from lawyer Sean Hayes:

``I can understand the government's feeling that increases in the number and diversity of non-Korean inmates has led to a strain on correctional institutes that need to be addressed via segregation within a separate institute. However, I fear that this could lead to a successful challenge at the Constitutional Court,'' Hayes said.

He said a Korean inmate has already filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission, claiming that non-Koreans are being given preferential treatment over Koreans.

The idea of a foreigner-only prison sounds progressive, and certainly a country doesn't need to accomodate the linguistic or religious needs of its foreign prisoners, though the Times article does bring up a good point: where will they find officers who speak the right languages?

Professor Park Kwang-seop of Chungnam National University said, ``Finding officers who speak Chinese, Russian and Arabic is still difficult, even though the number of prisoners from these regions has been on the rise.''

Timely "Dear Abby" column on Romeo and Juliet and suicide.

I saw this in a copy of the Learning Times---put out by the Korea Times---at school the other day, though the column is of course not limited to or aimed at South Korea.

DEAR ABBY: My son was required to read "Romeo and Juliet" in his freshman year of high school. It has always bothered me that this play is considered good for teenagers to read, much less required reading. The story ends with Romeo and Juliet committing suicide, which is considered "romantic."

Teen suicide is on the rise. I believe we don't need teens seeing this in literature as a romantic way out of problems. What do you think?

Abby's answer posted below as a comment. Timely because of this, though Korean teens certainly don't need a movie to remind them of suicide.

A 25-year-old housewife killed herself in her bathroom in Suncheon's Yeonhyang-dong on the 24th. She was found by her 41-year-old husband. According to the NoCutNews report, her family was against the large age gap between her and her husband, and she was having problems related to her dropping out of high school five years ago. The article also shares some of the notes she left behind:

당신을 사랑한다. 먼저 가서 미안하다. 아들을 잘 키워달라.

Jeollanam-do men earn highest salaries in the country, Jeollanam-do people earn highest on average.

For the past few months I've been getting an extra 100,000 won per month from the Jeollanam-do Office of Education to help compensate for the poor exchange rate, though that still puts me at about half of the average. From the Korea Times:

According to Saramin, an online recruitment site, employees working in the southwestern province were paid an average salary of 68.85 million won ($53,400) per year in 2008.

This is almost double the amount earned by North Chungcheong Province workers, the lowest-paid bunch in the country, who made 38.94 million won last year.

Saramin's analysis of South Korea's top 1,000 companies' salary reports indicated that after South Jeolla, Daejeon (54.75 million won), Ulsan (52.66 million won), South Gyeongsang Province (50.25 million won) and South Chungcheong Province (49.81 million won) were the best-paying regions.

Then came Seoul with an average salaried worker bringing home 48.72 million won per year.

Behind the capital city were Gwangju, Incheon, Gangwon, Busan, North Gyeongsang Province, Daegu, Gyeonggi and North Jeolla Province, all paying in the range of 42 to 47 million won annually, the report said.

Saramin attributed South Jeolla and Daejeon's high rankings to the large number of oil-related companies operating in those areas, including GS Caltex, LG Chem and Hanwha Chemical.

There is a wide gap between men and women, though, and Jeollanam-do has the widest in the country with a difference of 36 million won.

Male professionals turned out to be best compensated in South Jeolla, where they received an average of 71 million won per year, followed by Daejeon, Seoul and Ulsan.

In the meantime, women's pay was highest in Daejeon with 39 million won, followed by Ulsan, South Jeolla and Gangwon.

Public school teachers improving their English at hagwon.

Actually when I glanced at the headline "More Teachers Hone English at Private Institutes" in the Korea Times this morning I thought it was going to be about public school teachers teaching in hagwon to improve their English.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said it has raised the budget to finance hagwon fees for 444 English primary and secondary schoolteachers in Seoul this year from about 200 in 2008.

Each teacher receives about 450,000 won ($350) in subsidy for three months. Of the 444 teachers, 204 are at elementary schools and 240 at secondary schools. Many other teachers are learning at hagwon without subsidy, and the number is expected to rise further.

Many teachers say they are feeling growing pressure to strengthen their proficiency, as they are required to conduct English-only classes by 2012 as part of government-led programs to boost English classes at public schools.

Oh You-hwan, 47, an English teacher at Paekahm High School, has attended an English-speaking class at a hagwon in Seoul since April.

``I want the authorities to offer various training programs for English teachers with greater subsidies,’’ said Oh, who has taught for 19 years.

Yoon Yeon-mo, 50, another English teacher at Sorabol High School, has found the subsidy is not enough to cover her hagwon fees.

``I can easily find other English teachers from public schools in my class (at the foreign language institute). Many English teachers are under pressure to study English, as they have to conduct English-only classes,’’ said Yoon, who has worked in education for about 25 years.

I wrote about those TEE certificates earlier in the month, and Chris in South Korea has a good write-up today. He brings up a Korea Herald article that has an interesting line:

The Seoul education office will begin operating the system in the second semester this year. Whether a teacher in Seoul has the TEE certificates will be disclosed to parents, many teachers are expected to strive to gain one.

On the one hand, I totally get that English class isn't about English in secondary schools, but that it's about teaching toward exams, thus making the language an obstacle in its own class. But, and this is me being a little cranky after a long day at the office, let me just say "oh, God forbid an English teacher is actually evaluated on his or her ability to use the language." Okay, that's out of my system.

There was a lot of news about English teachers in June; another story which intersects with this is the planned introduction of Korean English "lecturers" who will be able to teach English class in English. Actually, the news this month was that the government didn't attract nearly the number of applicants it expected.

But the interesting thing about these lecturers, and about these teachers with TEE certificates in the public schools, is that their will roughly coincide with the start of a domestic English test aimed at replacing the TOEFL exam. The Minister of Education said last year that he sees it being accepted overseas, like Japan's Eiken, though by showing how few schools actually accept the Eiken, I think I made it clear that the Korean test can only hope to be used domestically. News at the time said the test would be of "practical English skills,"

The government will introduce a state-certified English proficiency test from 2012 to improve practical English skills of students and eventually replace TOEFL and other foreign exam material.

and likewise these English "lecturers" would teach "practical English."

This year, it will hire 2,000 ``practical English instructors'' for elementary schools and another 3,000 for secondary schools.

I mentioned in my Korea Herald article last week, and in a couple other posts this past year, that these teachers, backing up this test, are not set up to fail like we are. Can you imagine how more successful native speaker English teachers would be in the schools if "practical English" were actually a priority now?

Spider Man shoots web out his ass, woman in bikini climbs up.

Sorry, but that's the only way I can describe this ad I saw yesterday in Busan for Daegu's "Spa Valley" waterpark.

English version of Wonder Girls' "Nobody" out.

The Korean girl group will be doing an American tour this summer, opening for the Jonas Brothers. Here it is dubbed over the original video:



HT to reader.

A little about being black in Korea, and hip-hop.

Professor Deauwand Myers is in the Korea Times this evening and talks a little about the hypocrisy between the acceptance of some elements of hip-hop culture in Korea and the discrimination about the blacks who inspired it.

Rain, Big Bang, BoA, TVSQ, Mighty Mouth, Dynamic Duo, and a very large majority of Korean pop music's brightest stars liberally borrow and copy African-American music styles right down to the fashion. If some variants of black culture are so desirable for mass Korean consumption, why aren't black people equally engaged as, at the very least, human, on a fair and individual basis?

Being foreign in Korea already presents challenges, regardless of complexion: getting a cell phone, credit card, one's own apartment and even certain bank services can be unnecessarily difficult because of one's citizenship. Being of color need not and should not be an added burden.

Some Koreans, and I say some because I have been treated quite nicely by a great and many people, should ``critically think" about their racial presumptions and prejudices. Where's the simpatico? The histories and experiences of Koreans and the African Diaspora are unique but not dissimilar, as both struggled and died to gain freedom and demand human dignity from brutal imperialist forces.

Yes, this debate happens back home, too, but I'll just direct your attention to the title of my blog. I think the above paragraphs are things we've all thought about while in Korea, and often well outside the arena of hip-hop: like when people in jeans, t-shirts, Converse, and perms chuckle at the foreigners.

I recall reading in a journal article some years ago about Asia and borrowing hip-hop culture that performers are imitating the domestic acts that have come before, not necessarily the Western groups that inspired them. So a new Korean quote-unquote hip-hop group coming out in baggy jeans is doing it because another Korean group did it, not because an American fifteen years ago made it cool. But one does run the risk of looking foolish by doing something so out of context. See the douche Crown J and his antics, for example.

The case of Ali Khan, sentenced to death in Korea for a murder he didn't commit.

Andrew O'Donnell of the Gwangju News forwarded some information to me on Wednesday about the case of Ali Khan, a Pakistani man who says he was falsely accussed of an Ilsan murder in 2003, was implicated by the real murderer, was tortured into signing a false confession, and was sentenced to death, which was then changed to a life sentence. What follows here is an overview of the information available, and word that what is needed now is people willing to look into this case further, and funding to hire someone to do so.

Because we are essentially hearing only the voice of the accused, through the filter of a limited number of other sources, I've tried to be careful throughout this post to simply show what's presented, without being accusatory or taking it as a foregone conclusion that there is an abortion of justice. I hope further information will accompany the growing interest in this case.

The most linear and coherent account of what happened comes from a piece O'Donnell wrote for the November, 2008 issue of Gwangju News titled "Introducing . . . The 'Free Ali Khan' Campaign" (here, as a .pdf file). A couple of excerpts:

The crime itself, in Salamat’s account, was initially committed by another citizen, a man named Tanveer (also from Pakistan, known to Ali Khan as ‘Vicky’), who Salamat and Khan vaguely knew at the time (in his ‘confession’ Salamat describes Tanveer as “a thug”), the motive being an argument over money, and the act itself being (initially) only witnessed by Salamat. The victim was a Pakistani citizen named Zahid whom Salamat had worked with in the past (Zahid was then working in a factory in Ilsan, near Seoul) and Tanveer and Salamat visited him on February 10th 2003 with the intention of robbing him.

. . .

Salamat’s confession makes clear that this was a common robbery conceived by Tanveer and naively supported by Salamat among desperate circumstances of those on the lowest rung of soceo-economics in Korea – a robbery that went disastrously wrong and ended with Zahid being hit on the head with a hammer by Tanveer, and finally stabbed by Salamat (who, in his version of events, did this at Tanveer’s insistence and feared for his life, and the lives of his family, if he did not).

The same evening, and subsequent to what happened in Ilsan, Tanveer went back to Itaewon, leaving a bag of bloodied clothes with an unquestioning Ali (Ali's letter's reveal a great feeling of regret on his behalf regarding the question of the bag, with Ali feeling a painful sense of his own naivety in blindly accepting something just because he was busy enjoying an evening out). Ali, of course, enjoying himself in Itaewon, was totally unaware that these bloodied clothes would consequently implicate him in the crime.

By the following morning Salamat, worried about what had happened, returned to the scene of the murder and was caught and questioned by the police in Ilsan.

There is a small blogspot site called "Free Ali Khan" active in 2006 and 2007, that collected some then-updates on the case. From a message from his brother, posted September 20, 2006:

[I]n February of 2003, Ali was falsely implicated in a brutal murder in a suburb of Seoul. The killer told police that Ali was an accomplice so that his real accomplice could gain time to flee the country. But unfortunately a brutal and incompetent police department combined with a series of other procedural errors resulted in the rapid conviction of my innocent brother. Ali was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

This all occurred in spite of numerous eyewitnesses who corroborated Ali’s original statement that he was nowhere near the scene of the crime at the time. Since then we have also obtained a full confession from the co-accused confessing that Ali was not involved and why he lied about Ali’s involvement."

The November, 2008 Gwangju News article has an excerpt purportedly from Salamat, known also as Sammy:

The police and I proceeded to set up Ali. I called Ali who was still oblivious to everything and told him to meet me in Burger King in Itaewon. When the police nabbed Ali in the fast-food restaurant, Ali’s worst fear was some immigration violation. They told Ali to take them to the knapsack. Ali happily obliged only too willing to co-operate and in the process he implicated himself. In the police station, he was cross-examined and Ali told them the truth, which contradicted my statement. The police then beat the hell out of him for 3 hours until he signed a false confession.

A post from October, 2006, brings up the subject of torture with with a proported account from Ali Khan himself.

“I was ordered not to speak, again. Asfandyar also received a sharp blow to the head for no other apparent reason except to instill fear into us. Up to this point, Asfandyar, Shahid, and myself thought that this was an immigration matter and had no other idea of what was going on.“

“At the police station, the police removed the handcuffs from Asfandyar and Shahid, but Sammy and I remained handcuffed. We were in the same room, but ordered not to speak. If we spoke, they struck us. I was then taken to an interrogation room alone. They asked me questions only in Korean. I told them that I don’t understand Korean. No translator was present. They beat me for awhile with their fists and feet. They also placed a broom handle behind my knees, made me kneel on the floor, and then jumped on the broomstick. The pain was terrible. I also had difficulty breathing because of a severe blow one officer game me to my solar plexus. They kept asking me which pair of pants belonged to me. I told them, “they are not mine”, which only seemed to infuriate them more. They were screaming and yelling the whole time. I pleaded for a translator.“

“Meanwhile they left me once in awhile to torture Sammy as well in a separate room. When I saw Sammy later, he was unable to walk.”

It continues with more after Sammy implicated Ali.

“When my turn came [to make a statement] the police typed a few basic lines and then began questioning me. I denied any involvement, so the policeman refused to type. This went on for awhile until the police got angry at my repeated denials. The police took me the interrogation room without a translator and resumed torturing me with punches and kicks to my head and body as well as the broomstick behind the knees technique I mentioned earlier.”

“In a semi-conscious state, I kept asking the police why they don’t ask Asfandyar about my whereabouts. So after awhile the police brought Asfandyar into the same room as me. He was also handcuffed behind his back. Unlike me, Asfandyar at the time spoke rudimentary Korean. Asfandyar told the police that I was with him the previous night and therefore it was impossible for me to have been involved in any crime up in Ilsan. The police got upset at Asfandyar and called him a liar. The police then proceeded to torture Asfandyar with a broomstick behind the knees as well as several blows to his body. A crying Asfandyar, who was visibly in pain, told me that the police instructed him to say that I approached him earlier to request a false alibi regarding my whereabouts at the time of the crime. The police also told Asfandyar that he would go to prison if he didn’t agree to this.”

“Anytime I spoke or tried to ask Asfandyar or anyone else a question, the police would hit me. My entire lower body was numb. I was falling in and out of an unconscious state.”

The blog's second post, from September, 2006, sheds light on where Ali says he was the night of the murder.

There are TWO KOREAN-CANADIAN MEN, who go by the names of "Vicky" and "Ricky", that were at The Rio that night with Ali in February 2003. It is unclear whether they were passing through as tourists or were English Teachers, a common occupation of foreigners in Seoul. At The Rio they were videotaping people they'd met, and Ali is on that videotape. This tape places him 45 minutes away from the scene of the crime at the time of the murder.

From the previous paragraph in that post:

He was seen by many friends and was talkative with many tourists and locals. These people were later disregarded by the Seoul PD as necessary to interview. Those that were questioned, Ali's closest friends, were beaten and threatened with imprisonment should they disagree with officer statements or the man who selfishly implicated Ali.

One of the big question marks in this case as I've reviewed what little information available is what's up with Sammy. There is a letter purportedly from him to the Free-Ali website; an excerpt:

Ali was a victim of circumstancial evidenses [sic] cleverly planted by the real culprit who is still at large. None of Ali's witnesses appeared in the court to prove his alibi. My own testimony against him sealed his fate. I want to request to the Korean Government to give him one more fair trial which I'm sure is not too much to ask when an innocent life is at stake.

Indeed he may have been a victim of circumstantial evidence, but let's not forget that it was Sammy who implicated him.

What people close to the case are looking for now are donors and for people interested in looking into this case. Again from the Gwangju News article:

In discussing the deposition with others the most immediate concern was that Khan’s lack of legal representation constituted a human rights abuse, and from this realization came the beginning of a campaign, that simply aims for Khan to receive a fair trial with the proper legal representation.

In addition to trying to get a fair trial, they're also concerned about his mental well-being. From an email from O'Donnell forwarded to me on Facebook:

Things have moved on with Ali and I, together with two [Gwangju International Center] interns, visited him on Tuesday. I'm now gravely worried about him. He is incredibly depressed and, even though we had twenty minutes this time (weekday privileges?!) my only lasting impression is a deep deep depression and an inability to hold his concentration for very long when in conversation with someone.

He veers between talking of God/ suicide/ mental and physical stress, and also the thought of going back to Pakistan, IF he can be released, no longer seems to hold any appeal. He's also very confused by the medical examinations he was given last month, and the absence of the results of them being given to him.

People close to the case are also looking to spread the word to as many people as possible, and have presumably also sent the same message to other bloggers. Again from the Facebook message:

I'll also send it onto Brian Deutsch and a number of other bloggers to see if we find someone charitable enough who's happy to receive all the documents we have that prove how his case was so massively bungled.

I've forwarded this to a couple people I know will give it proper attention, and I'm sure awareness will increase with this post, with the interview with O'Donnell on Michael Simning's GFN program on Friday morning, and with any coverage it gets in the local press, blogs, and messageboards. And while we all know examples of bad Korean policework, uncooperative authorities, and minorities getting screwed, what also needs to be proven I think is if this was in fact "so massively bungled" or just the consequence of notoriously-lazy cops not following-up on a liar.

The Gwangju News article concludes with:

From corresponding and visiting with Ali, what is probably the most positive lesson to be learned (and please feel free to send letters to Ali by all means) is that he does not blame the authorities, he does not blame the police, he does not blame Salamat, and, as a foreigner, he does not blame Koreans or Korean culture. He simply hopes to someday be free. Ali Khan has now been in prison for five years.

And includes his address.

Ali Khan (#3390)
P.O. Box 136
Yuseong-gu, Daejeon City
305-600

From the GFN interview Friday morning comes word of a "Justice for Ali Khan Bike Ride" from Gwangju to Daejeon---part of a larger ride across the country---on July 7th through 9th. More information is supposedly available via the Gwangju International Center at gwangjuic[at]gmail.com, and any details I get will be posted here as well.

Waterparks in Jeollanam-do.

It doesn't really feel like summer to me because school is still in session. However, by golly, summer is here, and it's high time to remind readers about the water parks in the area. I did this a little last year, but it's worth collecting all that information into one post this year. I wonder if I'd just rather spend a day at the beach, seeing how much these places cost and how relatively small they are, but I wouldn't be averse to giving them a shot in the spirit of trying something different (and because I like hotels). If you have visited any of these places, please share your thoughts as a comment below this post, because I haven't found any first-hand accounts online yet.

Out of all of them in the province the one I'd most like to visit is called Jungheung Gold Spa & Resort (중흥골드스파리조트), is in Naju, and if you've ever gone through the underpass that connects the Gwangju bus terminal to the other side of the road, you've seen pictures of it all along the wall. It's a large facility with slides and attractions on the outside, various hot tubs and spas on the inside, and a 36-hole golf course and condominiums in the back. The rides outside are named the Water Rollercoaster, the Family Slide, the Amazon River (what I've seen called "lazy river" at parks back home), a large fountain called the Aqua Player, the Wave Pool, the Tornado, and the Racing Slide. The Tornado looks bad ass, and, as Wikipedia says, is

a 4-passenger, 50- to 75-foot-tall enclosed slide which ends in a large, often multicolored funnel. Riders travel back and forth in the funnel several times before exiting into a splashdown pool.

The "Water Rollercoaster" is also known as "The Rocket." There are ten in the world, two of which are in Korea. According to the manufacturer's website:

ProSlide’s award-winning HydroMAGNETIC ROCKET™ has all the attributes of a roller coaster, but it’s pure water excitement! Utilizing a combination of water lubrication, downhill and uphill gravity and ProSlide's proprietary HydroMAGNETIC™ technology, this one-of-a-kind, four-person in-line water coaster will forever change the way people feel about water rides. As they experience the "magnetic pull" of the ascent, followed by the exhilarating speeds of the downhill drops, riders feel the "magic" of going uphill at top speed. The ProSlide HydroMAGNETIC ROCKET™ delivers a rider capacity of 540 or more per hour.

You can browse the indoor pools and spas by clicking here and going through the items on the sidebar. There is also a place for bungee jumping, though it may interest you to know that someone was killed doing it last summer.

It is expensive, though, at 43,000 won per person from June 5th through July. The website also lists information about shuttle buses from the bus terminal in Gwangju to and from the resort in Naju's Nampyeong-eup.

A big one opened last year in Yeosu's Soho-dong. The complex itself is called "The Ocean," and includes restaurants, condominiums, and a golf course, and the waterpark is called "Para Ocean Waterpark and Spa" (파라오션워터파크). It costs 46,000 won from now through July 17th, and like with other parks and resorts you'll find cheaper prices in the offseason. As far as rides and slides---which you can browse here---it looks comparable to the one in Naju.


A heck of a slide, the 17-meter-high "Direct Slide," from here.

Looks like a hell of a view, too. And I typed that in reference to the coast and the islands in the distance, well before I chose to include this:



Oh, that's not simply because she's hot, but also to demonstrate that not everybody at these places is in a lifejacket. The indoor facilities include a small wave pool; browse them here, and look around the sauna here. Take a cybertour here, and get prices and information on rooms here. There are shuttle buses that go back and forth between the resort and other spots in Yeosu, so click here and go to the third and fourth tabs for information.



There's a small one called 옥섬워터파크, pictured above, on the southern coast of Jangheung county, pretty close to the famed green tea fields in Boseong. It looks geared more toward families, but might be something to do if you're in Boseong or on Sumun Beach next door, both worth visits in their own right. Rooms are 40,000 for two, and other fees are listed here. Speaking of Boseong, there is small complex there, too, on Yulpo Beach, called 해수파도풀장. There's a Korean-language article with a couple pictures here.

Regarding beaches, I tried to get a survey going on waygook.org last year on the favorite beaches in Jeollanam-do, but unsurprisingly few users decided to participate. Myeongsangshimni Beach in Wando county captured three of the six votes, and from what I've seen and heard from others, it seems to be a local favorite among foreigners here. I'd recommend skipping the, um, "famous" Manseongri Beach in Yeosu, the "black" "sand" beach good for your girl parts. The one up the road isn't bad, though; a cab ride will cost you less than 10,000 won from the Yeosu bus terminal, and you can have the woman who operates the 민박 call a cab to take you back.

I'd also like to mention El Dorado (엘도라도리조트), a resort in Shinan county. It's on Jung-do, and certainly looks scenic. My girlfriend just got back and it looks and sounds very relaxing.

In the papers some more, and a little cranky so be careful.

I'm in the papers a couple times this week. I forgot again that my weekly Joongang Ilbo piece was out on Tuesday, so go ahead and give that a look. It's based off comments to the "Have they retouched your passport photos, too?" post. I was looking to do something not about teaching, and was pleased to find something I put up Thursday evening get enough comments to make the Friday deadline. I get sick of writing about teaching English all the time, and besides most people who don't teach or who aren't in Korea couldn't care less. That post, though, I think has broader appeal, in spite of a couple awkward edits.

I also found myself in the Korea Herald last night on the topic of the "unqualified" misnomer. It was a piece I had been trying to work out for several weeks, and when I submitted it I didn't think it had much to it. As I thought through the issues I not only became sick of thinking about the same old crap, but I stumbled onto some other ideas that I didn't have the time or the energy to develop. There are some glaring weaknesses in the piece, but whatever. There are two excerpts in particular I stand behind:

The ambiguity of the word "unqualified" is in part a product of the ambiguous role native speakers play in the classroom.

and

"Unqualified" really doesn't fit because native speaker English teachers do, in fact, meet the qualifications laid out by the government. There has yet been an effort to make proper use of native speakers in the classroom.

But the sentiment isn't groundless, and when people criticize "unqualified" teachers they're really talking about bad ones, an equally vague category of people who don't belong in the classroom, whose behavior is unbecoming of a teacher, and whose attitude toward Korea is unbefitting someone living overseas. Sometimes it's an issue of character, but more often than not it's an issue of training and preparation, of schools not really wanting a native speaker or not knowing what to do once they've got one.

Look, this topic has been done to death on the messageboards, blogs, and this site. People do need to ask themselves what the qualifications are to teach English in Korea, and whether their domestic or imported teachers meet them, But I'm not stupid, I'm not naïve, and I don't believe we're all upstanding citizens. I've been to Monkey Beach, I've been to Itaewon, and hell, I've been to teachers' orientation. I've met enough shitheads to make me wonder why I even bother sticking up for us as a whole. I'm also not foolish enough to think I was hired for anything beyond my passport, so even though my resume isn't bad, I know nobody has read it. It's no secret that a lot of us are brought in fresh out of college, inexperienced, and immature, and that it sticks in the craw of colleagues that so much money is going towards people who didn't even come here to teach.

Now, as I said I think a lot of the problems in the classroom stem from the disorganization, indifference, and even resentment we face that prevents us from being used effectively. I'm trying to bite my tongue a little bit after spending the day with a teacher who came in 10 to 15 minutes late each time, needed to be reminded several times to help the students with their work (it was test prep material, so two heads were better than one), and spent most of the period looking out the window. You really can't bitch about native speakers not being effective or professional when they're often stuck with people like this guy. This guy gets to write an evaluation on me, whereas he isn't held accountable for being a jackass.

But just as there are Koreans who don't deserve the title "English teacher," there are foreigners who haven't earned the title of "teacher." Most people realize that "unqualified" is a stupid word to use, most likely just a lazy translation that's stuck, like "Korean is scientific" or "bibimbap is spicy." And the people who don't realize that, well, to be honest I'm sick of getting angry emails from them so I'll let them stew in their own ignorance. When Koreans use "unqualified" they have no idea what the hell they're talking about. They have no idea how to evaluate a resume, how to work with a native English speaker, or what to make of communication-based classes. They're gonna hire the guy with the best tie and the girl with the brightest smile. When we look around and see Korean teachers beating students, controlling their classes through intimidation, shouting at kids, putting their students to sleep with lifeless lectures, and generally not giving a damn, we ask why all the attention is focused on us as a whole as opposed to the group that does the most damage.

"Unqualified" is tired, and the discussion needs to move beyond "unqualified." What we're really talking about, what it boils down to, is a conversation about what makes a good teacher. When Koreans talk about "unqualified" they're really talking about teachers who don't do a good job. They're talking about teachers who don't want to be there, teachers who lack patience, teachers who make no effort to adapt to challenges, teachers who belittle students, and teachers who show up to work dressed like they're ready for a flag football game. I'm not going to speculate on how many NSETs fit one or more of these descriptions, but suffice it to say it's enough to attract attention, even if we do realize that the media is out to get us.

A lot of this responsibility falls on us to step up. I regret not making myself a better teacher when I was starting out, and while I can make excuses that I was just a hagwon teacher, this attitude brings us right to the point. A good teacher doesn't need to be told he's useful, doesn't need to be told to take pride in his job, doesn't need to be told he's important. A good teacher takes his job seriously and does it for the love of the game. I'll be taking this topic out for a ride soon enough, as soon as I think it through a little more fully.

And the reason I write about this in the local papers, and keep coming back to it, is because schools and Korean teachers need to work us into the system, and I'd like to bring up these issues to more Korean readers. You can't hire thousands of people each year who've never been overseas before, stick them in a classroom, then bitch about it when they don't meet your expectations. You also have to create realistic expectations in the first place, create some sort of attainable goals, and work through them together with the native speaker. To show how this might be done---and I'm not suggesting redo the whole thing to accomodate some foreigners---I'll close here with the last paragraph of my Herald article, which is interesting enough, I think, to spawn an article of its own:

There are a couple ways to reduce the number of "bad" teachers, both domestic and foreign, that are beyond the scope of this column. But we might take inspiration from a bit of recent news.

The government has been recruiting thousands of Korean English "lecturers" to teach practical English, a change that will coincide with the introduction of a home-grown English assessment exam that will domestically replace the TOEFL in a few years. These lecturers have a better chance of success not because they are Korean, but rather because the system is not setting them up to fail.

Comments off, I'm not in the mood.

Heat wave warning for Jeollanam-do.

From the Joongang Ilbo, which says a warning goes out when the temparature is above 32 degrees Celcius for two days in a row:

The Gyeongsang and South Jeolla provinces have received the first heat wave warnings of the year.

The warning, which was issued yesterday by the Korea Meteorological Administration, comes 11 days earlier than the first one last year.

Temperatures rose to 35.3 degrees Celsius (95.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in Milyang and 34.9 degrees Celsius in Hapcheon, both in South Gyeongsang; 33.4 degrees Celsius in Pohang, North Gyeongsang; and 33 degrees Celsius in Suncheon, South Jeolla, according to the state weather agency.

Temperatures throughout Jeollanam-do were high on the 25th: Suncheon's Hwangjeon-myeon reached 35.4, Hwasun 34.7, Gurye 34.4, Gokseong 34, Suncheon 33.4, Mokpo 29.2, and Yeosu 28.2.

If you're stuck in Suncheon and can't get to a beach, why not take a dip in the sewage plant, as advertised on the Suncheon government website last summer?

THE SEWAGE PLANT IN SUNCHEON IS BECOMING VERY POPULAR AS THE PLACE OF DABBLING IN WATER FOR CHILDREN

The playground at the wastewater treatment in Suncheon is gaining popularity among students of kindergarten.

According to the city, the number of nursery schools visiting the playground of water has increased largely because of the heat came earlier than normal. Until now, the month of July, 3500 children, over 15% compared to last year, have fun from there.

This playground of water which was founded in 2004, attracts children with a water composed of various models of characters from comics and 12 types of attraction where children can have fun with the experience by games.

The city provides that there will be more children visiting with the beginning of summer vacation and really focus on the development of equipment and management of hygiene.

In addition, the city is planning to install a small pool, slide and a fountain held after the budget hundred million won, so that more children play in safety.

The facilities such as the artificial field of sports and in-line, the learning center on water etc, are always open to the public.

If you run a search for 순천하수종말처리장 you'll see it's not what the awkwardly-rendered name suggests, but that doesn't mean it's not worth sharing anyway.

Hitting a teacher in retaliation for corporal punishment not self-defense, court says.

From the Korea Times:

A former high school student has lost a suit which she filed to annul a school's disciplinary action against her after she hit a teacher. A local court ruled that a student hitting a teacher in reaction to corporal punishment did not constitute legitimate self-defense.

The Seoul Administrative Court Thursday ruled against the 18-year-old student, who graduated from a science high school in Seoul and is now a university freshman.

According to the court, the unidentified girl was taking a rope-skipping test during a physical education class last November. A sophomore at the time, she needed to take the test to graduate early. When the teacher did not let her take the test at her designated turn, she protested, speaking impolitely.

The teacher demanded she move aside so that other students could continue the test, but she refused. He then hit her on the head with an attendance book he was holding. The girl slapped the teacher on the cheek, and then the teacher attacked her with his hands and feet, causing her to receive medical treatment for 12 weeks.

The school ordered her to take six days of special lectures for disobeying and hitting the teacher. She accepted the punishment, but filed the suit later to annul the measure, claiming her action was legitimate self-defense against the teacher's improper instruction and corporal punishment.

The court, however, rejected her claim saying, ``It is wrong for a teacher to hit a student with the attendance book despite protest, but slapping the teacher on the cheek is neither a proper reaction nor self-defense.''

Actually I agree that slapping a teacher after the first hit was a bad move, but maybe that's because I've been desensitized by seeing lots of more, um, vigorous punishment at school. But Christ, how can a teacher beat a student bad enough to require 12 weeks of treatment and get away with it?

It also said that the school's discipline was not an abuse of its discretion even though the student received serious injuries inflicted by the teacher.

The teacher was earlier fined 3 million won and received a disciplinary warning, after the student sued him over the attack.

Wow, that's quite a message to send to teachers.

More on release of "Hebei Two."

On the 11th the Indian Embassy released the following statement regarding the impending release of the "Hebei Two":

Government of India welcomes the verdict of the Daejon High Court, Republic of Korea, delivered on 11 June 2009 in which the two Indian seafarers - Captain J. S. Chawla and Chief Officer Chetan Syam of the marine vessel "Hebei Spirit" have been held "not guilty" on the charge of criminal negligence leading to destruction of property. This verdict once again vindicates the position of the two Indian seafarers that there was no criminal negligence on their part in the accident involving their ship.

Government of India understands that the lawyers of the Indian seafarers have already approached the Prosecution for lifting the exit ban on them.

It is hoped that the exit ban on the two seafarers will be lifted and that they will be able to return home soon.

The Korea Times has more:

The two returned to India on Friday, June 13, two days after the verdict, receiving torrents of support and attention.

"The Hindu," a local media outlet that reported their arrivals, described the scene as this:

``While Captain Chawal flashed victory signs to the media, Chetan's younger son burst into tears, overwhelmed by the huge media presence. However, he later danced to the drumbeats of the victory rally held outside Mumbai's international airport.''

Chawla was quoted as saying, ``During the interrogation, I thought I would never be able to get back home. The interrogation was conducted in Korean, which we could not follow. Even the judge kept shouting at me; he was not fair. We also received little support from the Indian Consulate in South Korea.

The embassy denounced his comment as non-true.

The case attracted international criticism, especially from international trade unions and shipping management groups.

The international community has strongly objected to the rulings by the Korean courts, describing the guilty verdict as ``scapegoating'' and the sailors as ``passive victims.''

Ecologist Mark Shryock, who followed the case closely, once wrote to The Korea Times, saying, ``They are rapidly becoming international heroes, while at the same time Korea grows more and more unpopular. The irony is that while their case is gaining international momentum on a daily basis, in Korea, the imprisonment of Chawla and Chetan has prompted little interest.''

Shyrock had a lengthy piece in the Times in January, and to pick off where that excerpt left off:

But scrutiny of the case should be raised in Korea immediately because it is beginning to damage Korea's public image abroad. There has been much talk lately about branding Korea. Unfortunately, this issue is branding Korea in the worst ways possible.

The shipping world is starting to threaten the halting of all shipments to Korea. This is in addition to an already well-organized movement in the shipping world and India to create a global boycott of Korean goods.

The U.K. newspaper, the Financial Times, recently published an article saying that, ``If the boycott movement grows, Korea will be placed in a very serious situation, as it imports all of its energy from abroad."

Korea should be seriously concerned over this possible scenario. But Korea should also be concerned that at a time of a global financial crisis the international financial media is beginning to print speculation of the possible financial consequences of such boycotts.

I can say personally that I have met with a group of internationally connected bankers who feel this issue is already hurting Korea and has the potential to be catastrophic.

In addition to this, thousands have already gathered in protest rallies in India. Calls for a boycott of Korean products are now numerous and growing daily. This is now spreading beyond just the shipping industry and India, and is beginning to be heard in growing sectors around the world.

Toward the end he appealed to the "branding" angle, so near and dear to local politicians and mouthpieces:

To much of the rest of the world, this verdict is such a mockery of justice that collusion seems the only plausible answer. Korea needs to understand it can no longer afford this kind of justice and that the cultural need for this kind of justice had better be rethought.

This issue is not going to go away and the longer Korea detains these men, the greater the negative branding is going to be.

Interestingly South Korea and India are currently working on a free trade agreement, though neither the newspaper articles nor the Indian Embassy's press release make any mention of this case, which one would think would likely come up.

Shots aren't scary.

Gwangju kindergartners got acquainted with characters "예별이" and "예랑이" at the Namgu Cultural Center last week.

.

Young Koreans ignorant about Korean War, survey finds.

On the anniversary of the start of the Korean War comes news that

A survey of 1,000 adults over 19, conducted by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MPAS) in April, showed that 36.9 percent of respondents said they didn't know when the Korean War had broken out.

By age, 56.6 percent of those in their 20s said they didn't know when the war had occurred, while 28.7 percent of those in their 30s and 23 percent of those in their 40s said the same thing, it said.

``This is a very serious problem that more and more people, especially youngsters, are not well aware of or not interested in the Korean War, where millions of South Koreans were killed,'' an official of the Ministry of National Defense said. ``Pan-governmental efforts are required to make people understand properly about the Korean War and, in particular, educate youngsters about the war and history.''

Extra! Korea links to the Korean Herald coverage, which focused more on the involvement of other nations:

A total of 624 people, or 79 percent, said that they knew only five countries or less that sent troops to help defend the South during the Korean War. Only 55 people, or 7 percent, said they knew 10 countries or more.

The number of those who knew three to five countries was 443, or 56 percent of the total. A total of 142 people, or 18 percent, said that they knew one to three countries.

The number of those who did not know the countries at all or were not interested was 39, or five percent. Of the 39 people, 82 percent were 20 years old or younger.

The percentages of the respondents who knew that the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia joined the war were 97 percent, 84 percent and 77 percent, respectively.

The respondents were rarely aware that the Philippines, Luxemburg and the Republic of South Africa joined the war.

Here's another excerpt from the Times article:

The war broke out on June 25, 1950, when North Korean troops invaded the South, crossing the 38th parallel, the line diving the two Koreas. Twenty-one countries dispatched troops under the United Nations flag to fight against North Koreans backed by China.

The war resulted in a devastating death toll with at least 2 million Korean civilians killed, according to data. South Korea sustained more than 1 million casualties, while estimated communist casualties were 2 million. Casualties among the United Nations allies totaled 16,532.

I'm not sure if I should read something into their omission of the United States here, their 36,516 dead, their 92,134 wounded, and their 8,176 MIA. Sure, the effort here is to recognize the contributions of the many other nations in what is often reduced to a four-country war, but I'd be interested to see how many Koreans are aware of how much the United States gave to the Republic of Korea. For better or worse many both inside Korea and out hold the United States responsible for the war, but that doesn't nullify the sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Americans made.

Anyway, we found similar numbers last year when the MPAS looked at students:

The Ministry of Public Administration and Security said Monday that a survey of 1,016 middle and high school students showed nearly 57 percent didn't know the war started on June 25, 1950.

Moreover, 51 percent did not know that the war started with North Korea's invasion of the South. About 14 percent picked Japan as the nation responsible for the war; 13.4 percent, the United States, and 11 percent Russia. About 2 percent even said it was the South invading the North.

While the United States is regarded as the main ally of the country, 28 percent said it was the key ``threat'' for national security, 4 percentage points higher than North Korea.

Only 56 percent said they felt threatened by the North's nuclear weapons development, adding that the chance of another Korean War taking place was very low.

I liked the Joongang Ilbo headline from last June: "Teenagers are patriotic, but dunces at history." From the Joongang Ilbo today, a bakery in Seoul made cakes with the flags of the 16 nations who fought on the South Korean side.

Roh Moo-hyun t-shirt reaches French TV show.

A host on a French TV show is in the Korean news a little for wearing a shirt with a caricature of the late former president Roh Moo-hyun. The story is among the most-read international stories on Naver, and is on the front page of other news sites. As far as I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it's not a matter of taste but just that a t-shirt with the former president has turned up in France.





It says "사랑하는 세상" along the bottom.

Chairman of the Presidential Committee on National Competitiveness wants to tinker with romanization.

Hey, you know what'd help foreigners read romanized Korean? Picking a system and sticking with it.

Anyway, just for fun I plugged some different spellings into Google. I've only seen some of them used on signs, but I've seen all of them used in guidebooks and on "English" webpages.

Jeollanam-do - 121,000 results
Chollanam-do - 22,500 results
Chŏllanam-to - 7,370 results
Jeonranamdo - 2,490 results
Chullanam-do - 746 results
Chunranam-do - 409 results
Junlanam-do - 136 results
Junranam-do - 93 results
Brian in Jeollanam-do - 18,000 results
Gwangju - 1,170,000
Kwangju - 1,340,000
Gangjin - 108,000
Kangjin - 92,200

I didn't include Suncheon or Sunchon or Sooncheon or Soonchun here because there is a Suncheon in North Korea which would skew the results; well, actually it's Sunch'ŏn, as North Korea uses the old romanization system. Nonetheless you'll find it commonly used down here as well, and the messageboard for English-speaking Suncheonians spells it the old way. But, if you use that style and don't spell it with the thing above the "o" or the apostrophe it would sound like 순촌 or 순존, or even 선촌 or 선존, rather than 순천. The confusion is compounded by the coexistence of two romanization systems plus a bunch of hybrids.

Naked News could be all right.

Last month we learned that Naked News (알몸뉴스 / 네이키드 뉴스) would be coming to Korea. Today the Chosun Ilbo has posted photographs of the presenters.



If you subscribe you'll see a little more than what's shown above. From an article in May:

While South Korea is one of the world’s most-wired countries with widespread high-speed Internet access, the country has taken a stance over nudity and porn. Two years ago, South Korea blocked hundreds of foreign adult content sites and strengthened its obscenity laws.

Warda said that there most likely will be some hurdles with delivering news naked, but it should be well-received in South Korea.

"Like Japan they cannot show the pubic area, [but] appetite for all forms of adult entertainment is substantial," he said. "These are hardworking, hard-playing people."

I still think my plan for "Naked English" (네이키드 잉글리쉬) is ingenious. Koreans love porn---they spend more on it per capita than any other country in the world---they love gawking at white women, they love slow and awkward delivery of English, they love the internet, and they love giving the impression they care about studying the language. Plus, Son Jong-min, recently of Seoul's English radio station, is out of work.

New 50,000 won bill is here.

From the Daejeon Ilbo.

No jokes about bringing you yesterday's news, please. The new 50,000 won notes debuted yesterday, with Gwangju and Jeollanam-do getting 1150억원 worth.

The selection of Shin Saimdang was a controversial one, which I'm sure Google can tell you more about. One of the latest controversies was over the size of her face and whether the painting accurately depicted what her family believes she looked like.

The new note will make for thinner wallets---the largest denomination was the 10,000 won bill---and will, the Korea Times says, "shift transaction culture."

``Fifty-thousand-won will soon become the new standard in spending,'' said Kim Young-min, a spokesman of I'Park Mall, a high-end retailer, who explained that retailers are going to make all sorts of adjustments to make it easier for consumers to spend the new banknote.

For example, instead of selling one T-shirt for 35,000 won, retailers may start selling two for 50,000 won. Plus, popular 99,000-won promotions may be adjusted down to 49,000 won to encourage spending, according to industry experts.

A housewife interviewed by the Joongang Ilbo brings up another good point:

“The new bill will make my wallet flatter and lighter and I like it,” she continued. “But I am concerned that due to the existence of the 50,000-won bill, I will feel pressed to pay at least 50,000 won as congratulatory money when I am invited to a wedding.”

In Korea, the cash gifts guests bring to weddings and funerals are fixed according to custom at 30,000 won, 50,000 won or 100,000 won. There are also concerns that the new bill might cause businesses to round off product prices - for example, relabeling a good that now costs 45,000 won as 50,000.

A Dave's user brings up another inevitable shift in culture:

Will this cut down on foreigners pulling out their W300k gangster rolls at every opportunity?

Mixed-Koreans with "distinct skin colors" exempt from mandatory military service.

That isn't news, but it stands out in an article about a professor calling for the military to adapt to the inevitable rise of mixed-race Koreans approaching service age.

Those who have distinct skin colors, such as black or white, are exempted because they might have difficulty mixing with Korean colleagues at barracks, an MMA spokesman. But if an Amerasian or Eurasian wants to serve, the ministry can review his joining the military, he said.

As of last year, there were 148,000 mixed-race families in South Korea, according to government data. The birth rate of the mixed-race families is around 2.3 percent, up 1 percent or more over ordinary families, it said.

The number of Kosians eligible for the mandatory military duty is expected to increase about ten times to 2,200 over the next 10 years, said the spokesman.

From a 2006 UPI article, which like many items of the time contrasted the "Hines Ward craze" with the way visible minorities and biracial Koreans are actually treated:

The government said that a revision of the military conscription law passed by the National Assembly last June included the provision that mixed-race men born after 1986 could enter military service. The law previously banned men who "clearly appear of mixed racial background."

Robert Koehler of The Marmot's Hole, in a comment on a Foreign Dispatches post about what the ban said about Korean racism and xenophobia, gave some insight into why mixed-race Koreans had been theretofore banned from serving in the military:

About the military exemption, the reasoning behind it is not that mixed-race individuals would be prone to treachery. Rather, the exemption is granted because--and with good reason--the authorities believed that social attitudes being what they are, mixed-race individuals would have an extremely difficult time adjusting to barracks life. Life in the Korean military, by most accounts, is tough, with hazing by seniors being pretty rife. The authorities--and they probably meant this with good intentions--felt there was no need to put visably mixed-race individuals in a situation where they would be beaten and abused for two years straight. Anyway, the government passed a revision to the military service law last year allowing mixed-race men into the military if they choose, and there is now debate over whether to ammend the law to extend the mandatory draft to them as well.

I'll close with the comments of Seoul National University's Kim Kwang-eo, in the Korea Times article quoted above:

``With the rise in mixed-race soldiers, the military would become a society where a variety of cultures co-exist, so many different problems might arise,'' the professor said.

He said the military should come up with measures to deal with potential problems with the envisaged multicultural camp culture. The professor suggested that the military establish special training programs on language, culture and others for the mixed-race conscripts.

Police issue summons to political cartoonist in Wonju for insulting LMB.

According to the Korea Times:

Police issued a summons Tuesday to a cartoonist who put insulting phrases about President Lee Myung-bak in a cartoon printed in a gazette. Wonju Police Station in Gangwon Province said it asked the cartoonist, identified as Choi, to turn himself in to the station.

The 44-year-old cartoonist drew a cartoon where members of a family pay respect to a monument of a soldier who died defending the country in the city's promotional paper.

Police have launched an investigation of the cartoonist since last Friday after city government officials filed a complaint against him for ``interference with business.''

On one side of the monument, there are two abusive sentences subtly hidden in the form of patterns. One says ``he should be killed.'' About 22,000 copies of the ``Happy Wonju'' gazette were printed and delivered to residents there and in nearby cities.

Here's the cartoon, via NoCutNews:



This Naver blog, among others, has a photo with the words on the monument enlarged:



"이명박 죽일놈" and "이명박 개새끼" it says, sounding more like my students than a newspaper cartoonist.

A 33-year-old painter in Suncheon's Sangsa-myeon hanged himself at home on Saturday. He had been undergoing treatment for bipolar disorder for the past few years, according to his mother who discovered him.

Chinese Consulate-General opens in Gwangju.

Interesting news via GFN that the Chinese consulate in Gwangju was upgraded to a consulate-general (총영사관) last week, a result of an agreement between South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Chinese President Hu Jin-tao made last August. It becomes the second PRC Consulate-General in South Korea, in addition to the one in Busan. Neither the GFN blurb or the Newsis article it's based on have the specific location, but the latter says it is in Nam-gu, Wolsan-dong. The consulate had been around since March, 2007, though I hadn't known that until this morning. There is a website for the consulate-general here, in Chinese and Korean.

A write-up on the event says there are roughly 36,000 Chinese in its jurisdiction (Jeollanam-do, Jeollabuk-do, and Jeju-do).

Actress goes on MBC morning program, calls for legalization of marijuana.

Screen capture from NewsHankuk.com.

The Korea Times looks at Kim Bu-seon, who had an interview aired on MBC on the 19th in which she called for the legalization of marijuana. Here's a line the next busted English teacher ought to use, to try and appeal to Koreans' inflated sense of history:

"Marijuana is not a narcotic; it is technically an Oriental herbal medicine which Koreans have used for 5,000 years."

The screen capture above shows "대마초는 만약아니다, 엄밀히 한약이다," and other articles mention the "우리 민족이 5천년 동안 애용해 왔던 것" bit, though I haven't looked around hard enough for a transcript or a lengthy excerpt. The KT article says Kim has been busted several times for using pot, most recently in 2004, after which she filed a petition with the Constitutional Court that said Korea's laws violate the constitution. Other excerpts from the interview, according to the KT:

``Have you ever heard of any news that I committed a crime after smoking marijuana? I have never done anything harmful, as politicians or thieves have," she said.

The actress also claimed that marijuana use can be beneficial to people with certain medical conditions.

``If smoking it doesn't do harm to others, those who do need it, such as those suffering from depression or cancer patients, should be allowed to use it. Marijuana increases appetite and improves sleep," she continued.

``Korea has the highest ratio of death by suicide among OECD members. The nation needs to take marijuana as a depression remedy and make depression patients come back to society."

She also claimed that investigations into entertainers who smoke cannabis were politically motivated.

``Whenever the government has troubles, it uses drug-taking entertainers to divert people's attention. It is the best way to make entertainers and artists obey the government,'' Kim said.

Korea Times' Jason Lim on sensationalist reporting on the foreign teacher menace.

Good on Mr. Lim for this article, which looks at a nasty Yonhap piece on bad foreign English teachers, brought to English-language light by Korea Beat two weeks ago. An excerpt from that story:

Yonhap News learned from parents and teachers of middle school D in Jangan-gu, Suwon, where a native-speaker teacher from the United Kingdom came to school drunk and caused a disturbance.

The drunken teacher began teaching sex education to the students in words they could not understand, saying “the reason I’m not married is I don’t want to have kids like you,” and “Dokdo is Japanese.”
An English teacher named Choi who works at a high school in Jeollanam-do said, “they don’t know the basic purpose of education. During lesson song times they just sing songs over and over, 10 or 20 times. I totally fail to see how you can learn English through pop songs.”

English teachers who have to conduct lessons with native-speaker teachers say the biggest problem with them is lack of attention to lesson planning.

One teacher who was worked with a native-speaker teacher for 18 months said, “because elementary school students must be made interested in English, lesson preparation is the most important thing. But native-speaker teachers will prepare just two lessons in a year. Even that is for demonstration lessons.”

One elementary school teacher in Seoul said, “last year a native-speaker teacher who was at school for the first time was gone for a month claiming illness. Then for two weeks the teacher worked, then quit saying it was hard. Finally we went a semester with no native-speaker teacher.”

The Ministry says such native-speaker teachers are a minority, but statistics say otherwise.

Ministry statistics show that from January to April of last year 54 native-speaker teachers quit without notice or resigned for reasons including inability to fit in, work, and illness. That was the number for four months, and is equivalent to 160 in a year. Last year there were over 5,000 native-speaker teachers, a number that indicates a serious problem.

There are also not a few native-speaker teachers who have been caught with insufficient or forged credentials.

And here's a lengthy excerpt from Lim today:

The article gleefully cites the most outrageous cases of teacher misconduct to highlight the gross incompetence, negligence and outright lies involving native-speaker teachers. As an example, it tells of a middle school teacher from Great Britain who came in drunk and began to verbally abuse the students using words they didn't understand. One teacher supposedly told the class, ``The reason I'm not married is I don't want to have kids like you,'' and ``Dokdo is Japanese," while teaching sex education.

Gasp. This is indeed outrageous. Well, at least he didn't say Takeshima. That would have been unbearable and could have caused lasting psychological scars on these defenseless junior high school students. I did have one question, though: If the children didn't understand what the teacher was saying, how did they tell the adults what was actually said?

The article also lists other cases that are sufficiently shocking and disgraceful enough to deserve prime real estate in any British tabloid worth its name. But enough. Granted, the cases are probably not made up, but that's not the point; there is a bigger issue here than just bad and sensationalist journalism. The bigger issue is racism.

This article is not a search for the truth but a list of disparate episodes that have been connected in such a way as to create a narrative that is unjustified, inaccurate and dishonest. It's alarmist. Worse, it's outright racist because it attributes certain failings ― in this case, nothing less than a failure of character ― to a whole group of people based on the actions of a few individuals because they bear superficial physical resemblance, come from comparable cultural backgrounds, or share a similar language skill set.

This is unfortunate because such an attitude goes directly against the Korea Inc. stated attempt to transition itself into a diverse, multicultural and engaged workforce, ready to excel in a global environment.

I criticized Lim a few times in my blog's younger and more vulnerable years for what I considered bad writing on foreign English teachers, though he has delivered several quality pieces since then. I wrote a rebuttal to his piece "Why Not Korean Americans?," and it found its way into the Korea Times back in November, 2007. Go ahead and read "'Why Not Korean Americans' Way Off-base" if you've nothing else to do.

Professor Ben Wagner in the Herald, calling for Korea to "Abandon discriminatory HIV policy."

Go read Professor Wagner's piece in the Korea Herald, a piece that argues that the mandatory HIV tests for foreign teachers were instituted as a result of bad journalism, and that continues to harm Korea by portraying HIV/AIDS as a foreigners' disease.

Rather than promoting the idea that everyone, Koreas and non-Koreans alike, should seek voluntary testing for HIV, [the Anti-English Spectrum]'s leader is determined to manipulate the public's fear in order to promote his own agenda, even if it means putting the Korean population at risk.

As Shin Surin, the Director of Director of the AIDS Prevention Association of Korea, has explained, "the HIV/AIDS testing rate in Korea is low because people are afraid of the stigma attached to the disease ... As long as stigma, prejudice, and discrimination persist in society, it is easy to imagine that the HIV testing rate will remain low."

And as long as there are groups that seek to increase that stigma, prejudice and discrimination by portraying AIDS as a "foreigners' disease," Koreans living with HIV/AIDS will remain undiagnosed and unknowingly spread the disease in society.

If you haven't yet done so, give Professor Wagner's 69-page report a read as well.

(Updated) Mentally ill woman faced persecution in Korea, gets refugee status in Canada.

Though the article says people around the world know about this case, I did not until this morning. Some excerpts from the Vancouver Sun:

Canada has granted refugee status to a mentally ill South Korean woman and her daughter on grounds the treatment of psychiatric patients in their homeland is so inadequate, it amounts to persecution.

Mi Sook Oh, 42, initially sought refugee status in Canada by claiming she had been persecuted in her native South Korea by a church representative who had “poisoned everyone against her,” and she had been arrested and held three times against her will.

. . .

The Immigration and Refugee Board determined she was, in fact, persecuted — not by a church representative, but by a South Korean health-care system that mistreats mentally ill patients.

Oh suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and had been forced into mental institutions three times in South Korea without treatment or medication, the refugee board concluded.

Based on that mistreatment, the board granted Oh refugee status in October.

From an immigration and policy analyst and lawyer, Richard Kurland:

This decision means Koreans with mental illnesses can become refugees while other potential immigrants with mental illnesses who are seeking residency under categories such as that for skilled workers, could be denied entry if immigration officials determine the mental illness could be too expensive for the health care system or social services, Kurland said.

And from the consul at the South Korean embassy in Vancouver:

"I think the mental ill people are well taken care of in my country - better than in Canada," he said. "So I cannot believe her story."

* Update: Turns out she has been keeping a blog.

NYT on Korea's menswear.

"South Korea is shaping up as the next hotbed of innovative menswear" says the New York Times in a look at Korean menswear, its top designers, and its market.

The Joongang Ilbo always has neat features, and last week was one about tigers in Korean zoos and the challenge of finding mates for them. Who knew there were three Siberian tigers in Gwangju?

On the topic of wild cats, I've been having students read from a book about them for the school's afterschool English class. That reminded me of a post on Dave's from last summer about a teacher in Yeosu who came across a dead 삵 in the middle of the road. He explains that the Salg (삵) is a wild cat found in Korea, a fun fact I hadn't heard before or since. The Latin name is Prionailurus bengalensis euptailurus, and a search tells me they're better known as "Leopard cats."

Jeollanam-do looks to expand recreational boating industry.

A delegation from Jeollanam-do is visiting Australia to learn a little more about the recreational boating industry.

South Jeolla Province (Jeollanam-do) lies in the southwest corner of Korea and offers an ideal environment for recreational boating. The area features secluded bays and offshore islands and is at the southernmost point of the Korean peninsula. The province is a hub for the shipbuilding industry in Korea and features a number of active recreational boat and yacht manufacturers. The World Expo 2012 will be held in the province as well as the inaugural Korean F1 Grand Prix in 2010.

The recent Korea International Boat Show held from 3-7 June was a great success with total visitor numbers set to exceed the 300,000 recorded in 2008. The Show featured 438 companies including exhibitors, business visitors and conference delegates, representing 21 countries. Over 30 Australian companies traveled up to Korea for the event.

The marine boating industry is set to take off in Korea with its increasingly affluent 48 million population enjoying expanded leisure time. The sector is seen as an area of high potential growth and is currently attracting widespread government support. Some 26 marinas are currently planned for construction within the South Jeolla province alone.

Suncheon's getting a new Benisaf.

Time for you to make fun of me for being provincial again. There's a former clothing store near my school, in Suncheon's Geumdang neighborhood, that's being converted into a Benisaf. That'll be Suncheon's fourth, if I'm not mistaken.



When I came to Suncheon in 2007 there were only a few coffeeshops here, and even though there over three times as many today, when they build a new one it's still a big enough deal to warrant a post on it. Like the time we got a new Dunkin Donuts or the first Kenya. (Actually I just learned there is a fourth Dunkin Donuts, in Jorye-dong at St. Carollo Hospital!) But, this doesn't mean Koreans are acquiring a taste for the drink, just that it's become more fashionable for Suncheonians to choose these modern-style coffeeshops as a place to sit, talk, and have some dessert. The banner out front puts to rest any ideas to the contrary:

Benisaf gives you happiness rather than the aroma of coffee.

Apologies for the cellphone pics.

Han Ye-seul has the best face?

Koreans are deeply interested in face size and shape (1, 2, 3), maybe because their heads often look so damn big. Actress Han Ye-seul was voted the celebrity with the best facial structure (via Extra! Korea), according to a survey of aboug 2,400 people. Ye-seul is best known for being a Korean with breasts. However, I find her face a little weird, and I think before she accepts any award she needs to explain what the hell she was doing in that Cass Lemon commercial.




Am I the only one who noticed that last year? One of the runners-up is Kim Tae-hee, who is famous for being in commercials. She is an innovator on the small-face front, and shills for products that will give your face either a V-line or a heart line. Another runner-up was the woman I made fun of in April for having bug eyes and for posing with what looks like a dildo.

닦아다 means to clean or polish something.

See, my Korean's improving already! This comic strip in Sports Khan looks like a great resource. *cough*



I'm sure there are, um, better ones in the sports papers or the ones you get on the subway, but I just noticed this one while I was waiting in the aforementioned photo studio. The most ridiculous comic strip in a newspaper was one I found a few years ago in one of those subway dailies, and even though I'm foul-mouthed on this blog, I can't even bring myself to describe it here. Maybe I'll save it for the comments.

Team led by Hwang Woo-suk clones 9/11 hero dog.

A picture of the five puppies Trust, Solace, Prodigy, Valor and Dejavu, from AFP. They're either named after virtues or love motels.

From AFP:

Five clones of a search and rescue dog which helped locate people trapped in the rubble of the 9/11 attacks were formally presented to their ancestor's former handler.

James Symington, a former Canadian police officer, choked back tears as he formally took possession of the five descendants of his beloved German shepherd named Trakr, who died in April.

Symington was presented with Trakr's offspring after winning a competition organized by California firm BioArts International -- the "Golden Clone Giveaway" -- to find the world's most "cloneworthy" dog.

Symington said he hopes the puppies -- Trustt, Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Deja Vu -- will go on to follow in Trakr's footsteps.

"We're here to celebrate that Trakr's legacy lives on in these five beautiful puppies," he told reporters. "If they have the same attributes Trakr did, then hopefully they'll develop into world class search and rescue dogs."

Symington and Trakr arrived at the site of the World Trade Center collapse, commonly referred to as Ground Zero, on September 12, 2001 and were one of the first K9 search and rescue teams on the scene.

After working nearly non-stop for 48 hours, Trakr located the last human survivor found in the rubble of the twin towers.

And a little from MSNBC:

The retired Canadian police officer's first meeting with the German shepherd pups on June 14 was an emotional one, according to a statement released by BioArts International. "They're identical — down to the smallest detail," Symington said of the pups. "Few dogs are born with exceptional abilities — Trakr was one of those dogs. And if these puppies have the same attributes as Trakr, I plan on putting them in to search and rescue so they can help people the way Trakr did."

The cloning took place at Sooam Biotech Research Foundation [ed: 수암생명공학연구원] of South Korea and the procedure was led by Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk, who produced the world's first canine cloning in 2005. The process was an intricate one: Hwang's team replaced the genes in eggs from random dogs with genes harvested from Trakr. After stimulation, they grew into embryos and were then placed in surrogate mothers. The goal was to create one clone, CBS News reported, but five genetically identical puppies resulted from the surrogate pregnancies. The first of the pups was born on Dec. 8 of last year and the last arrived on April 4.

These articles don't do it, but most seem to preface the first mention of South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk with "disgraced." From the Christian Science Monitor's horizons blog:

A great story, right? Well, yes. But today some are raising questions about the South Korea company that helped BioArts with the cloning process. That company is headed by Hwang Woo-suk, a scientist who was publicly disgraced in 2006, after he claimed that he had successfully cloned human cells. A panel at Seoul National University eventually concluded that Hwang had fabricated all of the evidence. (Hwang is still credited with cloning the first dog in 2005.)

There you go. This reminds me of a story from last week, from the Korea Times via Extra! Korea:

Disgraced gene scientist Hwang Woo-suk has been a pariah in the science world since his landmark studies on cloned human stem cells were exposed as fraudulent.

So it's hard to say what the organizers of the Jang Young Shil Award of Science, Technology and Culture were thinking when they decided that Hwang was the most deserving candidate for this year's plaque.

It was an obviously bold, if unwise, decision to name Hwang the winner of the award, which was launched in 1999 to honor Jang, the legendary Joseon Kingdom inventor.

However, Hwang was unable to participate in the awards ceremony at the Press Center in downtown Seoul, due to a previously scheduled court appearance.

At the Seoul Central District Court, Hwang was reunited with five of his former laboratory colleagues, as they continued their game of finger-pointing over who should take most of the blame for faking data.

My family bought a poodle---perhaps a poodle-mix, we're not sure---back in 1991, and believe it or not he was alive when I was home last summer in 2008. He still takes daily walks around the block, but admittedly he's in bad shape. If he were to die while I'm overseas, I really doubt my family would say anything to me over the phone, so I'm not exactly sure he's alive today. Regardless, as big a part of our family as he has become, and as cute as he is---brown miniature poodle with white paws and a white chin---I would find it very creepy to have five more of him made posthumously.

Have they retouched your passport photos, too?

A few months ago a Canadian teacher here came up to me in the supermarket and asked me if I knew anything about this, and I said I didn't. He said that his friend got some passport photos taken in town and the guy at the studio touched them up. I didn't think about that again until I myself had some taken yesterday. Sure enough I watched as the guy used the paintbrush tool to eliminate most of the space between the outer edge of my glasses and the side of my head. I actually just needed passport-sized photographs for an application, so I didn't press the issue, but because I simply asked for passport photos I wonder if this is a common practice.

Nice, um, sandals.

Note to self: hanging around Korean sandal models is an easy way to get upskirt pics under the guise of legitimate and professional photography. From the Korea Herald:



Similar results accompany shoe models as well, in a country where a product isn't new unless there's a young woman holding it, wearing it, or dancing around it. That includes toilets.

College students to teach at Jeollanam-do summer English camps.

Here's some interesting information on English camps in Jeollanam-do, and I wonder if it conincides with the decision to not offer summer camps to us this year in Suncheon. The Jeollanam-do Office of Education will be bringing in 70 students and college graduates from the University of Missouri and 70 students from Portland State University to teach the two sessions this summer (another document said 65). They will be paired with college students from the Gwangju National University of Education and with Korean English teachers in the province. According to one blogger gearing up for the camp it's volunteer work, and another says all expenses are paid.

Below is some information in Korean, a memo from May that I took off another blog, but wanted to repost it for posterity.

전남 원어민 영어캠프 5개소 1천560명으로 확대【행정과】286-3353

-7월 23일부터 8월 14일까지…저소득층 자녀 20% 이상 선발-

전라남도는 7월 23일부터 8월 14일까지 전남과학대학 등 5개소에서 농어촌 저소득층 등 초․중생 1천560명을 대상으로 전남영어체험캠프를 실시한다고 21일 밝혔다.

전남도교육청과 공동으로 추진하는 영어체험캠프는 지난 2007년부터 시작해 올해로 3회째로 초등학교 6학년 780명, 중학교 2학년 780명 등 5개소 1천560명이 참여하며 이중 저소득층 자녀 20% 이상을 선발할 계획이다.

이는 지난해 4개소 1천272명보다 300여명이 늘어난 것으로 도농간 영어공교육 격차를 해소하는 효과가 매우 컸다는 평가에 따른 것이다.

원어민강사는 지난 2007년과 2008년에 각각 전남도와 교육지원협력을 맺은 미국 포틀랜드주립대와 미주리대에서 최소 실비로 70명을 초청해 도내 영어교사 및 광주교육대학 학생 등 80명과 각각 1명씩 배치돼 1대1 협력수업을 실시한다.

전남 영어체험캠프는 지난 2007년부터 전국에서 최초로 시행돼 적은 예산으로 많은 성과를 보임에 따라 전국적으로 영어공교육의 새로운 모델로 각광받고 있어 타 자치단체에서도 우수 사례로 벤치마킹 대상이 되고 있다.

최희우 전남도 행정과장은 “그동안 2년간 실시한 영어캠프의 경험을 바탕으로 올해는 학생들의 영어능력을 한단계 더 끌어 올리는데 최선을 다할 계획”이라며 “행복하고 신나는 영어캠프를 만들어가겠다”고 말했다.

한편 이번 영어캠프는 오는 7월 23일 전남과학대학(곡성), 전남도립대학(담양), 대불대(영암), 목포해양대(목포), 도청소년수련원(완도)에서 일제히 개소될 예정이다.

The last line says the five camps they have planned will be at the Chunnam Techno College in Gokseong, Jeonnam Provincial College in Damyang, Daebul University in Yeongam, Mokpo National Maritime University in Mokpo, and a youth training center in Wando.

Suncheon and Columbia, Missouri, are sister cities, which helps explain why there are a relatively large number of Missourians in Suncheon, and why students from their respective universities participate in exchange programs. Yeosu also has a sister city relationshp with Sikeston, MO, and Chonnam National University and Mizzou are sister universities (look here, too). The Portland State University page says that these camps are part of the practicum for their TESOL program; here's a bit more about that:

During this 5-week period, participants will gain experience in teaching English to South Korean school children. Throughout the program, participants will partner with professional South Korean English teachers in the classroom for lesson delivery. The mission of this program is to introduce the school children to native English speakers and to present to them experiential/situational opportunities to use their newly enhanced English language skills. Over 1,000 students from rural communities in Korea will gather at these English language camps scattered throughout the province to interact with and learn from native English speaking instructors.

In exchange for teaching, participants will receive international travel to/from Korea, room & board, 500,000 Korean Won stipend, international teaching experience, and an excellent cultural opportunity.

Approximate Program Dates: July 18 – August 20, 2009
Program Cost: $300 Program Fee, includes the following: 4 PSU credits (INTL 404 or FL 504, on a pass/no pass basis) International Health Insurance Coverage

It was interesting to read in that memo that people from these universities have taught summer programs in Jeollanam-do before. There's a little write-up from a PSU teacher in that university's Applied Linguistics Department newsletter (.pdf file); an excerpt:

For me, this was a great way to refresh my memory of what I have learned in the MA TESOL program and apply this knowledge to a real-world situation. I want to thank Kim Brown for her invaluable lessons on cultural sensitivity, tolerance of ambiguity, and remem-bering not to judge or make assumptions based on my own cultural values. This helped guide me through the challenges I faced andenabled me to be a better leader.This program was a great, but challenging experience for me. It’s not for everyone, but it can give you valuable experience teachingoverseas. If you are an adventurous individual that likes to explore on your own, this is not the program for you. However, if you have limited or no teaching experience and like things planned out for you, this could be a great opportunity. The program can also be taken for credit. Overall, I am glad that I participated in this program and feel that I have learned from the experience.

I do have to admit I was a little disappointed by not being able to do a camp this summer, and not simply because of the bonus pay. I've done week-long winter camps for each of the past two years and while I was a nervous wreck going in, I've enjoyed them immensely. I teach in two large middle schools and barely have a chance to interact with the 1,400-plus students I see each month or the 700 third-graders I once taught but no longer do. I see each class once or twice a month, I don't get roster sheets and barely learn any of their names. However at the camp I spent just about as much time with the students in my "homeroom" class in one day as I did with students at my public schools in an entire semester.

It's a good opportunity for these Americans, to see a new culture, do a little teaching, and get a taste for Korea without signing for a year. It's probably a little cheaper, though the airfare to and from the United States is still considerable. And while experience is an issue, as some of these imported teachers might not have any in the classroom, these camps are often so thrown-together that preparation and planning only go so far. We do plan materials beforehand---and I know I spent several long days putting together stuff for my unit on "Numbers"---though it's often done without knowing anything about the students or the facilities. I remember last year we all had to hurry up and put together lessons, and then we were taken to see the facilities at the Suncheon Youth Hostel. They have several small English Village-esque stations set up, but they were far too small to comfortably accomodate middle school students, which meant activities that involved moving around were out of the question. They didn't have desks or tables which made writing exercises inconvenient, and they didn't even come with whiteboards, which meant we had to rethink all the materials we originally designed.

In any event, that should shed some light on what's happening in the province. I also learned today that one of my schools has plans to hire a teacher from the Philippines to replace me when I leave in August, another cost-cutting move no doubt.

Herald profiles foreign family in Mokpo.

The Korea Herald takes a nice look at the Heaslip family, currently in Mokpo and off to Shinan county next year. An excerpt:

Foreign nationals either traveling or living in areas other than the capital city of Seoul tend to attract much more attention from the locals. But the number of those choosing to stay in lesser known towns or villages has also been on the rise.

Their main source of income is from teaching English to local children, which is lucrative enough to enjoy the serene life of the countryside.

The Heaslip family, with baby No. 2 coming next February, has chosen the islands of Shinan County, South Jeolla Province, as their next place to call home from next year.

"We are really looking forward to living in Shinan County as we will then have our own yard to garden, and grass for our son, Eoghan, to play on," he said.

Listing off the pros of living in Korea's countryside such as friendlier people, cleaner air, and less traffic, Heaslip also said there were cons, too of course.

"There are a lack of western amenities such as western-style restaurants and stores, as well as foreigners and English speaking Koreans, even at hospitals," he said.

The Muan Shinmun also did a story on him recently, though you have to log in to read the article.

"Unprecedented" indictment for hammer-wielding politicians.

Six months after the December Pay-Per-View, five lawmakers have been indicted for their role in the violence at the National Assembly.

Five opposition lawmakers and their aides have been indicted for brandishing a hammer and other implements at the National Assembly and assaulting or insulting governing party lawmakers.

The indictment comes about six months after they clashed with lawmakers from the governing Grand National Party (GNP) over the attempted ratification of a free trade agreement with the United States on Dec. 18. To block GNP lawmakers from tabling the FTA deal at a subcommittee of the Assembly, opposition lawmakers used a hammer and other tools to destroy a door to the panel room, which had been occupied and barricaded by GNP lawmakers.

During the clash, there was scuffling, individuals were grabbed by the collar and insulting words were traded.

The indictment is unprecedented, even though there have been numerous cases of violence in the Assembly over the last 60 years. The opposition parties denounced the prosecution for what they call politically motivated legal action. The violent scenes were featured in major daily newspapers worldwide.

Among the indicted ― without physical detention ― are Rep. Moon Hak-jin of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) and Rep. Lee Jung-hee of the minor opposition Democratic Labor Party (DLP) on charges of damaging public property. DP lawmaker Kang Gi-jung was indicted for obstructing the execution of duty, and GNP lawmaker Cho Won-jin for violence.

Some footage of the event:

I forgot that my latest Joongang Ilbo piece was in the paper yesterday. It's based on comments to the "Seoul wants English classes to be taught in English, will give TEE certs out" post. It was one of the few times that I had trouble getting it down to 600 words, as there was a lot of other stuff I wanted to include. I'd like to write about something other than English or teaching next time, and am looking at these two---this and this---posts about the love motel article in the Gwangju News, so, um, *cough* I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Infinitely yours, Seoul.

Um, okay.



If you're keeping score at home, the commercial's two protagonists do indeed kiss at the end. It comes in Japanese flavor, too.



It's better than that redunkulous "My Story" commercial from last year, but what does "infinitely yours" have to do with anything? Hell, neither Super Junior nor Girls Generation, the two groups featured in the English version, will be around next year, let alone for infinity.

Detained Australian u-21 lacrosse team wants to escape from Korean quarantine.

Thanks to Ben for pointing this out on my earlier thread about the Australian under-21 lacrosse team that is currently quarantined for swine flu in Suwon. Says the Sydney Morning Herald:

Members of an Australian lacrosse team quarantined in South Korea have made a video appeal for their freedom before they lose the chance to play in an international tournament.

The under-21 squad was quarantined last Saturday after a 19-year-old Victorian player was diagnosed with swine flu.

The sick teen was moved to a hospital about two hours away from Seoul. Fifteen of his teammates and 10 team staff remain quarantined in backpacker-style accommodation about 30 kilometres from the capital.

Eighteen-year-old Hayden Lee, from East Brighton, filmed the boredom of the players, who have not been able to go outside for five days, and posted the clip on YouTube.

To the sound of Queen's I Want To Break Free, one player beats his helmeted head against a wall, another jumps out a window, and another lies motionless as if literally dead bored.

Most appear wearing their uniforms while watching television or using computers on mattresses on the floor.

In an email to The Age, Hayden called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to intervene to get the team out in time to compete in the tournament.

"We still all have no symptoms and today we missed the first game of the tournament," he wrote early today.

Um, okay, while it must, dude, totally suck to be quarantined in a foreign country, I'm sure there are better ways to handle it. Here's the video, by the way:

The 2009 Asia Craft Fair will be at Gwangju's Kim Dae-jung Convention Center from June 22nd through the 29th. Not exactly sure what it entails because the website doesn't have much information.

Pittsburgh is good at sports.

From Sports Illustrated.

In the four years I've been in Korea I've missed two Pittsburgh Super Bowl wins and two Penguins Stanley Cup Finals appearances. I was a sports fan back home, but absence certainly has made the heart grow fonder, and not simply for Pittsburgh sports.

The Steelers two wins are great because Pittsburgh essentially revolves around football. Even the indier-than-thou kids I knew in high school love the Steelers, and the local newspapers devote considerable space to high school football and where the top student-athletes will be playing college ball. I spent a short time working for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in college, and it was really creepy being around thirtysomethings who talk about 17-year-old boys' stats and measurements, and pass judgement on their futures.

But living in Korea and seeing how fired-up they get for their national sports teams has provided insight into the pride Pittsburghers feel for the Steelers, and vice versa. Pittsburgh was one of the most significant cities in the country until the steel mills closed down, and Pittsburgh's identity during the bad times became mixed up in the Steelers. One reason "Steeler Nation" spans the globe is because so many Pittsburghers had to leave town to find work.

They are would-be steel workers who have improved their lot in life, but in doing so have had to leave Western Pennsylvania, but Western Pennsylvania never left them.

The quotation comes from a 22-minute video on "Steeler Nation" from NFL Films that touches on some of that:



I don't think we're at the point where we pack our suitcases full of pierogies and Iron City when we spend a few days out of town, like the stereotypical Koreans who eat nothing but ramyeon and kimchi when they take package tours, but you can find plenty of pictures of Terrible Towels in exotic places. I have one in my apartment, but I always forget to bring it when I visit someplace neat.

The video also gets into Pittsburgh's media obsession with the Steelers and the relationship to football with the city's self-image, something we in Korea can definitely relate to. Here's an excerpt from radio personality Scott Paulsen:

The news coverage of the Pittsburgh Steelers, in Pittsburgh, is possibly the most ridiculous imaging problem I've ever seen in local news. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying it's ridiculous. Let me give you an example. Of course, the big stories this past summer were Hines Ward returning to South Korea . . . and Ben Roethlisberger returning to Switzerland to find his roots . . . These were not only silly news stories, but they were the lead, the lead, the first story on every single newscast.

The Penguins win is significant because only a few years ago they were close to moving to Hamiliton, or Portland, or Oklahoma City, or Kansas City, or any number of places. After a couple losing seasons, brought about salary dumps in turn brought on by wreckless spending in the 1990s, and declining popularity in the US, Pittsburghers generally forgot about the Pens. The Penguins turned it around pretty quickly by drafting Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin, and Sidney Crosby.

The success of the Penguins and Steelers demonstrates how much there needs to be a salary cap in baseball. The Pittsburgh Pirates are a historic franchise, around for over 120 years, but now they're just known for being historically bad. They haven't had a winning season since 1992, and if they finish below .500 this year it will be a record. Their failures are due to bad trades, bad drafts, and bad free agents, but we can trace a lot of these back to their inability to spend money. The Pirates' 2009 payroll is about US$48.7 million; the New York Yankees' payroll is over US$201 million, and their two highest-paid players will earn US$51 million this season. The Pirates are considered a "small market team," though nobody considers Pittsburgh a small market for football or hockey. Hell, nobody in Pittsburgh even plays ice hockey. But because Pittsburgh can't compete financially with the Yankees, Mets, or Red Sox, there's really no point in them fielding a team at all.

The Penguins were bad enough to be able to draft high, taking superstars with high picks they acquired through trades or through simply being terrible. In hockey and football, players can make big contributions a year or two after being drafted, but there's not such a quick turnaround in baseball. And because first-round draft picks in baseball command such high salaries and bonuses, the Pirates can't even afford to draft the best players available. In 2007 they passed on Matt Wieters because they couldn't afford him and instead drafted the 5th-best pitcher with the 4th overall pick. *cough*

The Penguins also have a connection to South Korea in that the two ethnic Koreans to play in the NHL were drafted by Pittsburgh. Jim Paek played for them from 1990 to 1994, and Richard Park played 58 games for them over three seasons in the mid-90s.

You can find more Penguins photo galleries on their official website, and more links from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Mondesi's House.

Gangjin's heart-shaped strawberries.

So these were in Gangjin's paper last week. I'm not really sure what's going on there, but a quick search tells me that I didn't notice when they were in the news the first time around, back in February (1, 2).




The Gangjin Shinmun article says they're called "Love Very"---why why why---and they're grown in Gundong-myeon, to the east of the county seat Gangjin-eup.

In case you're curious, yes, I did teach in Gundong-myeon once a week, at a school with 51 students. In hindsight, that was pretty neat.

Memorial service held at school for Hwasun student.

An outstanding Hwasun county high school student killed herself on Friday due to bullying at school, says the Korea Times. They had a memorial service at school, and a few pictures were up on the news sites. The cameras got right up in there. I wonder who put the "Live life and enjoy it!" pencilcase on her desk.









Flowers also on the desk of the Gwangju 4th grader murdered last week in Damyang.

Not enough applicants for those "English lecturer" jobs.

Turns out the plan to hire some 9,000 Korean English lecturers---here and here---to teach English conversation in schools has so far failed to attract enough applicants.

Taken as a whole, the government appears to have succeeded in its recruitment drive: There were 4,543 applications for the 4,228 jobs this year ㅡ 1,963 in elementary and 2,265 in secondary schools.

But on closer inspection, the data showed that nine regional education offices were unable to attract enough applicants.

North Chungcheong had exactly 113 applicants for its recruitment quota ㅡ also 113 ㅡ while North Gyeongbuk received only 204 for its 274 posts. In South Jeolla, just 170 applied for the 208 jobs on offer in the province.

Additionally, applications for posts at secondary schools fell short by some 200.

The ministry admitted the shortage was due to the program's lack of promotion.

``Those who don't have teaching licenses can apply for a job, but it seems that many didn't know about it. Also, many teacher hopefuls with teaching licenses didn't apply for the lecturer jobs because they are preparing for exams for regular teacher positions due in October,'' a ministry official said.

The article goes on to mention that these lecturers would make 26 million won per year, but that teachers are choosing to instead work at hagwon. Though Kang Shin-woo says in this article, and includes quotations to that effect in others, that these lecturers would replace native speakers eventually, I still maintain that the first priority here is getting English teachers in the school in the first place. In rural areas especially there are not even Korean English teachers, as homeroom teachers pick up the slack. At two of the schools I worked at in Gangjin, for example, English was taught by the science teacher at one and by the physical education teacher at the other. Provided districts are willing to pay for these lecturers, I suspect they'd be headed there, first.

Nonetheless, a Ministry of Education official brought native speakers into the conversation in March:

The Korean instructors will receive about 26 million won ($18,882) in annual pay on a one-year contract and can renew for up to four years at one school. In comparison, native English teachers receive about 30 million won.

``Foreign native English speakers cannot teach students without Korean teachers, but the newly recruited teachers can teach on their own. We expect these instructors will replace foreign teachers over the long term,'' Euh added.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do teach by ourselves a lot of the time, yada yada yada, profound ignorance about what we do, yada yada yada, are these lecturers going to bring in extra money for the schools and so on and so forth. Look, I'm tired, so I'll just bring up a this one other point. One of the big challenges now is that NSETs are hired---at great expense, apparently, and great inconvenience---to teach English conversation in a system geared entirely toward placement tests. The schools have no idea what to do with us. When these Korean English lecturers do arrive, it sounds like the system will be more geared toward practical English, if the plan to replace the TOEFL with a Korean test goes into effect. You can't bitch about ineffective NSETs when you place them in a system in which they're set up to fail. If you're not going to use NSETs, not going to build their talents and strengths into the system, there's really no reason not to hire local teachers instead. And I'm not saying Korean English lecturers would do a poor job, or would necessariy be poor substitutes in the public schools, I'm just saying.

Two Wonder Girls drop out of school.

According to the Korea Herald, the two youngest Wonder Girls have dropped out of high school to pursue their music careers and gear up for their North American debut this summer. They will be opening up for the Jonas Brothers this summer, and will release an album in the fall. Here's a snippet of "Nobody" in English, in case you're interested.

It's only mid-June, and there's still a lot of ball to be played. But "comeback" definitely has a chance to crack this year's list of top ten most hated English words in Korea. According to the Korea Times, Girls' Generation is making a "comeback." Their last single was, what, six months ago?

(Updated) Australian under-21 lacrosse team quarantined in Suwon for swine flu.

Picture from the Joongang Ilbo, 6/16/09.

Yes, I know Suwon is not an hour north of Seoul, but I didn't write the article. An excerpt from The Age.

The coach of the Australian under-21s lacrosse squad detained in South Korea because one has tested positive to swine flu, says he's concerned for the mental health of some of the players.

South Korean authorities have ordered the other 24 members of the team and its coaching staff, who are showing no signs of the influenza A(H1N1) virus, to be isolated for seven days.

The group are currently staying at the Romada Plaza Hotel, in Suwon, about an hour north of Seoul.

A young man was taken to hospital and quarantined on arrival at Seoul airport after infra-red cameras detected an elevated temperature.

Co-coach Greg Mollison said the South Korean government informed him that he and the team would be moved to an as yet unknown hotel today, where they will be isolated in single rooms for seven days.

Browse the "Swine flu in Korea" category for stories about teachers being quarantined, in case you're just joining us.

More NSETs staying in Korea because of bad economy at home.

The Joongang Ilbo says, according to various recruiters here, that more native speaker English teachers are renewing their contracts because of the economic situation back home.

As North America continues to bleed jobs, more English teachers are arriving in Korea and choosing to extend their stay in the country despite its weaker currency and perceived threats from its communist neighbor, market and official figures show.

. . .

Indeed, for teachers looking to return home, especially those hoping to stay in education, there are few prospects.

School districts in the U.S. from Seattle to New York City have either made staff cuts or placed hiring freezes on out-of-district applicants, shutting doors on new grads and experienced educators alike. While few if any public school teachers are likely to lose their jobs in Canada, new hiring will probably remain slow until government revenues improve, according to Penny Milton, CEO of the Canadian Education Association.

For the time being this could mean an increase of, if not "qualified" teachers---whatever that means---at least of teachers who are actually interested in teaching and in gaining teaching experience. There was talk last year of allowing licensed non-native-speaking English teachers to get an E-2 visa in Korea to fill the perceived lack of "qualified" instructors, though it bears repeating that even a licensed, experienced teacher back home may not be prepared for all the challenges they'll face teaching EFL in Korea.

Anyway, a teacher from Jinju summed up her decision to stay in Korea a little while longer:

“I’m getting further away from pursuing my higher education goals,” she says, “but at the same time, [I am] getting more work experience and living rent-free in a beautiful country.”

Mom is Superman.

Moms do work hard---and in Korea, husbands don't help out---but I had to snicker at this S-Oil ad with Kim Nam-ju that ends with "Mom is Superman."



English makes me hard. *sigh* Kim is on the soap opera "Queen of Housewives" (내조의 여왕).

New York Times on Kim Yu-na's mom.

The New York Times did a thing about Kim Yu-na's mom, and the Korea Times did a thing on the thing, keeping up the frequent practice of covering any international coverage South Korea gets. A couple excerpts from the NYT:

South Koreans also have focused on the person they believe, more than anyone else, made it all possible: Ms. Kim’s mother, Park Mee-hee.

“I majored in Yu-na,” Ms. Park wrote in a memoir that has become a best-seller. “For Yu-na, I studied harder than when I was in school. I devoted myself to her more passionately than when I was in love.”

But this kind of commitment is only to be expected in South Korea, where parental involvement in children’s careers can approach obsession.

Twelve years ago, when a coach told her that her 6-year-old daughter showed talent in skating, Ms. Park embarked on her singled-minded quest. She abandoned her own painting lessons, stopped attending community meetings and restructured the family budget. All family resources were to be applied toward making Ms. Kim a star.

Six days a week, Ms. Park drove her daughter to skating lessons, monitoring her training and recording her mistakes. She forgot her husband’s birthdays and skipped her other daughter’s graduation because it conflicted with a skating match.

. . .

Working long hours and eventually ensuring that their children end up at the top of a chosen career is a dream pursued by many South Koreans. Here, a parking lot attendant whose son becomes a doctor or lawyer is more admired than a millionaire whose children do poorly in school.

The article talks about "skating moms" and "golf dads," so give it a read. The idea that Korean parents care more about their children than do any other parents in the world is something we'll hear every once in a while, something derived from this determination and obsession, and was revisited recently when the Korea Times wrote "Skating Moms Tougher Than Hockey Moms."

So a year ago today this started.

2009 Busan International Food Exhibition (부산국제식품전), June 18th - June 21st.

Anybody who likes food and stuff might want to visit Bexco for this exhibition. Just a reminder that you might not want to get your hopes too up on the international and food fronts, though, considering what the Gwangju version was like.

Missing Gwangju elementary school student found shot to death after being hit by drunk driver.

Ugly news out of Gwangju is atop the most-read lists on the Chosun and Jeonnam Ilbo sties. The autopsy on the body of a fourth grader who went missing last week revealed that the cause of death was projectiles from an air gun. The article in the Chosun Ilbo says that the boy was hit by a drunk driver on the 4th, loaded into the car, and killed in Damyang. A 48-year-old Mr. Lee was arrested, confessed, and led the police to the body, which was in a valley in Damyang's Nam-myeon, Manwol-ri. He said in the YTN video report:

"죄송합니다. 술이, 술이 취해 가지고 정신이 왔다리 갔다리 했어요."

Urban exploration in Suncheon and Yeosu.

Urban explorer Jon Dunbar paid a visit to Yeosu and Suncheon last month and took some great photos. When he came to Suncheon he checked out the Columbus Restaurant and the abandoned cafes next door. If the name sounds unfamiliar to you, you might simply know it as the abandoned restaurant shaped like a ship.

There are galleries for Yeosu, Yeosu Family Land, Odong Island, Abandoned Yeosu, Yeocheon, Yeocheon again, Choeun Plaza, and ColumBus. I was in Yeosu the day after, at the Tall Ships Festival.

Taxis for foreigners popular, according to newspaper headline.

Picture from here.

Not really sure what the Chosun Ilbo is basing this on, but it says those taxis for foreigners are "enjoying popularity":

Taxis exclusively designed for foreign tourists, which debuted in May, are enjoying popularity among their targeted customers.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government Monday said that the average daily number of reservations for these taxis from May 1 until June 4 was 15.3. Some 120 taxis are currently in operation exclusively for foreigners, and all of the drivers are fluent in English or Japanese. The average fare was W65,900 (US$1=W1,263), with 69.8 percent of all journeys being between Seoul and Incheon and Gimpo airports.

More in Korean here. I've done four other posts about them: here, here, here, and here. You can make reservations and get more information at the official website.

INTERTANKO happy at release of "Hebei Two," disappointed they're not exonerated.

Here's a press release from the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (INTERTANKO), via The Maritime Executive:

INTERTANKO is delighted that Captain Jasprit Chawla and Chief Officer Syam Chetan, Master and Chief officer of the Hebei Spirit, have finally been released after being held in Korea for 550 days since the accident in December 2007, and will be returning home within days.

That these men were held for so long is unjust and unacceptable, and support for their case has come from a uniquely broad coalition of the shipping industry – the Round Table of international shipping associations (BIMCO, INTERCARGO, ICS, ISF and INTERTANKO), The International Group of P&I Clubs (IG), the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), the Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association, InterManager, the International Maritime Employers’ Committee (IMEC) as well as the ship manager V.Ships and dozens of executives of international ship owning companies.

While we were pleased to see the Supreme Court reverse the Appeal Court’s decision to imprison these two officers in respect of the charges brought for destruction of the Hebei Spirit, we nevertheless remain surprised and disappointed at the decision to dismiss the appeal concerning the charges of pollution and to uphold the pollution fines. We are also dismayed that this pollution charge falls short of the ‘innocent of all charges’ verdict handed down by the Daejeon District Court in June 2008.

These two men acted in an exemplary manner during the Hebei Spirit incident, behaving in a way that was fully consistent with international tanker standards and practices which put the safety of seafarers first – as per the evidence given by INTERTANKO to the Supreme Court. We maintain that is unjust that these two men should have stains on their records when they should have been fully exonerated of blame and applauded for their behaviour.

We will therefore continue to back efforts to clear the names and reputations of these two men.

Ground-breaking survey of shapes, sizes, and hardness of love sticks.

One commenter to Korea Beat's post about the abusive teacher in Ulsan put up links from his own blog, where he has collected pictures of the assorted weaponry---"love sticks"---his Korean coworkers take to class. There are two photogalleries, here and here. My favorite is the goddamn plastic baseball bat.



Whether they're actually used for beatings, for noise-making, or simply for intimidation---a little of all three, from what I've seen---that so many teachers go to class armed does raise some questions about methodology and the student-teacher relationship. As NSETs we have our "affection" for students and our methodology challenged quite frequently, though I wonder why, if these things are so important, why domestic teachers aren't held accountable.

My apologies for the ambiguous title, I know it will attract people looking for something else. Most of you came here wanting to learn more about the "love stick" set at Dasarang Chicken, but unfortunately I don't have any follow up on that beyond my original findings: "it's really good."

Elementary school teachers' guides in English.

I just posted this as a comment in an earlier post, but in case you didn't know there are English-language versions of the elementary school teachers' guides. They're available online here, from the GEPIK website. As far as I know only the Korean-language guides are issued to schools. They're not entirely worthless to us: they offer insight into how Korean teachers would like the class to go, and also offer great "culture tips" such as this from Grade 5 Lesson 4:

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

The link has changed several times since I first posted it to waygook.org a couple years ago, so check back often. I'll also direct your attention to BarryFunEnglish, which has lots of supplemental material for the Korean elementary school curriculum, as well as some worksheet templates.

Sneaking out is for lovers. Skipping class is probably for lovers, too.

It's student-teacher season in school now, and there's a new group a few times a year. With the exception of one, who actually had the decency to speak to and be friendly with me, the others have . . . well, whatever the opposite of "given me hope for the future of English in Suncheon" is. Now, as I'll explain a little more after my contract is up, my one school is kind of ghetto, so maybe the culture there has something to do with it, but still, the combination of their poor English ability, their shitty attitude toward me, and their no-showing my classes has been pretty discouraging.

Anyway, they come from Suncheon National University, and I was reminded yesterday that they have a website for their English Education Department. I wanted to learn a little more about the English-language plays they put on once in a while, but was distracted---not like that---by the young woman in the picture. I was going to say that "Sneaking out is for lovers" might not be the kind of message they'd like to be sending, but they probably don't care.



She looks more like a "can I borrow a cup of robots?" kind of girl to me.


I took this at an E-Mart in Gwangju, but have seen them in Suncheon as well.

More fucking garbage in the papers about native speaker English teachers.

Here's more from Yonhap via Korea Beat. This is a juicy excerpt:

The increase of 3,000 people in two years is part of the rapid expansion policy, but there continue to be cases of native-speaker teachers who have poor credentials or characters.

Yonhap News learned from parents and teachers of middle school D in Jangan-gu, Suwon, where a native-speaker teacher from the United Kingdom came to school drunk and caused a disturbance.

The drunken teacher began teaching sex education to the students in words they could not understand, saying “the reason I’m not married is I don’t want to have kids like you,” and “Dokdo is Japanese.”
An English teacher named Choi who works at a high school in Jeollanam-do said, “they don’t know the basic purpose of education. During lesson song times they just sing songs over and over, 10 or 20 times. I totally fail to see how you can learn English through pop songs.”

English teachers who have to conduct lessons with native-speaker teachers say the biggest problem with them is lack of attention to lesson planning.

One teacher who was worked with a native-speaker teacher for 18 months said, “because elementary school students must be made interested in English, lesson preparation is the most important thing. But native-speaker teachers will prepare just two lessons in a year. Even that is for demonstration lessons.”

One elementary school teacher in Seoul said, “last year a native-speaker teacher who was at school for the first time was gone for a month claiming illness. Then for two weeks the teacher worked, then quit saying it was hard. Finally we went a semester with no native-speaker teacher.”

The Ministry says such native-speaker teachers are a minority, but statistics say otherwise.

Ministry statistics show that from January to April of last year 54 native-speaker teachers quit without notice or resigned for reasons including inability to fit in, work, and illness. That was the number for four months, and is equivalent to 160 in a year. Last year there were over 5,000 native-speaker teachers, a number that indicates a serious problem.

There are also not a few native-speaker teachers who have been caught with insufficient or forged credentials.

If stories about teachers who don't lesson plan or who come to work drunk are national news, then Yonhap better park a van outside each and every school to deal with its domestic teachers. Speaking of not knowing the basic purpose of education, let's make a contest of spending five minutes and finding as many stories as we can about Korean teachers abusing and harassing their students, or driving their students to suicide, or forcing them to cram material all day long for tests.

I can count on one hand the number of times a co-teacher has lesson planned with me in my three years in public schools. And that hand has zero fingers. If we're talking about elementary school teachers and lesson planning, like that one teacher is, let's not forget that there is a goddamn national curriculum with a CD-ROM and teachers' guide---in Korean, not English---with worksheets and cut-outs that means, wait for it, these Korean teachers do not have to lesson plan for the entire year except for demonstration classes.

Hell, given the rash of academic dishonesty we saw in 2007 alone, if we're talking about forged credentials we might as well subject our Korean counterparts to redundant checks. Fuck you. Put that in your goddamn paper. And after they're finished with it, some of the readers will use it as a pillow while they nap in the teachers' office.

Teachers back from Dokdo.

You'll remember that last month a group of native speaker English teachers through Gyeongsanbuk-do's EPIK program were supposed to take a trip to Dokdo. You'll also remember we twice read about another teacher's account of how shitty it was the year before.

When we arrive, we aren’t allowed to get on the boat right away, first we all stood in a group and the cameramen filmed us talking, just shooting the breeze, about the blah weather, and the fact that we likely wouldn’t even be able to set foot on Dok-do because the waves would likely be too choppy surrounding the island. After a few close-ups we were let onboard and the crew led the way to our cabins. Each room had 3 bunk beds and our names were on the doors, boys on the left and girls on the right. After claiming our spots and mingling in the hallway while a few were interviewed on camera (What do you think about Dok-do island? Do you think you will have a good visit to Dok-do? Do you feel Dok-do is an important issue?) we were called on deck for the funniest part of the trip…little did I know it was to be one of the last times we’d smile on board this ship. They gave us name tags with the now famous motto: Dok-do is Korean territory, and a picture of our flag so we could all see what country we were from, and then we were rounded up in front of the giant Dok-do banner (it travels) and instructed to wave our flags and say, in Korean, that Dok-do is Korean territory. Are you picking up on the theme? They were going to air this footage on t.v and we were all reasonably sure that we would be forever banned from entering the country of Japan after this little display went public.

The "Dokdo Inquiry" (독도탐방) was cancelled last month, but the teachers went this month from the 7th to 9th. One of them did a little write-up on Dave's; an excerpt:

The trip to Dokdo was kind of dissapointing. A 90 minute boat ride and we only had 20 minutes of photo time. In addition to that we were confined to the port area and couldn't go on Dokdo itself.

We had an awesome tour of Ulleungdo and did a lot of hiking. I endulged in Pumpkin Makeoli and a wide variety of Pumpkin Candies. The food was really good and the Dae-a resort where we stayed was just awesome. Ocean view and the rooms were pretty good too (bathrooms need to be cvleaned better).

The people on the trip were very cool and we all made great friendships with the organizers. It was sponsered by CBS Daegu and EPIK Gyeongbuk.

On a side note I feel that I should mention that many of us did question the lecturers about how Korea acts towards Dokdo and how it basically presents itslef. They took our criticisms and answered our questions to the best they could. One of the speakers presented us with a booklet about the debate and was terribly biased. He argued that Japan's aspiration for Dokdo is to reconquer the Korean Peninsula. He didn't answer my question when I asked for empirical evidence.

So overall I think it was a great trip and the stuff they presented to us was not as bad as i thought.

One of the drawbacks, besides being used as propaganda, is that the teachers have to write a 5-page, 11-point, single-spaced essay on it. Because I can think of nothing happening on the Korean peninsula that would be of more interest to the international community. *cough*

Hey Look, Foreigners in Kimchi!

Yesterday the Chosun Ilbo revisited an old favorite---white girls in bikinis at the mud festival---and today the news sites have brought out another: foreigners making kimchi.

Pittsburgh most livable city in the US, The Economist says.

Pittsburgh placed 1st in the US and 29th in the world. Three Canadian cities and three Australian ones are in the top ten. Seoul came in 58th. Plenty of other angles via a Google news search.

0.5% of people arrested or charged for drug-related offenses in Korea in 2009 were Americans.

That'd be a great headline. From the Times:

Police arrested or booked 2,965 people ― 621 and 2,344, respectively ― for drug use or trafficking during the first five months of this year, a 7.6 percent increase from last year, the National Police Agency said, Wednesday.

Of them, 345 were foreign nationals, a 95 percent rise from a year earlier. People from Thailand accounted for the largest portion at 233 or 67 percent, followed by 42 Russians, 14 Americans and 10 Chinese.

``Many of the Thai people sold or took drugs, such as yaba and methamphetamine, around industrial complexes where migrant employees work. They also grew hemp near the factories and smoked it,'' a police officer said.

No comment in the article about the motivations of the 2,620 Koreans busted, other than to say that some of the drugs came from overseas and were sold online.

Gwangju wins tourism award.

An excerpt from GFN:

Gwangju city has received first prize for the Promotion of Tourism, at the Korea World Travel Fair. The prize was awarded for the city's aggressive publicity for its sightseeing areas, as well as various international events such as the 2015 Gwangju Summer University Games, Gwangju World Photonics Expo, and the Kimchi Festival.

Really? I hope we're talking about domestic tourism here, because while I admit winning the 2015 Summer Universiade was quite a victory---at least among those who know what it is---I can tell you that finding English-language information about events, tourist spots, and news is quite a challenge. There is no English-language paper down here, for example, and even the Gwangju Kimchi Culture Festival website is only in Korean. But, I guess when you're a country about 83% the size of Pennsylvania, the far end is bound to win some local tourism awards.

Did Park Nam-sheik actually say what we thought he said?

So it turns out I have some readers over at the International Graduate School of English who read about the comments their president Park Nam-sheik made to the Korea Times through my site. To review, the Times did a fluff piece on the school, which trains Korean English teachers in modern techniques with the hope of evventually creating Korean teachers who can lead English classes on their own. One part in particular from the April 22 piece stands out:

The president stressed that a teaching license doesn't mean competence as an English teacher. ``Schools should open their doors more to those who can speak English well. Still many teachers are opposing to give opportunities to English teachers without teaching certificates to teach students at public schools,'' Park said. At the same time, he was very pessimistic about the increasing number of foreign English teachers from the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

``Most of the native English speakers don't have much affection toward our children because they came here to earn money and they often cause problems,'' Park said. ``If we need native English speakers, it would be better inviting young ethnic Koreans who have hometowns here. Also, we have to invite qualified English teachers from India, Malaysia and the Philippines as English is not a language only for Americans and British people.''
``Above all, we should produce qualified teachers who can replace native English speakers. I can assure you our school will produce such teachers,'' he added.

There are a number of huge problems with his statement, all worked into two sentences. There is the assumption that native speaker English teachers don't care about students, thrown out there with no explanation or support to back it up. Rather than being interested in teaching, we have simply come here to earn money. On the one hand I do resent the opinion that we're simply after money, a belief based in part on incorrect guesses about our salary and that we're given what's considered a free ride in exchange for simply being native speakers. But on the other, to echo something I've seen in subsequent comments here and on the forums, why should we apologize for working for money? Is it wrong to look for jobs that pay comparatively well? Is what we do any different than the thousands upon thousands of Koreans who have gone abroad to study or look for work? Sure, we all should be driven by a passion for teaching and a love for this great country, but when we look around at how domestic teachers behave, we're right to question why we as a group have our "affection" questioned.

There is the ambiguous "they often cause problems," which could be anything from womanizing and alcoholism to being uppity and demanding things like overtime pay or that employers honor their contracts. There is the mistaken idea that ethnic Koreans are better behaved than other native speakers, which ignores a number of things, like the prejudice against Asian faces in front of the English classroom, or the fact that a lot of the drug-runners and club-hoppers so demonized in the local press are, in fact, ethnic Koreans. Finally, there's the urgent need expressed to replace native English speakers, and though there certainly is a need for Korean English teachers competent and confidence in the language they teach, there is definitely a place for native Englsh speakers in the classroom provided they are used properly and wtih some sort of goal in mind. That is not to say there are not problems with native speaker English teachers, but it says a lot about the state of things here that the xenophobia of influential businessmen, academics, celebrities, and politicians find a place in the big papers without support, evaluation, or challenge.

People at the school tell me that this little paragraph caused a lot of problems, not only in the teachers' office---they do employ native speakers as teacher trainers, after all---but with clients. And it certainly gave negative attention to the school, which I'll admit I had never heard of until this piece, in what was supposed to be a glowing review.

But, people there tell me that, actually, Park didn't say those things. I first heard about this through Gusts of Popular Feeling, when he said he couldn't find Park's comments in the Korean-language press, and this was confirmed when I paid a visit to the school last month. Indeed I've learned that Park had prepared a rebuttal for the Times addressing these distortions. Chief among them is their contention that the reporter, Kang Shin-woo, fabricated quotations by combining separate parts of the interview into single lines and attributing them to Park. The "problems" Park speaks of do not refer to social ills, but were talking more about the bureaucratic headaches created by bringing in native speaker English teachers: dealing with paperwork, landlords, more paperwork, schedules, more paperwork, although a lot of that stress is probably aleviated when considering how much money schools get for hiring one.

The line about not showing affection is, according to people over there, a mistranslation of the Korean in which the interview was conducted, and the line about money is simply speaking to the number of college graduates who come to Korea not only to gain teaching experience but to pay back loans.

As I said, I learned Park had prepared a rebuttal to the piece but decided not to submit it. However, until it appears in print it cannot be taken as truth that Park's words were distorted or his quotations fabricated, and it must be assumed that he did in fact say these things and that the school is now simply trying to save face by saying otherwise. In light of some evidence, though, we can say there is one of two things going on, neither of which is good: either big-wigs and politicians in the English business in Korea have a deep-seated ingorance about who native speaker English teachers are and what we do, or the media has no qualms about inventing stories that sensationalize the foreign menace in schools. Either the decision-makers in the business are morons, or the media can't be trusted to report accurately on native speaker English teachers. Regardless, the result is that the people whom the public ought to look up to and respect are lying to them, and they should be made to account for their distortions. The reporter, Kang Shin-woo, chose not to reply to my email about the Park Nam-sheik piece.

NZ kicks out pregnant Korean woman trying to get student visa.

This should create some interesting conversation.

A Korean woman will be kicked out of New Zealand after being refused a student visa because she is pregnant – despite being willing to pay for her maternity care.

Sung Won Kim, 31, and her partner arrived on visitors' permits in March.

In April, she applied for a student permit which was declined because she was pregnant, Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman said.

He said it would be different if Ms Kim already had a student visa.

"It is also simply not true that if a woman who is already studying in New Zealand on a student permit becomes pregnant they are automatically required to leave the country.

"Each case would have to be considered on its own circumstances."

It was immigration policy not to grant student permits to pregnant women because it puts "extra strain on the health system," he said.

Today the Immigration Minister spoke to clear up some misconceptions about the case.

On behalf of the New Zealand immigration department, Dr Coleman has explained that the inaccuracies in the story have lead to a false view of the New Zealand immigration policy towards pregnancy.

"It has been reported that Sung Won Kim is in New Zealand on a student visa. That in fact is not the case. Sung Won Kim and her partner entered New Zealand and were granted visitors' permits in March. She applied in April for a student permit which was declined because she was pregnant," Dr Coleman said.

He further explained that New Zealand student permit holders are not required to leave the country, as contrarily described in the media this month, and that each New Zealand visa application is taken on a case-by-case basis.

However, New Zealand student permits are not granted to pregnant women because not only their study be inhibited during the term of their pregnancy and thereafter, but they will also place strain on the healthcare system and resources. Despite offers to pay for healthcare services associated with pregnancies, the Government cannot afford to have an open healthcare and visa policy for foreigners on a New Zealand visitor's permit.

And, since we're here, South Korea and New Zealand are currently working on a Free Trade Agreement.

"E-2 visa holders, once caught for taking drugs or sexually harassing children, were often found to be rehired at another school or hagwon."

The Korea Times says one lawmaker is pushing for "tighter screening of foreign teachers," though what he's suggesting is to simply maintain what's already in place.

A lawmaker proposed bills to strengthen the screening of foreign English teachers in Korea, Tuesday.

Rep. Choi Young-hee of the main opposition Democratic Party submitted the bills obliging foreign English teachers to present criminal record and health check documents, including HIV-AIDS tests, before they are hired at public or private schools.

Under immigration regulations, applicants for an E-2 English teaching visa have been required to submit those documents since December 2007.

``E-2 visa holders, once caught for taking drugs or sexually harassing children, were often found to be rehired at another school or hagwon,'' said Yeo Jun-sung, an aide for Rep. Choi. ``The proposed bills are to remove these loopholes from the current immigration law.''

Care to provide any evidence for that claim? Because if you refer to the statistics found in the NHRCK Report, you'll see that, well, there is none. You will see, though, that there were 13 foreign teachers from the "Big 7" countries arrested for drug offenses in 2008, and 34 arrested for "sex crimes," two numbers certainly not large enough to allow the word "often." Shithead. But I do wonder who has his ear, considering we heard similar talk last May from the Korea Association of Foreign Language Academies:

The association said the Korea Immigration Service (KIS) does not retain data on foreign nationals who have had work experience here. ``No hagwon owners want to work with unqualified foreigners. Most hagwon employers terminate contracts of unacceptable foreigners, those guilty of sexual harassment or taking drugs,'' general director Choi Chang-jin said.

``However, many of these `blacklisted' foreigners return and teach English at other hagwon. I have seen a foreigner, who was expelled on drug charges, return here within three days. This is because the government does not keep records on these foreigners,'' Choi said.

Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Coffee Bean are 1, 2, 3 in Korea.

I would love to see more statistics on this, but the Chosun Ilbo has data from a survey done in Taiwan that shows the top three coffee chains in South Korea are Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and Coffee Bean. The article is ambiguous because it doesn't say how, exactly, they're ranked. By number of customers? Revenue? Customer satisfaction? Popularity in a particular survey? Well, anyway, in Taiwan, the order is 85℃, Starbucks, and believe it or not 7-11 City Cafe. We read a little about Dunkin Donuts in Korea a few days ago.

In a timely turn of events, Zagat has released results of a survey that shows Starbucks has the best coffee in the US among fast-food chains. You can check the rest of that survey out here.

And in other news that turned up searching for "Starbucks" and "Taiwan," it seems that last week Starbucks was in some trouble over there because the website listed Taiwan as a province of China. As for a naming controversy closer to home, the map calls it "Sea of Japan" with "East Sea" in parenthesis.

It's Tuesday, which means I'm in the Joongang Ilbo. This one is about the stuff Avalon is pulling in response to the threat of swine flu among native speaker English teachers. As subsequent emails and comments have told, Avalon is taking employees' temperatures when they clock in each day.

Matt Robinson in the Joongang Ilbo today.

There's an article about Matt Robinson in the Joongang Ilbo today and about the effort of the quote-unquote foreign community in getting him the help, and money, he needs.

“There have been so many donations, from so many areas. From donation boxes set in businesses in Itaewon, people transferring donations through Matt’s bank account, and Matt’s Paypal,” said Lydia Cooper, an English teacher in Bundang and another friend of Matt.

“Some of them don’t know him, some of them never met him, and never even heard of him until now and they are using what they can and what they know to raise money for him.”

One individual donated $500. Most give 10,000 won. But as Lydia puts it, “everything helps.”

“I wasn’t expected this tremendous support,” she said. “I just can’t believe it. It’s absolutely amazing.”

Matt said he has been touched by the generosity of strangers. The phone calls he’s received from donors, he said, “renewed my faith in humanity.”

I'm glad his friends and supporters took the article in this direction. Some users on the Facebook group were being, quite frankly, assholes in trying to make his situation Korea's fault. A few excerpts from users on this thread on "The Media":

I don't know if someone else has already brought this up yet but why not get the North American media involved? They would love to get their hands on a story like this. Not too mention how it affects a large amount of people from the continent who come over here trying to help out the country and then have Korea turn around and try to screw over one of our own like this. I could see Amderson Cooper or Keith Olberman or even Bill O'Reilly yelling into the camera for 2 hours about how this is wrong in everyway, shape and form.

. . .

I was thinking about something similar. I could ask to do a report about it on our radio show. its called tbs efm and is a english radio station here in Seoul.

I also wrote my proposal to Sara yesterday. I hope she/Matt and my station agree. I think it could be worth to get some attention of the foreign community in Seoul, too.
The radio station is pretty new but a lot of foreign people are listening to it.

I am really touched by all this and could not believe such things could happen in our time. This is not humanly to me. Hope in the end it all turns out well for Matt.

. . .

This has gone too far already. Please take some photos of the supposed food they are giving him as well.

. . .

Ryan,Vanita & others this needs to go world wide. It not only how foreigners are treated @ hospitals in Sth Korea. There are other issues concerning foreigners in Sth Korea.

I expressed my objections about that angle twice on that thread, and surely if that was the group's official position from the start---it wasn't and it's not---I would not have encouraged people to pitch in. However, I didn't the tone of this sentence from the original Facebook posting:

Since he's on tourist visa, he can't get insurance. The Korean Bureaucracy has cleverly devised a system so that tourists can't have insurance here.

Personal info for 2 million Cyworld users sold.

From the Korea Times:

Police booked six people for selling personal information of about 2 million visitors to social networking site ``Cyworld.''

According to the Seoul Police Agency, last October they created a program that traces visitors to personal blogs on Cyworld and sent text messages or mail to about 16,000 users saying that they could check who visited their Web spaces for 10,000 won.

The tracing program provides the names, IP addresses and visit time of users. However, social identification and phone numbers along with other sensitive personal information have not been leaked, police said.

The individuals installed the program on each blog in order to extract visitors' basic information, then saved the relevant data in a separate database.

I wonder if there will be any fall-out. Last year Google was in trouble for exposing Korean resident ID numbers, with people using this "flaw" as another reason to hate on the foreign competitor. However, as Stafford at The Chosun Bimbo points out, the fault should lie not with google for finding the information, but for users themselves putting this sensitive information on webpages and documents to begin with.

Journalists sentenced to 12 years' hard labor in North Korea.

Breaking news on a story that sounds like a bigger deal back home than over here. An excerpt from Reuters:

North Korea said on Monday it had found two U.S. journalists guilty of entering the state illegally and sentenced both to 12 years of hard labor, a step likely to compound diplomatic strains with Washington and regional powers.

The female journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV, were arrested while working on a story near the border between North Korea and China.

"The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor," the official KCNA news agency said in a brief dispatch.

Analysts say the two have become bargaining chips in high-stakes negotiations with the United States, which has long sought to end the North's nuclear ambitions.

Feel free to post other relevant links as a comment.

More bad teaching, methodology in Ulsan.

Oh, I'm not talking about the 12% of native speaker English teachers who were not retained in Ulsan because of poor methodology and weight problems. I'm talking about this story, via Korea Beat, of an abusive Korean teacher:

According to the students and their parents on the 5th, the homeroom teacher, “A”, called the group in front of their classroom on the afternoon of the 3rd and used a tree branch 50 centimeters in length to strike them on their calves 30 to 50 times each.

The students who had their calves beaten suffered deep-red bruises and finally bleeding after their skin burst, their parents said.

The students and parents also alleged that the teacher forced them to come to school from 9 am to 6 pm on Sunday for study hall, leaving them unable to participate in their church or study arts and sports in hagwons.

The students also said that the students who did not abandon church for school on Sunday were also made to stay at school until 11:30 pm on weekdays cleaning the school and were beaten on their calves in proportion to the amount of time they were absent.

I'm glad "criticism is being considered." I hope she gets suspended for at least a weekend, and if she was made to stay home over summer vacation I would not think that too harsh.

Visually-impaired runner from Jeonju completes race in Namib Desert.

A short article about a man from Jeonju who lost his sight when he was in the army; an excerpt:

The 48-year-old municipal politician from Jeonju, North Jeolla, and the head librarian for the visually impaired in the city, completed Racing the Planet: Namibia, a seven-day survival race held in some of the most remote places around the world. This year, the race was held in the Namib Desert of Namibia, the world’s oldest desert.

The 250-kilometer (161-mile) race requires participants to carry their own food, clothes, water, global positioning system and maps, while enduring unbearable conditions including temperatures that can reach above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

A new entry for the "Nazis in Korea" category.

Looks like a guy dressed up as a Nazi officer for a Cosplay event in Seoul over the weekend, and raised some interesting questions for the photographer. I realize that people who dress like this in Korea probably don't hate the Jews, and probably just think the Nazis were good dressers, or that Hitler had a funny moustache, or something. So though they're probably not anti-Semetic, they are exceedingly stupid, and need to be called on it.

Browse the "Nazis in Korea" category---yes I have a category on it---for more on Nazi bars, Nazi commercials, and a Nazi mural in downtown Gyeongju.



And in case you're wondering how well a photoshoot with a comfort woman theme would go over in Korea, Gusts of Popular Feeling has your answer. If you thought "well enough for people to dress like a comfort woman in subsequent cosplay shows," try again.

Fundraiser for blogger in Daejeon, Mike McStay.

If you're in the Daejeon area and would like to help out another foreigner with his medical costs, there will be a fundraiser on Friday the 12th at "J Rock." You can learn a little more about what's he going through here, or by just reading the last few posts on his blog, but basically he had an upset stomach with some congestion, for which he originally took a laxative, but when he got worse and went back a few days later they found a tumor. He had one operation already and will have a second one on the tumor later. He seems like an all right guy, interested in staying on top of what's happening in Korea. But I'll admit I never cared much for his blog, even though he links to me a lot, because he copies-and-pastes others' posts in their entirety.

Anyway, if you would like to send a little something, you can this way, too:

Woori Bank
Account Name: McStay, Flynn M.
Account Number: 1002-929-503133

This "would you like a cup of robots" shirt doesn't express who I really am. I'm more of a "Yellow men can't rap" kind of guy.

Might as well put those low English test scores to use. From an article today about why T-shirts will be a popular fashion item this summer (go figure):

Practicality is the biggest virtue to hoist them as this year's top fashion item, industry watchers say.

``T-shirts are popular in the economic slowdown because they can easily make various styles by mixing and matching at cheaper prices,'' said Kwak Woong-il, a manager at Shinsegae.

``Customers in a weak economy have a stronger urge to find ways of expressing themselves at reasonable costs, and T-shirts exactly meet this need,'' said Yoo Jung-yoon, a brand manager of LG's TNGT. ``They are cheap, go well with many different items and also can be a very expressive item with flamboyant and expressive illustrations or phrases on them,''

Maybe be a little less expressive, though, when using a langauge you don't understand.





Or this one from Maru, which says:

GENTLY PULL
THE SAFETY SEAL FROM
MY VAGINA, REVEALING
MY VAGINAL OPENING

FOLLOW THE SANE PROCEDURES TO PEEL OFF
MY ANUS SEAL VAGINA AND ANUS OPENINGS WILL
HAVE A SMOOTH AND REGULAR RIN AFTER
THE SEAL IS PEELED OFF EXPOSING MY PUNK TUNNE OF
LOCE FOR THE FIRST TIME - TO

Korean fashion makes me want to die.

Tour de Korea comes to Jeollanam-do.

The Tour de Korea rolled into Gangjin today.



Stage 3 was from Jeong-eup in Jeollabuk-do to Gangjin county in Jeollanam-do. As I mentioned in April, Stage 4 will start tomorrow and go from Gangjin to Yeosu. You can get route information and estimated times for tomorrow here; it will start from the athletic complex just outside of Gangjin-eup and will pass through Jangheung, Boseong, and Suncheon.

Lee Hyori for Ocean World.

It's that time of year again, time to start thinking about waterparks. Or about their commercials, such as that new one with the 맛있는 Lee Hyori for Vivaldi Park Ocean World (비발디파크오션월드) in Hongcheon county, Gangwon-do.



We saw a little of her skin last year, too, along with the skin of white women in bikinis there in the papers. Here's last year's television spot:

Seoul wants English classes to be taught in English, will give TEE certs out.

The Korea Times has an article that says Seoul wants English classes to be taught in English by 2012.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said it plans to establish a system to ensure that all Korean English teachers can conduct English-only classes by 2012 from the current 58 percent.

Under the plan, the education office governing all elementary and secondary schools in the city will introduce a Teaching English in English (TEE) Certificate for English teachers beginning in the fall semester. The city currently has 4,678 English teachers at secondary schools and 3,800 at elementary schools.

``We will issue the certificate to teachers who are able to conduct classes in English and continue to encourage more and more teachers to acquire the certificate,’’ said Yoon Ho-sang, senior supervisor at the education office. ``Those who hold the certificate can get incentives in personnel placement.’’

These TEE plans are generally unpopular. Here's an excerpt from an article last year, though this one talks about the plan to recruit new teachers rather than use the ones already here:

Meanwhile, more than half of English teachers are opposing the introduction of "Teaching English in English (TEE)" teachers, planned by the government for next year. The government plans to recruit 23,000 TEE teachers, who will conduct classes only in English, over the next five years.

Korea’s largest teachers group, the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association said Sunday that 56.7 percent of English teachers negatively responded to the TEE teacher plans in a recent survey, while 24.9 percent said they need TEE teachers.

Among those respondents against ``English-only'' teachers, 46 percent said it would bring unqualified teachers to schools and 21 percent said current teacher levels are already enough for English education. The teachers' group questioned 425 English teachers at elementary and secondary schools nationwide between April and May.

TEE is unpopular because so few teachers can do it, because it requires such a departure from the normal teaching style, and because it takes some confidence to speak English in front of students. You'll notice how unwilling, if not unable, many teachers are to use English in class, not only because their English is poor, but also because the students will laugh at them.

I watched a TEE demonstration class last year and it was awful, just plain awful, because the Korean teacher led the class, barked the orders, and spoke most of the time while the native speaker modeled some dialogues and gave out stickers. However, this was a failed attempt at team teaching, though if TEE catches on it could ultimately mean more face-time with native speakers in schools. For instance, in public schools now Korean English teachers meet classes about three times a week, and do roughly one or two pages in the textbook a day. The textbooks aren't very meaty, and stretching the material out requires a lot of bluster and ultimately wastes a lot of time. There are only so many times you need to explain "can" and "can't," or other tedious points, and really these can be explained in very simple English or in a few examples of Korean. Reducing time used for, say, grammar or listening practice by half or two-thirds would open more time for meaningful English in class, either with a native speaker or a competent, and dare I say "qualified" Korean teacher.

Because I'm afraid of losing my title as "angriest blogger" this year, I'll just copy and paste a rant I wrote last fall on the topic, because I know you won't click through to the link:

And I know that one of the chief objections to TEE is that teachers students just aren't good enough to manage a class conducted entirely in English. But, you know, rather than plugging away at grammar and readings that neither the students nor the teachers can understand, why not aim for more functional English?

But come on, would you tolerate social studies teachers who couldn't use a map? Math teachers who couldn't do long division? Then why the easy-going attitude toward English teachers who clearly aren't proficient in the subject they teach? I'm not simply talking about being able to speak fluently---but is that really too much to ask?---or even being able to produce the sounds of English---of course a necessity, but one which most can't do on a regular basis---I'm also talking about being able to comprehend texts and use the basics of English grammar. Grammar is supposed to be their specialty, after all, but the idea of the Asian grammar expert so embraced by out-of-touch academic journals is clearly a myth. Why, then, is every utterance filled with errors? Maybe they just suck at speaking, you say, but then why is every newspaper, every magazine, every textbook, every advertisement, every commercial, every piece of stationary, every t-shirt, and every other scrap of English so heavy in errors and in awkward English? Perhaps Koreans just aren't good at writing, then. Sorry, but if you can't use grammar and can't recognize when it's used improperly, you don't know grammar. Time to hit the books again. I wish I could say bad English were simply a holdover from the older generation, but having dealt with younger teachers over the years I can say that's not the case.

What I like to bring up, though, each time people talk about TEE is that, as native speaker English teachers, are essentially required to do it each and every class. The challenges Korean teachers imagine are the ones we face each time.

Ah, so that's why I appreciate my body in the shower.

The Chosun Ilbo has information from a survey by Dove about how blood type corresponds to shower behavior.

Some 35 percent of blood type As said they have cried during a shower, while 55 percent of blood type Os said they think of the opposite gender. Of those who said they appreciate their body during a shower, 33 percent were blood type B, confirming the common belief that those with blood type B are vain.

A little more in Korean here.

Work n' Play gets the word out about free HIV tests.

A reader noticed this and passed it along. Work n' Play, a job site, is reaching out to the foreign community by running an ad atop its page for a free HIV testing center, the Korea HIV/AIDS Prevention & Support Center.



Now, there's nothing wrong with getting the word out about HIV, and a foreigner who knows where he or she can get a free, anonymous test is better than one who doesn't. However, because those who test positive are deported, people who might be at risk will thus be afraid to come forward. So I guess theoretically the test has only a 50% chance of anonymity.

The person who sent this to me asked what Work n' Play was really saying by putting up such a banner on a site used mostly by foreign English teachers. I do agree that in spite of the benefits of knowing where to get tested, it does send the message that we're, well, risky. But then again my site has advertisements for Korean dating sites, and though they are out of my control it probably doesn't look good for someone from a demographic so frequently stereotyped here as preying on Korean women.

In case you're curious, there's another testing center in Gwangju. I used to have stats for Gwangju, but the link's broken; this blog gives numbers for new cases in Gwangju from 2002-2006. Here are stats for Korea as a whole, though I can't find region-by-region breakdowns. There were 797 new cases last year. The UN says there are an estimated 13,000 Koreans living with AIDS here. The actual number is probably much higher because, as AIDS Prevention Association Director Shin Surin says:

Stigma and discrimination toward HIV/AIDS has also greatly hindered prevention efforts . . . [T]he HIV/AIDS testing rate in Korea is low be-cause people are afraid of the stigma attached to the disease . . . Saving face in Korean culture is very important, and the combination of low public awareness and the potential stigma associated with a positive diagnosis leads many people to not check their HIV/AIDS status . . . Prejudice and discrimination are among the worst fears of PLWHA. As long as stigma, prejudice, and discrimination persist in society, it is easy to imagine that the HIV testing rate will remain low.

You can find that on page 163 of this report (.pdf file), though I took that passage out of "The Wagner Report." Pages 24-31 deal with HIV/AIDS.

And, just to throw this out there, HIV-positive travellers are generally banned from entering the US.

"We are vampires": Pressian looks at drugs, women, and foreign English professors in Korea.

Pressian, in Korean, looks at native speaker English professors in Korea, a notorious womanizing, drug-taking lot. *cough*

* Update: Korea Beat has the translation.

Choi Jin-sil sued for being beaten by her husband.

Here's some justice system fail, from the Korea Herald via Korea Pop Wars:

Models who failed to maintain appropriate dignity as representatives of the products they represent should compensate for the damages caused to their advertiser, the top court ruled.

The Supreme Court reversed the original ruling and ruled in favor of a construction company that filed a suit against the deceased actress Choi Jin-sil, who committed suicide last October.

The company, upon hiring the top actress as their representing model in March 2004, concluded a contract stating Choi's duties to pay back 500 million won ($399,361), should she depreciate the company's social reputation.

However, in August, Choi appeared on television and newspapers with her face full of bruises, allegedly caused by the violence of her then husband and retired baseball player Cho Sung-min.

Choi and Cho, who had been living apart since 2002, divorced soon after the incident.

The advertiser company thus filed a suit against the actress, requesting for 3 billion won as compensation. The amount included the 500 million won in damages as stated in the contract, additional compensation of 400 million won and 210 million won in advertising costs spent by the company.

"The purpose of the brand model contract is to use the model's social reputation and images to draw the customers' interest," said the Supreme Court in the ruling. "The model's failure to maintain an adequate image constitutes a breach of the hiring contract."

Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

Parents say schools are overreacting to swine flu. Or, parents say keeping kids out of school is stupid.

Two ways to read this article from the Joongang Ilbo, I guess.

One elementary school in southern Seoul’s Seocho District sent a letter to parents suggesting that students who attend Chungdahm and show flu symptoms stay home for a few days. The school said that the absences wouldn’t be recorded, even if the students ended up testing negative for the new flu.

According to a source familiar with the school, at least two or three students per class attended a Chungdahm institute in the area.

The school’s recommendation rubs some parents the wrong way.

“It’s true that I was worried at first about the large number of kids in my daughter’s school taking classes at Chungdahm institutes,” said Park Jin-hee, a 36-year-old mother in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul. “But encouraging students to be voluntarily absent from school doesn’t seem right.”

Another elementary school in Gangnam recommends that students returning from trips or studies overseas wait about a week before resuming school. Seven days is the maximum latent period for the flu. Other schools are having health teachers check students for flu symptoms on a daily basis.

Choi, a mother in the Gangnam area who declined to give her first name, feels that the schools have gone too far.

“I appreciate the school's effort but I don’t think it will be easy to have my son take days off simply because he goes to the institute and coughs occasionally,” Choi said. “I was told that those infected teachers didn’t even get a chance to teach at individual branches since they were being trained.”

Gwangju girls undergo "barracks experience."

A group of students from Gwangju's Daekwang Girls' High School underwent two days "barracks experience" (병영체험) on Wednesday and Thursday, likely the most physically-demanding exercise since English class.






Photos from here, here, here, and here.

English Channel doesn't hire flu-infected foreigners.

English Channel, considered among the worst hagwon out there, is proud to let you know---"you" being the Korean consumer---that its foreign teachers are flu-free.

WSJ on Dunkin' Donuts in Korea.

Here's an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal today:

With their austere interiors, Dunkin' Donuts outlets in the U.S. cater to grab-and-go commuters seeking their morning caffeine fix. But in South Korea, breakfast is traditionally consumed at home and most customers are young women and teenagers who go for a snack in the afternoon or evening.

"I come to Dunkin' nearly every day after lunch to drink coffee," said Shin Min-hye, 25 years old, an office worker at a Seoul law firm who was sipping an iced coffee and eating cacao honey dip munchkins at a Dunkin' outlet. She was there studying English with a friend. "I like to hang out here because I can stay as long as I want to....I sometimes study here for hours."

Dunkin' stores in Korea encourage that kind of lingering with plush orange and yellow chairs, wi-fi Internet access and plasma-screen televisions. But Dunkin's recently named chief executive, Nigel Travis, said he wants to get Koreans into the habit of picking up doughnuts and bagels on their way to work in the morning. "The trick we need to focus on is how we build a breakfast business," he said.

The first challenge: creating a morning coffee habit in South Korea, where older generations favor tea. To do that, the company in April opened a coffee-roasting facility in Korea -- its first outside the U.S. -- so it no longer has to import coffee from America.

There are commercials all over TV for Dunkin' Donuts coffee with Lee Min-ho of "Boys Over Flowers," though until this morning I didn't understand that they were saying "Roasting." Regarding altering the coffee and snack culture of Korea, I can't say I like hearing executives talk about creating habits, anymore than I like spending 3,500 won for what the menu says is "coffee." Dunkin' Donuts is good for what it is, though, a clean, usually roomy place to sit, chat, and eat some donuts. I'd kind of like to see this style imported back home, rather than the other way around.

For a look at how McDonald's changed itself to meet the needs of its East Asian markets, or rather how Asian customers localized the McDonald's experience, take a look at this post from February, and the book Golden Arches East by James L. Watson. From a 2003 interview with the author (.pdf file), talking here about Hong Kong:

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, and therefore family-friendly, institution: No alcohol, no smoking, noprofanity, and most important in a place like Hong Kong, no triad gangsters.

And a little from the book about the difficulty of convincing Korean customers that McDonald's was actually a meal:

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[.]

I suspect Dunkin' Donuts and other Western chains have to do similar soul-searching.

Release of the "Hebei Two" near?

Lloyd's List, via the Free the Hebei Spirit blog, reported on May 28th that the "Hebei Two" will be released within two weeks, according to unnamed diplomats.

South Korea’s Supreme Court dismissed charges against the master and chief officer last month, but kept the pair in the country awaiting a lower court decision that the charges against them should be dismissed.

The widely backed lobby for the release of the Hebei Two had expressed fears that a lower court decision to dismiss the case could take anything up to six months.

According to Satnam Kumar, V.Ships' Asia managing director of ship management, there was a hearing of the lower court in Korea on Tuesday.

The case is due to be heard again on June 11, with the lower court affirming that the charges should be dropped.

“We are confident by that time they will be able to return to India,” V.Ships president Roberto Giorgi said.

The pair have not been allowed to leave South Korea since the very large crude carrier Hebei Spirit was holed by a crane barge and spilled oil in December 2007.

In short, on December 7, 2007, a Samsung barge broke free from its tugboats and collided with the anchored Hebei Spirit, spilling 10,800 tonnes of oil into the waters off Taean, and though the tugboat captains were found primarily responsible, the two Indian captain and chief officer of the Hebei Spirit were sentenced to 18-month and 8-month sentences, respectively. They were not only essentially held accountable for simply being there, they were, you might say, held accountable for being foreign. More information on Free the Hebei Spirit.

CDI is a flu-free zone.

From the Korea Herald, in a story about the release of the 65 teachers quarantined after a member of their orientation group tested positive for swine flu.

After its voluntary nine-day shutdown, the language institute is also to restart its lectures with the arrival of their teachers.

"We feel sorry for making people concerned," said Kim Young-wha, president of the institute. "We will do our best to prevent recurrences of such problems through our new health monitoring system."

In preparation for its reopening, the institute yesterday launched a health monitoring program and "flu-free zone" campaign aimed at all its staff, teachers and students.

With its existing standards tightened, teachers will receive medical checkups regularly and their fever development is to be examined twice a day. When they have light symptoms, they will be treated following the recommendations of the disease control agency, according to the institute.

From the CDI website:

Oh that's nice.

From Hankyoreh today:

Wearing a “PSI” hard hat, President Lee Myung-bak stands atop a mountain resembling “Owl Rock,” where the late former President Roh Moo-hyun is said to have jumped to his death.

As President Lee pushes “the company located in Kaesong Industrial Complex” off the cliff, the person asks, “Why? Did you not pledge to save the economy?”

It's less funny if you have to explain it.

A railway to connect the distant east and west?

No, I don't mean Asia and North America, I mean Daegu and Gunsan.

History and politics have long divided the eastern Youngnam and the western Honam regions, but this could change with the East-West railway, according to some 200 lawmakers, mayors and scholars participating in the event held at the National Assembly.

In particular, lawmakers of both ruling and opposition parties voiced bipartisan views on the necessity of the project.

``Korea's existing major railway infrastructure have focused on a North-South connection," said Chung Dong-young, referring to the case of the Gyeongbu KTX, a high-speed railway running from Seoul to the southern port city of Busan. ``The East-West line will make an important contribution to the reconciliation of the two regions." he added.

The independent lawmaker, who represents a Jeonju district in North Jeolla Province, is one of the co-organizers of the conference with Rep. Lee Cheol-woo, from Gimcheon, of the governing Grand National Party (GNP).

``Misunderstanding and hostility between the peoples of the two regions is in part due to a lack of exchange through mutual visits and communication," said Lee.

There is a Harmony, Pennsylvania, so when I read the headline "East-West Railway Planned for Harmony" in the Korea Times I was like "what?"

Koreans joining US army to expediate US citizenship.

This turned up on ROK Drop via Rate My Hagwon yesterday after the Wall Street Journal wrote that "A Korean Invasion Blindsides U.S. Army." Some excerpts:

Suk Joon Lee, a South Korean immigrant, feared his days in the U.S. were numbered. His ice-cream shop wasn't doing well, and if it failed, his investor visa could be revoked.

Then Mr. Lee stumbled upon a Korean-language Web site that described a way out: a program that the Army was about to launch that offered a shortcut to getting U.S. citizenship. The site was created by another Korean immigrant, James Hwang, and it explained in minute detail the steps required to qualify.

"James knew everything about the program, and he wasn't even in the military," says the 27-year-old Mr. Lee. In February, Mr. Lee, along with hundreds of other Korean immigrants who had learned about the pilot program from Mr. Hwang, descended on Army recruiting centers in New York to enlist.

The program was authorized without fanfare late last year by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to attract temporary immigrants who speak strategically important languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Korean. The bait: The soldiers could immediately apply for U.S. citizenship, skipping the sometimes decadelong process of securing a green card first.

Koreans form the largest group among the 8,000 applicants for the program, launched on Feb. 23. Many have excellent credentials, including degrees in medicine and engineering. Almost all are veterans of South Korea's own compulsory military service.

"The quality of these applicants has been phenomenal," says Lt. Col. Peter Badoian, the project officer for the pilot program. "But we didn't anticipate one immigrant community would respond so strongly."

The promise of America lures thousands of South Koreans to the U.S. each year. Korean students enroll in U.S. colleges. Others start small businesses in order to get temporary visas.

This is quite an interesting predicament.

Witness protection fail.

This news out of Gyeongsan is an example of both "witness protection fail" and "search the suspect for weapons fail":

A man under interrogation at a police station for violence stabbed a woman witness sitting next to him, police said Sunday. The woman died in an ambulance on route to hospital from blood loss.

According to Gyeongsan police, the man identified as Kim, 48, was taken to a police station at 1 p.m. for assaulting others at a bar. The bar's owner ㅡ the victim, a woman aged 52 ㅡ was also present at the station as a witness.

Officers at the scene said Kim abruptly pulled out a knife from his backpack and stabbed her in the chest and sides several times. A police officer shot him twice.

The man was injured in his right calf and taken to hospital. ``He is not in critical condition,'' police said.

``It was too sudden to block him,'' an officer said. ``The man will be indicted on homicide charges.''

(Updated) Taking E-2 visa regs to court.

An excerpt from the Korea Times:

A group of human rights lawyers plan to file a petition with the Constitutional Court against what they call discriminatory visa rules that require foreign English teachers to submit documents on health checks and criminal records.

Chang Suh-yeon, an attorney with the Korean Public Interest Lawyers Group ``Gong-Gam,'' told The Korea Times Tuesday that her group will take the issue to the court this week or next.

``The visa law violated the Constitution that guarantees a basic right to freedom, equal treatment, the pursuit of happiness and the protection of privacy,'' Chang said.

``The visa law is based on vague prejudice and bias that foreign English teachers have disordered sex lives and use drugs,'' she added.

I have to wonder why people are talking to the Times when, after reviewing my notes and old posts, they've been far-and-away the English-language outlet that's been the most guilty of spreading this prejudice and bias in its reporting. I'll draw your attention to this paragraph

E-2 visa holders have contended that the government should apply the same visa screening rules to foreign English teachers holding other visas, urging the government to use the same restrictions on teachers holding E-1 (professorship), F-2 (spouse of a Korean) or F-4 (ethnic Korean) visas. They made it clear that they don't oppose background checks as a rule.

and remind readers that this paper and this writer, Kang Shin-woo, have made the same distortion twice before, including, as Gusts of Popular Feeling has pointed out, inventing quotations from Professor Benjamin Wagner.

The article doesn't say what, exactly, "the issue" is and what the lawyer and the professor are fighting against. Instead it looks like a bunch of different issues are being conflated here, and gives the impression that teachers are objecting to criminal background checks, or to health exams in general. The professor in question, as you'll see when you scroll down, submitted a background check, but objected to the HIV test. Another excerpt:

In response, the ministry says that a visa policy is a country's own right and foreign nationals are not entitled to complain about it. ``We believe the human rights agency is well aware of this fact and will take sides with us,'' said Ahn Kyu-seok, a ministry official.

Well, I get Ahn's point, and that a country ultimately has the right to accept or reject whomever it pleases. However, I hope the human rights agency doesn't rule against groups for, um, "complaining." For more on the case in question, see my original write-up from March. An excerpt from a KT article back then:

Instead of producing documents showing HIV/AIDS and drug test results, [the professor] gave an immigration officer a letter.

It reads: ``Unfortunately, I will not be submitting the HIV/ AIDS test results or the tuberculosis drug test results that you have requested. These tests unreasonably discriminate against me as a foreigner living in Korea and are a violation of my human rights.''

In the letter, she also said that she has lived and worked in Korea for more than three years and does not understand why she is suddenly suspected of being a danger to Korean society.

``I have done nothing wrong, and yet the Korea Immigration Service wants to search my body. This is an invasion of my most private and personal rights and an affront to my human dignity,'' she said.

Give the NHRCK report referenced in the initial article a read, if you haven't already. Interestingly, it looks like a follower of this blog is going through a similar headache with these HIV and drug tests.

Huge concert at the Gwangju World Cup Stadium Wednesday night (Rain, Jewelry, Bobby Kim, After School, Leessang, 등).

I hate getting scooped by the radio station. Via Michael Simning and the "City of Light" program on GFN comes news of a huge concert tomorrow night in Gwangju to celebrate the winning bid for the 2015 Summer Universiade, also known as the World University Games. Because I spent a little time writing up the 2003 Games in Daegu and the North Korean cheerleaders, and poked a little fun last year at Gwangju, its losing bid, and it's crying citizens, I wanted to devote at least an equal amount of space to the city's celebrations. However, the news broke the same day as President Roh's suicide, and I assume the celebration planned for City Hall late on the 23rd had a different tone than expected. There has been little coverage of the announcement, so far as I can tell, though I'm sure I'll have plenty of material to work with after this concert.

It will run tomorrow night from 8:00 to 9:30 downtown in front of the old Provincial Hall at the World Cup Stadium, though it was originally scheduled for the World Cup Stadium. Those scheduled to appear include Rain, Jewelry, After School, Hwayobi, Jun Jin, and hip-hop acts Bobby Kim, Buga Kings, and Leessang. As far as I can tell there's no website set up for it; I heard it on GFN, saw it in a few articles today, and stole the poster up there from the Gwangju official site.

This is the only way I can title this post to avoid getting lots of hits looking for porn.

I'm proud that most of the visitors to my site come here looking for actual information, and not pictures of _____________ naked. Except for the few hits I get each day for funeral porn. So while I wanted to title this "Hot white girls with nice asses in Seoul," and risk the wrath of all those bloggers who have my feed in their sidebar, I opted for something a little more worksafe. It's a series of galleries from the Chosun Ilbo at the Swatch FIVB Women's Beach Volleyball Tour in Seoul last week, hat tips to Korea Beat and Dokdo is Ours, who has posted several right to his blog. Not bad for the guy best known for being the white Jon Huer. You can find a bigger gallery on the official Swatch FIVB site, from whence the above picture of amateur photographers was taken.

What a sad state of affairs it is that I can't browse the major news sites at work because they're NSFW; between this and blocking blogger.com, it's like Jeollanam-do is actually, like, wanting me to work at work.

2009 Muju Firefly Festival (무주반딧불축제): June 13th - 22nd.

The Muju Firefly Festival is coming up in Muju county, Jeollabuk-do in the middle of the month. This sounds really interesting, right? I went last year, and I do have sentimental attachment to it since it was where I had my first date with my girlfriend (awwww), but I should point out that there, um, were no fireflies. I'm not really sure how they got away with that. There were bright lights pointed all over the festival grounds, and when moths and other insects flew through people would cheer at the mock-fireflies, but those were the only hint of the festival's namesake.

Judging from comments here and from other blogs, perhaps the weather kept them away. According to one out-of-touch poet---is that redundant?---the Japanese killed them all off:

He is waiting to be seen.
In this world I hardly matter.

What goes into the dark
to be seen? Nothing like me.

There is a festival of fireflies
in Muju-gun in August

where people pray for firefly prosperity,
in Korea, since the Japanese

exterminated their fireflies
experimenting with insecticides.

Um, right, well, according to Kim Jong-Gill at the National Institute of Agricultural Science & Technology, environmental changes due to urbanization are to blame.

Only 20 to 30 years ago fireflies were a common sight, but now they have become a nostaligic rarity, highlighted on television shows. In recent years, their natural habitats have been increasingly destroyed and disturbed through environmental damage resulting from the modernization of rural areas and changes in agricultural methods involving excessive reliance on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, as well as street lights that interfere with the ability of fireflies to communicate with each other. Indeed, with all these challenges to its survivability, it is no wonder that firefly sightings are so infrequent nowadays.

You can read the rest of his thoughts on the matter in a 2002 issue of Koreana (.pdf file).

Anyway, I found Muju a cute little town, though there was nothing particularly special about the festival. If you're looking to go, keep in mind that accomodation is prohibitively limited. The few motels in town were all booked, as were all the guesthouses, and we ended-up having to take a cab a few minutes up the road to find anything. If you're without your own transportation you'll be stuck having to make due in town or trying to get a cab either to a motel or to the nearest city. But perhaps if you do go---if you decide to attend the firefly festival during the day---you'll get to meet this interesting assortment of characters:

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for my latest Joongang Ilbo column. This one is pieced together from comments on the various swine flu posts last week.

96 busted for selling drugs in Gwangju.

From an article yesterday about the decreasing number of "harmful websites" comes news that

96 people were arrested in Gwangju last week on charges of selling narcotics, including the date rape drug GHB through major Web sites such as Naver (www.naver.com) and Daum (www.daum.net).

More in Korean here via Yonhap.

Updates on Matt Robinson, the American who needs help in Seoul.

There have been a couple Facebook updates since I last posted on Matt Robinson, a teacher and improv actor in Seoul with lingering health problems that require emergency surgery to save his leg, and potentially his life. On the main page of "Please help Matt Robinson, a foreigner in need":

On [last] Wednesday Matt had to have emergency surgery on his leg because his calf turned blue due to the deep vein thrombosis. They had to put a long thin catheter into the veins in his leg. He is stable now, but they are saying they won't do the surgery he needs until this condition gets better.
We have almost raised the 10 mil he needed before, but his hospital bill is around 16 mil now, and rising... and he hasn't even had the main surgery.
Please continue to donate and pass this group on.

And on one post they've broken down the medical charges:

Medication - 2,500,000
Doctor's Fee - 94,460
Admission - 940,280
Meals - 922,720
Prescriptions - 135,732
Anesthesia - 614,858
Treatment - 419,354
Operation - 689,923
Examination - 1,340,067
X-ray - 71,268
Medical Expendible Supply - 784,169
Sonogram - 110,000
Blood Transfusion - 378,656
Specialist Fee - 865,950
Room - 38,000
Other - 10,000

This was the bill as of Friday evening. The charges go up every day, and from what [name withheld] said, the bill is now at 16,000,000 and rising.

I'd also like to pass along a question asked on the FAQ thread:

Last year after Bill Kapoun was badly burned there was a fundraiser at the Wolfhound with an auction, etc. When I came in, I paid 10,000won, and was told that enough money had been raised already, but the rest would go to a "burned teacher relief fund" (no joke, that was what was actually said to me!)...hmmm. I can definitely see the point of having a fund for these kind of situations, and isn't this situation exactly what a fund like that is for? Does anyone know what happened to that excess money?

According to the Save Bill Kapoun Facebook group, the remaining 13,000,000 won was donated by the Kapouns to the family of Nerine Viljoen, the teacher who died in a Mokpo apartment fire in December. Not that I'm demanding that money to be accounted for, or suggesting that our donations to those families ought to go to anyone but them, but I would feel better if we had people in the know on this other than Wolfhound employees. I'd also like to add what kushibo wrote on his "HABO (Help A Brother Out)" post:

I'd also like to know what the Friends of Matt group is going to do if they surpass the money needed. I'd like to see someone I trust (e.g., Brian, Marmot, the head of KOTESOL) keep that money in trust so that we have it ready for the next time — God forbid — we end up with a bad case like that of Bill Kapoun or Nerine Viljoen, requiescant in pace.

Maybe this isn't the place to talk about it, but I do think this is where a teachers' organization would be able to step in. A teachers' organization that is far less controversial, that is, than the current one, perhaps one that grew in large part out of community-based efforts like this, and one that could be trusted to oversee donations. Anyway, I'd like to close with what Daniel Gray of Seoul Eats had to say in response to kushibo's post; an excerpt:

Sure, Matt has made some wrong decisions. When he started to have these health issues, he should have gone home. There are many in Korea that dread the idea of going home because they don't know what they will return to. Imagine how he would have felt going home crippled and sick? Also, his medical bills in the states would have been 10 times what they are here.

I can assure you that the money that is raised will go to help Matt. The 10 million is not the final amount. Matt will have to stay in the hospital for an additional month after wards to heal. Then there will be costs for physical therapy and then getting him home or wherever he decides to go.

There have been people that have criticized the approach in getting money for Matt. But, it was due to the severity of the situation. It was a life and death situation and all of us had to act as soon as possible.

Thanks so much for donating and please spread the word.

Once again the donation information:

account #:481-007433-01-011
Bank: IBK / Industrial / 기업은행

The name on the receiving account is 매티유로. There is now a PayPal account, the address for which is chh5522[at]gmail.com. The group asks that you send post a message to make sure the donation went through.