Festivals in Mokpo, Yeongam, and Yeosu this weekend.

Because of time constraints I didn't do the typical regional spring festival preview this year, but I will try to write them up as they come up. This weekend there are four going on, including the Gwangju Spring Flower Expo that started last weekend. Most of the information available is in Korean, but the advertisements feature lots of white people, so you should go.



Mokpo's annual Yudalsan Flower Festival (유달산꽃축제) will take place this year from Friday, April 2nd through 4th on and around Yudalsan, the 228-meter-high mountain on the west side of town. You'll find a program of scheduled performances and events here, in Korean. I went in 2008, but didn't notice much except the view from atop the mountain, and an upsetting animal show. Southeast of the mountain you'll find a lot of what inspired Robert Koehler to call Mokpo "an outdoor museum of colonial Korea," including a cafe called "House Full of Happiness" (행복이 가득한 집) you ought to visit (map here, in Korean). A short taxi ride to the east, or a long walk, you'll come to "Museum Road" and later to Peace Park (평화광장), which stretches along Yeongsan Lake. You can see these attractions on a large tourist map provided by the Mokpo city page.



In Yeongam county, from the 3rd through the 6th, is the Wangin Culture Festival (영암왕인문화축제), with the tagline this year

A Trip Full of Energy!
To Yeongam of Wangin,
a World of Cherry Blossoms.

Wangin (왕인) is the Korean name for a man better known as "Wani," believed to have traveled from Korea to Japan in the 6th century to spread Confucianism and culture there. Yeongam county celebrates its connection to Wangin with festivals each spring and fall and with landmarks, though the authenticity of this connection has been disputed. Wikipedia says, under "political exploitations":

Earlier geography books including the Taekriji (1751) never link Wani to Yeongam. The first known record that associates Wani with Yeongam is the Joseon Hwanyeo Seungnam (朝鮮寰輿勝覧; 1922-37) by Yi Byeong-yeon (이병연, 李秉延). It claims that Wani was born in Yeongnam without providing any evidence. It is known that around the same time, a Japanese monk named Aoki Keishō claimed on the basis of "oral tradition" that Yeongam was Wani's homeland. In 1932 he made an appeal to erect a bronze statue of Wani in Yeongam.

A new myth about Wangin was publicized in South Korea in 1970s. In 1972 the social activist Kim Changsu reported a series of essays titled "Korean spirit embodied in Japan," which appealed to South Koreans who felt oppressed by the legacy of Japanese colonization. In this framework, Wani was regarded as Korean without doubt.[citation needed] Upon being informed by a reader from Yeongam, Kim issued a statement identifying Yeongam as the birthplace of Wani in the next year. In spite of the weakness of the evidence, Wani's "relic site" was designated as Cultural Asset No. 20 of South Jeolla Province in 1976.

The development of Wani's "historical sites" was led by the governments of South Jeolla Province and Yeongam Country. The construction was carried out from 1985 to 1987, "restoring" the "birthplace", schools where Wani allegedly studied, and others. Yeongam Country started to fully exploit the old-looking new theme park as a tourist attraction because the introduction of local autonomy of 1990 forced the local government to look for its own source of revenue. For example, Youngam County began to host the annual "Wangin Culture Festival" in 1997 that was previously organized by local people under the name of "Cherry blossom festival".

Links and footnotes removed.

The "energy" refers to the 氣 (기, better known as "chi" in English) associated with the area.

Anyway, you'll find a timetable of scheduled events here, in Korean, and you'll find a trilingual leaflet with very small writing here. The "Korea and Japan Friendship Performance" takes place on Saturday at 1, and the parade replicating his trip to Japan, seen below passing beneath the cherry blossoms, takes place on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday at 2 pm.



Yeongam county is just south of Mokpo, west of my old home in Gangjin, and south of Gwangju. The festival website doesn't have transportation information, so I guess it's top secret. It's spread out over a few sites found just west of Wolchulsan: "The Historical Site of Dr. Wangin" and Gurim Village. Yeongam's official site says buses run that way every twenty minutes. If you check that URL you'll see it says "unpleasant-bus," and after spending several hours looking up stuff about these festivals, I'm pretty much at that point, too.

There's also a festival in Yeosu, on the other side of the province. The Yeongchuisan Azalea Festival (영취산진달래축제) takes place from April 2nd through the 4th, a mountain in northeastern Yeosu.


Source.

As the festival website says, there will be shuttle buses between the Intercity Bus Terminal (시외버스터미널) and the festival grounds five times a day. There will also be shuttle buses from Yeocheon Station (여천역) five times a day, buses that will also stop at city hall.

They're also looking to crown a Ms. Azalea (진달래아가씨), but unfortunately you all missed the registration deadline.



And, like I posted last week, the Gwangju Spring Flower Expo (광주봄꽃박람회) runs through the 4th. Gwangju's local yodelling club will perform on Saturday and Sunday.

Shopping and taxis highest among tourist annoyances.

Last week the Korea Herald wrote that tourists site taxis and shopping among their top difficulties in Korea. Here are a few excerpts:

A recent survey conducted by the Korea Tourism Organization shows that the number of calls made by disgruntled tourists in 2009 saw a 13.4 percent increase from the previous year.

Of the complaints, difficulties while shopping and disputing costs of taxi fares topped the list with 32.5 percent and 17.5 percent of the total 468 complaints filed.

. . .

Complaints from Westerners aren't as numerous.

According to the KTO's Byun Eun-hye, who works with the organization's complaint center, the majority of the reports regarding shopping mishaps were filed by Japanese and Chinese tourists.

"We've gotten numerous calls from Japanese tourists saying they received the wrong orders such as shoes that were not the size they had purchased or custom tailored clothes that didn't fit when they received them - or even bizarre instances where they purchased a cosmetic product only to find something entirely different once they opened the box," she said.

. . .

Some Koreans have been saying for years that foreign tourists should be expected to possess a minimum level of Korean. Others ask for better English education in the travel industry here, citing Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East as places where locals communicate with tourists primarily in English, rather than in their own local languages.

"It's difficult to say whether we are trying too hard to cater and to accommodate foreign tourists and not encouraging them more to try and speak Korean," said Kang Oki, the Korea Tourism Organization's executive director of public relations.

On that last point, The Marmot's Hole wrote:

I think phrasebooks are always a good thing to bring along when you travel — trying to communicate is part of the fun, after all, and it’s just common politeness to at least try to communicate with locals in their language — but it seems to me the KTO is in the business of making things easier for tourists (not the business of promoting the Korean language, which is the business of its parent organization, the Ministry of Culture), and that it’s in the best interests of tourism-related industries to have staff that can communicate with their customers.

I've mentioned taxis a few times on this site, mostly in regard to the foreigner-only cabs introduced last year to make travel easier for tourists, and I'll reiterate that I've found cab drivers in Korea to be friendly and patient, for the most part. With very few exceptions, their cabs are new and clean, and they don't expect passengers to tip them for doing their jobs.

I'll also bring up a little of what I mentioned on Alex's Adventures in Asia's post. My fiancee is Japanese, and walking around with her highlighted the different ways foreign customers are treated. Shopkeepers were very rarely actually rude to me, but they did have a tendency to shout English at my white face, or use baby English when it might be easier to simply speak Korean, or simpy hover beside me without saying anything. Koreans generally aren't as proficient in Japanese as they are in English, but in Busan and Insa-dong---which get a lot of Japanese tourists---it's not unusual to find clerks who do have a good command of the language. In Busan's Nampo-dong, for instance, shop employees will stand out on the street and pull Japanese tourists into the store, or shout the latest sales and specials to passersby. Adding another dimension to it is that my fiancee looks Korean: not because "all look same" to white people, but most Koreans were fooled, too. Before they learned Korean is not her native language, and even after, Koreans would often speak in Korean to her, and more often then not would exclude me from the conversation completely.

When you meet a white person in Korea, it's safe to assume they're an English teacher, and we know the stereotypes that go along with that. When you meet a Japanese person here, it's safe to assume they're a tourist and that they're looking to spend money. And, Japanese are the largest group of tourists to Korea, a big reason "complaints from Westerners [to the KTO] aren't as numerous". According to the stats provided by the Korea Tourism Organization for January, 209,184 Japanese entered the country, the most of any nationality. China was second with 91,252, all of North America had 53,839, and all of Europe had 46,509.

The KTO's English-language assistance line is 1330.

Anyang Halla, your 2009-2010 Asia League Ice Hockey champions.

From the Anyang Halla site.

Reader "This Is Me Posting" emailed and told me the Anyang Halla (안양한라) became the Asia League Ice Hockey champions Sunday night, defeating the Nippon Paper Cranes in overtime of Game 5 a five-game series. This is the first time a non-Japanese team has won the league championship. The Cranes won it last year, and have won it three of the seven times it's been awarded since the league formed in 2003-04. There's more on the Anyang Halla official site, in English as well as Korean, including this game recap.

We've had conversations about Korean ice hockey a couple times on this site: in November to remind readers that there are two pro teams in South Korea, and in February when the Korean government said it was going to invest in "unpopular" sports in order to get more Olympic medals. The Halla play in Anyang, a city just outside of Seoul, and have their home games at the Anyang Sports Complex. For Game 3 of the championship series, the last game in Anyang this season, 1,496 people showed up on a Wednesday evening to watch.

Looking for B- blood in Korea (updated).

Here is an excerpt of an email I received from Marie Frenette of the Korea Tourism Organization:

I am writing this note with the hope that anyone living in Korea with a blood type of B rh negative (B-) would be willing to help a 19 year old boy who has recently been diagnosed with lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. I went to visit him in the hospital today, and now have specific information about him.

His name is YooWoon Jeon and he just graduated from high school in February. He has been sick since last October, but was just diagnosed last week. He will require 5-6 chemotherapy treatments, every three weeks. After each treatment he requires 6 doses of platelet, a part of human blood. The problem is, his blood type (B-), is not at all common in Korea. B+ is quite common, but B- is not. If a B- person gets B+blood, it can create problems. Platelet has a storage life of only one week, so its not easy to ship it from other countries.

There are 100's of thousands of expats in Korea, teachers, business people, engineers, etc... B- occurs much more reqularly in foreign populations than in Korea. That is why I am reaching out to you! Korea has given me so much, and I often wonder how I can return at least a little bit of it. This is one way. I happen to have B- so I went to the hospital today, and am scheduled to give the platelet on Monday. I will just lie down and while I watch a movie or chill out, my blood will be pumped into a machine that will take out the platelet and put the rest of my blood back into my body. The pain is about the same amount as getting a needle.

YooWoon just graduated from high school, and his dream is to go to Yonsei University. Instead, he is in the Yonsei Severence Hospital. If we can all come together, we can help him get back on his feet and he can get back to studying!

Please ask your friends to pass this info around.

His father is called Jay John in English, his Korean name is Jeon Jeong woo (전정우). His father works for the Korean branch of Cray Valley, a chemical company. His English is very good, so you wouldn't have to worry about communication issues.
He can be contacted at:
Jay
010-5048-7678
jeongwoo.jeon@crayvalley.com

If you have any additional questions, feel free to call me directly, 010-6801-0731.

The rest of the message, with information about Lymphoma and platelet donation, can be found on the "Every Expat in Korea" Facebook page.

Update: There's a new Facebook page "Save A 19 Year old Korean Boy!"

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, writing about Korea and everyday technology.

I'm in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this Sunday writing a little about Korea as the "digital future."

I feel a little swell of pride when I hear people talking about Korea, and I get a little defensive when that talk isn't good.

I'm not Korean. But I have just returned home after spending the last 41/2 years living and working in Korea teaching English, after graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Korea gave me a job, a half-decade of memories and, somehow, a Japanese fiancée. I have a lot of affection for the country and its people. But I'm sorry to say most people here aren't too interested in any of that. They look at me like I've done a gap year abroad a few times too many.

When I do answer questions about Korea, it's to confirm that I lived in South Korea, not in the one with that crazy guy with the funny haircut from the movie "Team America." Yes, they do eat dog; no, I haven't; and no, it doesn't bother me.

Many American impressions of Korea haven't outgrown "M• A• S• H." If you get beyond lame jokes and lazy stereotypes, you see that the southern half of the peninsula isn't living in the past at all. It's considered "the most wired country on Earth." The fastest Internet service in the world is available everywhere in the country. It is electronics years ahead of the Western market.

I'm not sure I'll see any spike in traffic, in spite of my blog being mentioned under the article, but any new visitors might want to check out the "Korean internet" category for some of the news and issues that informed the piece. Readers from Pittsburgh might also like to learn about the church in Seoul built to resemble PPG Place.

Approaching South Korea as a "digital future" is still problematic because, as I note:

[I]t's still unfair to treat the country relative to the United States, whether as a version of the past or a vision of the future. Even that seemingly complimentary image, in the way it turns up stateside with fantastic stories of all-in-one phones, robot teachers and Internet addiction, confirm the long-held stereotype of East Asia being a weird, exotic, very different place.

If you've watched the programs on CNN Asia or the Discovery Asia, especially before the 2008 Summer Olympics, you've seen the new sort of Orientalism that's cropped up, whereby you can't talk about that part of the world anymore without marvelling at its progress, sometimes out of respect but sometimes to implicitly question how those people could do so much. They're always narrated by some fresh-off-the-boat white guy mesmerized by the overuse of neon as much as by the handheld technology years ahead of what had always been accessible to the average American. That same sort of approach is found in recent pieces like CNN's about "weaning Koreans off their wired world" or BBC's asking "Can South Koreans survive without the web?"

I do think there is a genuine interest to learn how people live over there, and how we live when we make the move. Otherwise, the Post-Gazette wouldn't have run something like this. I joke that people ask if I lived in North or South Korea, and that people are surprised that they have running water and schools, but those are really the sort of reactions I get sometimes. A doctor I saw in the North Hills a couple of summers ago told me that Koreans lived in hovels. We joke about the rotten perceptions some people hold in Korea of our countries and our cultures, but you'll of course find those same distortions back here, too, and returning teachers might provide some fresh perspectives. I don't want to start talking about "correct" ideas, in the same condescending way some Koreans try to dictate how others see their country. I also don't want to have people think I'm some kind of authority because my name is in the paper, and that Korea is something that can be "figured out" or "opened," to use that very loaded word.

It's just a nice little story in the paper, by a guy who spent time in a place most people only see on maps. Hell, I even talk about bingbongs, so let's not take this all too seriously.

"Uncle Bob" selling phones in Korea.

KT's started using Bob Ross to advertise its "Qook and Show" service:



The commercial, which mixes footage of 밥로스 아저씨 with some white guy they stuck in a wig, was made last month but has hit the internet, and the forums, recently. As is the norm for Korean TV shows, music videos, and commercials, this also has a "making" video where at the two-minute mark they talk a little with the foreigner they recruited.

Other commercials with celebrity impersonators include Faux-bama for Skylife and Faux-prah for IBK. If they use Mr. Rodgers next I swear to God I'll beat the whole cast and crew with their own Keds.

There are certified "Joy of Painting" contacts throughout the world, and South Korea's is in Cheongju.

Weekend reading.

There are a few lengthy posts on other blogs I'd like to share with you, as well as a repeat of something I posted last year. Whatever, it's the weekend, you ain't doin' nothin'.

From "unqualified" to "ineligible" and "inadequate."

The latest piece by Kang Shin-who in the Korea Times, "Legalizing Eligibility of 'Hagwon' Teachers Sought," uses two new terms to describe what often falls under the umbrella of "unqualified" teachers.

Education authorities and lawmakers plan to propose a bill to screen out ineligible teachers at private institutes or hagwon.

Under the current regulations, Koreans who completed at least two-year college courses are entitled to teach at hagwon without legal binding.

Officials from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology told The Korea Times, Friday that they are likely to submit a bill to ban inadequate teachers from working at hagwon.

"There have been no attempts to regulate eligibility of hagwon teachers by law. We plan to submit a bill next month, disallowing ineligible hagwon teachers, to the National Assembly," said an official in charge.

The first half of the piece is clearly talking about ethnic Korean teachers working in schools without undergoing the same background checks required of foreign English teachers on E-2 visas. Eligibility for the E-2 visa is, of course, regulated by law, but not all teachers at hagwon use E-2 visas. Ineligible would be a good substitute for "unqualified" in some cases, but currently, as the article says, uniform rules of eligibility for foreign teachers across the board do not yet exist.

"Unqualified," as we've discussed many times on this site, like yesterday for Kang's last piece, is an improper term because it's used as a catch-all to talk about teachers without visas or the proper paperwork, teachers without training as teachers or advanced degrees in TESOL, teachers who act unprofessionally, or teachers who dress poorly, use drugs, and date Korean women. Kang played with that ambiguity in his last article, in a piece supposed to be about ethnic Korean teachers hired by cramschools without undergoing background checks:

Both immigration and education authorities have long turned a blind eye to loopholes in screening "unqualified" foreign English teachers.

That inattention occasionally horrifies parents and students when such teachers show their true colors.

. . .

Police announced Tuesday they arrested a group of unqualified English teachers who habitually took drugs.

The first half of today's Kang Shin-who article is about eligibility, and about one of many pieces of proposed legislation. I'm sorry to see the discussion shift back to native speaker English teachers, and to inadequacy, though I oughtn't be surprised.

For now, a total of 13 bills related to hagwon are pending for approval at the parliamentary. Especially, a bill, proposed last year by Rep. Choi Young-hee of the main opposition Democratic Party, is seeking to tighten the screening of native English-speaking teachers at hagwon.

The bill is to mandate foreign English teachers to submit documents proving no criminal and drug records, whenever they are hired or transferred to other hagwon. It is because some E-2 or English teaching visa holders, once caught for taking drugs or sexually harassing children, were often found to be rehired at hagwon.

Rep. Choi said "We could have prevented those foreigners (from working at hagwon), if my bill were passed last year."

In addition, the bill stipulates ``cannabinoid" tests in drug check-up in order to detect marijuana users. The immigration authorities initially planned to conduct the tests on E-2 visa applicants, but the idea was scrapped.

Choi Young-hee is no stranger to this site. An article by Kang Shin-who appeared in the Korea Times on June 9, 2009, and you'll see what Kang wrote today about lawbreakers moving to new hagwon is taken almost word-for-word from a quotation by Choi's aide:

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.''

Gusts of Popular Feeling looked at the three bills introuced last summer by Choi, a must-read. Here's something interesting:

Note the term “native English teachers” (원어민교사), and not specifically E-2 visa holders. Does this mean all native English teachers will have to undergo these requirements, regardless of their visa? According to Ben Wagner, who talked with an aide of Choi Young-hee, the answer is no – the bill applies only to E-2 visa holders. Still, those on other visas might wish the bill to be a little more specific in its language.

Also, when he initially spoke with them, Wagner told me that Choi’s office seemed to be unclear as to what an E-2 visa was or what its limitations are, as they seemed to be trying to stop people moving from job to job, something that, unless an employer closes their school, is impossible under the terms of an E-2 visa.

If you look at the statistics collected in the "Wagner Report" you'll see there's little cause for lawmakers or journalists to use "often" in tandem with drug-use or sexual harassment. The report shows, on pages 16 and 20 and with numbers from the Supreme Prosecuters' Office, here were 13 foreign teachers from the "Big 7" countries arrested for drug offenses in 2008, and 34 arrested for "sex crimes."

Nhrck Report 2

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Kang's piece today concludes with another piece of legislation, one given attention on my site last year as well.

Another bill, submitted by Rep. Cho Jeon-hyuk of the governing Grand National Party, is to provide a mandatory course on Korean culture to native English speakers at elementary and secondary schools as well as hagwon

The Assemblyman said many foreign English teachers are involved in a number of criminals and the government needs to help native English instructors better understand local culture and also improve their teaching skills.

I first posted on this plan in November after KBS had a little blurb on it:

Cho said most foreign teachers in the nation do not have enough of an understanding about Korea’s culture and practices. He said the revisions are aimed at raising the quality of the nation’s English education programs by mandating that foreign teachers have better knowledge of Korea.

I did a follow-up in December, and wrote about it in the Korea Herald, the main idea of those three write-ups being the sort of "training" teachers do get at the already-mandatory orientation programs isn't especially helpful and doesn't address any of the challenges native speaker English teachers face in the classroom. It's interesting to note now that Cho brings up the criminal element, or at least Kang says he does, while those three write-ups last year approached the issue of training. Not even Kang's sloppy article last November put those words in Cho's mouth:

"Schools and hagwon hire native English speakers but most of them are visiting Korea for the first time and have no teaching experiences," Cho said.

I've talked about conflation and about the worst traits, real or imagined, or native speaker English teachers get merged into vague terms like "unqualified," and I see the spirit still leaves even when one word is swapped out for two others.

Cambodia stops bride trade with South Korea.

세잔, one of the many sites introducing Korean men to Cambodian women.

This story is about a week old now, but it's an important addition to my "international marriage" category. Cambodia has temporarily put a stop to marriages between its women and South Korean men over concerns of human trafficking and marriage broker trade thriving in spite of rules in place to stop it. Here's the Phnom Penh Post:

CAMBODIA has temporarily banned marriages between local women and South Korean men after officials broke up a human trafficking ring designed to facilitate such unions, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Sunday.

Koy Kuong said a woman had been convicted on March 3 of recruiting 25 girls from rural areas and arranging for them to be married off to South Korean men for a US$100 fee.

Accepting a commission to facilitate a marriage is illegal, he said, adding that the convicted marriage broker is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence, and that the South Korean embassy in Phnom Penh had been notified on March 5 of the temporary marriage ban.

The ban will eventually be lifted, though not before the government puts in place an effective screening mechanism to prevent cases of trafficking, Koy Kuong said.

. . .

In March 2008, Cambodia imposed an eight-month ban on all foreign marriages to combat human trafficking after the release of an IOM report that found that as many as 1,759 marriage visas were issued to Cambodians by South Korea in 2007, up from only 72 in 2004.

Despite the 2008 ban, the number of Cambodian women marrying South Korean men rose from 551 in 2008 to 1,372 last year, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.

There have been a few editorials on the topic in Korea's English-language press. From the Dong-a Ilbo:

International marriage is expected to increase due to Korean women’s reluctance to marry men in rural areas and the prevailing trend of globalization and rising multiculturalism. If Koreans cannot open their minds to allow foreign immigrants to settle in their society, this country will inevitably face an unstable future. A society that closes itself to multicultural families and foreigners also does not live up to the national dignity of Korea, an economic powerhouse. Koreans must exercise the best of manners when bringing in foreign brides, and treat them as wives and daughters-in-law the same way they do for Koreans.

That's titled "Cambodian Ban on Int'l Marriage," but the Korean-language version from whence it comes is called "Room Salon Style International Marriage" after the entertainment rooms where women serve and, um, "serve" men, recently in the news because of the questions posed earlier in the month by a foreign journalist to the Finance Minister about these parlors vis-a-vis women in the workplace.



The Korea Herald has one that a, um, wider look at the issue, putting blame on Cambodia as well:

We hope Phnom Penh will soon return things to normal while we wonder how serious the crime is and at which end of the problem is most serious.

Just before this story broke the Herald ran atop its page an article saying "Foreign wives happy with life in Korea," a piece that contradicts a lot of what we've read before. The editorial continues:

Cambodians ranked after Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos and Japanese last year. International marriages will continue to grow in Korea in the years ahead but any sudden ban from a foreign government for unsavory reasons such as human trafficking allegations will threaten the balanced growth of multicultural families in this country. Human trafficking is a most vicious crime and the governments involved should try their utmost in order to end it completely.

Chosun Ilbo columnist Oh Tae-jin has some powerful words:

Now Phnom Penh has temporarily banned marriages between Korean men and Cambodian women. Unlike the steps it took in 2008, the latest measure affects only Korean men. The Cambodian government informed the Korean Embassy there that the steps were designed to "prevent the trafficking of women." It remains to be seen how much longer the Korean government intends to ignore these ugly practices that are tarnishing Korea's image and making Southeast Asians cringe at the sight of Koreans.

You'll find more links and information in the other posts in the "International marriage" category, and for the sake of brevity I won't bring them all out again here.


A sign saying Vietnamese women won't run away, hanging in Jeonju.

A decent overview of international marriages is found in the post "Government estimates 50% of rural Korean children will be biracial in 2020," both because of all the foreigners coming in and the Koreans moving out. That post links to a lengthy New York Times article about the marriage broker business in Vietnam. Naver will turn up loads of links for international marriage brokers; I've been enjoying reading a few, including this page about selling points of Vietnamese women, pardon the turn of phrase. (You keyboard warriors can relax, I can find examples from back home on my own, thanks.) You might also like to read Gusts of Popular Feeling's "Vietnam, Korea's 'womb colony'?"

I'll write again that I don't object to these marriages out of hand. Many countries, Korea included, have a history of blind dates and arranged marriages, even today, and this is really no different. I don't think a man being a farmer, or middle-aged, or mentally or physically disabled ought to be denied a chance at marriage, and I don't think there's anything immediately wrong with looking overseas for a wife if you can't find one at home. I don't think it's appropriate to always treat these young women as victims, in spite of the title I gave this post, because it's not as if they aren't marrying for money or for the chance to live the "Korean Dream," badly misinformed though it is. I don't buy into the laughable assertion that South Korea is now "multicultural" because it finds itself stuck with a generation of half-Korean kids, but I recognize that Korea has taken steps to help these women adjust to the country and culture. The women it can find, I mean, so that doesn't include those their husbands don't permit to leave the house.

All that said, it's unfortunate that these young women are sold to men twice their age and half their IQ to help the country's low birthrate and to repopulate the rural counties. Guess the idea to abort all those fetuses and kill those baby girls wasn't so smart after all. The local papers can write all the articles they want about how the "Korean Wave" is washing over Southeast Asia, but there's going to be problems in a generation or so when these poorer countries become economically stronger, and can do something about Asia's self-proclaimed "hub" buying and abusing its young women. Korea talks a lot about contributing more to less-fortunate countries, in part as repayment for all the aide it received to allow it to become, what, the eighth-biggest economy in the world over two generations. More than simply giving money, though, as a way to boost it's own national image, perhaps some reflection on the responsibilities the strong have for the weak. I'm pleased to see Cambodia standing up for its citizens,

How's the hotel situation in Yeosu ahead of the Expo?

Atop the Gwangju Ilbo yesterday.

Not so good, according to this Korea Times article.

Visitors of the 2012 Yeosu Expo may encounter inconveniences due to a lack of accommodation during the three-month international exposition, state auditors said, Wednesday.

. . .

The Board of Audit and Inspection pointed out that the Expo will suffer a shortage of 8,000 rooms due to poor planning.

It said that the expo's organizing committee's demand for Yeosu City to build a floating hotel with 500 rooms off its coast has been rejected.

Earlier in the month they did announce that a 25-story, 300-room hotel is going up on the Expo grounds.

South Korean suicide rate highest in OECD again.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare says, via this Joongang Ilbo article, that South Korea again has the highest rate of suicide among the thirty member-countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

An average 24.3 people per 100,000 die every year from suicide in Korea, followed by an average of 21 in Hungary, 19.4 in Japan and 16.7 in Finland. France and the United States saw an average of 14.2 and 10.1 people die respectively from suicide annually.

. . .

Suicide was the leading cause of death for people in their 20s and 30s, accounting for 40.7 percent and 28.7 percent of deaths in the respective age brackets.

South Korea was in a similar position in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.

I won't editorialize too much, because Google will turn up plenty for you---some of it worth reading, much of it not---but I did want to share something written on Good For Man's Health in response to a Korea Times article last week titled "Jockey's Suicide Opens Ugly Side of Horseracing" about the recent suicide of a 28-year-old jockey.

When I was in college, I dated this girl who was really hot, but for a variety of reasons made me miserable. You know what I did? I killed myself. Oh no ... wait ... I ended the relationship.

The headline of this story, as well as some of the writing in it, claims that people should be questioning the "ugly side of horse racing." Or, maybe, people should be questioning the ugly side of Koreans killing themselves when they face pressure.

People will question it, I'm sure, in columns and editorials in the days following the release of these statistics. I suppose in South Korea there is considered to be some honor in suicide, whereas in the United States it's more fashionable and acceptable to descend into self-destructive behavior such as addiction.

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology creates 3D books.

Kushibo of Monster Island passed this story along to me. From Reuters via the Washington Post:

Pop-up is so passe: South Korean scientists have developed 3-D technology for books that makes characters literally leap off the page.

. . .

At South Korea's Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, researchers used 3-D technology to animate two children's books of Korean folk tales, complete with writhing dragons and heroes bounding over mountains.

Pictures in the books have cues that trigger the 3-D animation for readers wearing computer-screen goggles. As the reader turns and tilts the book, the 3-D animation moves accordingly.

"It took us about three years to develop the software for this," said Kim Sang-cheol, the team leader of the project.

It usually takes a couple weeks for the foreign media to pick up on Korean news, and this is no exception. As Tech Ticker shows, this technology was featured on a March 5th episode of 스펀지:



Here's what GIST had to say about the episode with the "digilog book" (디지로그북) on their website, in Korean, and here's an excerpt of an English version:

The technology for producing Digilog Book whose development is currently under way at Culture Technology Institute at GIST (Director Woontack Woo, Professor at Dept. of Information and Telecommunications) was introduced in KBS’s TV program the Sponge on March 5 (Friday) and attracted a lot of interest.

In particular, the program featured the first books ever produced domestically in the digilog book format - The Temple Bell and Hongkildongjeon. The guests were filled with admiration on viewing a 3D image of a temple bell model and heroes of the books while enjoying vivid sound.

The digilog book is a next-generational e-book that allows readers to view content in 3D, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects. Unlike virtual reality (VR) technology, in which both content and background aren’t real, augmented reality (AR) experience used in the digilog book is created from the overlay of virtual digital content on physical reality.

GIST and other local universities often make the news, even the English-language news, for their innovations. I usually don't write about them because they're over my head, but one I did mention was the robot flower made by Chonnam National University:

Kang Shin-who calls for tighter visa regulations.

Kang Shin-who writes that "English Teacher Vetting Needs Tightening" and looks at inconsistencies in screening E-2 visa holders and ethnic Koreans hired from abroad:

Earlier, The Korea Times reported about complaints from E-2 visa holders and problems with the "unfair" visa policy. In response, the Korea Immigration Service (KIS) said it would not change its policy to favor ethnic Koreans, while the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, responsible for overseeing hagwon or private institute teachers, said they would devise ways to close the loopholes.

However, the government has not come up with any measures in over a year to block unqualified ethnic Korean English teachers.

Immigration and education officials are passing the buck. "F-4 visa holders are allowed to do all kinds of jobs as it is a residential card, so hagwon supervisors have to weed out unqualified English teachers among the visa holders," said Jeon Dal-su, an official from the immigration office.

Chung Young-min, an education ministry official said, "If it's a problem regarding visas, then it should be a subject for immigration authorities."

In the past I've called Kang Shin-who the worst reporter in Korea's English language media, and for good reason. He's made a name for himself over the past couple years by distorting facts, twisting and fabricating quotations, and taking every opportunity to keep native English speakers in the news for all the wrong reasons. His unprofessional behavior is the stuff of legends, and will get some attention soon enough.



But in spite of the rotten headline today, he at least deserves some credit for looking at background checks vis-a-vis ethnic Koreans. The issue of "equal checks for all" raised by the Association for Teachers of English in Korea last year, by which teachers on F-series visas would be subject to the same screening procedure as E-2 visa holders, proved contentious to say the least, and was a fight Kang himself aggravated. I personally happen to think all foreign teachers should undergo the same screening regardless of visa status, because being married to a Korean---or being Korean yourself---doesn't necessarily make you "qualified" as a teacher (and I'll get to that use of "qualified" in a minute).

But the discussion needs to move forward, and people really need to be asking why business people---the hagwon bosses who hire illegal teachers---in the English education industry escape without much scrutiny. Native speaker English teachers are the face---the goofy, big-nosed, dope-smoking face---of this rotten industry, and take a lot of heat from politicians and reporters, but behind every teacher working illegally is a hagwon boss who hired them.

The buck gets passed a lot. We saw in the article immigration saying it's the responsibility of schools, and the education ministry saying it's up to immigration. In 2007 and 2008 after the arrest of Christopher Paul Neil, a man who taught at schools in Korea and who ended up wanted for Interpol for sex crimes against children in Southeast Asia. His arrest led to a whole uproar about "unqualified" teachers, and led to a whole bunch of new regulations on English teachers on E-2 visas (not necessarily applied to E-2 visa holders teaching other languages). It was all very ironic considering Neil wasn't even on an E-2 visa, and checks on his academic background or his criminal history wouldn't have turned up anything.

Now, there are certain limitations on what I can actually say with confidence. I can't say hagwon break the law with impunity because I don't actually know what the punishment is for bosses who are caught with illegal teachers. People on Dave's ESL Cafe have said nothing happened to their school, or their school was simply fined, but again I don't know for sure and I don't recall reading about any such cases in the papers. I'm lead to believe there's not much awareness about what teachers can and cannot legally do, considering the number of times I was asked by colleagues and people on the street to tutor kids on the side, and I've read plenty of cases about teachers being asked by their schools to work without a visa or to do things outside the scope of it.

Everybody's sick of hearing about "qualified" teachers because the authorities and the press haven't decided what it means. Sometimes it means a teacher with the proper paperwork---college degree, criminal record check, passport from "Big 7" country---to be legally employed. Other times it means a teacher with appropriate credentials, such as certification back home or an advanced degree in TESOL. Other times it simply means good teachers. In this particular article, it's used to mean teachers with the proper paperwork, though of course the writer can play around with that ambiguity. Right in the opening line, too:

Both immigration and education authorities have long turned a blind eye to loopholes in screening "unqualified" foreign English teachers.

That inattention occasionally horrifies parents and students when such teachers show their true colors.

The middle of the article talks about ethnic Korean teachers from overseas not subject to background checks, but then shifts to this:

Police announced Tuesday they arrested a group of unqualified English teachers who habitually took drugs.

I've seen no other mention of that arrest save for on The Marmot's Hole, where he writes:

MBC also reported that nine unqualified English teachers were busted for habitually doing drugs, and police plan to expand their investigation of hagwon English teachers.

If they were busted for habitually doing drugs, they're not really "unqualified" in the sense Kang is talking about in most of his article. Kang writes that they were busted for being unqualified, their drug habit something else.

The meme of the drug-taking English teacher isn't new, and you'll read about teachers who came to school high. When "unqualified" is conflated in the press it's often to mean teachers who use drugs, or dress poorly, or sleep with Korean women. The damn president of Seoul National University of Education is a fine example of this conflation of these stereotypes:

"The native speakers are not qualified and are often involved in sexual harassment and drugs."

That's what he said in a Kang Shin-who article last October, and though he confessed privately that he was misquoted, since he never made a public statement, we're only left with his quotation, which regardless of whether said by a reporter or educator, demonstrates how common the theme is and how flippantly those stereotypes are called upon.


"He is a killer, drug dealer --- and your teacher" says the Dong-A Ilbo. Found via Gusts of Popular Feeling.

These recent arrests and the accompanying media attention will probably start a little panic about who these ethnic Korean teachers are and what they're doing, and I'm sure the Times will do its part to keep E-2 visa holders in the news, too. In the past I've strongly disagreed with people who thought replacing foreign-looking NSETs with overseas Koreans would be a smarter, safer option. Certainly some of the criticisms made of the average native speaker English teacher---young, no overseas experience, not trained to be a teacher, just here to make money and party---can be applied to the worst of the gyopo community as well, and clearly nobody's paying too much attention to them.

This is an industry where any Kim, Lee, or Choi can open a school, and one made all the worse by those who hire the wrong teachers, who don't honor contracts, and who swindle parents. If you're really going to clean up the business, there need to be more headlines like "Hagwon Owner Vetting Needs Tightening," or a comparable headline that makes more sense.

The food capital of Asia is __________, the ecological capital of the world is _________.

I'm often reminded of a passage on the first page of Michael Breen's 1998 book The Koreans when I read through the local English-language news sites:

The local media can be extremely misleading as a source of information. They generally do not see their role as a check on government and business, with the result that government intentions are frequently reported as facts. A huge proportion of news stories, when you follow them up, turn out to be speculation, trial balloons, rumour and deliberate distortion.

I think you'd have an easier time disputing the first part of that paragraph now, a couple decades after it was inspired, but the second half remains true, especially in the local English-language media, which sees its role as a promotional tool written by and often for Koreans. That brings me to a fluff piece in the Korea Times, "North Jeolla to Become Food Capital of Asia":

President Lee Myung-bak pledged Wednesday to support North Jeolla Province's bid to become the ``food capital'' of Northeast Asia, saying the project was closely related to the government's plan to globalize hansik, Korea's traditional cuisine.

``The province's efforts to build a cluster of food firms and institutes deserve more attention as the importance of the food industry is growing fast,'' Lee said during a visit to Jeonju, a city in the province famous for bibimbap, a mix of rice, vegetables and meat.

``I believe its plan to become the food capital will not only help promote regional development but also help foreigners better understand Korea and its dietary culture.''

I'm sorry to say I only visited Jeonju once, but I had a very pleasant time and would love to go back someday. I learned that Gwangju might not want to call itself the "Hub City of Asian Culture" when it doesn't even have as much culture as Jeonju. As you've heard probably eleven times this week, "Jeonju is famous for bibimbap. Do you know bibimbap? It is kind of traditional Korean dish. Almost of Koreans like the bibimbap. If you go to Jeonju you can enjoy Bibimbap there . But I think maybe You can't eat bibimbap. it is so spice" and indeed the food of Jeonju, and all of the region, is a prime attraction. My collection of maps and promotional material was among the casualties of my move back to the US, so I no longer have my Jeonju guidebook, but I do recall it promoting itself as, dare I say, a hub of Korean food, and I wondered how Gwangju would feel about that, considering it also sees itself as, dare I say, a mecca of Korean cuisine as well.

That Korea Times article goes on to talk about the Saemangeum project whereby 155 square miles of wetlands will be turned into "Northeast Asia's new growth engine" and "a global business hub and a beautiful waterside leisure city that comes second to Venice and Amsterdam" according to someone in the Prime Minister's office. In January we learned the new city would be called "Ariul" (아리울). From an International Herald Tribune article in November 2008:

"This project is not about protecting the environment," said Park Hyoung Bae, an official with the Saemangeum development authority. "It is about economic development. And we will do that in an environmentally sound way."

It continues:

[Developers] will replace natural wetlands with artificial ones and turn riverbeds into lakes. They will build a park along the road on the sea dyke and try to attract tourists with a theme park, convention center and even perhaps a casino.

The Korea Herald had a piece on it in December:

Korea began work to transform part of the Saemangeum tidal flats on the country's southwest coast into a regional tourism hub, the government said Thursday, according to Yonhap News.

. . .

The park region is part of a much larger 10.2 trillion won project that aims to build a world-class tourism industry hub on Saemangeum by 2020. The hub will cover 24.4 square km and feature international schools, theaters, museums, healthcare facilities and a residential area deemed vital for attracting both local and foreign investors.

The IHT article also repeats the line about that area of the country not having much economic development. Please excluse the ignorance of a guy from a big country, but I can't understand why one smaller than his home state of Pennsylvania needs "development," hotels, and casinos in every town and on every coast. Matter of fact South Korea has so many hubs I'd wish it'd loan Pennsylvania some. Anyway, Birds Korea has a page on Saemangeum looking at some of the consequences of this "development."



Last month I also learned from Xinhua that "S Korea's Suncheon Bay dreams of becoming world's ecological capital." Suncheon is the self-proclaimed Ecological Capital of Korea (대한민국 생태수도), and most of that pride derives from Suncheon Bay, one of the nicest spots in the country if I do say so myself. That article led off with a nice story:

South Korean farmer Jeong Jong-tae, who lives in Suncheon Bay Area, is busy feeding hooded cranes at four o'clock every afternoon as it is now a season that the birds come from Siberia winter to the region's well-preserved wetlands.

The food for the endangered birds comes from Jeong's own harvest, which he grew by taking an eco-friendly, organic way of farming.

It has been only a year since Jeong took the job, which is part of the so-called "scenic farming" the Suncheon municipal government launched in a bid to provide first-class food and shelter for some 1,000 migratory birds that visit wetlands in South Korea's far-south city every winter.

A committee of 95 nearby farms, led by Jeong, joined the government-led project, agreeing to renovate their farms as a place where visiting birds could gather, while supported by the city government through tax benefits and subsidies.

Local authorities call Suncheon Bay one of the five biggest wetlands in the world, though I've found nothing to confirm that, and even the numbers show it isn't even the biggest in Korea. In 2013 Suncheon will host the International Garden Expo (2013년국제정원박람회), and local authorities are more than welcome to invite me and my fiancee to visit. They'll be building a new visitor's center down there, and it looks great but it does make you wonder how all this development fits the idea of preservation.



That's sort of the paradoxical thing about Suncheon Bay and Korea's other wetlands. If you listen to the authorities, they're being preserved for the sake of promoting them as eco-tourism destinations. You'll remember in 2008 they had the Ramsar Convention in the city of Changwon, while they were simultaneously building over the wetlands on the west coast. According to the Korea Times, the Minister of the Environment in 2008

adapted his pragmatism to the ``wise use of wetlands,'' the No.1 priority of the Ramsar Convention. ``What must be protected must be protected, but it would be even better if wetlands are utilized as eco-tourism sites because that could result in not only their protection but also the revitalization of the local economy,'' he said.

Gwangju Spring Flower Expo: March 26th - April 4th.

The Gwangju Spring Flower Expo (광주봄꽃박람회) will run from Friday, March 26th, through April 4th at the Kim Dae-jung Convention Center. It's billed as the "Earliest flower Show in Korea". Both the website and the online brochure (.pdf file) are generally unhelpful with specifics, though it does look like there will be topiaries, various gardens, and yodeling from the Gwangju Berner Oberland Yodel Club (광주오버란드요델클럽). Their message board says they'll perform on the 3rd at 4:00 pm and the 4th at 1:00 pm.

The convention center is accessible via the subway stop of the same name, tickets cost 5,000 won for adults, and the expo will run from 10:00 am through 6:00 pm those ten days. You'll find photos of years past via a Naver search.

Huge Catholic church coming to Mokpo.

On the 23rd they broke ground on St. Michael's Cathedral (성미카엘기념대성당) and facilities in Mokpo's Sanjeong-dong. They say about a thousand people showed up for the eleven o'clock ceremony at the site of the former St. Columban Hospital.

Some Koreans changing their names.

I couldn't think of a good title for the post, but the Korea Times writes that over 725,000 Koreans changed their name this past decade.

Most of them said they had been bullied or mistaken for someone else because of their names.

When ``hideous'' criminals, including serial killers and pedophiles, were caught, people who had the same names as theirs filed for revisions, which were mostly accepted.

A Korean-language article gives examples of such names: 강호순, 조두순, 김길태. Since names are collections of a limited number of syllables, you're bound to have a lot of repeats. Searching on Naver for instance turns up notable people who share those three names. I'd be interested to see how many Kim Kil-tae's there are, or at least how many changed their name after his crime.

The Chosun Ilbo translation has some more information:

Among the 162,246 people whose application was approved by the Supreme Court last year, Min-jun was the most popular name for men with 552 people, and Seo-yeon for women with 1,401. In the past, many people wanted to change names that sounded old-fashioned or unpleasant, but now an increasing number of people do so for superstitious reasons such as choosing names believed to bring prosperity.

. . .

According to data published by the National Court Administration, popular names have changed over time. The most popular names in 1948 were Young-su for men and Sun-ja for women. But in recent years, unisex names such as Ji-won and Hyeon-seo are being preferred.

I don't remember ever meeting a Sun-ja.

With "hideous criminals" in the news again I'm reminded of something I noticed last year, and have an opportunity to finally write a post about it. I taught at two middle schools in Suncheon, and between them had over 50 classes of about 35 students each. I saw each class once or twice a month---one class had a three-month gap between meetings---and if that didn't make it hard enough to learn names, I never got class rosters. I'm glad students were required to wear name tags, and I'm glad some homeroom teachers had seating charts taped to their desks (that doesn't do any good when classes are mixed up according to level).

Anyway, the point is I didn't know students' names, and didn't see class rosters until it was time to give speaking tests at the end of the semester. Groups of five students would join me at a table and I'd match their names with their student numbers. A few times I'd have the right number, and the right student, but a different name on the roster. Turns out some parents would change their students' names mid-semester.

I sent an email to the author of Ask A Korean! last March, and he responded that there are two possible explanations for changing a teenager's name:

Koreans generally believe that a good name is essential to good fortune, and some parents apparently realize that there is a better name out there. Two, the other way around -- sometimes the parents force a "good name" onto a child, only to realize later that the name sounds ridiculous and subjects the child to being teased at school.

I still remember the names of my favorite students, and there are some other names that stand out. There was a Kim Dae-jung, president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003. There was a Park Ji-sung, who shares the name of Korea's most famous soccer export. And my first year I taught a Han Guk-in (한국인), or "Korean." That's way more weird than having a guy named after the German word for German.

Korea's robot English teachers won't go away.

"Tiro," or teaching robot, in Daejeon in 2007. I wonder if it will be any more effective teaching English conversation to 35 students than humans have so far been.

The story of South Korea soon using robots to teach English is one that won't go away. In January the Korea Times had an article, "Robots to Replace Native English Teachers," using the projections of a single economist as the basis for an ominous headline. I didn't touch it at the time because I was taking most of January off, but the news came up again a few weeks later when western media picked up on it. The Korea Times has another article today, looking at the results from a few trial runs.

Classes using robots developed for educational purposes have proven to be effective in enhancing English classes, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said Thursday.

Students of English classes using robots as teaching assistants showed better learning achievements in speaking, as well as greater confidence and motivation, it said, citing a survey carried out by the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS).

The eight-week project was conducted from late December last year at three elementary schools in Daejeon and Masan, South Gyeongsang Province, as part of an initiative to make South Korea a leading robot developer by 2018.

Using robots to teach English in Korea isn't news. You can find articles from 2005 talking about it, and even further back if you're looking at Japan. Foreign media, always eager to pick up on a "news of the weird" item out of East Asia, reported on it in February. The blog Gusts of Popular Feeling did a nice job last month looking at some of the robots in use today, and the social climate created by some in the media that might make robots a safer alternative to foreign barbarian teachers.

Today's Korea Times article gets closer to the reason these robots are employed deployed:

"Using teaching robots in classes is expected to raise the quality of public school education, thus leading to less dependence on the private education," said Kim Hong-joo, a ministry official.

Also, an early start in teaching robot projects will be helpful in leading the new global market as the nation aims to be one of the top three global leaders in this field by 2013, he added.

Decreasing spending on private education is something you see in the papers all the time---Koreans spent 1.12 million won per household per month in 2008, and the country spent three billion more last year---though it's not clear how robots in the classroom will improve English education or make parents not want to seek out an actual human being for instruction.



The second part seems to make more sense, and is in line with South Korea's goal to become a worldwide leader in practically everything. South Korea will use English-teaching robots because it wants to demonstrate it can. As I'll try and show below, native speaker English teachers are basically lame ducks anyway, so sacrificing a little quality for the next couple years isn't really a concern.

Getting back to the January article, I'm not sure if you can believe "a good number" of native speaker English teachers will be replaced by robots by 2018, necessarily, because projections for the use of NSETs change all the time. I recall reading articles years ago that said NSETS would be out by 2012, and 2013, and 2015, and 2016. Before the 2008 presidetial election here you had one candidate advocating English taught by NSETs, another who wanted more money spent on training Korean English teachers, and others who wanted NSETs phased out.

At first glance the progression shown in the January article confirms my suspicion that the NSET experiment is nearly over in public schools. But the source for the January Korea Times article, "an economist at the Hyundai Research Institute," isn't a guy in the Ministry of Education, isn't a guy in place to shape policy, and certainly isn't a guy whose forecast warrants a headline "Robots to Replace Native English Teachers," but this is the Korea Times. Nonetheless he says:

"Before such sophisticated English-speaking robots debut, teaching by native English speakers will be conducted by video-conferencing with teachers in their home countries," he said.

This is something we've seen happen the past couple years---I wrote about it in 2008 and again last week---on a small scale with students on islands and in remote counties who otherwise wouldn't have regular meetings with a native English speaker.

There are other signs that schools and policymakers are looking to move away from native speaker English teachers, just a few years after they were imported in large number. The government has been hiring thousands of Korean "lecturers" to teach practical and conversational English in public schools. The government has created "Teach English in English" certificates for Korean English teachers who can conduct an entire English class in English, a departure from today where most classes are grammar-based and have little to no target language use. And, the government is looking to replace the TOEFL with a domestic English exam that tests "practical English," rather than the inappropriately difficult material you find on standarized exams now (take a look at last year's college entrance exam).

I can't say native speaker English teachers are by and large efficient or effective, but I do know little preparation or thought has gone into their implementation, and little planning goes into how they're used in school, practically setting them up to fail. It's remarkable that all the interest in "practical English" comes at a time when NSETs are projected to be on their way out, because "practical English" and English conversation of course certainly play into the strengths of native English speakers, and right into the weaknesses of Korean English teachers. Currently NSETs are used in schools where English is taught entirely because of standardized exams, where the actual use of the language is an obstacle to the test material, where conversation classes are of no importance and receive no significant grade, and where native English speakers exist at best as a novelty and at worst as a nuisance. When foreign teachers arrive in school their principals and co-teachers often have no idea what to do with them, give them little guidance beyond "teach speaking," and have no goals for their use or ways to measure success or failure. You often have Korean English teachers who don't do their jobs as co-teachers, don't assist in lesson preparation, don't attend the mandatory English workshops, and don't even show up to class.

It doesn't really matter because there's no incentive or accountability, and this is something I wrote at length about in a December post about a government blacklist of "incompetent" foreign teachers. NSETs aren't given the opportunity to anonymously evaluate their Korean co-teachers---except on blogs or Facebook---so nobody really knows if Mr. Park doesn't show up for class, or Mrs. Kim doesn't participate, or Ms. Lee beats the students. It's up to these co-teachers to decide if NSETs have their contracts renewed, but you have to question the qualifications of evaluators who don't attend or participate in class, or don't know anything what NSETs are brought in to do. Teachers are required to attend training sessions in language and methodology, but since everyone passes regardless of ability, attendance, or effort, there is again no accountability. And, since all we hear about in the papers are that foreign teachers will be out by 20__, there's really no reason to change to accommodate a temporary intrusion.

None of this is new to readers of my site, but to first-time visitors I'll direct you to other posts where I've addressed the problems NSETs face:

* (12/3/2009) "Are native speakers part of English here? Your thoughts on the 2009 GETA International Conference."
* (12/2/2009) In the Korea Herald, writing about mandatory culture classes for foreign teachers.
* (6/26/2009) Korea Herald: Just what makes a teacher "qualified"?
* (6/15/2009) Not enough applicants for those "English Lecturer" jobs.
* (6/5/2009) Seoul wants English classes to be taught in English, will give TEE certs out.
* (5/13/2009) Korea Herald: The media bias against foreign teachers.
* (5/6/2009) 12% of native speaker teachers in Ulsan not retained.
* (5/1/2009) Korea Times: Foreign teachers wrongly portrayed in Korea.
* (4/7/2009) Korea Herald: Stop the scatter-shot approach to English.
* (12/30/2008) Half of foreign teachers leave after one year? GREAT! That's an article that should be brought up every now and again, because a MOE official in charge of native speaker English teachers says

``They are neither regular teachers nor lecturers who can conduct classes independently. They are `assistant teachers,' hence their teaching experience doesn't matter much,'' he said. ``Rather, it's better for students to have more new teachers so that they can meet various kinds of foreigners,'' he added.

* (12/10/2008): Poor guy.
* (11/24/2008): EPIK in the news some more.
* (11/21/2008): 4,000 "English Lecturers" coming in 2010.
* (11/14/2008): A must-read: an account of teaching English in South Korea in the sixties.
* (10/6/2008): More money going into English education next year.
* (9/11/2008): More English-Only classrooms, more gimmicks.
* (6/23/2008): Pronunciation matters.
* (11/28/2007) A reaction to Kang-Eun-hee's "Korean English Teachers."

Those posts all have links to other posts and articles, and the "English in the news" category has more information as well.

In that Gusts of Popular Feeling post last month he links to an interesting comment on another site:

I'm currently teaching in South Korea (and yes, there are always job openings... though less than usual, with the recession on). I teach at two public elementary schools, one of which is on the extreme outskirts of the city and only has 46 students. For some reason, this tiny school got an English robot called the Cybertalker, which uses voice recognition and some kind of face recognition to tailor pre-made conversations to students. The only time I've seen the thing turned on was in the frantic lead up to a school inspection, when my English classes were cancelled in favour of registering all the students in the system and trying to make it perform for the school board officials. Even with days of practice, the students couldn't make it respond - even the almost fluent teachers couldn't make it recognize their English. These are the crappiest teaching robots in existence. A Speak and Spell would be more useful.

Indeed when I first heard about the robot story and how they were cast by the Korea Times as a replacement to native speaker English teachers, I thought about something my former school tried.

In October 2008 I wrote about my school getting a brand new AMC-200, a piece of machinery that, as explained to me, works like what you'd find in a 노래방 (singing room). It came with dozens of books, on a wide variety of topics, and when you select the lesson you'd like to do, you punch in a particular number and it calls up a small video, or a recording of a dialogue, or a particular language activity, or a song, or a number of other little tasks.



I never saw it used, and matter of fact it wasn't even plugged in during the spring semester. I liked the use of such technology, and also the overuse of powerpoint and multimedia in the language classroom in Korea, as using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. There's no need for fancy displays and expensive equipment when students just need to learn and practice the basics, how to construct sentences and basic meaningful utterances.

South Korea teaches English exclusively toward standardized tests, yet achieves some of the lowest scores on the world on them (a function of every student in the country taking them, but still). Spoken English and "communicative competence" has never been a priority, and it shows. You'll never have improvement there without an overhaul of the goals and methods of English education, and whether you have a native English speaker, a Korean English teacher who can speak some English, or a robot with a funny voice, you'll still have the same results unless you change how English is taught and what it's taught toward. Korea talks about using robots in school just to demonstrate it can, unlike many other countries in the world. However there's nothing to indicate a fancy robot will achieve any more than this piece of equipment: