Teacher fired for love shots.

The Korea Times writes of a teacher fired for, among other things, forcing student-teachers at his school to drink.

A court ruled Tuesday that a high school in Gyeonggi Province did not overstep its authority in dismissing a male teacher who forced a group of trainee teachers to drink “love shots” against their will at an evening get-together party.

A “love shot” is when two people drink with arms entwined, a drinking ritual meant to boost teamwork and forge closer relationships but which is often abused by male superiors.

The teacher also sullied the dignity of educators by making unwanted physical contact with them, it said, siding with the school’s decision to dismiss him.

“The teacher apparently forced trainee teachers to drink excessively and made unwanted physical contact with them. His behavior is tantamount to compromising the dignity of all teachers here,” the Seoul Administrative Court said.

We first read about this story 13 months ago, only then four teachers were involved. From the Korea Times in May, 2009:

According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, the four teachers invited the college students to an evening drinking outing on April 6. Later that night, they also suggested them to go to a singing room, which the college students rejected.

Then, the teachers told the college students that they wouldn't get good grades on their on-the-job-training unless they'd join. At the singing room, the teachers sexually harassed the students that included touching their hips and hugging.

"Hips," of course, being Konglish for butt. Of interest at the time, apparently, is that of the four teachers involved, three were of the "progressive," political, and controversial Korean Teachers & Education Workers' Union (전국교직원노동조합).

Chuseok bribe season for teachers?

A couple people pointed me to this article from the Korea Times, which says teachers can potentially receive bribes from parents via their cellphones. It's a pretty flimsy article by a guy whose email address is "foolsdie"* and without any evidence beyond an article in a newspaper that isn't this one and isn't one you've read, you might as well title it "Fees for illegal private tutors going mobile" or "Tips for middle-aged strippers going mobile":

According to the Donga Ilbo, with Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) approaching, some parents are sending teachers "white envelopes" (cash) via mobile phones.

SK Telecom, the country's largest mobile carrier, operates Giftcon services that enable a person to send a gift certificate of up to 500,000 won through a text message. The receivers can use it for purchases.

This makes it easier for some parents to send gifts to teachers, making it unnecessary to check the addresses of teachers or hire delivery services to send the packages.

A representative of a teachers' association told the vernacular newspaper that teachers should not use mobile services for bribery, which he said is not helping teachers' efforts to halt the practice.

That's pretty bad journalism, not only because it just copies what another paper found. I did enjoy that last paragraph, though, even though it didn't say who the representative was or what union s/he was representing. Indeed four out of five dentists agree that accepting bribes is not conducive to not accepting bribes.

Here's what looks to be the Korean-language Dong-A Ilbo piece.

* Those who teach adults, can you please disavow them of the practice of either picking ridiculous email addresses or making ones that correspond directly to their names in Hangeul? Maybe we'll also work on the "Korean Thanksgiving" thing, too.

On the bribery front, Korean teachers don't like being portrayed as criminals, either.

Recently Seoul has tried to implement a system that would reward people who report teachers who accept bribes from parents. However, it's been met with some objections from teachers, the Korea Herald says.

Many have expressed concern about possible negative effects of such a reporting system. The education office claims that the system will work effectively to stamp out any corruption by teachers and education officials.

"With the system, teachers may become subjects to be monitored by the education authorities and look like potential criminals, which will create very negative images of teachers among students, damage the authority of teachers and obviously dampen the morale of hard-working teachers," said Kang Dong-heun, a high-school English teacher in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province.

Kim Dong-seok, spokesman of the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, said that the system has the potential of yielding many innocent victims as there could be people who would seek to receive the rewards and file malicious and false reports.

"The committee in charge of deliberating on the reports does not have any investigation rights like prosecutors, so it is in actuality difficult to vouch for the authenticity of the reports," Kim said.

"I agree that the government and teachers ourselves should try our best to eradicate any corrupt practices, but the reporting system is like police putting potential criminals on a wanted list and giving rewards when they are caught. This will damage the mutual trust between teachers and students, which is a very critical quality in educating students."

Indeed, the negative portrayal of native speaker English teachers has the same effect.

Earlier this year we saw some figures about how common gift-giving is, though I'll just preface the numbers by saying we really oughtn't lump all these gifts together. There's a difference between giving a white envelope to buy a little more attention to your child, and giving a plate of food, case of juice, or a pair of socks as a token of thanks. From the Korea Times:

The Anti-corruption & Civil Rights Commission surveyed 1,660 parents whose children attend elementary and secondary schools across the country at the beginning of the month.

It showed 18.6 percent of respondents said they had offered money or gifts to teachers.

By region, Gangnam had the highest ratio at 36.4 percent, trailed by South Jeolla Province with 36.2 percent. Busan and Gwangju, came next, with 31.9 percent each.

South Gyeongsang Province had the lowest ratio at 9.5 percent, while Jeju Island and Ulsan recorded 10 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

By grade, parents whose children are first graders in middle school took the largest portion of the money-offering group with 26 percent. More than 25 percent of parents of senior elementary students offered money to teachers.

The LA Times had more in May.

In South Korea, the deeply rooted practice of parents offering under-the-table payoffs is known as chonji. Calling the practice an economic corruption of the classroom, authorities have announced 2009 as the year of the war against such bribes.

On a national day to honor teachers this Friday, they have devised an unusual plan: On Teacher's Day, many schools will be closed and parents will be sent letters asking them not to visit their children's classrooms for at least a month.

Investigators have also stopped teachers on the way home from school to check their vehicles for chonji-related gifts.

Such measures have touched off a debate in this education-obsessed nation about who are the real perpetrators: Are they greedy teachers with their hands out or overly aggressive parents who will stop at nothing to promote their children? Is it both?

In a recent government survey of 1,660 parents of school-age children, more than half of those polled cited parents' "selfishness" in putting their kids before all others as the main reason for the practice. Forty-eight percent considered chonji a bribe, as opposed to a harmless gift.

Accepting chonji is considered a crime in South Korea if prosecutors decide the amounts are large enough, but the law does not penalize the giver, authorities say.

"Across the country, one of five parents says they have given chonji to teachers, and one of three in big cities says so," said Kim Jong-yoon, who heads a bribery investigative team for the national Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. "This culture must be fixed and improved."

In one case, inspectors posed as parents to follow school visitors carrying envelopes and shopping bags. Kim said such tactics have brought results. One $1.50 box of candy was found to contain hundreds of dollars.

Suncheon school principal stabs himself outside the house of a local newspaper reporter.

Strange story out of Suncheon, as a 59-year-old principal of an elementary school in Suncheon went to Gwangju late Wednesday night and stabbed himself in the stomach outside the house of a local newspaper reporter. The principal was being investigated by the Suncheon Office of Education for having an affair with a teacher, based on some purchases made on the school credit card says CNB News, and went to the reporter's house after the investigation wrapped up at 10:00 PM, under the pretense of setting the record straight. The principal survived and was taken to a St. Carollo Hospital in Suncheon and later moved to Chonnam University Hospital in Gwangju.

"Education ministry officials formed the largest group on the list of civil servants who were caught paying for sex."

That's not good news.

According to data submitted by the National Police Agency to Rep. Chang Je-won of the ruling Grand National Party, a total of 229 government officials were caught involved in prostitution last year.

Of them, 93 were local government officials and 42 education-related officials, including those at education offices in provinces and cities.

By ministry, the education ministry accounted for the largest number of 19, followed by the now-defunct Ministry of Information and Communications (Korea Communications Commission) with 17, and the National Police Agency with 15.

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.

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."

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.

Another Gwangju student commits suicide after corporal punishment.

That's the direction the article is leaning, anyway.

A female student took her own life after receiving corporal punishment from her teacher.

According to police in Gwangju, the 13-year-old middle school student hanged herself and was found last Thursday in her room by family members.

The unidentified girl was ordered by her teacher to repeatedly crouch down and stand up as punishment because she did not read some assigned books.

Police say the teacher claimed that the level of discipline was far from harsh and there was no corporal punishment harsh enough to drive her into committing suicide.

The article goes on to reference the Gwangju student who killed himself earlier this month after getting hit 110 times across the feet for skipping study hall. But, while I have no doubt that a teacher is willing and able to give out excessive corporal punishment---we've all seen it ourselves---it's probably too hasty to lay the blame solely on the beating, seeing how, well, how regularly people chose suicide.

(Updated) Gwangju student kills himself after 28-year-old teacher hits him 110 times.

Disgusting news out of Gwangju.

The 16-year-old student, identified as Lee, was found hanging from a tree in a playground early in the morning in what appeared to be a suicide.

On Thursday, the teacher, 28, struck him on the sole of his foot 110 times because he skipped two hours of self-study classes. She was recently hired as a regular teacher after having worked on contract for several years.

That's not corporal punishment, that's bullying. The teacher should be fired, plain and simple, as should anyone else who demonstrates an inability to control their anger and lead their students without beating them to death. If you're going to make a big to-do about rooting out underperforming and unprofessional native speaker teachers, you damn sure better take a look at who else you're allowing in your schools.

* Update: I knew I saw a longer article about this somewhere. Extra! Korea linked to an earlier article. An excerpt:

The teacher is known to be a daughter of the school principal. She began to work full-time this year, after teaching part-time for a few years previously at the same institution.

The school, just like many other Korean high schools, requires students to study in school until 10 p.m. on weekdays.

After the punishment, the deceased told some of his classmates that he would kill himself "in a joking manner," the police said.

After returning home that night, the student chatted with his friends online and watched television, before he went outside.

Students in the school told the investigators that the degree of punishment the student received actually "wasn't too harsh" compared to the "usually very harsh punishment." The police are further investigating the case, focusing on how much influence the punishment had on the student's decision to kill himself.

In another fine piece of editing those paragraphs are repeated twice in the article. So, since she is the principal's daughter we can assume nothing will happen to her and that she won't even be subjected to the harshest of harsh punishments: a transfer.

Student teachers sexually harassed.

This is several days old, but I'd thought I'd post the story about the student teachers sexually harassed by four teachers at their assigned public school.

According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, the four teachers invited the college students to an evening drinking outing on April 6. Later that night, they also suggested them to go to a singing room, which the college students rejected.

Then, the teachers told the college students that they wouldn't get good grades on their on-the-job-training unless they'd join. At the singing room, the teachers sexually harassed the students that included touching their hips and hugging.

Three days after the incident, the students handed in a letter, detailing the incident and asking the male teachers to be punished.

An official with the provincial educational office said, "Most of the allegations proved to be true. The teachers involved will face stern punishment."

As Extra! Korea notes, "hips" is how Koreans mistranslate "butt." And I think "punishment" is another way of saying "might get a talking-to, maybe" considering how common this sort of behavior is. Anecdotal evidence and observations tell me that, and a survey---I know, I know---that found half of women get harassed at these mandatory drinking parties helps the case.

Lee was not the only one having such an unpleasant experience ― according to a survey by a recruitment company Saramin of 729 female employees, 52.3 percent, or 381, said they have experienced sexual harassment at drinking sessions. Some 39 percent said they have been harassed not only at drinking parties but also during work.

When multiple replies were allowed, the surveyed women said they suffered from physical contact such as hugging (74 percent), dirty jokes (41.7 percent), jokes about their body shape or appearance (30.7 percent), pressure to serve drinks to men, and questions about their sexual experience. Twenty-one respondents even said male senior staff or co-workers asked them to have sex with them.

About half of the harassment was from immediate superiors, followed by top managers and co-workers.

Ethically unqualified teachers talk about corporal punishment.

In the Times there's an article on the debate over whether corporal punishment should be made totally illegal. A couple excerpts:

Late last month, the Incheon District Court sentenced a female elementary school teacher who hit two of her second grade students more than 80 times in October last year for not having done their homework to eight months in prison suspended for two years. It was one of the harshest rulings handed down on a teacher involving corporal punishment. The teacher is appealing the sentence.

According to court documents, the teacher hit a boy, identified as Kang, and a girl named Na for not having done their homework. When they had done it, she called them liars and caned them, which required them to undergo two to three weeks of medical treatment.

The Incheon Metropolitan Office of Education suspended the teachers' license for just three months.

. . .

However, some people still support corporal punishment. They claim that it is the only way to maintain discipline because so many students no longer listen to their teachers anymore.

Others say caning doesn't work anymore.

``These days, kids are so wild that you cannot even dream of hitting one,'' an elementary school teacher in Seoul, confided. ``The children often threaten us that they will call the police and sometimes make video records and upload it on the Internet. These days, we don't know who is in charge,'' she said.

It calls to mind a book written last year by a Korean English teacher talking about how hard it had become to control students. An excerpt from the Korea Beat translation:

"Once class starts it’s a disaster. The kids giggle over their cellphones. So the teacher takes them away. One of the kids looks at her with hurt eyes and says, ‘I’m going to call the police’. The student gets angrier as the teacher goes on with the lesson. The students write the answers on the blackboard, one by one. Carrying the chalk, the student says to her ‘fuck you’ [in English]. All the students start laughing uncontrollably. The student has a wide grin at doing such a great thing. So she just had to go on. The teacher whacks the kid on the head. ‘Screw you!’ the kid says [in Korean].”

For the record I'm not against some corporal punishment in schools. I think back to when I was a student, back when corporal punishment was gone, and now some twenty years later I could definitely sympathize with one of my old teachers wanting to give my punk-ass a swat.

However, that's a bad example because corporal punishment isn't effective when teachers hit students for being punks. I think one reason students fight back against the teachers, either physically or with cell phone cams and message boards, is because teachers have clearly abused their authority and taken it too far, from beyond just inflicting a little pain and humiliation on the students to showing that they cannot control their anger. Beating students with a bamboo sword, for example, or repeatedly with a plastic broom are not carried out on students "for their own good," to borrow a tired phrase, but are cases of teachers demonstrating they've lost it. The first teacher was given a warning, by the way, and the second was given a leave of absence during summer vacation. Meanwhile some native speaker teachers in Ulsan did not have their contracts extended because, to hear the local education office tell it, among other reasons they yelled too much.

The "ethically unqualified" in the title comes from a quotation from the supervisor at the Incheon Office of Education, who told the Korea Times in March:

``Speaking English fluently doesn't necessarily mean they can teach English well. Many foreign teachers lack teaching methodology and some of them are not ethically qualified to treat children. Also, children have difficulties learning from them, as they cannot speak Korean,'' said Koo Young-sun, supervisor of the education office. ``The problem in securing foreign teachers is another reason we have to work with Korean teachers for English conversation classes,'' she added.

What examples did she give, what evidence did she cite? Hahaha, evidence.

As I said on the post about the Korean English teacher's book I just mentioned, I wonder if stories like hers might give our Korean colleagues pause to consider how hard it can be for us to lead classes. Not that we're tempted to beat children, but if students show such disrespect to their Korean teachers, they of course show it to us. In fact one reasons why students can be so inattentive in our classes is because we don't beat knowledge into them. Perhaps some students are put at ease knowing we won't hit them, but I remember hearing from quite a few of my former hagwon students that they respected the teachers who hit them the most because it showed that they cared.

Which of course leads one to ask what sort of training these teachers are getting, or lacking, if they see no other means of controlling students beyond violence. I can think of quite a few times when I've asked a co-teacher in the room to help kids pay attention, and their response was to whack them with the weapons they brought to class. If you're going to call into question the ethical qualifications of foreign teachers, and say that many are ignorant of teaching methodology---which is probably true---you damn sure better question the methods of teachers who cannot lead classes without a bamboo switch.

Gwangju female high school students stripped by English teacher as punishment.

The Gwangju Ilbo has two stories about female high school students who had their skirts forcibly removed as part of their corporal punishment. The first article, posted below, says because of poor test scores about 10 students were subject to the punishment, which had the students take their skirts off and get on their knees in front of the teachers' desk.

I can't figure out how to link directly to the two articles on the story---GFN's Michael Simning passed them along to me by searching for "치마" on the 광주일보 site---so I will repost them below. Perhaps Korea Beat or another blog can translate them in full.

‘치마 벗겨 체벌’ 10여명이 받았다

광주 C여고 여교사가 성적이 나쁜 학생들에게 교복 치마를 벗게 하는 체벌을 줬다는 보도〈본보 28일자〉와 관련, 광주시교육청이 진상조사에 나선 결과 사실로 확인됐다.
시 교육청은 28일 “해당 학교 교사와 학생들을 대상으로 조사를 벌인 결과, 이 학교 영어교사가 수업도중 일부 여학생에게 치마를 벗게 하는 체벌을 준 것으로 드러났다”고 밝혔다.
이날 시 교육청이 조사한 결과에 따르면 이 학교 1학년 영어 담당 여교사는 수업시간에 본 쪽지시험에서 성적이 나쁜 학생에게 교복 치마를 벗은 채 무릎을 꿇도록 하고, 교탁 주변을 돌게하는 벌칙을 줬다.
이 같은 벌칙은 신학기인 지난달 쪽지시험에서 ‘0점’을 맞은 학생들을 중심으로 10여명이 받았다.
이들 중 일부는 치마를 벗고 교탁 뒤에서 2∼3분간 무릎을 꿇다가 제자리로 되돌아갔고, 일부는 치마를 벗은 채 교탁 주변을 왔다갔다하는 벌을 받았다고 시 교육청은 설명했다.
문제의 여교사는 진상조사에서 “성적이 너무 나쁜 아이에 대한 벌칙의 하나로 학생들이 제안한 ‘이마 매 맞기’와 ‘치마 벗기’ 중 하나를 정했다”고 해명했다.
하지만 일부 학생들은 “학생들이 이 같은 벌칙을 제안했다는 주장은 사실이 아니며, 치마를 벗고 교실을 돌게 하는 벌칙까지 줬다”고 반박했다.
시 교육청 관계자는 “학생들과 논의해 정했다 하더라도 체벌방식이 적절치 않으므로 정확한 진상조사를 거쳐 징계 등의 조치를 취하겠다”고 밝혔다. 한편 시 교육청은 이 같은 체벌이 재발하지 않도록 광주지역 교사들을 대상으로 체벌 방지 교육 등을 강화해 나가기로 했다.
/박진표기자 lucky@kwangju.co.kr

* * *

여고생 치마 벗겨 벌 세우기

광주의 한 여자고등학교에서 일부 교사들이 수업 도중 학생들에게 교복 치마를 벗게 하는 벌칙을 주고, 욕설을 했다는 주장이 제기돼 인권침해 논란이 일고 있다.
27일 광주 C여고 학생과 학부모들에 따르면 이 학교 1학년 영어 담당 여교사가 수업 시간 도중 쪽지시험을 본 뒤 성적이 나쁜 학생들에게 교복 치마를 벗고 교실을 도는 벌칙을 주고 있다는 것.
이 학교 한 학생은 “친구들 앞에서 교복 치마를 벗고 교실을 돌면서 극심한 수치심을 느꼈다”면서 “저는 한 번 밖에 벌칙을 받지 않았지만, 다른 친구들은 수차례에 걸쳐 이러한 벌칙을 받기도 했다”고 주장했다.
또 다른 학생도 “아무리 공부를 못한다고 사춘기 소녀들의 치마를 벗기는 게 말이나 되느냐”면서 “선생님께 항의하고 싶었지만, 미움을 받을까봐 꾹 참았다”고 말했다.
이에 대해 해당 교사는 “학기초에 쪽지 시험을 봤는 데 ‘0’점이 나온 아이들이 있어 두 차례에 걸쳐 치마를 벗게한 뒤 무릎을 꿇고 있게 했으며, 벗은 치마로는 무릎을 덮고 있게 했다”면서 “치마를 벗고 교실을 돌게 했다는 말은 사실이 아니며, 요즘은 이마저도 하지 않고 있다”고 해명했다.
이 학교의 또 다른 여교사는 1학년인 A양이 꽃무늬가 새겨진 가방을 들고 등교했다는 이유로 가방을 빼앗고, 폭언을 한 것으로 알려져 학부모의 반발을 사고 있다. 이 학교는 숙녀용 가방과 빨간색 등 화려한 색상이나 꽃무늬 등이 새겨진 가방을 들고 등교하는 것을 금지하고 있다.
A양은 “다음날 학교 홈페이지 게시판에 ‘가방의 기준은 어디까지 인가’라는 글을 올렸는데, 이를 본 선생님이 저를 교무실로 부르더니 여러 선생님들이 지켜보는 앞에서 ‘낮과 밤이 다른 X’, ‘이 것도 홈페이지에 올려라’라는 등의 폭언을 했다”고 주장했다. 이후 심각한 스트레스를 겪은 A양은 결국 부모님과 상의 끝에 전학을 가기로 결정했다.
A양의 어머니는 “아이가 극심한 스트레스를 받고 우울증 증세를 보여 전학을 결심하게 됐다”면서 “우리 아이가 마지막 피해자가 되길 바라는 마음에서 시 교육청에 감사를 의뢰할 생각”이라고 울먹였다.
이에 대해 이 학교 교감은 “가방과 관련해서는 해당 교사로부터 폭언을 한 사실이 없다는 말을 들었다”면서 “치마를 벗기는 벌칙도 학생들을 의욕적으로 지도 하는 과정에서 일어난 일로 보인다”고 해명했다.
/박진표기자 lucky@kwangju.co.kr
/김형호기자 khh@kwangju.co.kr

* Update: translation by Korea Beat here; an excerpt:

According to the investigation, the female English teacher had the students, who had done poorly on a pop quiz, remove their skirts and duck-walk around the teacher’s desk.

A similar punishment was meted out to over 10 students who scored 0 on a pop quiz last month.

Some of them removed their skirts and spent two to three minutes with their knees bent before returning to their desks, and others removed their skirts and walked to the teacher’s desk and back, the Office explained.

The teacher at isse explained to the investigation, “I gave the extremely low-scoring students a choice between taking their skirts off or being hit on the forehead.”

But some of the students criticized her, saying, “the students didn’t ask for the punishment, we had to take our skirts off and walk around the classroom.”

Ignorance from yet another big name in the English industry.

You know, I was going to give a nice little write-up of the International Graduate School of English, in light of the profile in the Korea Times this morning, but I don't think I'll be as friendly now.

The president [Park Nam-sheik] 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.

If by lacking affection you mean that we don't beat the students to study harder, then yes, we are not as affectionate as our Korean peers. And it's remarkable how the industry is so eager to attract foreign teachers, then so resentful of them once they're here.

Yes, yes, it's our job to lead by example and buck these stereotypes, but it would also be helpful of policy-makers and business leaders didn't have such severe cases of cranio-rectal inversion. There was a lot of what I liked in the KT's profile, but I've got to be dismissive of a guy so ill-informed about who we are and what we do.

Ethically unqualified hagwon teacher breaks 15-year-old's goddamn face.

News out of Seoul, and this is a Korean teacher, by the way:

According to police in Seoul, a complaint was filed that the 20-something teacher at a cram school hit the 15-year-old boy in the face with his clenched fist several times around 9:40 p.m. March 13. The student suffered fractures to his maxillary and orbital bones.

The boy's father claimed that the boy was standing outside a classroom as punishment for not solving a math question, and that the instructor, presumably displeased with his chewing gum, punched him.

``My son had to undergo surgery, having 16 metal screws put into his face. But the hagwon did not pay even the surgery fee, saying it does not have any money. I'd like to let people know how corporal punishment is rampant at private institutes,'' the father said.

A director of the hagwon said that the teacher hit the boy only once and that he did so because while he was scolding the student for not taking the punishment seriously, the boy grabbed him by the collar.

``We fired the teacher. There may be misunderstanding about the money, as we proposed to the father that we pay the whole cost of treatment and tuition until the student enters college,'' he said.

Hmm, curious if the police have anything to say about it. Another case of a Korean teacher behaving badly, yet no one is questioning the whole group's ethical qualifications the way they're doing native speaker English teachers. Yes, some foreign teachers here are pricks, though the evidence suggests that perhaps schools and academies have bigger problems on their hands than just ignorant white people.

Test day.

No classes today as middle school students are taking another round of standardized tests. You'll remember a couple of months ago some teachers with the Korea Teachers and Education Workers' Union allowed their elementary school students to cheat on the exam or to abstain by taking field trips, both measures taken to protest what is considered superfluous testing and to demonstrate how unnecessary the exams are. The union said in October:

"The uniform test is an act of suppression against students' human rights, and ranks students and schools into a hierarchy based on their scores," the teachers' union said in the statement.

Seven teachers were fired for undermining the exams, including the man pictured above, who continues to hold class outside the school in front of a police barricade. Here are a few more pictures of the events outside his school yesterday. Students are holding banners that say having police outside makes for a scary school. Even more scary is teachers manipulating students for their own political ends.






That's in the news because today is the middle school version of the standardized tests (일제고사), which will evaluate schools' performance. Some 1.35 million students will take it today. People are right to be upset about them, considering students finished their three-day tests two weeks ago, and of course don't care about these. In fact, having tests all morning interferes with our school festival preparations. From the Korea Times:

Progressive educators and parents groups are also increasing calls for the government to stop the ``standardized test'' for elementary and middle school students and reinstate the dismissed teachers.

Professors' union groups also joined the campaign to stop the test. They contended that educational motivation through competition is more than enough and many students have already been suffering from study pressure during a media conference held Monday in front of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

``The state-run test will deteriorate the situation at elementary and secondary schools. The uniform test will rank schools by scores and only boost unnecessary competition,'' the professors' group said in a statement.

Some 20 other civic and womens' groups have joined the protest against the government test, arguing the test will increase private education costs and trigger competition among children.

However, conservative groups called for the progressive groups to stop protesting. ``Avoiding the test is anti-educational. Their protest is confusing parents and students. Educational authorities should stand firmly and take stern actions against any illegal activities by the protesters,'' the Korean Federation of Teachers' Association said in its statement.

Union members have been protesting outside schools. Here's a middle school in Suwon:




I'm at a school with a big union presence, in a province with the highest percentage of KTUnionized teachers in the country. You can guess what the reaction to all this test business has been down here.

Sexual harassment of student athletes.

The KT has the story:

Approximately six out of every 10 athletes at secondary schools were found to have suffered sexual harassment from their coaches and seniors, according to a survey by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) released Monday.

The human rights agency surveyed a total of 1,139 male and female athletes at middle and high schools nationwide over six months in cooperation with a research center at Ewha Womans University.

The report found that 63.8 percent of respondents had been sexually harassed, either physically or verbally. By type, verbal sexual harassment formed the largest portion at 44 percent, while 20 percent answered they were physically harassed. Of them, 1.5 percent said they were asked to have sex by their coaches or colleagues. Of 17 sex demand cases, 11 led to sexual assault, and six were male victims.

The article goes on to say that, unsurprisingly, most did not report the abuse, and it continues by noting that 79% of student athletes have reported either sexual harassment or physical abuse from coaches.

This type of abuse was highlighted back in February, too, when a TV program investigated harassment, abuse, and rape of female athletes, from elementary school through the pros, all while their coaches went largely unpunished. We see this lack of accountability in schools, too, where physical abuse is an every day occurance and where stories of it, of bullying, and of sexual assault are rarely accompanied with news of punishment. This is something Hub of Sparkle can add to its list of authority figures failing young people.

Abusive elementary school teacher apologizes.

From the Korea Times:

An elementary school teacher made a public apology for his harsh beating of students.

The school stripped the teacher of his homeroom teacher post.

The male teacher, Oh Yong-su, of Seolbong Elementary School in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, posted a written apology on the school's Web site Tuesday. It comes four days after a video clip was spread online showing him striking a boy with a broomstick in the classroom.

Oh said in the apology, ``I beg forgiveness from parents and students who were shocked by my excessive corporal punishment and behavior that was unworthy of a teacher. I myself even cannot accept the scene that I caused.''

He said he led the class with his own standards, forcing students to follow rules beyond their capacity. ``I forgot my duty as a teacher who should educate children by respecting their ways. I deeply regret causing pain and torment to the students and their parents by losing my rationality and giving the boys physical punishment.'' Oh said.

. . .

The school stripped Oh of his homeroom teacher position and ordered him not to come to the school for a while, according to the headmaster.

The above video (이천 초등학교 체벌 동영상) was taken from here and preserved on youtube. Not to sound cold, because these are elementary school students after all, but I've witnessed worse attacks in person, and have seen and posted videos of even more brutal ones. Matter of fact, corporal punishment is routine according to pretty much every foreign teacher I've listened to, especially in public schools but also in after-school academies. I can't say I don't support some degree of corporal punishment in schools or as a punishment for certain crimes, but I do have to wonder how schools get off telling native speakers things like be more friendly or smile more when half the staff carries weapons to class. Hell, those kids are lucky the teacher only used a plastic broom.

* Update: I finally watched the video with the sound on, and the kid is wailing pretty good. Ugly. Good to see parents and other internet users coming out against this guy.

"We are doing what we've been taught to at school."

"We are doing what we've been taught to at school." That was written on a placard by a girl at one of the countless anti-beef rallies in Seoul, according to the Korea Times. That article, "Gone is Solemnity from Rallies," highlights what it considers the humor, the sarcasm, the quote-unquote postmodernism in these recent protests. Certainly a lot of unintentional irony at these protests, too, what with students waving signs that read "I want to live!" (살고 싶다!) while their peers are dying on school field trips. Students acting like this

Cha Yoon-min, 13, marched on City Hall on Saturday night with his mother, a lawyer in Seoul. “I am afraid of American beef,” he said. “I could study hard in school. I could get a good job and then I could eat beef and just die.”

while living in the country consistently named most-dangerous for pedestrians. We know all too well what students have been taught at school, and we know what a lot of their teachers have been preaching. And here's a poster displayed atop the Korea Teachers' and Educational Workers' homepage:





Poster advertising an upcoming rally, a banner ad atop the Union homepage advertising the poster, and a cartoon from the site making clear that Americans are intentionally giving rotten beef to Koreans.

The Korea Times also ran a piece saying that the future of journalism has been on display at these rallies, with internet and citizen journalists having a larger role. The unnerving thing is, of course, that these whole hysteria was started by a case of intentionally shoddy journalism, and the meager rebuttals from quote-unquote conservative papers have fallen on deaf ears.

The Hankyoreh has an editorial today that echoes similar sentiments, titled "A new role for the media." An excerpt:

Big conservative papers like the Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and DongA Ilbo have been looking pretty shabby at the daily candlelight protests. Citizens parading in the streets pass by the tall buildings that house those newspapers and call out for them to, “Turn off those lights! You’re not worth the electricity!” There are slogans telling them to go out of print, and their reporters on the ground at these protests find themselves being ridiculed. They’re saying these papers can’t be seen as news media, so their position is not much different from the way the government-controlled media was given a baptism by pebbles at the climax of the April 19 Revolution in 1960.

The reason these newspapers are being scorned is because they are pushing positions that run contrary to the will of the people. Early in the mad cow disease issue, their coverage was largely about preaching to the people, about how American beef is safe, and about how the Korean people don’t know what they’re talking about. After the government went through the motions on those additional negotiations, these papers announced that would be enough and tried to keep additional demands at bay. It tried to discredit the candlelight protests with the absurd, like saying that someone was agitating from behind the scenes. Now they are suddenly calling for President Lee Myung-bak to wake up and change, but that looks mostly like dwitbuk chigi, hitting the drum after the beat has come and gone, only because they realize the country is angry at them as well as at the government. They put their trust in the influence they enjoy and tried to push the will of the people this way and that, and this is what they are doing after having failed.

Those damned quote-unquote conservative papers and their "positions that run contrary to the will of the people." Reminds me of a line from an excellent Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode: "I believe everything that man just said. Because it's exactly what I wanted to hear." Brave, enterprising journalism certainly has not been on display during these events, and the rub is that the quote-unquote liberal sources have been engaging in ridiculous scare-mongering and yellow journalism, a tactic normally reserved for propaganda and government sources. So while the liberal douche in me would love to rise up with my Rage Against the Machine and fight the system and so forth, you've got the anti-establishment side guilty of chronic irrationality and manipulation, to the extent that they're raving mad and are far more untruthful and slippery than the folks they're protesting in the first place.



Their one-sided bullheadedness have not only claimed truth as a casualty, but have had human victims as well. Most recently, ubiquitous comedianne Jeong Sun-hee (정선희) was forced to make a public apology and compelled to quit three of her shows because of remarks she made about protestors. So in addition to getting worked up over Mad Bull Shit, netizens are also patrolling other minor issues, and busting those who don't fall in with the established narrative. Jeong's "controversial" line?

Amid rising iron prices, some people have been stealing manhole covers. People participate in candlelit demonstrations over big issues such as mad cow disease, out of patriotism, but do not feel guilty over such small things as manhole theft, which is a crime. Who knows? Some of those steaming over the big issue and participating in the rally may be such small-scale offenders.

Oooh. The KT quotes a netizen as saying:

Maybe people misunderstood her. But Jeong, who deals with the public, should have considered this sensitive issue more seriously and made remarks more carefully.

Yes, a public figure should be more careful . . . careful to step quickly in line. It's quite acceptable for teachers' unions to speak on the issue, and it's certainly okay for political leaders to intentionally lie in order to stir up public emotion and incite panic, but woe be to those who veer from the company line. Interesting that the netizen's line is similar to the one United Democratic Party head Sohn Han-kyu used to chastize the AMERICAN AMBASSADOR, and that "consider this sensitive issue more seriously" seems code for "keep your mouth shut."


Cartoon from yesterday's 서울신문.

And finally, the Hankyoreh also has a short piece called "Taking sides against American beef" on the men who burned themselves in protest of these imports. It's under "entertainment," LMFAO. An excerpt:

At 2:30 a.m. on June 5, Kim poured paint thinner onto his head and struck a match, lighting his body on fire. He had called the police to inform them of his intentions 10 minutes before he immolated himself.

Kim’s wife, 55, said, “My husband criticized the Korean government for deciding to import U.S. beef again, saying that the lives of farmers and ordinary people were harder due to the government’s policies.”

Both the original Yonhap report and the follow-up from the KT said that Kim set himself on fire because he was dissatisfied with compensation he received from the government for some real estate deal or other. No mention of that is made here, though, which is reminiscent of the Hankyoreh's manipulation of another story, the story of the farmer in Hampyeong who killed himself reportedly because he was distressed by the impending beef imports. In reality, though, the man lost all of his cows some months earlier to disease, well before the imports on the public's mind. So there are two minor cases of the quote-unquote people's media being just as dishonest, just as manipulative as one would imagine some state-run propaganda outlet. Staggering that so many people put their unyielding faith in one while immediately rejecting the other.


I suspect that in the long run, having no skin will be far more damaging to this man's farming career than American beef.

And for those keeping score at home, between the suicides, the self-immolation, the police beatings at the rallies, and the old women beat up by thugs, there have been more casualties from the Mad Bull Shit protests than from Mad Cow Disease itself in Korea. 살고 싶다!

Gwangju brings out the children for its candlelight rally.

In relation to my last post, I found myself in downtown Gwangju on Saturday night and found a little candlelight rally against American beef. The Korea Times told us that about 60% of people at the rallies in Seoul were students, and that number was about the same in Gwangju, if not higher. It was held on Chungjangno, a street that has some type of festival or event every weekend, and a street that is bordered on one side by "hagwon street" and on another side by the huge pedestrian shopping/drinking area, so it's no surprise that the rally attracted the demographics it did. It was also a family affair, with lots of parents with their small children. One newspaper article said about 8,000 people were there. Most of my photos from last night sucked, but compared to the ones out there on Naver (here and here and here, for example), they don't look so bad anymore. Here's a few of mine:









I also grabbed a few videos which might be of interest to those who understand Korean. I don't, but in some ways it doesn't really matter as the visuals are enough. The first one is of a rap group whose song's refrain goes "All my ladies, if you want it just shake that ass."



I'm not going to embed these next two, but they're of high school students who got up on stage to testify. You can find them here and here. Again, I don't understand much of what they're saying, but I do know the issue of beef in schools is big among my students, many of whom feel they'll be forced to eat American beef if it floods the market. That, in my opinion, is something worth protesting, though students and teachers ought to consider that Korean and Australian beef will still exist, and will be available for schools to purchase if they choose. As you can imagine I am not happy with people attributing incorrect dangers to American beef, and as I see it that hysteria has thus far trumped any economic concerns or protests. After all the signs say "I want to live!" not "I want the members of my community to earn a fair price for their cattle in this newly competitive market!" I think I'm going to use "살고 싶다!" ironically from here on out, sort of like how others use "Korea, Sparkling!" whenever something decidedly unsparkling happens.

And finally, here's one of a little kid being fed lines. The beginning is cut off a little, sorry:



As a foreigner in Korea, my opinions are pretty much worthless in the grand scheme of things. My opinions are generally dismissed by Koreans and Korean-Americans anyway, and that's not even when I take a grossly unpopular position. I brought up the issue of these protests at my last teachers' workshop. Among the highlights was when I brought up the thing about

94 percent of Koreans have genes that make them more susceptible than Americans or Britons to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), which is the human variant of mad cow disease, and this physical trait makes Koreans two to three times more likely than Americans or Britons to contract the disease

my colleagues believed it because a scientist said it. I always come heavy whenever I know we'll be talking about contentious issues, so I showed them the Korean-language Joongang-Ilbo article on the scientist who was pissed that the Mad Cow Disease nonsense was being exaggerated and that his ideas were being used for political ends. The teachers immediately dismissed the article because it was from the Joongang Ilbo, "the government's newspaper."

Anyway, they're having another couple rallies next weekend, too, if anybody's interested in going and taking pictures that don't completely suck. I'm sure the kids will be out in force again, and while that's not an exclusively Korean practice, it's a common and annoying one nonetheless. And again, my point remains that if you're a student who's going to invoke "살고 싶다!" it'd be more practical and more urgent to shout that at your bus drivers and all those who share your roads.