LA Times on Anti-English Spectrum

Update:
People seem to think that this is the first picture of Yie made available:


It's not; he previously was interviewed by the Seoul Shinmun which posted a video of part of the interview with him (though I can't find the video at the moment).


Original post:

Brian has a good post about this LA Times article about Anti-English Spectrum, which tells us a bit about Yie Eun-woong and his "investigative work."

Yie, a slender 40-year-old who owns a temporary employment agency, says he is only attempting to weed out troublemakers who have no business teaching students in South Korea, or anywhere else. [...]

Yie says he has nothing against foreigners. Growing up near the city of Osan, he often rode with his taxi driver father and encountered foreigners who served at the U.S. military base there. "I learned to pick out the good guys from the bad guys," he says.[...]

The volunteer manager of a controversial group known as the Anti-English Spectrum, Yie investigates complaints by South Korean parents, often teaming up with authorities, and turns over information from his efforts for possible prosecution.

I'd always had the impression it was mostly Korean hagwon and school teachers who were leaving tips, along with jilted ex-girlfriends. I would have liked to have seen this quote expanded on:

"This has nothing to do with race. It is all about teaching," said Kim Young-Lan, a sociology professor at Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul.

Actually, I think it has a lot to do with race - and gender - seeing as photos like the one seen below led to the creation of AES in the first place.


The English Spectrum incident five years ago is something that could stand a more closer look (but I'm too busy to do it at the moment). I'd noticed that Yie's online ID 'M2' was not present when AES first formed; this seems to suggest that he joined a bit later: "In 2005, by then living in Seoul, he joined the fledgling activist group after seeing an upsetting posting on a website: claims by foreign teachers that they had slept with Korean students."

It also notes that ATEK's "[Dann] Gaymer says he doubts that such a posting ever existed." Well, it did, and it can be seen here. What's not translated are the angry comments by the foreign English teachers that saw the post (which the poster said he cut and pasted from elsewhere to test the 'no censorship' policy of the website, Korean ESL (now long gone), much as reports about Christopher Paul Neil failed to mention that at least one of the people who reported him to Interpol was a foreign English teacher in Korea.

Lillias Underwood's book "Fifteen years among the top-knots; or, Life in Korea" describes the 'baby riots' she witnessed not long after her arrival in 1888:

Some person or persons, with malicious intent, started a rumor which spread like wild-fire, that foreigners were paying wicked Koreans to steal native children, in order to cut out their hearts and eyes, to be used for medicine. This crime was imputed chiefly to the Japanese, and it was supposed the story had been originated by Chinese or others especially inimical to the large numbers of Japanese residents in the capital. Mr. Underwood acquainted the Japanese minister with the rumors, in order that he might protect himself and his people ; which he promptly did by issuing, and causing to be issued by the government, proclamations entirely clearing his countrymen of all blame in the matter, which it was left to be understood was an acknowledged fact, and consequently the work of other "vile foreigners," namely, ourselves and the Europeans.

The excitement and fury grew hourly. Large crowds of angry people congregated, scowling, muttering, and threatening. Koreans carrying their own children were attacked, beaten, and even killed, on the supposition that they were kidnapping the children of others ; and a high Korean official, who tried to protect one of these men, was pulled from his chair, and narrowly escaped with his life, although he was surrounded by a crowd of retainers and servants. It was considered unsafe for foreigners to be seen in the street. Marines were called up from Chemulpo to guard the different legations, and some Americans even packed away their most necessary clothing and valuables, preparatory to fleeing to the port. The wildest stories were told. Babies, it was said, had been eaten at the German, English, and American legations, and the hospital, of course, was considered by all the headquarters of this bloodthirsty work, for there, where medicine was manufactured and diseases treated, the babies must certainly be butchered.

These days such rumours of foreigners targeting Korean children are spread in other, more widespread and sophisticated ways:



While the baby riots of 1888 were more threatening, at least the rumours they spread didn't continue for five years... or did they?


By the way, Robert Neff tells me that he gives the baby riots thorough coverage in his new book Korea Through Western Eyes.