To celebrate moving into a new building, Pagoda teachers, students and staff cleaned around Cheonggyecheon for an hour yesterday. The hagwon obviously thought that the deed was in and of itself worthwhile, and did nothing to draw attention to the participants or itself.
As Financial News noted, the teachers dressed in 'our traditional village teacher' clothing, students dressed as unmarried pupils, and staff as commoners.
Is Pagoda's motto still "I can do"? I guess this goes to show that it doesn't matter what foreigners are doing in hanboks (picking up garbage?), as long as they are in the hanboks and experiencing 'Korean culture.'
6 comments:
Perfect timing: "Cheonggye Stream severely polluted with bacteria"
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2011/11/117_98382.html
Seriously, that's fucking denigrating as hell to foreigners, and the rest of the Korean staff for that matter.
If it was an organic move to do some community service voluntarily, then awesome.
But it was a stunt.
Not that I needed any further evidence that Pagoda sucks.
Brian,
It had crossed my mind to suggest that they might make the water dirtier...
To answer your question, no, Pagoda's slogan is no longer "I Can Do!" It was changed to be grammatically correct somewhere around 4 years ago. Only took them, what, 35 years to correct it?
Reminds me of a joke I heard at a foreigner comedy club in Busan. This American guy was telling us about his Chuseok experience with his Korean in-laws. His uncle asks him how his Korean language skills are coming along. The American guy says that he can hardly speak Korean at all, to which the uncle says "I feel very uncomfortable". The American guy says "Here I am, a tall white guy in a pink hanbok sitting in a room full of Koreans and my uncle says that he feels uncomfortable".
The teachers' outfits remind me of the free-size plastic 우비 raincoats. Do they have those in hanbok style now?
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