Gusts Of Popular Feeling: The Daum signature campaign: 'Let's kick out low quality foreign instructors!'

To the Ministry of Education and English hagwons:
Let's expel low quality foreign instructors!

10,475 signatures out of target of 10,000 (Jan 14 to Feb 14)

Korean women are easy to sleep with and in Korea if you teach English, you can simply and easily earn money? The inculcation of this prejudice is due to the reckless behavior/indiscretions of a small number of students, but fundamentally, the reason they come to Korea to teach English is because we embrace unqualified foreigners who simply speak English.

Recently there was also an incident in which a former hotel doorman who had faked a diploma was hired as a professor and taught classes at Konkuk University, and when it was finally discovered it angered the students. As well, a shameless 'instructor' coolly posted on the internet how to sexually harass Korean children between the ages of 8 and 12.

These people who teach by day and behave indecently with Korean women by night like this, they're free to play, but let's not give them jobs as English instructors anymore!!

Also, there's an article about recruitment of a Yankee strike force. We shouldn't use violence, but let's gather and have a protest!

This post is then followed by the Kukmin Ilbo article titled 'Recruit a Yankee strike force!' posted earlier that day.

A few notes: It's good to know that the inculcation of the 'prejudice' that "Korean women are easy to sleep with" and "behave indecently with" is "due to the reckless behavior/indiscretions of a small number of students." As always, it's the traitorous woman's fault. Also worth noting is that any sex with foreign men is 'indecent,' or so you'd think from reading a lot of the commentary surrounding this incident.

As well, that "shameless 'instructor' [who] coolly posted on the internet how to sexually harass Korean children between the ages of 8 and 12" actually said not to target that particular demographic, but the inability to read should be no barrier to posting a signature campaign at Daum!

The post is followed by 280 comments. An early one reads "Really unbelievable. In their own country they lie around, in our country they take over. Don't forget this incident" There are many others like this; some are critical (commenting, say, on the differences in how Koreans perceive westerners and southeast Asians), others rehash perceptions like the one above, some relate negative stories about foreign instructors that the poster had met, and others are just, well, dumb ("I want to hit them").

At the same time, however, there are also comments critical of the uproar, saying things like "foreigners are not all the same type of people," and how in that commenter's eyes, the Koreans posting on the internet about this incident all seemed the same.

A series of comments were left early on by 미완성 ['incompleteness']:

- Wow, now I've become aware of this, be careful. It seems like the opinions being posted here now are like a movement encouraging really primitive violence, 'if they're American let's indiscriminately beat them up.' Why during the Asian Cup did Chinese beat up all the Japanese fans and in Korea two years ago during the anti-American demonstrations were Americans beaten in the streets?

- It's really childish. Really childish. Let's talk about a different way than Korean nationalism. In foreign countries, is it good if the locals beat Korean men for dating foreign women? Why are you so childish?

- In the same movement, if, among white people in the neighbourhood [in a foreign country], it leads to a movement to take down Korean men who hang out with white women, what will happen? I'm honestly worried.

One of the interesting things about delving into all of the articles surrounding this incident is seeing just how monolithic the response wasn't. While it did lead to the formation of Anti English Spectrum, there was criticism of this response as well.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Daum signature campaign: 'Let's kick out low quality foreign instructors!'

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