Gusts Of Popular Feeling: Netizen anger over 'foreign instructor' broadcast

Part 59: Video On Demand service for "I Want to Know That" temporarily suspended
Part 60: TV Program Warms Up Foreign Teacher Controversy

Part 58: Netizen anger over 'foreign instructor' broadcast

On February 21, 2005, Dalian - one of the online news outlets which had given a great deal of coverage to the English Spectrum incident a month earlier - reported on the furor caused by SBS's "I Want to Know That" broadcast:

Netizen anger over 'foreign instructor' broadcast

"From an instructor who provided marijuana to an instructor who sexually assaulted a middle school student"
An outburst of self-reflection after the broadcast of SBS's "I Want to Know That"

[Dalian reporter Lee Ju-yeong] Once again the problem of unfit foreign instructors' qualifications is heating up on internet message boards and arousing the anger of netizens.

As the SBS current affairs program '"I Want to Know That," broadcast on the night of the 19th, reported on the immoral behavior of some foreign instructors, netizen anger reached extremes. Even extreme reactions by some netizens poured out such as "Let's attack foreigners living in Korea."

On that night "I Want to Know That" exposed on a large scale the problems with unfit foreign instructors which Dalian and other public opinion [outlets] had brought up [previously].

SBS blew the whistle on: the reality of foreign instructors dating high school students and giving students marijuana; a case of a foreign instructor who sexually assaulted a middle school student; the reality of foreigners who choose to come to Korea because they can earn money and enjoy women easily.

Because of the broadcast, there was a flood of messages denouncing foreigners on the show's message board.

'armageddon99' wrote, "Why do white Americans, who graduate university and eat and live well in America come to Korea, at the edge of East Asia?" "They come to earn some money using [the fact that] they're white and are native speakers," he argued. "Of course, for many foreigners it might not be this, but mix in a sense of superiority over East Asians and it seems this is the result you get."

‘cherish516,' who lived abroad, wrote that "Frankly, in foreign countries Japan lives well and can't be ignored and China is a huge country with great influence and can't be ignored, but Korea is the easiest country," and requested, "[We] trust and sleep with foreign men who have had manners ingrained in them since childhood, unaware of their indecent thoughts, but don't shed tears or blood or have regrets."

'choi715,' who wrote that "The Republic of Korea feels like its rotting bit by bit," wrote, "Korea (our country) has no self respect regarding the nation. So white people think they're superior to us." "We need to establish an upright world view."

At the unfit foreign instructor anti cafe "Anti English Spectrum' (cafe.naver.com/englishspectrum.cafe) there was also an outpouring of critical posts by netizens.

‘qlrhkswk' wrote "They openly belittle our country, which invites those who cannot find decent work in their own country and even gives them a job, and think of Korea as a sexual paradise." "In any country there are the same loose women, but if such educators as hagwon instructors and bar owners use dirty business tactics to mobilize decadent activities, and if committing such acts leads to social problems, it's proper for it to be criticized," he argued.

‘yeats82,' who was so ashamed after watching the broadcast, said, "During the first half of the broadcast, I begrudged the sight of foreign white people being confident and so shameless as well as the sight of them breaking the law as they pleased, and then suddenly the scene changed and I couldn't control my rage at the sight of a "legal" Filipino worker being beaten and dragged through a back alley in a factory area." "The words of a woman, that 'All of society seems to have made a mistake,' rings in my ear."

Dalian fulfills its role here as self-appointed gatekeepers of the discourse on foreign English instructors, drawing attention to its role in previously highlighting "the problems with unfit foreign instructors" and quoting netizens to construct a problem of Koreans letting disrespectful foreigners run amok in Korea. Unsurprisingly, it quotes from Anti English Spectrum members, one of whom makes clear what one of the main contributors to the foreign instructor problem was: "loose women".

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Saturday, September 03, 2016

Netizen anger over 'foreign instructor' broadcast

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