Gusts Of Popular Feeling: Anti English Spectrum distributes pamphlets in Seoul part 2 [AKA the final post of the English Spectrum Incident series]

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

Part 61: A country where foreign English instructors play
Part 62: "Let's not use foreign actors": Controversy spreads over SBS's 'I Want to Know That' report

Part 63: Anti English Spectrum distributes pamphlets in Seoul taking advantage of the SBS broadcast, part 1

Part 64: Anti English Spectrum distributes pamphlets in Seoul taking advantage of the SBS broadcast, part 2

More Anti English Spectrum members handed out leaflets again the weekend after the SBS report came out, on February 27, the same day member Gamjameori (dgy1204) posted these photos of the outing:

Making concrete plans.

Dividing up the leaflets before our earnest work.

Smoking a cigarette after hard work....

A description of their "campaigns to oust illegal native English teachers" in their list of achievements states that they "Conducted three separate campaigns in front of Hongdae, Myongdong, Shinchon and Seoul Girls Highschool). One wonders what effect these campaigns might have had. To put it another way, one wonders how many passersby even bothered to read the leaflets.

Regarding the leaflet, continuing from the previous post, it also highlights the argument made on "I Want To Know That" about the how Koreans view foreigners differently depending on their appearance and country of origin: "Think about the racial discrimination within ourselves. We look coldly upon migrant workers from Southeast Asia but are excessively lenient towards blue-eyed foreigners..." The solution, for them, is to not only encourage Koreans to look coldly upon "blue-eyed foreigners" as well, but to take matters into their own hands:

Right now our society has no system properly put in place to filter out low-quality native-speaking instructors! Ladies and gentlemen, you yourselves must be vigilant and expel them!!! If you see these people please report them to the immigration office or the nearest police station.

What's also interesting is how Anti English Spectrum's target changed. The leaflet defines low-quality native-speaking instructors as "Those coming to Korea without E-2 visas for the purpose of engaging in sexual pleasures and to create trouble [emphasis added]." It further defines E-2 visas as "A visa issued by the immigration office to those who have a four-year university degree or teaching credentials." Of course, by the time they had BreakNews publish what amounted to their manifesto on the need for HIV tests for foreign teachers in September 2006, their target for these tests became foreign teachers on E-2 visas, presumably because they realized the difficulty of testing those teaching illegally (such as on tourist visas), which makes clear that their concern was never with 'illegal' or 'low-quality native-speaking instructors' per se, but with the imposition of Korean sovereignty over, and stigmatization as AIDS threats of white, male foreign teachers in general.

The leaflet they distributed is also an early example of Anti English Spectrum rewriting its history. Though its initial members (thousands joined in the first few weeks of its existence) were netizens keen to vent their anger at both the foreign teachers and the women who dared to be seen frolicking with them in photos of the Hongdae English Spectrum parties, many of the early posts at the site (featuring titles like "Now's the chance to humiliate those crazy bitches") were later deleted. The reasons for netizen anger toward the teachers were changed into something rather different from their initial anger at (and feelings of humiliation due to) foreign teacher attitudes towards Korean women at English Spectrum's "Ask The Playboy" forum and anger at the betrayal of Korean women who would sleep with them:

At the end of last year photos of white people frolicking with Korean women at a bar in Itaewon were uploaded at an employment site for foreign language English instructors, causing controversy when netizens criticized this and put forward the view that [the photos] invaded privacy.

First of all, every member of the group very knew well the photos were not taken in Itaewon; I imagine Itaewon conformed better to what they imagined were the prejudices of the leaflets' potential readers and more heavily implied, without outright stating it, that there was sex involved. More importantly, the assertion that "netizens... put forward the view that [the photos] invaded privacy" makes them seem like concerned citizens - concerned about the women's privacy - rather than angry, offended netizens who themselves used the photos as both a means - and yet another excuse - to lash out at young women who increasingly seemed to be forgetting their place (something that would come to a head months later during the 'dog poop girl incident'). Over time Anti English Spectrum would change their image from netizens angry about a sexy costume party, to nationalists trying to expel dangerous outsiders, to citizens concerned about the safety of children, as the changes in the header on their site reveal:

February 7, 2005

"Anti English Spectrum"

July 24, 2006

"The citizens movement to expel illegal foreign language instructors." ("Our fatherland, protected by the blood of our ancestors. What we must protect now is [our] descendants' education." Note Yi Sun-shin, Kim Jwa-jin, Dangun, and other nationalist heroes.)

October 16, 2008

The final website banner of "Citizens' group for upright English education (The citizens movement to expel illegal foreign language instructors)."

Over the next year and a half the group would be busy, according to their list of achievements:

2005.01 to present
Submitted countless [hundreds of] petitions to the MOJ, Immigration, Supreme Prosecutor’s Office and Education Ministry [resulting in]:
- strengthened E-2 visa related documents at Immigration
- active and full-blown crackdown operations on illegal English teachers by related organizations
- southern district prosecutor’s office deported 69 fake academic credential teachers in Oct. 2005

2005.01 to present
Extensive efforts in trying to get press on the problems and disorder regarding native English teachers. Scores of articles were published/broadcast! (MBC, SBS, Kookmin Ilbo, Dailian, Hankook Ilbo, Breaknews, The Korea Economic Daily, The Women’s News, etc…)

2005 - 2005.12
Conducted campaigns to prohibit illegal native speakers to teach and appear on TV.

2005.11
Visited Information and Communications Ministry, Ethics Committee to request that the native English teacher job search site English xxxx be punished for posting obscenities.

2005.01 to present
Successfully reported and closed down native English teacher sites and sites with posts that degrade women in Korean society.

2005.01 to present
Collected information and exposed illegal native English teachers and reported them to related institutes (cannot disclose).

2006.07
Visited the National Assembly (assemblyman Lee Joo-ho, etc) to request a bill to strengthen checks on native English teacher management policies / plans.

2006 to present
Efforts made to build opposing public opinion against the lowering of standards regarding qualifications for native English speakers by certain people involved in the English education market. Received confirmation from Education Ministry and Offices of Education that qualification standards will be strengthened.

2006.08
Participated in National Assembly public hearing (held by assemblyman Lee Joo-ho) regarding English education and delivered our Internet cafe’s position on the matter - emphasized that budgets concentrated on foreign assistant teachers should be used to support Korean English teachers and English students.

2006.08
Cooperated and participated in TV broadcast programs regarding problems with low quality, unqualified native English teachers.[On August 25 and September 1, in the wake of the arrest of John Mark Karr and the realization he had taught in Korea.]
SBS 'Seven Days': "Unverified foreign English teachers, a danger to children" [Link]
KBS 'Center of the World': "Are native speaking English teachers really trustworthy?" [Link]
KBS2 'VJ Special Forces': "The war against foreign crime" [Link]

If it is true they contributed to those broadcasts, then it would seem they had, by this point, become the go-to 'experts' on foreign teacher misbehavior for two of the main Korean television networks. Still, they weren't getting the publicity for their activities and goals they desired; this would change in July 2006, when 'Inside Story' (in its tabloid newspaper edition) or BreakNews (in its online incarnation) began to publish a series of articles from Anti English Spectrum's point of view about the debased nature of low quality foreign teachers and the threat they posed to upright Korean society:

07.24 “Low-quality foreign teachers absorbed in money, women, drugs.” [Link]
08.07 "Low quality English teachers: 'Korean women are a source of money and sex partners'" [Link]
08.16 "Women give English teachers 'full service like a king'"[Link]
08.21 "Affairs with High School Students, Spreading Nude Photos on the Internet" [Link]
09.12 "Foreign teachers demand mothers in substitution for tutoring fees." [Link]
09.18 "Tracking [down] blacklisted foreign teachers suspected of having AIDS" [Links: English Korean]

In the pamphlet that Anti English Spectrum members distributed in February 2005, they mentioned scandalous actions by foreign teachers that had not been reported in the media but were available at their site, such as a foreign teacher who got a student pregnant and threatened legal action against someone who wanted to report him, and teachers who "seduced students' mothers." As can be seen in the second-last article above, BreakNews was not at all above reporting these stories. I'd love to do a short series translating these but they're rather long so that might take some time (though perhaps not as long as this series!). I have, however, translated a number of news reports linked to Anti English Spectrum's campaign to connect foreign teachers with AIDS between the summer of 2006 and the imposition of HIV testing for E-2 visa holders in late 2007, and will try to get those posted in the near(ish) future.

With the media furor over the SBS broadcast of 'I Want To Know That' dying out by the end of February 2005, the media stopped, for the moment, reporting on the English Spectrum incident (though references to it (or to foreign teachers "secret parties") would appear even seven years later as if it had happened yesterday (see here and here)). As seen above, however, Anti English Spectrum, which formed due to the incident, kept fighting its fight to ~~keep Western men from having sex with Korean women~~ protect Korean children from unqualified foreign teachers, eventually gaining a major success in 2007 when they were invited to an immigration policy meeting which decided on the HIV and drug tests for E-2 visa holders for which they had been lobbying during the past year or more.

When I started this series over five years ago, I wouldn't have imagined it would take this long to finish, but I also didn't realize how varied the the news articles surrounding the English Spectrum Incident were, or how interesting the conversation regarding the incident was compared to my expectations. Hopefully my readers have found it interesting as well. Several people helped me along the way: Young Mi Park helped with translation in many of the 2012 posts, while the translations of the 'I Want To Know That' episode couldn't have been done without Ami Shin. Thanks as well to Matthew Smith for reminding me to continue the series in 2013. And thanks to readers who have stuck with me despite the intermittent posting.

2 comments:

The Sanity Inspector said...: Well done. I need to curl up with this from beginning to end, some weekend.

BTW, you are just about the only K-blog standing from the time I discovered them, back in 2009. I appreciate you sticking around!; July 31, 2017 at 10:01:00 AM GMT+9
matt said...: Good to see your comment - I appreciate you still reading! The blog will continue, even if the content is more sporadic than before.; August 1, 2017 at 4:18:00 AM GMT+9

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Anti English Spectrum distributes pamphlets in Seoul part 2 [AKA the final post of the English Spectrum Incident series]

2 comments: