Gusts Of Popular Feeling

Future plans for Seoul's subway from 1988

2012-02-01T15:38:00.007+09:00

On January 29, 1988, the Korea Times published this article outlining the future plans for Seoul's subway system:

Interesting that the idea then was for extensions and spur lines. Line 4 was pretty much extended as planned, but the Kimpo and Chonho spurs were (roughly) eventually joined to make line 5, while line 3 was extended only a little (and extended a little further again in 2010), with the Godok and Songnam spurs basically being joined to make line 8. Spur lines as an idea haven't died, really - several light rail spur lines are planned to be built throughout Seoul over the next decade - see here and here for more information.

Parents tremble at 'pleasure parties' thrown by foreign instructors

2012-01-31T11:22:00.000+09:00

Ilyo Seoul, who in March 2010 published a creative writing assignment titled "The Seriousness of Foreign Teachers’ Ugly Double Lives Cannot Be Measured", offered readers a new and wonderful follow up on December 23 (Merry Christmas!).

The truth about the 'pleasure parties' thrown by foreign instructors
Parents tremble inside

▲ This photo is not related to the article

Last summer, American foreign instructor H (24) was booked without detention for assaulting and choking a middle aged man on a bus. While H was speaking loudly with others, a middle aged man told him to shut up in English and was assaulted. For this reason, public opinion buzzed as demands for verified foreign native speaking instructors were made, but with no particular solution it soon died down.

However, on December 2, the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office, arrested A (23), an Australian native speaking English instructor, for smuggling J(trillion)-018 called 'Spice,' it was announced on the 5th.

With the domestic situation in confusion, this problem has not been greatly highlighted, however parents who send their children to hagwons with foreign native speaking instructors have once again had to bury their feelings.

As the demand for native speaking instructors continues to grow, the number of foreign instructors teaching foreign languages grows as well. However, with this increase in demand, the number of problems caused by some unverified foreign native speaking instructors grows day by day. We will examine this.

At a street full of hagwons near Mok-dong Station before 10pm lines of cars wait for students. On rainy weekends in the evening one or two lanes of the street become a parking lot. It's a queue of parents waiting for their children.

This occasionally ties up traffic, but but there is no particular reaction from most of the residents who live here because most have had the same experience.

One can often see foreign native speaking instructors around the Mok-dong hagwon area. Of course, it's not just here, but in any big city across the country one can see foreign native speaking instructors without much difficulty.

However parents carry anxiety with them in a corner of their hearts. Sometimes when they hear of an incident involving drugs or assault by native speaking instructors reported in the news parents cannot conceal their worry that it might be [their child's teacher].

The deviation and illegal acts of some native speaking instructors

In fact, on December 6 I met two native speaking instructors on the subway who were drunk. Luckily it was not crowded, but they had a loud conversation with each other not caring about the others around them.

As no one was restraining their behaviour, this reporter requested, "This is a public place, please be quiet," and after looking around they wore an apologetic expression. Their voices also quickly became quiet.

It just so happened that they got off at the same stop and we walked in the same direction transferring to another line. Getting up the courage, I asked after them.

Brendan (30) was a tall Australian and native speaking instructor, and Osborn (29) was a short American.

After a short conversation with them I arranged a time to meet for an interview.

Both of them really liked Korea and said they were very embarrassed about illegal activities of some native speaking instructors.

However they hoped it was recognized that some were a little distorted.

Brandon explained that, "In truth, very few native speaking instructors commit illegal acts, but if you look at what has happened, there are many cases of it being due to misunderstandings caused by not being able to communicate or cultural differences.

Osborn complained that "You can see that things that are not [illegal at home] are illegal in Korea, and I hope we can all recognize these differences."

There are 'pleasure parties' but they are not well known.

In June 2009, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Drug investigation unit caught 84 people including foreign instructors, university students, famous entertainers, and adult entertainment workers. They were charged with habitually taking and dealing drugs in Yeoksam and Cheongdam-dong area clubs.

Over 80 people were caught by police, but a big stir was caused by the knowledge that foreign instructors and Koreans who had studied in foreign countries had secretly brought drugs into the country.

After this, the government intensified its crackdown, and following this many of the so-called "wild parties" disappeared.

However wild parties are still taking place secretly, the two teachers told me. Of course, they never attended the parties themselves, but sometimes when socializing with other foreign instructors or foreign students in Hongdae or Itaewon they hear talk of these parties.

The two said there are problematic things about these secret parties which are sometimes thrown. However they don't know the details of the parties attended by a very secret minority.

On the other hand, most parties are not problematic and see the gathering of people who share a similar culture and who drink, chat and dance through the night, they explained.

There are cases where people get so drunk that they lose their senses and start arguments or use violence, but these people are also in the minority. In particular, Koreans find it difficult to understand foreigners who are a little more sexually open and can see them as being promiscuous, but they are all not like that, they explained.

Osborne said, "Among foreign instructors there are also people who have caused minor problems in their home countries. However there are never problems related to teaching children. People like that could not come to Korea."

He also said, "The reasons for coming to Korea are all different, but in my own way I feel pride as a person who teaches a foreign language here and gives children a chance to learn a language."

There is a need to make mandatory confirmation that one has an E-2 visa.

Last August people were shocked when Mr. Kim (38), who was a gangster in the US who was deported to Korea after serving a 10 year sentence obtained a fake degree on the internet and was hired as a native speaking instructor.

Ultimately while demand for native speaking instructors explosively increases, the biggest problem is that of hagwons hiring instructors who have not been properly verified, but in fact the fundamental problem is that there are few ways to verify the backgrounds of foreigners.

So how does one distinguish good foreign instructors from bad?

Currently there are approximately 25,000 native speaking instructors working in Korea. In order to work a native speaking instructor, they must be issued an E-2 visa.

In order to receive an E-2 visa from the ministry of justice, they must submit a criminal background check and health verification, as well as go through a consular interview. As well they have continuous in-depth verification such as blood tests to confirm whether they take drugs.

In the end, a hagwon which plans to hire a native speaking instructor absolutely needs to confirm that they have an E-2 visa. As well, parents need to investigate to see if the hagwon has verified the person through the ministry of justice.

Brandon, who teaches elementary school students, said, "Every time illegal activity by native speaking instructors emerges, parents look at us with fierce eyes." "But it would be good for them to know that most instructors come to Korea through a legitimate process.

Osborne said, "I feel bad that [teachers] are treated like lawbreakers because some cause problems like secretly throwing wild parties. However it would be good for native speaking instructors to know for certain that these acts are clearly problematic."

I love the 'unrelated' photo at the top of the article.

So let's see... the article brings up several cases from over the past few months, and seems to feel bad that one case "soon died down" (hence the need for this article, perhaps). Lamenting that "parents who send their children to hagwons with foreign native speaking instructors have once again had to bury their feelings," it states that "parents carry anxiety with them in a corner of their hearts." I'd tend to think the purpose of that statement is to be prescriptive more than descriptive.

The reporter then bumps into two (drunk, of course!) foreign teachers on the subway and stands up to their noise, shames them into being quiet, and then happens to be getting off at the same spot and asks for an interview. After a chat about conflicts caused by cultural differences, they reveal the "wild parties are still taking place secretly," but don't know much about them as they are attended by a "secret minority." This is reminiscent of the party that turned Koreans against foreign teachers during the English Spectrum incident in 2005 (an incident I plan to revisit before long), a party so secret there was an advertisement for it up on the internet beforehand, as well as plastered on the wall of the bar itself:

When photos of it (some of which are here) were found at English Spectrum (its Ask The Playboy forum organized the party), netizens frothed at the mouth in anger and formed the 'Anti' cafe that's still with us today. It's this party the article is drawing on when referring to 'secret parties,' but instead, it tells us that in June, 2009, police arrested Yeoksam and Cheongdam-dong area clubgoers for taking drugs, and that

[o]ver 80 people were caught by police, but a big stir was caused by the knowledge that foreign instructors and Koreans who had studied in foreign countries had secretly brought drugs into the country.

Much like Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, but the big stir was caused by Winston Churchill being hung over that day. Hey, I can rewrite history, too!

The busts referred to above were reported on June 3, 2009, but it was the entertainers who were arrested which drew the most attention, with the media even revealing at least one of their names. That's not to say no attention was paid to the small number of foreign teachers involved.

Newsis reported that entertainer(s), native speaking teacher(s) and university student(s) were charged with smuggling and taking drugs, as did Yonhap. Another report said native speaking teachers/ instructors were arrested, while the Munhwa Ilbo wrote the most about the foreign instructor busts, saying that four native speaking instructors were arrested, giving details on one who smuggled 150 ecstasy pills from Canada for 2 million won and sold them for 80,000 won a pop in Itaewon and Gangnam clubs.

At almost the same time, photos of (mostly Korean) clubgoers at a club in Chungdam-dong were reported by Yonhap to be causing a scandal online. What was amusing is that, though only 4 or 5 photos of the 140 posted had foreigners in them, I still managed to find a Korean blog post at the time which railed against 'foreign teacher bastards with Korean women' (no complaints about the Korean guy posing with a white woman) - talk about ignoring the forest to look at the trees.

I also enjoyed the article explaining that "a hagwon which plans to hire a native speaking instructor absolutely needs to confirm that they have an E-2 visa." They also might want to confirm that they have sponsored that E-2 visa.

At any rate, the article has at least served one purpose - via this translation it lets foreign English teachers who read it "know for certain that [secretly throwing wild parties is] clearly problematic." Remember - you need to advertise your wild pleasure parties!

Books more satisfying than native speakers

2012-01-30T13:12:00.000+09:00

Yonhap posted this article on January 23:

"For English conversation education, reading an English book has a higher level of satisfaction than the native speaker's class"

Yun Sunsaengnim English Classroom parent survey

Parents with elementary school-aged children prefer native speaker English classes over reading English books when it comes to English conversation education, but the method that brings true satisfaction is reading an English book, survey results found.

On the 23rd, Yun Sunsaengnim English Classroom announced that according to a survey of 646 parents of elementary school children held between December 28 and January 5, 53.9% answered "I prefer my children to learn English conversation in a native speaker English class," while 46.1% chose "I prefer they read an English book every day."

As to the reason for choosing the native speaker English class (multiple answers), 62.6% chose "Children are not afraid when talking with native speakers," 33.9% chose "Pronunciation is checked," and 31.9% chose "Communication skills seem to improve in a short period of time."

The reasons for preferring that they read an English book every day included "They can read for themselves and direct their own learning" (41.9%), "Through various English books they can build up their general knowledge" (40.9%), and "They can learn English at little cost" (40.3 percent).

However, asking their real satisfaction, English book reading education got an average of 3.9 points (out of 5), which was higher than for native speaker English class (an average of 3.1 points). The percentage answering that they were satisfied was 67.5% for reading English books, which was much higher than the 30.4% who chose native speaker English lessons.

As for their method of reading English books, (multiple answers), 61.8% chose 'reading along with audiobooks,' 40.7% chose 'talking about the content after understanding the general meaning,' 15.7% chose "looking up the words and carefully reading,' and 8.2% chose 'reading the English book and writing a report.'

Yun Sunsaengnim English Classroom senior researcher Won Yong-guk said, "It's good for those in an environment like Korea with non-native English speakers to continually read English books to improve their English language skills." "Practical English language skills can be improved based on reading skills."

Yun Sunsaengnim English Classroom is a company which sends (Korean) English instructors to students' homes to tutor them using books that it provides. People I've known who have worked for the company tell me the whole point to is finish the books on schedule and sell as many books as possible. So no one will be shocked that though parents preferred native speakers, its survey found that their "real satisfaction" is found in books (though we're not told how such satisfaction is measured). Not that there's anything wrong with books, of course. (Though some are better than others).

Also amusing is that this article appeared almost a week earlier (though a few paragraphs shorter) in the Youth Hanguk Ilbo, so these results were certainly not released on the 23rd, as it says above. I imagine someone needed to publish another article for Yonhap before they could go home for the holiday, and they came up with this.

Jeju Weekly on the SMOE budget cuts

2012-01-25T13:23:00.000+09:00

Jeju Weekly has a good story on the SMOE cuts and the fears that they may spread throughout the country and affect public school foreign teachers in Jeju. Here's what SMOE said in an interview:

Currently, SMOE states that this is not the first step to replace all foreign English teachers with Korea English teachers.

“We will never stop hiring [native English-speaking teachers]. We have NO plan to make Korean English teachers replace them. We need to recruit hundreds of foreign teachers a year for the time being in spite of the budget cuts. But the number will be reduced,” Choi [Chun Ok, SMOE Foreign Education Department Chief] stressed in an email interview with The Weekly. Throughout the three-page response to our questions, this paragraph was the only one specifically written in English.

“Foreign English teachers have greatly contributed to the development of English education in Seoul. However, it is time to reevaluate the cost-effectiveness, considering a huge sum of budget (about 52 billion won, or US$45 million annually). So we are changing our policy from quantity expansion to quality improvement,” said Choi.

SMOE said the three reasons influencing the budget cut to middle school English teachers are the improvement of Korean English teachers in TEE, that according to their research foreign English teachers are most effective in elementary schools, and the need to provide cost-effective quality programs.

“So it is not a sudden decision or unprepared plan,” said Choi.

Interesting. When the cuts were first announced it was reported that SMOE planned for the end of native speaking teachers in high schools, but that the cut to middle [and elementary] school teachers was the Seoul Metropolitan Council's unexpected decision.

According to SMOE, the average monthly salary of a foreign English teacher is between 1.8 million to 3 million won a month, but when considering accommodation allowance, flight reimbursement, and contract completion bonuses it equals between 38 million to 48 million ($33,000 to $42,000) a year. For a native English-speaker with a teaching certificate but no experience, they earn about 43 million won ($37,000) a year (including accommodation allowance and other benefits), while a Korean with the same qualifications only costs SMOE 31 million won ($27,000) a year.

Just for fun, looking at the figures for the lowest salary, 1.8 x 13 = 22.4 + [flight] 1.3 x 2 = 2.6 + [settlement allowance] .3 = 25.3 million a year. I believe the most paid per month by housing (in my area at least) is 700,000 a month (though its usually 3-400,000 a month), and if that high figure is multiplied by 12, we get 8.4 million + 25.3 million = 33.7 million, a bit less than the 38 million quoted above. But whatever. Clearly, it's higher than the 31 million won new Korean teachers make.

Further statements from SMOE representatives claim that there will be more openings for after-school English classes, and that what happened in Seoul "does not signify a nationwide trend." Other than Gyeonggi-do and Gangwon-do, I guess. Seeing as some provinces have only just reached peak numbers for NSETs such as Gyeongsangbuk-do, I doubt there will be large cuts there in the near future. Also worth remembering is that Gyeonggi-do was one of the first provinces to hire NSETs en masse, as this graph (I don't know where I found it) using figures from September 2006 - over five years ago - reveals:

Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Incheon, Gwangju, Daejeon, Ulsan, Gyeonggi-do

Gangwon, Chungbuk, Chungnam, Jeollabuk, Jeollanam, Gyeongbuk, Gyeongnam, Jeju

The blue bars show the number of schools in each province or city, the yellow bars show the number of NSETs in each province or city, and the figure in brackets is the NSET placement rate. At that time there were 2,877 NSETs in the public school system out of 10,890 schools, making for a 26.4% placement rate. As can be seen Gyeonggi-do had the largest number of NSETs (788) in 2006, and the second highest placement rate (behind Chungcheongnam-do). So perhaps it's not surprising to have seen cuts in Gyeonggi-do first. That said, that bit of history isn't going to convince anyone that this isn't mostly about politics.

One person is quoted in the Jeju Ilbo article saying "This budget cut should not be exaggerated," but perhaps someone should have said that to SBS, who broke the story in December, when they started their report with the caption "Native speaking teachers are disappearing."

Native speaking teachers to be reduced in Gangwon-do

2012-01-24T20:41:00.003+09:00

On January 12, Gangwondomin Ilbo published an article discussing plans for the future in Gangwon-do which included the following section.

△Support for middle and high school native speaking teachers

With the prolonged economic recession, the burden of private education expenses is increasing for parents.

To reduce the burden of private education expenses for parents, the provincial education office operates the 'Project to support native speakers in middle and high schools.'

The 'project to support native speakers in middle and high schools' was implemented in 2007 to expand the opportunity for foreign language education and enhance understanding of international culture for middle and high school students.

Last year the province placed 216 native speaking instructors in schools, but with the strengthening of training for Korean English teachers, native speaking teachers are scheduled to be gradually decreased.

Accordingly, they will be reduced by the province and provincial office of education to 180 this year and 144 in both 2013 and 2014.

The project to support native speakers in middle and high schools cost 8.78 billion won last year and will be reduced to 7.42 billion won this year and 5.98 billion won in 2013 and 2014, with 20% of the financial burden being covered by the province, 30% by the city or county, and 50% by the provincial office of education. The reduction in the budget will allow funds to be used for other educational projects to reduce private education fees for parents.

The province expects the project to support native speakers in middle and high schools will have a large effect on cutting private education expenses for parents and will continue to do so in the future.

Gyeonggi-do, Seoul, Gangwon-do... Who's next? Worth keeping in mind is that this is only for middle and high school teachers, and not elementary school teachers, and 1/3 of NSETs in Gangwon-do middle and high schools being phased out over three years is not as drastic as Gyeonggi-do's cuts. On the other hand, this is a province which will be hosting a Winter Olympics in six years...

North Korea links

2012-01-20T15:37:00.000+09:00

A week or so ago North Korean television broadcast an hour long program about Kim Jong-un, which can be seen here and which is analyzed in detail here.

Love that photo. As B.R. Myers has pointed out, the template of the leader riding a white horse (the one above is not so white, is it?), which both Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung did, comes from Emperor Hirohito. Speaking of Myers, he has a piece in the New York Times about the Kim succession.

And speaking of North Korean television, you can (apparently) watch 조선중앙방송 (KCTV) from 5 PM to around 11 PM KST on a live stream that comes through the South Korean broadcast station SPTV, and also through Korea Web which allows 64 bit systems to access it.

This link to the Rodong Sinmun was apparently new, as it worked for a few days before the good people upholding the national security law finally blocked it.

As well, SinoNK.com has released "China and the North Korean Succession," a compilation of open-source Chinese language materials translated and edited by Adam Cathcart which give insight into the Sino-North Korean relationship during the eight days following the announcement of Kim Jong-Il’s death.

Canadian returns to Korea to confess to a murder

2012-01-19T10:33:00.000+09:00

A bit late on this, but a Canadian who taught English in universities from 2001 to 2009 returned to Korea to confess that he'd murdered his ex-girlfriend, a university student, in 2009. He'd gotten away with it and made it look like accidental drowning, but he was wracked by guilt and returned to confess to her family and police. The fact that he said he did it because he thought she was going to kill him doesn't suggest the most stable of minds (but who knows what actually happened). Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of news reports on this (39 at last count), one of which is translated at Korea Beat. It's also been reported by the Korea Times, Korea Herald, and Chosun Ilbo.

I liked this scene in YTN's report:

One wonders if there are actually any police officers in the room or if they are all journalists. It's one of the things that baffles me, the allowing of the press into police stations. Perhaps it's part and parcel of being a shame-based society. At any rate, you can hear him talking in that video.

I wonder who all the people are in the screenshot below (from an MBC report); he certainly towers over everyone.

I've never come across any arrests of English teachers for murder in Korea (not counting Korean American gangsters who committed crimes in the US or Canada), and while it wouldn't surprise me if this was used as fodder for more "there is yet another loophole in the native speaking verification system" articles, I almost wonder if the interest here might be more in the fact that the man - a product of a guilt-based society - returned to Korea to confess the crime, rather than the crime itself.

For example, the article translated at Korea Beat has the following:

Netizens had various reactions to the news of the murder and the Canadian’s confession, such as “he must have been haunted by a Korean ghost even in Canada,” and “it’s lucky that the defendant was so full of sadness.”

Here are a few of the titles from the 39 articles. Most common is the title the Maeil Gyeongje used: "Canadian English instructor who murdered girlfriend gives self up after three years."

Newsis: Native speaking instructor who murdered Korean female university student in Han River gives self up after three years.

Chosun Ilbo: Canadian English instructor: "The ghost of my girlfriend who died three years ago has followed me around... I came to be punished."

Segye Ilbo: Canadian English instructor who murdered girlfriend but was found innocent gives self up after three years.

IB Times: Canadian who killed lover turns self in is "miserable"... 'Why' did he kill woman 14 years his junior?

Donga Ilbo: "The scene of my girlfriend's murder constantly replays in my mind..." Canadian voluntarily returns to Korea and turns self in after three years

less than a third of the articles mention "English teacher" or "native speaking teacher" in the title, so that angle is not being as played up as it could be.

I keep wondering when the Canadian press is going to pick this up.

Music-related links

2012-01-17T13:35:00.001+09:00

Here are some fun music related-links:

G'old [good old] Korean vinyl: Hongdae vinyl oldies bar Gopchang Jeonggol and concert promoter Super Color Super team up to rip tracks from the bar's extensive vinyl collection from the '70s to the '90s and provide mp3s. A mix tape (or mp3 collection) of several tracks they've released plus others can be found here.

Korean Indie: All you would ever want to know about Korean indie music including reviews and interviews by the people who brought you Korea Gig Guide and Indieful ROK. A brief history of the indie music scene in Korea is here.

If this is all too modern for you, how about a collection of Korean hits from the 1930s and early 1940s? (Hat tip to Jamie)

And looking at about the same era is Roald Maliangkay's article "Koreans Performing for Foreign Troops: The Occidentalism of the C.P.C. and K.P.K." (As the article notes, the "Chosen Music Club (C.M.C.) and the K.P.K., which derives its name from the initials of the family names of its three main members (Kim Haesong 金海松, Paek Ŭnsŏn 白恩善, Kim Chŏnghwan 金貞桓), were two variety show collectives whose activities from the late 1930s to the 1950s". The former performed for Japanese troops, the latter for US and UN troops.)

And for books ranging from recent to a hundred years old about East Asia, have a look here.

'Bitter distortions' regarding Hongdae in 2006

2012-01-16T14:22:00.001+09:00

[Update at bottom]

From a November 22, 2006 Chosun Ilbo article:

"Girls in Hongdae"

Rumors about Hongdae by Foreigners? 'Street of pleasures' - a bitter distortion

Kim Myung-hee (23), who is studying in New York, recently had an absurd experience at a "Tea Party" (a gathering with tea and snacks from different countries).

The aim of the party was for the students from various countries to improve their English skills and share information.

The foreign students had a variety of conversations with the locals.

On that day, Ms. Kim and other Korean students were approached by local men who asked them "Are you Korean?"

At first they talked about topics like the 2002 World Cup and Samsung phones. However, the local men were in fact interested in "Hongdae," and knew more about the place than the Korean university students.

However, the idea of Hongdae that had come to roost in their heads was not the space where youth live and breathe culture and art.

It had been distorted into a place where you could pay a cover charge and spend the night with the girl of your choice.

Ms. Kim was shocked by a conversation with Eliot (33), who worked for a bank, who said, "In 2005, I went to Korea to visit a friend working as an English teacher. For 10 dollars to get into a club, I could enjoy a night with beautiful women."

Moreover, he added that, "Once you say you're from an English speaking country, everything is immediately settled. Once, young women even argued over who would date me."

Andrew (29), a graduate student, said, "When I was backpacking in Europe, I heard a lot about Hongdae in Korea. I heard you could easily approach the first girls you saw. It's a place I want to visit once."　

Ju In-gyeong, a student who attended the tea party that day, said, "At first I was angry and perplexed, but it may not be completely untrue. All things considered, I feel really bitter."

It's understandable, that bitterness. If only they had continued talking about the "2002 World Cup and Samsung phones" - I know that's what my conversations usually revolve around. I'm sure she would have been much happier hearing about how Korean women are "wise mothers and good wives." Seriously though, would it have been better to have been told that these foreign men had heard Korean women didn't talk to foreigners at all, or to have been ignored by the men, or have something like this happen?

As for Hongdae being the "space where youth live and breathe culture and art," that's not how it was being described less than a year earlier after members of a punk band dropped their pants on live TV and Seoul mayor Lee Myung-bak railed against the decadence of Hongdae club performances and called for a blacklist of bands (shades of Park Chung-hee's actions when he destroyed the rock music scene in 1975). Also, one wonders what the motels there have to do with 'culture and art.'

A companion piece to this article would be an August 2005 Herald Gyeongje article titled "[Hongdae, haven of desire] Crowded with foreigners, the temptation of 'one night stands'" translated at the Marmot's Hole here, which stated that "Hongdae is now an area hot with youthful passion that has degenerated from being mixed up with foreigners."

Needless to say, both reports were written in the shadows of the English Spectrum incident, in which photos of a 'sexy costume party' in a Hongdae bar posted by English teachers on the internet led to negative attitudes towards both foreign teachers and Hongdae. I'm sure the way in which perceptions of Hongdae have changed over the last two decades would make for a fascinating paper, though the negative view of the foreigners there (in the press) has no room for the contributions made by these same foreigners to the scene there.* Not that that would surprise anyone.

*This is briefly mentioned here and in more depth here.

[Another set of reports worth mentioning is YTN's February 2007 reports on the "Scandalous behavior of foreigners on weekend nights in Hongdae... police just watch," as the title of the first puts it. It was translated at the Marmot's Hole, and ends with this paragraph:

Amidst the thoughtless behavior of some foreigners and the failure of the authorities to maintain order, the area around Hongik University, limelighted as a street of romance and youth, is becoming a lawless zone.

God help us, each and every one. Worth noting is that AES has taken credit for contributing to this report. I'm sure they were disappointed the focus turned to GIs instead of English teachers, but since the targets were white males, I imagine they weren't that disappointed. At any rate, a few days later, USFK banned its soldiers from the area, and YTN followed up with a report which interviewed a police officer, who said, "Since the ban, the area in front of Hongik University has maintained a state of very serene public order."]

Depopulation explosion

2012-01-12T12:11:00.000+09:00

According to this Korea Times article about the small number of children enrolling in the first grade of elementary school for the coming school year, "The number of elementary school students has kept falling in Seoul to 535,000 this year from 762,000 in 2001."

There's not much more to say there than "wow". A 30% drop over ten years - in Seoul - is pretty drastic. One wonders what the situation is like in the likewise heavily populated Gyeonggi-do.

Joongang Daily article on SMOE NSET cuts

2012-01-10T16:21:00.000+09:00

On January 3, the Joongang Daily published an article titled "Seoul’s English teachers shocked at getting axe." It then goes on to look at a high school teacher, which is a little odd, since it's been known for well over two months that those cuts were coming.

The teachers are disappointed. They said they believed in the Lee Myung-bak administration’s policy of improving Korean students’ English, started in 2009, which was also supposed to diminish the gap between rich and poor students by giving good English education in public schools, especially in the capital.

“I heard that the government was continuing to expand the number of foreign English teachers coming here,” Morris said. “But now they want us gone.”

As the graph below reveals, almost 2000 NSETs were hired in public schools in 2006 and 2007; the drive to put more native speakers into classrooms began before Lee Myung-bak even came into office.

Starting from August 2009, the government hired 2,996 foreign English teachers in elementary, middle and high schools across the country, and the total number reached 6,255 as of last February.

That figure is quite different from the statistics above (though perhaps it doesn't include teachers not hired by city or provincial offices of education).

But last November, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, which is controlled by rival parties to the ruling Grand National Party, announced the results of a public survey on the city’s English education policy and changes to the policy based on the survey.

A total of 43,742 people were surveyed, including 28,761 students, 11,980 parents, 2,406 Korean English teachers and 595 foreign English teachers at 1,282 elementary, middle and high schools in Seoul.

According to the city education office, 53.7 percent of the students said they preferred to learn English from Korean teachers, while 29.7 percent preferred foreign English teachers. In the survey, 42.1 percent of the students said they can’t understand what “native English teachers [who can’t speak Korean] are talking about.”

In addition, 62.2 percent of the parents surveyed “preferred Korean teachers who are fluent both in Korean and English to teach English classes at schools,” while only 26.9 percent of the parents preferred foreign teachers.

However, 62.4 percent of the parents and students said foreign English teachers are definitely needed.

Again with the survey (I'm working on a translation of SMOE's official summary of this survey, but at 13 pages it'll take some time). At least this article includes the last sentence above, though one wonders how the information above would look if it was printed first. By the way, the sentence "53.7 percent of the students said they preferred to learn English from Korean teachers" should describe those teachers as "fluent both in Korean and English." Also, SMOE did not "announce[...] changes to [English education] policy based on the survey" when the results of the survey were announced in November. In fact, here's Yonhap's summary at the time:

According to the results of the "Study analyzing the results of the Seoul English education strengthening policy and development plan" released by SMOE on the 27th, parents, students and teachers are satisfied with current native speaking teachers but the opinion came out that in the medium and long term Korean English teachers with English ability should be responsible for school English education.

The Joongang Ilbo article continues:

As a result of the survey, the education office said it will “downsize the project to place native English teachers in high schools but focus on having them in lower grades.” It said that part of the budget used to hire the foreigners could be redeployed to give language training to Korean English teachers.

Actually, a Korean friend who is a high school English teacher told me the teacher training program for SMOE in Gapyeong (which involves) NSETs is also supposed to be cut, which is ridiculous - I haven't confirmed that though.

“The survey showed that more parents preferred Korean teachers who are fluent in both English and Korean over foreign English teachers,” said Kim Jong-wook, a member of the Seoul Metropolitan Council from the Democratic Unity Party.

According to Choi Chun-ok, a supervisor at Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the survey results showed that the “efficacy of foreign English teachers is not as high as the amount of money that gets allocated to the project.”

One wonders how many parents, if the survey was on music education, would chose 'JYP or Lee Soo-man" as "preferable teachers" if the option was offered. And I think that SMOE supervisor Choi meant to refer to the "efficacy of the foreign English teacher system" as not being high enough.

The teachers say the program hasn’t worked too well because the city hired native speakers without any qualifications.

“They took so many people who either did not major in English or who have had no teaching experience at all,” said Morris.

Yeah, God knows you can't teach English conversation without being able to describe the influence of "Waiting for Godot" on "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." Seriously though, why an English major? Why not a major in a foreign language? As for the lack of qualifications, according to the SMOE survey, of the NSETs it questioned, 15.5% had MAs and 64.3% had TESOL or TEFL certificates.

In August, 252 foreign teachers will be let go from elementary schools and 200 from middle schools. A total of 4.9 billion won was cut from the 2012 budget to hire foreign English teachers at elementary and middle schools.

No it wasn't. This is referring to the statistics reported in the original SBS report on the cuts the Seoul Metropolitan Council hoped for; The actual cuts were not 4.9 billion won for middle and elementary school NSETs, but 2.2 billion won. Now, the original SBS report said that last year's budget of 34.6 million won for NSETs was to be cut by 9.3 billion won (4.4 SMOE planned to cut + 4.9 wanted by the council), or by 27% - and yet it reported that 57% of NSETs would be cut. Even better, I found the below SMOE document about the hiring of NSETs which reveals that over 25% of SMOE's NSETs in 2010 were not funded by SMOE, which makes the 57% figure even more ridiculous. According to the original plan, 27% of 75% of Seoul's foreign teachers would be cut, or about 20%. Again, perhaps what is needed is more math education...

The Joongang Daily story has a nice ending:

Some foreign teachers want to lash back at the government’s decision, but they’ve been warned not to.

“Numerous foreign English teachers in Seoul were considering holding protests or taking some form of collective action to express dissatisfaction with the new plan,” Chao said. “But an official from the education office told us that wasn’t a good idea. He said Koreans would only hate us even more.”

Rather blunt, if honest, talk from the "education office" (if true). Just imagining foreign teachers protesting job cuts makes me chuckle... I don't think a device exists that could measure how little sympathy such an action would garner from the public.

Gestapo in Itaewon

2012-01-10T15:22:00.008+09:00

[Update at bottom]

On January 7, 1988, the Korea Times published the following letter by a long-term expat:

There's not much more to do than to shake your head and wonder "Itaewon?!" One can only imagine that people were clueless that it would cause such offense. More about this bar can be found in an AP article printed in Stars and Stripes on October 30, 1991 (sorry, the photo's not clear at all):

The German Embassy has raised a fuss over this beer hall,
called Hitler, near Seoul, South Korea.

'Hitler' pub draws protest from Germans

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The German Embassy is asking the government to force a popular new beer hall called Hitler to change its name and get rid of its blinking name signs and Hitler matchbooks and pictures.

The embassy also wants the beer hall to get rid of a Federal Republic of Germany flag that has a Nazi swastika stitched onto it. The embassy said the beer hall is defaming a national emblem.

"We consider the use of Nazi pictures and symbols as hurting ... German feelings and detrimental to our reputation," embassy spokeswoman Martina Nibbeling-Wriessnig said Tuesday.

The use of Nazi symbols is illegal in Germany, which has sought to repudiate dictator Adolf Hitler, who ruled from 1933 until near the end of World War II in 1945. The swastika was used as a Nazi emblem.

In 1987, a bar called Gestapo in Itaewon near a sprawling U.S. Army base changed its name after complaints by the German Embassy. The Gestapo was Hitler's secret police.

His namesake beer hall, which seats 100 customers, opened about two months ago in Kwangmyong City, an industrial area about 12 miles southwest of Seoul. The embassy said it only recently discovered it.

Interesting that, despite a foreign embassy complaining, Hitler bars continued to appear throughout the country until at least the mid-2000s (some photos are in the Metropolitician post here). And that in 2007 Rhie Won-bok could refer to the 'fact' that the Jews run America (as detailed in his comic book about America) as 'common knowledge.' And that a year later a cosmetic company would run a commercial (viewable here) mentioning Hitler.

Even more interesting might be that Yi Pom Sok, South Korea's first prime minister and minister of defense (who the Metropolitician mentions in his post), told an American journalist in 1946 that one of the things he planned to teach at his school to train anti-communist youth group leaders - which was funded by the US government - was "the history of the Hitler Jugend." A story for another day, I suppose.

Update:
The most recent article about a Hitler bar was from 2007, though no photos were shown. As that ROK drop post mentions, in 2000 Time did an article about a Hitler bar (one of three said to be in Seoul at the time) which had changed its name after complaints from the Third Reich to the Fifth Reich (the main attraction of the Nazis? "They dressed well."). That same year Pusanweb interviewed the owner of a Hitler bar in Busan who eventually changed the name to Ddolf Ditler (it's long since gone); the owner made clear he meant no offense. In 2005 photos of the interior of a Hitler bar in Daejeon were posted at this blog, and another photo of it was gathered with photos of a few other bars in this posting (links can be found in this post). It's entirely possible that they disappeared by 2007. To be sure, with around 25,000 foreign English teachers spread throughout the country, if such bars still existed they would probably be pretty well documented by this point.

Harmony...

2012-01-09T15:51:00.000+09:00

As the Yonhap article title put it (in 2006), "Harmony between east and west(?)"

Happy belated new year - I've just been busy, but regular posting should resume shortly...

Internship at Canadian Embassy

2011-12-30T15:22:00.002+09:00

If any Canadian citizens are interesting in applying for an internship at the Canadian Embassy from March to August 2012 (or know someone who would be), the details can be read here.

Hagwons not following new law allow stoned foreign teachers to wreak havoc in classrooms

2011-12-29T15:17:00.001+09:00

On December 17, NoCut News published the following report:

A stoned native speaking instructor and my child...?!
Foreign instructors should be hired after confirming a drug test but this has not been implemented

On December 2 the Eastern Seoul Prosecutor's Office 4th Investigative Division arrested and charged J (23), an Australian native speaking English instructor, with importing a new kind of drug.

On December 8, many members of a group of Korean Americans including Mr. Kim (38) were arrested for forging diplomas in order to work as language hagwon instructors in Korea and for habitually inhaling drugs.

Despite continuous crimes such as taking, distributing or importing drugs by foreign instructors like these, why can they not be prevented in the sphere of education outside of criminal investigations?

Legislation has been made to ban the entry of drugs into hagwons, but in fact it's just empty talk. In addition, it's been pointed out that the educational authorities carrying out enforcement have their hands tied and are passing the buck with their administration.

◇ Hagwons: "A health certificate including a drug test? What's that?"

On December 10th, CBS reporters called a hagwon in Daechi-dong which had posted an job announcement for foreign instructors and made inquiries regarding the documents needed for the application.

The hagwon said, "A passport, degree, and criminal record check are needed." The same was true with a language hagwon in Incheon. Hagwons mostly answered, "Just a resume and diploma is okay" or "they can be hired after submitting a resume and going through an interview."

However, according to the revised law on the Establishment and Operation of Private Teaching Institutes and Extracurricular Lessons which came into effect on October 26, a health certificate including marijuana and drug test results issued within the previous month must be submitted when hiring foreign instructors.

However, CBS has discovered that hagwons are not carrying out the entire foreign instructor hiring process through which a health certificate including drug test results must be submitted.

Even foreign instructor hiring sites openly post that only resumes and application forms are needed and there are many that have no idea about the related regulations nor have any intention of carrying them out.

◇ Educational authorities' hands are tied, "There are no enforcement personnel"

With a situation like this, enforcement by educational authorities is not being accomplished.

An official at an English hagwon in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do, said, "Drug test documents received from foreign instructors are being voluntarily submitted to the relevant education office." "We've never been informed that particular documents should be submitted."

According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Techology (MEST), local education offices which carry out enforcement according to the hagwon law can impose a fine of up to 3 million won for hiring unqualified foreign instructors.

But in reality, local education offices, lacking personnel, cannot enforce this when they don't receive reports from hagwons, and expect that hagwons will voluntarily submit documents when hiring foreign instructors.

A MEST staff member said, "With one or two people, the supervision and enforcement of thousands of hagwons is the difficult part." "The (details of enforcement) are not being regularly reported at present, and if someone feels there's a problem, we can receive requests for action."

An official from a local education office in Seoul complained of the difficulties: "With so many civil complaints over things like the hagwon fee refund issue, we don't have the ability to confirm whether health certificate including drug test results have been submitted when hiring foreign instructors.

According to the "Current status of employed foreigners"report released by the foreign policy division of the immigration service, on September 30, among 600,138 foreigners working in Korea, 22,859 were conversation instructors.

However, with the trend of foreigner-related drug crimes increasing every year, there is a need for thorough measures.

According to the Korean Institute of Criminology, the number of foreigners caught for breaking the drug control law or eradication of drug trafficking law numbered 145 in 2005, 77 in 2006, 227 in 2007, 538 in 2008, 538 in 2009, and 824 in 2010, increasing every year.

Jang Eun-suk, director of the National Association of Parents for True Education said, "After the hagwon law was amended, there was no feeling at all that things have changed." "Parents are very worried about children still being exposed to drug crimes by unqualified foreign instructors who have not been fully verified."

She said, "You can't help but enforce the law by offering rewards for reporting lawbreakers, and we expect that the 'school snitch system' (학파라치 제도) would have an effect, but due to the resistance of hagwons, it won't be implemented."

Stoned teachers? Check. Worries about them being a threat to children? Check. They're made out to be unstoppable due to inability of Korean authorities to enforce the law? Check. It must be a Tuesday.

So, "Legislation has been made to ban the entry of drugs into hagwons." Because apparently the fiends bring their drugs with them to work. (Though, considering positive urine or hair tests count as 'possession,' I suppose those who toke in their spare time do technically carry it with them at all times.)

We're told that "the revised law on the Establishment and Operation of Private Teaching Institutes and Extracurricular Lessons ... came into effect on October 26." From what I could tell looking at the bill, it was promulgated on July 25; whether that means it came into effect that day I'm not sure. This article seems to indicate only one aspect of the bill came into effect on October 26, that being a system rewarding those reporting hagwons which charge too much (just one of four categories of reports which can be rewarded), but fines punishing the hagwons for such behaviour would be suspended, with full punishment starting from March 1 next year. The article says nothing about other portions of the bill being implemented in October.

As for the figures from the Korean Institute of Criminology regarding drug crimes "increasing every year" (145 in 2005, 77 in 2006, 227 in 2007, 538 in 2008, 538 in 2009, and 824 in 2010), these figures are quite different from those in the Supreme Prosecutors Office report on 2010 drug arrests, which are listed below:

No increases "every year" there. Perhaps the moral of the story is that, when looking for statistics to provide a question to the answer you already have, it's best to shop around.

More amusing is the fact that, when presented with Korean citizens deported from the US after serving time for crimes like rape and murder being able to teach children because they faked their backgrounds, NoCut News thought that the real news story was that one or more of them (along with an Aussie teacher in another case) smoked pot while in Korea. I guess there's a question for SMOE's next survey of parents:

Who would you rather have teaching your children?
A) A person from our country convicted of rape or murder
B) A native speaker who habitually inhales drugs

I'd be curious to see if the response would be similar to what NoCut News thinks it should be.

Unfilterable, never-ending defilers

2011-12-27T16:03:00.001+09:00

Regarding the former Korean American gangsters deported to Korea who taught English using forged degrees arrested three weeks ago, the Joongang Daily offers this information:

A 38-year-old Korean-American surnamed Kim, one of three arrested for forgery, found employment in a reputable English language academy in Korea as a native foreign language instructor.

According to the police, Kim, who was adopted by a family in America as a child, was a member of an Arizona gang and shot and killed a member of a rival gang in 2000. He was charged with second-degree murder and sentenced to ten years in prison. After receiving parole after eight years, Kim was deported to Korea in October 2007.

Interestingly enough, this man was actually arrested four months before the arrests of the others were announced, as a summary of this article at the Marmot's Hole in August relates:

This guy, identified as Mr. Kim (38), was adopted at 18 months old by an American couple. He left home as a teen, however, and ended up running with a Mexican gang in Arizona. In 2000, he earned himself a 10-year sentence for 2nd degree attempted murder; he was released after seven and deported in Korea in 2007. Prosecutors believe after Kim arrived in Korea, he got a fake degree and taught English at four famous English academies in Gangnam, Goyang and Anyang.

Odd that it took them so long to arrest the others. I imagine that's his diploma in the foreground here.

As for this case, on the day the arrests were announced, the Kookmin Ilbo published this "article":

American native speaking instructors who were gangsters and committed rape and murder... why were they not filtered out?

As the number of native speaking teachers significantly increases, the improper confirmation of such things as their criminal backgrounds is becoming a social problem. The native speaking teacher crime rate increased from 0% in 2008 to 1.6% last year, so there is an urgent need for thorough management and supervision. [...]

[It then retells the story of the Korean Americans who served time in the US for gang related murder, rape and drug crimes before being deported to Korea where they faked their backgrounds to work as instructors in hagwons.]

The government strengthened regulations for native speaking instructors, but they have not been very effective. In July the government amended the "Act related to hagwon establishment and operation and private tutoring" (the hagwon act) making it mandatory to submit a criminal record check, health certificate (including drug screening), and a diploma when hiring native speaking instructors. However the government's measure is only effective for native speaking instructors who are registered with city offices of education. Unregistered instructors, who work for small hagwons which have not registered their instructors with the office of education, are in an enforcement 'blind spot' and can operate freely.

Hagwon owners who do not report to the office of education when hiring a native speaker are fined a mere 500,000 won to 1.5 million won, and in fact hagwons which hire unqualified instructors will bear this fine. [...]

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education revealed that it has difficulty enforcing laws regarding native speaking instructors. An SMOE official said, "Seoul's 11 educational support offices have only 70 to 80 people in their enforcement squads, but in Gangnam alone there are more than 3000 hagwons. "Due to things like lack of manpower and difficulty working with the Ministry of Justice, it's actually impossible to enforce the laws."

Police notified the relevant office of education regarding hagwon owner Ms. Lee, who hired unqualified English instructors without verification or notification, and seven others, and conducted further investigation into Gangnam and Seoul area hagwons which hire instructors illegally.

To answer the question in title as to why American native speaking instructors were not filtered out, the answer is because the weren't American, they were Korean, and no one asks Korean teachers for overseas criminal record checks. Also, the lack of due diligence on the part of the hagwon owners played a part in their diplomas not being found out.

As for this - "As the number of native speaking teachers significantly increases..." - I fail to see a significant increase occurring (presently) in the number of E-2 visa holders (stats can be found here):

2000 - 6,414
2002 - 10,864
2004 - 11,344
2005 - 12,439
2006 - 15,001
2007 - 17,721
2008 - 19,771
2009 - 22,642
2010 - 23,314
2011.11 - 22,895

The cuts to the GEPIK program (and future cuts to SMOE) will see these numbers fall even further (they've been fluctuating over the last year already), as the massive expansion (of around 2000 per year) since 2005 was due mostly to public school hiring.

As for this - "the native speaking teacher crime rate increased from 0% in 2008 to 1.6% last year" - I will go out on a limb and guess that these figures were pulled from some remote recess of the reporter's rectum. Either that or the reporter managed to track down statistics not yet published in the media or by Anti English Spectrum.

We're also told that there is an "urgent need for thorough management and supervision" of native speaking teachers, something that appears to be a required phrase for such articles. They are, however correct that better management is needed, but not of E-2s. All of the wanted murderers (or attempted murderers) and former gangsters/criminals caught teaching English here since 2006 (various Korean American former gangsters deported from the US caught teaching illegally in 2006, wanted murderers David Nam (caught in 2008) and Ronald Rhee (caught in 2010), another gangster deported for attempted murder arrested with Rhee, and the former gangsters arrested this month) have been Korean citizens, while wanted murderer Sang-woo Ye (caught in 2010) was presumably on an F-4 and the Korean American gangster turned hagwon owner wanted for attempted murder caught this summer used identity theft to pose as a Korean citizen. (There may even be one more wanted murderer hiding out here.)

The article then brings up the revisions to the hagwon law passed in the summer and asserts that the law won't have any effect on those teachers not registered with city offices of education. Such "unregistered instructors, [who] are in an enforcement 'blind spot' and can operate freely," seem to exist only in the columns of the Kookmin Ilbo, as we saw here (the only other article that describes the threat of "unregistered native speaking instructors" (who, by the way, commit "never ending" "drugs and molestation... in hagwons")).

And, of course, the article mentions the other never-ending problem with ~~USFK members~~ foreign teachers, that due to ~~SOFA~~ institutional hurdles, "it's actually impossible to enforce the laws." This, of course, is a great problem, one which was, in fact, predicted by Choe Ik-hyeon when he opposed King Gojong's plans to negotiate what would be known as the Ganghwa Treaty with the Japanese in early 1876 (as translated in this book). Choe wrote that "Although they call themselves Japanese, they are really Western bandits," and he feared that Korea would be "defiled" and "reduced to the level of wild animals" by their presence, which would be allowed by the treaty and would permit them to "build dwellings and reside within our borders." Due to the agreement, he said, the Korean government would have "no grounds to stop them," and so they would be able to "plunder our property and violate women at will, and no one will be able to restrain them.[...] There will be countless cases of this nature."

"Countless." "Endless." "Never-ending." As we can see, Choe's Confucian-inspired feeling of moral supremacy over the barbarians tinged with fears of Korea being defenseless before them as they committed never-ending outrages against women and property (was there really a distinction then?) still holds sway over some people (especially in the news media) 135 years later.

Clearly, this xenophobia coloured by moral superiority felt by the upper/educated class predates modern nationalism, but the degree to which the the former influences the latter (or how they inform each other) is not something that has been much explored, as far as I know.

I couldn't help but think about this when I read this Donga Ilbo editorial (as translated by the Korea Herald on September 24, 1988) published during the 88 Olympics:

One of the reasons we decided to host the event despite its staggering burden was to show the world the true picture of Korea. We wanted to show our friends from abroad our moral and ethical supremacy that far transcends our political and economic potentials.

Articles from the Korea Times and the Korea Herald (which were aimed at foreign tourists!) during the Olympics make quite clear this feeling of 'ethical supremacy.' This is revealed by even a quick glance at the titles of articles about, for example, foreign athletes' 'drug use' (steroids) detected by superior Korean technology, or those that highlighted every after-hours mishap involving American athletes or complained about 'biased' coverage by NBC. This page of photos of foreign spectators in the Donga Ilbo certainly doesn't put them in a very good light either (girl in hot pants with legs spread, foreign men with their shirts off). Taking that into consideration with the fact that the government (and later civil society groups) wanted to test all foreign visitors to Korea for AIDS, and, well, you start to see patterns. Not for nothing did the Joongang Ilbo editorialize thusly in 1984:

The true educational effect of foreign language learning is that when learning to speak and write a foreign country’s language, to some degree one learns its culture and ‘spirit’ as well. Attaching importance to conversation, [learners] can’t distinguish a teacher’s or instructor’s standard of refinement and mistake them for nothing but a 'tape recorder.' Ultimately there’s a worry that when learning conversation students will imitate that country’s vulgar culture, vulgar living language, and vulgar values. [...] Also, for this reason it could come to pass that our citizens' image of their level of culture will fall and will offset the effectiveness of gaining foreign language learning.[Emphasis added]

Interestingly enough, in describing how learning a "foreign country’s language" causes one to learn "its culture and ‘spirit’ as well," this also echoes Choe Ik-hyeon's 1876 memorial, in which he also warned that "books of their wicked religion...will be mixed in with other trading goods and...will be all over the country before long." Some, including King Gojong, thought "Eastern ways/ethics" could be used together with (and temper) "Western learning" (dongdo seogi), but fears of unwanted, decadent western "culture and 'spirit'" piggybacking on western technology have been a perennial worry, and was explicitly referred to by Park Chung-hee when he cracked down on marijuana and rock and folk music (and youth culture in general) in 1975-76 and called for "selective adoption" of foreign culture. Needless to say, such fears of foreigners bringing unwanted culture with them are alive and well today, (with even one reporter (out to "correct biased views on Korea") writing an article for ABC news titled "Drug Toting Teachers Defiling South Korea"), as are assertions that westerners in Korea can't be controlled and commit endless crimes (the former turning up today in the first article described here).

Choe, it should be mentioned, died of self-imposed hunger in a Japanese prison after leading an uprising against the Japanese in 1906 at the age of 76, so you certainly can't say he didn't follow through on his beliefs. One wonders if there is a statue of him somewhere.

Christmas

2011-12-24T20:54:00.004+09:00

Strange that Seoul will have more snow for Christmas than my hometown in Ontario. On a related note, "I still believe in Christmas trees" by the Telstar Ponies just popped into my head, and here it is on youtube.

Something else I just remembered is Takako Minekawa's cover of NRBQ's 'Christmas Wish.'

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.

Spot the difference

2011-12-23T15:03:00.001+09:00

Pyongyang, 2011:

Pyeongchang, 2007:

I can't help seeing the kids in the top photo and wondering if they were simply tired of standing in the cold (it's five degrees colder there than Seoul today). I'm also reminded of this story:

'Well, some years ago we were told that he was coming down to our town and that he would visit a local school. There was great excitement. The security people wouldn't exactly say when he was coming, but they told the school to go ahead and make all the preparations to greet him properly. So they did just that: they arranged a ceremony, and as one of the ways of welcoming him, they made a huge portrait of him, broken up into hundreds of pieces on the back of coloured cards. When the children held the cards up one way, they made a pretty pattern. When they turned the cards over, there was the president's face.

'The day arrived, and we were told when he would be arriving. The children were ready, everyone very nervous. Then one of the children asked permission to go to the bathroom. His teacher said that would be fine, but hurry. Well, you can guess what happened; while the boy was in the bathroom, the president arrived, and the security people wouldn't let the boy back onto the field. So the celebration went on, the children did their dances with the cards and turned this way and that, and then all together, turned them over.

'The president's face was there all right - except that it was missing a left eyebrow. The official people went crazy! The president himself didn't say anything, of course, but after the party was gone, the education department had the master in and fired him on the spot. The headmaster was in trouble. I even heard they visited the parents of the child and warned them of the consequences. And then an instruction went out. If ever there was a demonstration of loyalty like that again, the children had to be told that if they wanted to pee, they peed where they stood.

This story (reminiscent of this ad) does not take place in North Korea. It's told by a former teacher in Simon Winchester's Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles, and takes place in the early 1980s in Jeolla-do; the president in question is Chun Doo-hwan. Winchester himself admits it may not be true, though other Koreans he meets elsewhere in Korea admit they've heard it.

Of course, Chun wasn't the only president who was pixelized on cards:

(Busan, 1976; from Through our eyes: Peace Corps in Korea 1966-1981)

I wonder when card displays of this sort began in Korea.

Floors 4 and 14

2011-12-22T14:58:00.001+09:00

[Update: Another student at the same school committed suicide just as this case was being investigated.]

One of last night and today's news topics has gained a great deal of attention in part, I imagine, to the photos below (taken from a cctv camera video which can be seen here).

Apparently she hit the buttons for floor 4 and floor 14, staying in the elevator at the fourth floor and proceeding to the fourteenth. As you might guess, she didn't use the elevator to get down. This story came to light because someone posted a few days ago on a bulletin board about his younger cousin, a 17 year old high school student in Daejeon, who was found dead on December 3 on the roof of the apartment entrance, her shoes and bag left on the 14th floor. The cousin wrote that she couldn't bear being ostracized by her peers, and charges that her teacher who showed no interest in her plight is responsible, something that the school has denied to inquiring newspapers, and will likely do so as police investigate (as described here and here).

Teachers in Korea - homeroom teachers especially - are expected in their own way to be counselors as well, and the attention, or lack thereof, given by teachers to students like the girl in this case would likely have more impact here than in Canada.

I got to watch one of my students go through becoming a 'wangtta' earlier this year. I knew her homeroom teachers from this year and last year, and while they could point to the problem - a classmate of hers who was directing the rest of the class to ignore her - there wasn't much they could do other than talk with her (a lot). While things eventually improved, the experience changed her a great deal from the way she was a year earlier (though I imagine puberty contributed to that).

The same things happen back home - the day the girl in Daejeon died, an anti-bullying rally was held in Montreal after the suicide of a 15 year old girl due to bullying, and the recent suicide of a boy who was targeted as an openly gay student in Ottawa led the Ontario government to introduce new anti-bullying legislation. Though solutions have been offered, it's one thing to try to stop physical bullying, but how does one stop ostracism? It's not like you can force people to associate with someone, which makes the Korean brand of this particularly difficult to deal with.

The 2011 Amendments to the Hagwon Law

2011-12-22T12:01:00.000+09:00

I've probably mentioned this several times, but I've never gotten around to posting about it specifically. On June 29, the National Assembly passed a bill amending the hagwon act which applies to foreign English teachers. The bill itself can be found here (in Korean). It was promulgated on July 25, 2011.

Act on the Establishment and Operation of Private Teaching Institutes and Extracurricular Lessons (in Korean here)
Some revised bills (alternative)
Bill # 12398
Date proposed: 2011.6.28
Submitted by: Chairperson of the Education, Science and Technology Committee

In the introduction we are told that the bill is essentially a compilation of various bills submitted over the past three years (Rep. Choi Young-hee, 2009.06.09; Rep. Kim Bu-gyeom, 2008.12.01; Rep. Gwon Yeong-gil, 2008.12.03; Rep. Lee Sang-min, 2008.12.24; Rep. Park Jong-hui, 2009.03.24; Rep. Lee Gun-hyeon, 2009.06.10; Rep. An Sang-su, 2009.09.02; Rep. Jeong Du-eon, 2009.11.10; Rep. Jo Jeon-hyeok, 2009.11.25; Rep. Kim Chun-jin, 2010.04.10).

Some of these names are familiar. Choi Young-hee proposed revisions to the school and kindergarten laws as well, but has finally found success with her planned revision to the hagwon law. Lee Gun-hyeon was responsible for releasing 'serious' foreign instructor crime stats (which showed their crime rate to be one fifth of the Korean crime rate) and Jo Jeon-hyeok was responsible for "forcing" foreign instructors to learn about Korea (as per KBS, via Brian). Choi Young-hee and Jo Jeon-hyeok's marks on this bill can be seen in the provisions regarding foreign instructors, which are just one focus out of several in this collection of bills. Here are the parts of the revised bill referring to foreign instructors:

The following will be established for Article 13 paragraph 3

In the case of foreign instructors (non-citizens of the Republic of Korea who, in accordance with paragraph 1, are responsible for instruction in a hagwon. Hereafter the same), training will be conducted more than once after entering the country to improve their skills as those responsible for social education and aid them in adapting to Korean culture.

The following will be established for Article 13-2
Article 13-2 (the hiring of foreign instructors) The person who established or manages the hagwon must, when hiring a foreign instructor to be responsible for foreign language instruction, submit the each of the following documents and have them confirmed before hiring the instructor:

1. A criminal background check
2. A health certificate (issued within the previous month and including the results of a drug and marijuana test)
3. An educational background certificate
4. Anything else prescribed by presidential decree

[As well, Article 23, which deals with penalties, will have paragraph 3-1 added to it, which stipulates that 3 million won will be the penalty if Article 13-2 is not followed.]

Supplementary Provisions

Article 5 (Interim Measures for foreign instructors carrying out foreign language instruction) According to the revised regulations in article 13-2, those currently working as foreign instructors must submit the documents listed in article 13-2 within one month of this law coming into effect.

Article 6 (Application of training for foreign instructors) After article 13(3)'s revised regulations within this law come into effect, they will apply to those foreign instructors who enter the country for the first time.

While it's good that this ostensibly closes the F-visa loophole, it doesn't solve the problem of Korean citizens who have lived abroad who have committed crimes there (and have either been deported to Korea or have fled to Korea to escape justice).

Detecting native speaking instructors with forged diplomas

2011-12-20T13:14:00.000+09:00

The Chosun Ilbo published this 'article' on December 18, which is rather similar to these 'foreign teachers, being non-Korean, could commit crimes at any time' ads passing as articles from this summer:

[Why] "Detecting native speaking instructors with forged diplomas" a boom for inquiry service providers

Significant increase after Shin Jeong-a incident
On the 8th police caught Korean Americans who had been imprisoned for violent crimes like murder and rape in, and deported from, the United States, and who had forged degrees from well known universities to work as English instructors in Korea. As there is a continuous inflow of foreign workers into Korea, cases of forged degrees are also occurring again and again. Because of this, requests to educational inquiry service providers to confirm the authenticity of degrees are increasing.

The article then rehashes the story of Shin Jeong-a and says these businesses have seen increases in business by 20% each year since her story came to light (suggesting this growth has little to do with the "continuous inflow of foreign workers into Korea"), but fails to make any other specific mentions of foreign teachers or of foreigners. Unsurprisingly, the article is an advertisement for this company, and though it reports on the arrest of the Korean Americans (who one assumes are Korean citizens, having been deported here), we're presented with this photo:

"Native speaking teacher file photo. The photo above is not related to this article."

Nice ass-covering caption.

It's interesting how looking up "원어민 위조" rather than "원어민" turned up a lot more news stories about the recent arrests (as in, 20 more), with Yonhap publishing several photos of the police displaying the former gangsters' forged diplomas:

The Chosun Ilbo article begs the question, however: Are forged degrees still really a problem with foreign teachers (as in non-Korean citizens) like they were with numerous high profile arrests a few years ago (when KBS claimed that 20% of native speaking teachers had forged diplomas)?

In a September 19, 2011 Hankook Ilbo article (which crashed Firefox for me), it was reported that National Assembly Education, Science and Technology Committee member Kim Se-yeon (GNP) reported that 146 people had been arrested for faking their academic backgrounds between 2008 and 2010, with 76 caught in 2008, 32 in 2009, and 38 in 2010. Of those, 40 worked for hagwons, but while the use of faked diplomas from US universities is mentioned, there's no mention of foreign teachers, except at the end, where Kim is quoted as saying,

Because of the social controversy over the problem of foreign instructors lacking qualifications, a similar verification procedure for faked diplomas should be regularly and systematically carried out.

We might remember Rep. Kim Se-yeon as one of those who mistakenly declared that over half of NSETs break their contracts. One imagines that, especially with her invocation of foreign teachers, that if there were a sizable number of foreign teachers involved, they would have been mentioned. So I decided to take a look.

In 2008 I was able to find three cases connecting native speaking teachers and forgery. In the first, in May 2008, three people from Ghana and a Korean-Australian (the latter's role isn't explained) were arrested for faking documents (including alien registration cards), and a hagwon owner who hired them was also booked.

In another case in November 2008, an American 'delivery boy' who worked in Korea for 12 years with a forged diploma was arrested, but though NoCut News reported (via its headline) that "a bunch of native speaking instructors had been caught for faked backgrounds," 5 other teachers were actually busted for teaching privates (made clearer in this article).

Another case from December was reported by SBS, who opened their report by saying, "These days, if one establishes an English hagwon, what’s crucial is securing a native speaking instructor. In particular, finding a native speaking teacher with a proper teaching qualifications is almost impossible." [It leaves out the part about this being impossible because hagwons generally don't look for them.] The case is better explained here, where we're told that a Nigerian who worked in a hagwon as a native speaking instructor was arrested as part of a group that used a computer program to copy credit cards and made 28 fake cards, stealing 138 million won. (It doesn't mention forged diplomas, though).

So for 2008, that makes 4-5 foreign teachers (or one or two people from one of the 7 English speaking countries allowed to teach English) with fake diplomas. There were none reported in 2009, and the Ronald Rhee case was the only one in 2010 (he was a dual citizen, and the other person arrested who used a fake degree was a Korean citizen) and the only case of a 'native speaking teacher' being busted for a forged degree that I could find this year was a Chinese woman working in an elementary school.

While the association of 'native speaking teacher' with 'forged degree' may have had some substance five or six years ago, it doesn't seem to be the case now, though that doesn't stop it from being brought up in advertisements passing as news articles as one of the 'social problems' caused by foreign teachers.

Foreigners make up 3% of Korea's population

2011-12-19T14:42:00.002+09:00

The Joongang Daily reported on the weekend that foreigners now make up 3% of Korea's population, and with over 1.4 million foreigners as of October, the foreign population has increased 13% since the end of last year. The last big news of this sort was when the number of foreigners surpassed 1 million (or 2%) in 2007.

Although international migrations to Korea decreased in 2009 for the first time since Seoul began monitoring them in 2000 mainly because of the worldwide economic slump, the trend reversed last year in line with the country’s economic recovery, the ministry said.

Migrant workers comprised the largest group of all foreign nationals, accounting for 42.5 percent, the data showed. Around 9 percent of them were illegal workers, the ministry found. By nationality, Chinese ranked first with 53.1 percent, followed by Vietnamese with 11 percent, Filipinos with 5 percent and Indonesians with 4.77 percent, according to the data.

Immigrants married to Koreans formed the second-largest group of foreign residents here, taking up 10.1 percent of the total international population in the country. Chinese ranked first, totaling 45.4 percent of all spouses, followed by Vietnamese with 25.35 percent and Japanese with 7.64 percent, according to the data. Foreign wives accounted for nearly 90 percent of the total marriage immigrants, it showed.

The third-largest group of foreign nationals here were students who came to Korea to study. Among the total 93,232 international students, 20 percent were studying the Korean language, according to the statistics. Chinese, again, turned out to be the largest group among international students here with 72.9 percent, followed by Mongolians with 5.25 percent, Vietnamese with 3.47 percent, Japanese with 2.61 percent and Americans with 1.32 percent, the data showed.

Detailed immigration statistics can be found here, (on each page, click the zip file to get excel files). There has been a large increase in the number of foreigners this year; here are the year-end stats since 2000, which I posted here last year:

2000 - 491,324
2001 - 566,835
2002 - 629,006
2003 - 678,687
2004 - 750,873
2005 - 747,476
2006 - 910,149
2007 - 1,066,273
2008 - 1,158,866
2009 - 1,168,477
2010 - 1,261,415

Here are the statistics by month this year:

1,236,385 January
1,260,841 February
1,308,743 March
1,354,414 April
1,353,967 May
1,392,167 June
1,411,013 July
1,410,259 August
1,418,149 September
1,403,355 October

Between February and July, the population increased by 150,000, which is a pretty large increase. Here's a breakdown by nation (including totals, and broken down by gender) for some countries from October of this year:

Here are the top 15 countries (or groups) by population:

Korean Chinese
Chinese
USA
Vietnam
Philippines
Japan
Thailand
Indonesia
Uzbekistan
Mongolia
Taiwan
Canada
Sri Lanka
Cambodia
Bangladesh

Unsurprisingly, they're mostly Asian countries, with the US and Canada added in (with the US in third place).

Kim Jong-il dead

2011-12-19T12:22:00.006+09:00

[Update: Some interesting photos and videos from Pyongyang]

I was just told by my co-workers that Kim Jong-il is dead.

The BBC is reporting that North Korean state-run television "said he had died on Saturday of physical and mental over-work."

I imagine the next few months should be interesting...

[Update: Using a proxy to try to get through to KCNA isn't working - not surprising that it would be down. And I would imagine AP had this lengthy article prepared beforehand...]

SMOE budget passed

2011-12-19T09:17:00.006+09:00

[Update - paragraph added at bottom]

Yonhap reported yesterday that on the 17th, the Seoul city council's special budget committee passed SMOE's budget of 7,094,953,700,000 won (32.9 billion won more than SMOE asked for).

According to SMOE a good deal of the debate over the budget was in regard to senior teachers and the budget for placement of native speaking teachers, which saw cuts by the education committee and was then partly restored by the special budget committee.

The education committee of the city council also cut 4.9 billion won from the budget for placement of native speaking teachers in elementary and middle schools, though [in the end] in the budget committee, the office of education's submitted budget of 31.4 billion won was cut only by 2.2 billion won down to 29.1 billion won.

According to this, next year native speaking teachers will disappear from high schools, as per SMOE's original plan, but are expected to remain at current levels in elementary and middle schools.

[A revised version of this article instead says "but are expected to remain at current levels in elementary and middle schools until at least the first half of next year," and deletes the following paragraph:]

An SMOE official said, "Allowances were made for middle school native speaking teachers whose contract periods end next August and the budget was expanded again." "During the second half of the year a supplementary budget for placing native speaking teachers in middle schools should be further reviewed."

Interesting that the above paragraph was cut. Perhaps that means there will be no supplementary budget for NSETs next summer.

As well, next year the free lunch program will be expanded to students in the first year of middle school and the Seoul City Council education committee decided SMOE would shoulder 50% of the total cost of 55.3 billion won (27.65 billion won), with the remaining 50% to be covered by Seoul City Government (30%) and each gu (city district).

The budget should be completely settled today.

Some of the figures there are interesting. It says SMOE's planned budget of 31.4 billion won was cut only by 2.2 billion won down to 29.1 billion won. However, the original SBS report said that the budget was set to be 30.2 million won - a 1.2 billion won discrepancy. As well, SBS reported that last year's budget of 34.6 million won for NSETs was to be cut by 9.3 billion won (4.4 SMOE planned to cut + 4.9 wanted by the council), or by 27% - and yet it reported that 57% of NSETs would be cut.

Someone needs to brush up on their math. What makes the 57% figure even more ridiculous is the fact that SMOE does not fund all of the foreign teachers. I recently saw a list of the teachers in my district whose contracts were being renewed, and out of twenty, 12 were funded by SMOE, 4 by Seoul city government, and 4 by the local district office. While that's a small sample, it does at least make clear that SMOE doesn't fund all of the teachers. As for current NSET numbers, I've been told that there are currently 579 elementary school teachers, 372 middle school teachers, and 291 high school teachers, or 1242 teachers all together.

Something else I haven't seen mentioned is that last week there was a panel on English education in the Seoul school system, which is described here.

The writer of that blog, a Korean elementary school English teacher who has worked with native speaking teachers, also wrote a long opinion piece for Ohmynews (called "It's easy to be a native speaking teacher!) which calls the cuts 'welcome' and, while saying that some teachers were okay and some just came for the money (and the best only stayed for a year), concludes by asking which is more important for 'our future' - giving money to native speakers or food to children?

The SMOE English education survey

2011-12-16T14:03:00.002+09:00

I just came across the survey about English education commissioned by SMOE that was looked at here a few weeks ago and is being used to justify NSET cuts. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but at 13 pages, there's certainly going to be more to consider than the initial reports on it, or SMOE's one sentence summary of it ("parents prefer Korean teachers with good English skills").

It can be found (in Korean) here (or downloaded directly (pdf) here) I should note that it downloaded for me as a 'file' and prompted me to choose a program to open it with, which may just be a result of running the buggy newer firefox).

SBS reports on the SMOE budget cuts and the fear of foreign teachers in hagwons

2011-12-15T15:21:00.000+09:00

On December 8, after it was reported foreign teachers in Seoul public schools would be reduced, and Korean Americans who were working in hagwons as English teachers were caught with fake diplomas and were found to have been deported from the US for violent crimes, SBS broadcast a report:

'No questions asked hiring' of native speaking instructors... the uncomfortable inside story

Parents are greatly concerned after watching last night's 8pm news report about the dismissal of many native speaking teachers from Seoul's elementary, middle and high schools. It's not just the private education costs but also the difficulty of entrusting children to hagwon native speaking instructors.

In August police were searching a native speaking instructor's house and found not only numerous faked US university degrees, but also a plastic bag with marijuana seeds.

The house's owner was 38 year old Mr. Kim, a former US gang member, who was sentenced to and served ten years for murder before being deported to Korea in 2007.

Five months later he was working at a language hagwon as a native speaking instructor. He'd easily found a fake diploma using the internet.

Kim also gave a fake diploma to and found a job as an instructor for another Korean American who had committed a violent crime and was deported. [...]

At the end of June, there were 1300 registered hagwons in Seoul.

With such an abundance of hagwons, native speaking instructors are truly impossible to find.

Hagwons are not in a position to distinguish whether they are foreigners or gyopo, or whether they have qualifications or not.

Instructors disclose that it's common for backgrounds to be faked. [...]

Parents cannot hide their anxiety.

Shim Young-mi, Seoul Daechi-dong: It's scary. To some degree children learn from the teacher's way of speaking, behavior and character. This is a problem.

Native speaking teachers in the public school system will be sharply reduced.

Students will be driven into the private education market where teaching frauds abound.

Interesting. SBS seems to be inadvertently speaking out against cutting foreign teachers in public schools. The inference is that schools can weed out the fakes, while hagwons can't. Or as it says above, "Hagwons are not in a position to distinguish whether they are foreigners or gyopo"; something that I don't think is true at all - they just don't bother trying. Of course, there's no surprise there, since, once again, when Korean Americans (or the odd Canadian) are wanted for murder and found to be teaching in Korea, the media also find themselves "not in a position to distinguish whether they are foreigners or gyopo" - they're all "native speakers." This time is no different, since, if the Korean American criminals in question were deported to Korea, they must have all been Korean citizens, and there has never been a need for Korean citizens to provide foreign criminal record checks to work in hagwons (though perhaps this might start to be required after a few dozen more such cases). As for native speaking teachers being "impossible to find," that's not true at all, but it sounds good if you're making a case against hagwons and for public schools, I suppose. Of course, in the end, since SBS isn't making clear that it's because they were Korean citizens that they were able to get away with not having their criminal records found out, it still paints "native speaking teachers" as potential murderers and criminals.

Just for fun, the 'no questions asked hiring' in the title above echoes an August 18, 2006 Segye Ilbo article, which was titled "As long as they just speak English... The 'no questions asked hiring' of foreign instructors" (and which contained this cartoon).

As for the SMOE budget cuts for elementary and middle school foreign teachers, they are supposed to decided on today, according to this Joongang Daily article (which is much clearer than any other I've read):

"According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the 4.4 billion won ($3.9 million) usually allocated to hiring foreign English teachers at city high schools was removed from next year’s budget proposal. [...]

The Seoul Metropolitan Council is also hoping to cut 4.9 billion won from the budget for foreign English teachers at elementary and middle schools in the city, however the council is currently going through a week-long deliberation period on the matter. The final decision will be made on Dec. 15 during the council’s general meeting."

Worth adding is that high school teachers may not necessarily be let go - those who are accepted for a new contract can move to a middle or elementary school.

AREX Gongdeok Station open

2011-12-15T10:28:00.000+09:00

I was heading home from downtown Tuesday night and decided to go down to Seoul Station and take the airport express home, even though the transfer from line 1 to AREX takes more than five minutes and probably takes just as much time to get home (though you're more likely to get a seat). I'm glad I did, because I was surprised when the train stopped at Gongdeok Station; the station - with its transfer to lines 5 and 6 - wasn't supposed to open until the end of this year. As it turns out it was opened on November 30th:

(from here)

Judging from Daum's map, compared to the other transfers (at Digital Media City and Hongdae), the transfer looks to be quite a bit shorter.

Always nice to see the city getting easier to navigate. Mind you, not everyone is happy; this article takes the transfer to task for having very poor handicapped access.

Article on SMOE foreign teachers teaching alone

2011-12-12T15:46:00.000+09:00

Asia Gyeongje published this even-handed article about native speaking teachers teaching classes alone on December 2:

Native speaking English teacher 'Teaching Alone'... "Regulations ignored, classes barely function"

It has come to light that at some schools the "Native speaker English conversation" system implemented by the government at a cost of millions of dollars to foster students' practical English communication ability is not being operated according to its intended purpose and improvements are urgently needed.

Education authorities say that for classes to proceed smoothly, guidelines are set so that during the native speaking teacher's class, a Korean teacher must always be present with them, but in actual classes, regulations are violated and it's common for native speaking teachers who speak almost no Korean to teach classes alone.

This newspaper was able to easily confirm these non-functioning classes at an elementary school in Seoul's Jungnang-gu.

An English conversation class for about 30 grade 6 students was in progress. At the front of the class, native speaking teacher A (a 29 year old American male) was constantly saying in English "Look here please" and "Be quiet and pay attention to the class," but not many students were listening. Only a few students sitting in the front row watching A teacher with curiosity showed any interest in English conversation.

Most of the other students were talking, sleeping, walking around or chatting with the person sitting beside them. After A teacher pointed out a student who was talking, he said in poor Korean "Be quiet," but the student had a confused look on his face before snickering at A's funny pronunciation, and his attitude didn't change at all.

After the class in which A teacher basically read the material alone, the students poured out of the classroom without a word. Not a single Korean teacher had come by the time class ended. A is assigned 3-4 English conversation classes a day, all of which go on like this with him alone.

A teacher complained, "When I speak Korean awkwardly, the students laugh. The students do not follow English well. With the way things are, the atmosphere in class is terrible. It clearly says in my contract that I'm to teach with a Korean teacher, and when I teach alone I feel like a fool."

A teacher also said, "At my school there is one more native speaking teacher, and that teacher is in the same circumstances as I am." A, who has worked at the school since last year, said, "I have complained to school officials a number of times, but in most cases they only came to class a short while before leaving me on my own again."

Students also feel pessimistic. Kim, a 6th grade student in the class, said, "The native speaking teacher's class is a disaster. In the beginning I looked forward to the native speaking teacher's class, but now I don't expect anything. I don't understand it and it's not fun." "Usually half the class is sleeping or doing something else while half participates in class. Sleeping or making nose is pretty much what the teacher gets."

Yu, a grade 5 student, also said that "English conversation class is not much fun," "Sometimes I feel sorry for the teacher." Both the teacher and students have been thrown into an inefficient and awkward situation.

The experience of A teacher and the students is a clear violation of regulations. According to education authorities [interviewed] on the 2nd, in order to help students' understanding and increase the effectiveness of the class, a Korean assistant teacher should co-teach during a native speaking teacher's English conversation class in elementary, middle and high schools. This is stipulated in each education office's regulations and is the premise of employment contracts between native speaking teachers and education offices. Schools which violate these regulations should from now on be penalized when receiving funds.

However, a great many native speaking teachers have no choice but to teach alone because the Korean teachers think that the native speaking teacher's class is 'not their problem' and consider it a time to rest or take care of unfinished work related to their own classes, A teacher explained.

A teacher said that "Because Korean teachers are busy preparing their own classes or have many administrative tasks, they feel that helping with the native speaker's class is burdensome." "So they don't participate sincerely in the native speaker's English conversation class and it becomes break time or a time to take care of other things."

This problem is common at other schools as well, it turns out. On the basis of tips to this paper, at other schools besides A's elementary school, including B high school in Yongsan-gu, C high school in Gwangjin-gu, and D middle school in Seochu-gu, most native speaking teachers' classes proceed without help from Korean teachers.

One should be careful of blowing this up into a problem that affects all elementary, middle and high schools on the basis of these confirmed examples, but we can presume that already at many schools the officials there would explain that this situation is not surprising. An official at B high school said, "Having the native speaking teacher teaching alone is not just an issue at our school." "I would guess that it's an issue throughout Seoul's elementary, middle and high schools."

Regarding this second hand information, Won-gwang University English education professor Yun Seok-hwa explained that, "If we look at the big picture, native speaking English education is very important." After stressing the necessity of native speaking teachers' English conversation classes like A teacher's, he said, "Educational authorities must make a thorough management system and follow the regulations without fail, and on this basis must protect the native speaking teacher system from harm."

In regard to this, a Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education official said, "By sending documents or manuals and carrying out on-site instruction, the authorities constantly train [schools] that native speaking teachers should absolutely not teach alone." "Most schools which receive support [from SMOE] run the system sincerely, but in some schools there are minor defects."

The official also said, "Realistically, it's true that complete management and supervision is difficult, but effort will be made to prepare effective measures so the system is more stable." According to Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, 309,459,660,000 won was invested this year in the employment and management of native speaking teachers.

While this is even-handed, extensively interviewing the foreign teacher and placing blame to some degree on the schools and the Korean teachers, I have no doubt it could be selectively quoted from by others to make a case for dumping the system (which is already being done to this article by SMOE in justifying its budget cuts. The support shown in the article for the NSET system is interesting, considering the events of the last week.

The SMOE native speaking teacher budget cuts

2011-12-09T13:33:00.001+09:00

[Note: There are updates here and here.]

From the reports that were broadcast Wednesday evening and yesterday morning, it seemed that Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) was about to drastically cut the number of foreign teachers in its schools. SBS broke the story Wednesday night in an exclusive (follow the link to see the broadcast), saying that "700 teachers will leave schools from next year."

Native speaking teachers disappearing

As they put it, the SMOE budget was being discussed by the Seoul Metropolitan Council, and in the budget for native speaking teachers personnel expenses for next year, 4.4 billion won was being cut for high school NSETs, along with 4.9 billion won from the budget for elementary and middle school NSETs.

"Native speaking teacher personnel expenses"
2011 - 34.6 million won, 2012 30.2 million won, 4.4 million won cut.

Elementary and middle school NSET budget: 4.9 million won cut

According to these budget cuts, from next year when contracts finished it would not be possible to renew contracts, and 255 high school, 252 elementary school and 200 middle school teachers would be let go. In total, of 1,245 NSETs, 57% would leave their schools.

It interviewed Kim Jong-uk of the Seoul Metropolitan Council: "In truth, we've discussed the problem of reassigning English native speaking teachers for some time, and in August 2012 and February 2013 native speakers will be gone from middle and high schools."

The council also cut 500 million won from the budget for online English education that has attempted to be set up in elementary and middle schools.

An SMOE official was also interviewed: "As our teachers' [English] capability increases, we plan to gradually decrease native speakers. So, 'starting in 2012 the number will be gradually reduced."

The story was continued at this link:

The reason for reducing native speaking teachers is that compared the large amount of money spent for their salary, house, and food [food?] they don't have very much of an effect. But many are concerned that without a realistic alternative this will encourage private education.

The city of Seoul and SMOE's budget for hiring native speaking teachers was 50.7 billion won this year.

(Total budget for English education in Seoul public schools: 98.8 billion won)

More than half of the English education budget is set aside for native speaking teacher personnel costs.

SMOE evaluated the qualifications of native speaking teachers and found that more than one third were near the lowest level.

Kim Myeong-su, Seoul Metropolitan Council operations chairman: "A teacher from our country who can speak both our language and English increases the effectiveness for those taking part in English education."

A survey of students and parents found that a Korean teacher who is fluent in English is preferred over a native speaking teacher.

"Which teacher would you prefer the most?" (Students 53.7%, parents 62.2%)
"A Korean teacher who is capable with English conversation and teaches well."

To prepare native level English proficiency, the Seoul Metropolitan Council and educational authorities maintain that the rest of personnel expenses should be used to hire more cheap Korean teachers.

It went on to talk about difficulties in finding native speaking level teachers, and the fears that these cuts will lead to a focus on private education.

There are a lot of conflicting figures there - the 2011 NSET budget is 34.6 billion won in the first slide but in the later slide comparing it to the budget for all English education it's suddenly 50.7 billion won. And if the budget is 50.7 billion won and around 10 billion won is being cut (ie. one fifth), why does that lead to 57% of teachers being cut? One starts to wonder if SBS, in such a rush to broadcast its exclusive, got a little sloppy. (I could make a comment like "They've done it before," but since much of that broadcast was deliberate, concentrated negativity, it wasn't actually the result of error).

Regarding this - "SMOE evaluated the qualifications of native speaking teachers and found that more than one third were near the lowest level" - the SMOE report (from May) which this refers to said that one third of native speaking teachers were at the lowest level referred to pay scales based on qualifications, which would have already been known when SMOE (or EPIK) hired them.

As for this - "A survey of students and parents found that a Korean teacher who is fluent in English is preferred over a native speaking teacher" - it refers to the survey results released less than two weeks ago, which said that

when asked about what category of English teacher was most desirable, the most common choice among parents (62.2%) was "a Korean teacher with excellent English conversation ability who is good at teaching."

However, the report above left out the response to this item:

62.4% of parents answered that there should be native speaking English assistant teachers, and responded negatively to the suggestion that English assistant teachers be reduced.

For some reason this isn't being brought up.

The Chosun Ilbo summarized the SBS report (translated here), as did YTN (summarized here). The Hankyoreh (translated here) expanded on the SBS report and explained more:

In the 2012 Seoul City’s Education Office Fund Decision meeting on the 7th, the Seoul [Metropolitan Council] Education [committee] cut about 4.9 billion won, which was the city’s next year cost for 452 native English teachers. Before the meeting, the Education Office turned in a budget of 31.4 billion won, which already cut 4.4 billion won, largely including the pay for all high school native English teachers.

I'd heard of the high school cuts only recently, but they've obviously been in the pipeline for at least a month. I just read SMOE's March 2012 Contract Renewal Guide from late October, which has this item:

7. High School NSETs
1) If you are currently a High School Teacher and pass your evaluations, you will transfer to a Middle or an Elementary school.
2) All High Schools teachers will transfer besides the following schools: 국제고, 과학고, 영어중점학교. [International high school, science high school, English-focused school]

So what the Hankyoreh describes above makes sense, that the high school cuts were planned, but that more cuts have been added by the council, though it adds that these extra cuts will only happen "if this budget passes." It seems, though, that SMOE isn't so concerned about these cuts. The Hani article also has some choice quotes and claims:

Hyung Tae Kim, member of Seoul City’s Board of Education, said, “Native English teachers are the representation of high cost low effect policy, and students’ satisfaction rate dropped.”

You'd think a "high cost low effect policy" in regard to English education would be right home here. But I digress. Nothing is said to substantiate the assertion that NSETs have a 'low effect' or that "students’ satisfaction rate dropped."

The article goes on to quote the aforementioned survey, highlighting the desire for Korean teachers and ignoring the desire of most respondents not to decrease the number of foreign teachers. It adds:

The Education Office said, “Native English teachers scored low in communicating with the students as well as participating in class. An average yearly cost of a native English teacher is 40 million won, and we will use that money to develop skilled Korean English teachers and an online English education program.”

Just after midnight, however, Maeil Gyeongje (translated here) reported that "Laying off native English teachers not decided yet." The money shot:

Seoul’s Education Office said that nothing has been decided in relation to some media’s broadcast that Seoul City’s native English teachers will be laid off next year.
The Education Office said that even though the Board cuts the budget, it can still continue to hire native English teachers through supplementary funding.

At 3am the Chosun Ilbo's second report on this offered a rather different outlook (the report is translated at their English site):

Most native English-speaking teachers in about 300 high schools in Seoul could lose their jobs next year. In its budget for 2012, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education cut about W4 billion (US$1=W1,126) for 225 native speakers teaching at high schools.

If the budget is approved by the city council, most of the high schools in Seoul except for 30 English "immersion" and international schools, can no longer afford a native speaker.

Currently 1,245 native speakers teach English conversation at primary and secondary schools in Seoul, 895 of them subsidized by the city office of education and the rest by the city government or district offices.

"A native speaker earns on average W42 million a year, and we concluded that they are not effective enough to justify the cost," a spokesman for the city office of education said. "A survey conducted for us showed that Korean teachers with outstanding English and teaching skills are more effective in the long term."

The office also plans to reduce the number of native speakers teaching at elementary and middle schools from 2013.

Students from low-income families will likely bear the brunt of the policy. "Students from well-to-do families may find lessons from native English-speakers dull because they've been attending private tutoring institutes since they were young," an education official said. "But those from poor families should be given the opportunity to learn English with native speakers at school." He added it is "too early to reduce the number of native speakers as long as Korean teachers aren't good enough to replace them."

What's interesting here is that suddenly the massive cuts to the elementary and middle school budgets have disappeared, and we're left with the high school cuts which have been in the pipeline for some time. Again, according to the SMOE document, it's already been known that the cuts were coming for high school teachers and the plan is to transfer those who are offered renewal contracts to elementary or middle schools.

So, did SBS simply mess up? Did SMOE or the council mess up? Was this an attempt to gauge reaction to something which was only proposed? To be sure, Wednesday night 452 middle and elementary school NSET jobs were on the chopping block, and in the morning, they (pretty much) were not even being talked about.

About the Chosun Ilbo's article, I'd say 42 million per NSET per year seems a tad high, especially having met NSETs who were recently hired by EPIK who are working for 1.9 (or was it 1.8?). Teachers like those (especially considering 33% of SMOE NSETs are at the 'lowest' pay level, and few are at the higher levels), would skew the average yearly salary downward.

And I'm quite certain that "A survey conducted for us showed that Korean teachers with outstanding English and teaching skills are more effective in the long term" refers to the aforementioned survey from two weeks ago. And again, the results in that survey which favoured keeping NSETs are being ignored.

E Today then reported the story Thursday morning repeating SBS's claims, and SBS itself kept repeating their story. This report in the Korea Herald, however, also states that there will be none of the Elementary and middle school cuts SBS trumpeted:

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said it plans to cut about 40 billion won ($3.5 million) in personnel expenses for 225 foreign teachers at high schools in the 2012 budget, which has been reviewed in the council’s budget committee since Thursday.

If it passes the plenary session of the city council next week, the number of foreign high school teachers will start decreasing from next year in about 300 high schools in Seoul. Only a few will be left at some high schools designated to focus on English study by the government and Seoul Global High School, a special high school focusing on international studies in the end, according to officials. [...]

There will be no change in the number of foreign teachers at elementary and middle schools for now. [...]

According to another official who wished not to be named, SMOE will reduce the number of foreign teachers at all public schools gradually as its English education policy shifts from “quantity” education to “quality” education.

“Foreign teachers’ effect on English education is higher in elementary schools than in middle and high schools and we plan to use them at where it needs them the most,” said the official. [...]

“Besides, the English proficiency of Korean teachers is much better than when we start to expand foreign teachers at public schools in 2005,” the official added.

It also adds that teachers will be able to finish their contracts and won't just be laid off. I might have some idea why SMOE would feel that should be mentioned (though, to be fair, they're likely reassuring teachers in this regard due to the lay-off fiasco that threatened GEPIK teachers's jobs as a result of the budget cuts in Gyeonggi-do announced this summer).

The Korea Times report on this notes that "Of the 266 teachers at high schools, the education office pays for 255 teachers, with the remaining 11 funded by district offices." With the budget cuts, "225 teachers out of 266 teachers [in high schools] will not have their contracts renewed upon expiration." It also reports that

“We have yet to decide on the budget allocation for foreign English teachers at elementary and middle schools,” the SMOE official said. “The adjusted number is near to final for high schools.”[...]

“The district offices may increase or decrease their budget for foreign English teachers on their own discretion,” the official from the SMOE said.

It also gives some responses:

“For the past seven years, I co-taught with four foreign English teachers at my school but the quality of teaching students receive is up to luck. Some will be taught by qualified teachers where as those less fortunate will be taught by teachers who aren’t so well versed in teaching,” said a Korean teacher at an elementary school in Seoul.

“Besides, it costs too much to employ foreign English teachers. They receive housing and other expenses from the education office along with their monthly pay. I wish the office would invest more for Korean English teachers with that money.”[...]

Not everyone agreed:

“Kids who can afford private English lessons will be okay, but those who are less privileged will be victimized by this decision. They are stripped of the opportunity to receive education from foreign teachers. Regardless of the quality of teachers, I think foreigners play a positive role in reducing the cultural gap with students,” said a parent in his 40s.

A Donga Ilbo column Thursday evening at least gave us a new cartoon:

"Native speaker" teacher

Mr. Kim was curious about the English class at his child's elementary school. He called the office and asked to talk to the native speaker. He heard the vice-principle's voice through the receiver: "Where did that foreign guy [외국 놈] go? Is there a student who speaks English to tell him he has a phone call?" This parent got the impression that the native speaking instructor was neglected in the school. Also a problem is that before the native speaking teacher's classes started, the teacher did not receive special training needed for adapting to Korean schools. For one native speaking teacher, the budget needed for salary, lodging, and household items totals 42 million won per year. As taxes are used, citizens must weigh costs compared to effectiveness.

Students generally like the native speaking teacher's classes. SMOE requested that SNU professor Lee Byeong-min analyze public English education policy, and he found that student satisfaction with and interest in their class with the native speaker was generally high, especially with elementary school students. However the number of students who chose the answer "It gives me confidence to speak with foreigners" in regard to the native speaker's class was low. It is difficult to improve conversation skills through a native speaker class which is only once a week. High school students in particular would rather have a Korean teacher who can help them raise their marks than a native speaker.

SMOE submitted a budget bill to the Seoul Metropolitan Council cutting about 4 billion won, or the personnel expenses for 225 native speaking high school teachers, from the budget for next year. If the bill passes, high schools will not be able to keep their native speaking teachers, except for 30 high schools such as foreign high schools or schools designated as English focused. It seems inevitable that low income students with no experience of English hagwons will suffer. Supplementary measures such as graded classes to improve English skills [streaming students?], strengthening the capabilities of Korean English teachers, and strengthening self study must be prepared.

In Seoul and the cities of Gyeonggi-do where many students learn English in hagwons, there is less need for native speaking teachers, but in rural areas native speakers make a significant contribution by increasing students' access to English. A problem is instructor supply and demand. Young native speaking teachers who have just graduated from university avoid working in rural areas. Policies tailored to the situations in particular areas are needed more than uniform native speaking teacher policies.

It's nice to see an even-handed column; again, it mentions only the high school cuts.

Newsis published an article early this morning claiming to be based on what SMOE 'did' on the 9th (ie. today, meaning they got a comment from SMOE before 6am), which declares that there will be cuts to the elementary and middle schools as well as the high school teachers, but the article just seems to rehash SBS's report from Wednesday night. It does say that if teachers finish their contracts next August and want to renew, SMOE will have only 9-11 months of salary and it will not be able to renew them.

So where does this leave things?

The high school cuts are already a done deal. The question is whether budget cuts to elementary and middle school NSETs will be passed. SBS was unclear on the source of such cuts, but the Hankyoreh reported that the 4.9 billion won cut to elementary and middle school NSETs was a decsion of the Seoul Metropolitan Council (while the original 4.4 billion won cut to high school NSETs had already been decided on by SMOE when they submitted their proposed budget). Whether these cuts were a figment of SBS's imagination (though a Seoul Metropolitan Council member does say on camera that "in August 2012 and February 2013 native speakers will be gone from middle and high schools"), or whether they are indeed proposed and the council is waiting to see the public's reaction remains to be seen. To be sure, the budget hasn't been officially passed yet, and the official budget won't be announced until this weekend or early next week, or so I've been told.

And as always, it's nice to see the media and elected officials selectively interpreting statistics (in regard to the survey that was done) in order to back up their assertions that NSETs have a 'low effect' or that the "students’ satisfaction rate dropped." And no where in this is the mention of the free lunch program - but then I suppose the progressive city council might turn a bit red if one were to suggest that low-income children's only access to native speakers was being taken away in order to give free lunches to the middle and upper classes. It's not exactly the kind of wealth redistribution I would expect from leftists, to say the least.

One thing is for certain - it would seem the GEPIK cuts were not an aberration, and NSETs are likely on their way out of public schools (though who knows what effect the campaigns for the national assembly and presidential elections next year will have).

Former gyopo gangsters with fake degrees caught teaching in hagwons

2011-12-08T12:36:00.005+09:00

[Update: There's more on this here and here.]

Newsis issued this report this morning:

Former gangster native speaking instructors... instructors and a broker caught with faked backgrounds

A number of language instructors, and the broker ring which found them their hagwon jobs, have been caught for faking academic backgrounds. What's shocking is that among them is a gang member who committed serious crimes in the US.

The Seoul Police International Crime Division Lab on the 8th arrested 2 unqualified instructors who faked their academic backgrounds in order to work, including 38 year old Mr. Kim, for document forgery, and issued warrants for three others, including 29 year old Mr. Lee, for the same offense.

Mr. Kim is accused of taking money from Korean Americans wanting to work as native speaking instructors but who lacked the qualifications, forging academic credentials and introducing them to language hagwons.

The police investigation found that Mr. Kim paid a fake degree website $100-200 USD to produce fake US university degrees and these were used to get hired by language hagwons or private middle schools.

As well, Mr. Lee served time in a Korean prison for selling marijuana and afterwards used a fake degree to work as an instructor.

It's been found that most of them were either adopted to or emigrated to the US as children, joined Korean American gangs, served time in the US for crimes such as second degree murder, kidnapping or rape, and were deported to Korea.

On weekends they would meet in Itaewon and habitually take drugs like marijuana.

A police official said, "There is great concern that children may be negatively influenced by native speaking instructors who have been recklessly hired in accordance with the social atmosphere of the English education boom." "There is a need for authorities and hagwons to strengthen the screening of teachers' backgrounds."

Police said that there are reports that the Gangnam area has more unqualified native speaking instructors who have faked their backgrounds working their and will expand their investigation, while at the same time strengthening information gathering on people who smuggle drugs to Korea like Korean Americans and overseas students.

NoCut News issued this report - helpfully titled "Native speaking teachers turned out to be murderers, gangsters, rapists and kidnappers in the US" - with more information. (I want a t-shirt with that written on it.)

It adds that 30 year old Korean American native speaking instructor Mr. Seo has been arrested for smoking marijuana, and 40 year old Ms Lee, a hagwon owner, was arrested for hiring unqualified instructors.

The Mr. Kim mentioned in the first article was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Arizona for second degree murder (accidental murder) involving a shooting, and after being deported to Korea found shelter at a religious group in Yeongdeungpo and started forging after meeting another deportee there.

Among those who Mr. Kim sold degrees to was another Mr. Kim (42), who was sentenced to 10 years in California for kidnapping and rape. And Mr. Lee, a public service worker, was sentenced to two years in prison in the US for selling marijuana and illegal firearms possession, before being deported to Korea, where he served time for selling marijuana around Sinchon before faking his background to work as an unqualified hagwon instructor.

I'm going to assume that, since they were all deported from the US, they are all Korean citizens, hence the difficulty in learning the truth about them since, working in hagwons, they are [were] not required to submit criminal record checks. The thing is, even if the new hagwon regulations apply to F visa job applicants, they still wouldn't apply to Korean citizen 'native speakers,' since the law specifically refers to the criminal record checks and drug tests being required only of non-citizens.

Usually gyopo gangster murderer arrests lead to interesting cartoons; perhaps we can expect something new to add to what we already have?

2006: 'English instructor'

2008: "Wanted" "Teacher"

2010

2011: "First degree murder"

2011

We'll have to wait and see what happens this time.

The kidnapped

2011-12-06T15:24:00.004+09:00

On Saturday, the New York Times published an article about Lee Mi-il and her 11 year campaign to "generate more interest in the fate of tens of thousands of South Koreans believed to have been forcibly taken to North Korea during the Korean War six decades ago." As the article makes clear, the obstacles placed in the way of an inquiry into these people were put there by both Koreas.

“They [DPRK] never admit kidnapping because that would be admitting a crime,” Ms. Lee said. “They just hope we’ll all be dead soon and this will all be forgotten.”

In 2000, she shut down her nursery and established the Korean War Abductees’ Family Union, bringing together 700 families.

In 2002, her group found a 1952 government document listing 83,000 South Koreans as kidnapped, a preliminary wartime compilation that officials had previously denied existed. It was gathering dust, uncataloged, in a government library.[...]

Last year, after seven years of lobbying by her group, lawmakers passed a bill authorizing the first government investigation of wartime kidnappings. In August, the government panel confirmed 55 men as kidnapped. More such rulings are expected during its four-year inquiry. To Ms. Lee, the official recognition was a first step toward establishing a “systematic war crime” by North Korea.

According to South Korean government estimates, Communist troops and militias killed 59,000 to 122,800 South Korean civilians during the war.

There is another group which protests the kidnappings of South Koreans by the north since the end of the war. In the Kim Dong-won documentary Repatriation (2003), they are seen attempting to stop the repatriation of 'unconverted' prisoners back to North Korea in 2000, and can't help being seen as obstacles to the ultimate fulfillment of the 'plot,' of the prisoners' return home (though Kim asks one of the prisoners why he won't just meet one of the leaders of the group and at least give her a hearing). Donald Kirk wrote an article in September about these families (here, though since the link isn't working now, try the cache here).

Hwang In-Chul, the son of a television producer whom the North Koreans decided to hold after he “apparently denounced communism”, described his feelings at a forum here of the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. He intermingled his personal responses with sweeping criticism of South Korean authorities for their reluctance to press the case. [...]

Hwang contrasted the South Korean position with that of Japan — an example that Korean officials prefer to ignore. Unlike his own government, he said, “the Japanese government recognizes the case of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals as a violation of its sovereignty, actively brings their citizens back, and continuously makes an effort to solve this problem.” [...]

Benjamin Yoon, chairman of the Citizens’ Alliance, summarized their problems. “Although family members were victims,” he said, “they were kept under tight surveillance and control by the South Korean government”. Incredibly, he added, “The stigma attached to the ‘Missing Person Household’ label,” as recorded on school records and other documents, condemned “young children of such families to endure all forms of societal prejudice and institutional discrimination.”

This reminds me a little of this story, about the families of the soldiers killed in the June 2002 naval battle between the north and south, who found it difficult to publicly mourn the fallen:
"Nervous government officials, worrying that the incident might cast a pall over the Sunshine Policy, even warned the families to please be quiet." [...] "Our children who lost their lives to the enemy are being treated like criminals who tried to ruin the atmosphere of intra-Korean reconciliation," one family member said."

This quote from Don Kirk's article was also interesting: “the Japanese government recognizes the case of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals as a violation of its sovereignty, actively brings their citizens back, and continuously makes an effort to solve this problem.” This stands in contrast to South Korea, which - apparently - would rather aim at dastardly foes like the US by attempting to amend the SOFA agreement (again).

At the same time, the case of the kidnapped Japanese took years to be acted on by the Japanese government, even after it was known what had happened (as related in the book North Korea Kidnapped my Daughter, which detailed the decades-long search for the truth by the parents of Megumi Yokota, who was 13 when she was kidnapped).

(Hat tip to Ryan)

Teacher busted for spice

2011-12-05T09:10:00.002+09:00

Yesterday afternoon Yonhap published the following article, the first of 17 on the topic:

Native speaking instructor smuggles 'spice' which is 5 times more powerful than marijuana

Seoul Dongbu prosecutor's office, 4th investigative division, has arrested and charged a 23 year old native speaking English instructor, J, from Australia for smuggling a new kind of drug named 'spice,' (JWH-018) in contravention of the drug control law.

According to prosecutors, J has been charged for smuggling 24 grams of spice through international mail on two occasions between June and October this year.

The pharmacological effects of spice are five times stronger than marijuana and can continue for up to 6 hours, and recently it's come to light that it is spreading in Korea in places like clubs.

J, who dropped out of high school, married a Korean studying in Australia last year and came to Korea, and then easily got a university diploma from an online diploma mill and used it to get a job working as a native speaking instructor at a hagwon in Ilsan, investigators found.

A prosecution official said, "In October when he was hired as a foreign instructor by the hagwon, he had a health check which included a drug and marijuana test, but there is concern that it did not work properly as a filter as it did not show that he had taken this new kind of drug."

"I'll mail myself some spice through the mail! They'll never know!" Nice one, J.

The Segye Ilbo adds that Incheon Airport Customs intercepted the most recent package and he was arrested at the motel in Seoul's Seongdong-gu listed as the receiving address. A prosecution official also adds that there's concern he spread it to students or people at the motel, so there are plans to expand the investigation.

Newsis, in an article titled, "Native speaking instructor caught trying to smuggle JWH-018, a new kind of drug stronger than methamphetamine," assures us that "JWH-018, which was developed as an air freshener but abused as a narcotic, is a synthetic drug stronger than methamphetamine." Keep that in mind the next time someone here asks you if you've ever tried marijuana or heroin. The 'author' of the article also apparently decided it would be better to make him a middle school dropout, rather than a high school dropout.

I really don't know the first thing about synthetic marijuana and its effects compared to the real thing, but Wikipedia tells us that the binding affinity for the CB1 receptor for THC is K_i = 40.7±1.7 nm, as compared to JWH-018, which is K_i = 9.00±5.00 nm. And no, I don't know what that means either. According to this site:

The simple explanation is [...]:
"In simple terms, a lower Ki == a greater affinity."
The greater the affinity the more potent the chemical (kind of):
"Molecules with higher affinities for target proteins usually require lower doses(/concentrations)."
So the lower the Ki value generally means a smaller dose will be required. It doesn't translate 100% because there's a lot more involved then just the receptor and the chemical but it's still a useful indicator.

So it would seem JWH-018 is stronger than THC, but it's not clear by how much. To be sure, saying that it's 'stronger than methamphetamine' is pretty pointless - on the one hand, it's kind of like comparing apples and comets; on the other, the comparative strength or weakness of an intoxicating substance usually determines how much is consumed. Drinking three bottles of beer won't raise any eyebrows, but drinking three bottles of soju will.

One other thing: we know he had to take a drug test, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was on an E-2 visa; according to an amendment to the hagwon law passed in August, native speakers working in hagwons must submit drug tests and criminal record checks. I don't know if that applies to F-visa teachers or not, and still have no clue if it will or not because his visa status isn't mentioned.

Checking test scores

2011-12-04T20:43:00.004+09:00

Apparently the girls in the corner really, really, didn't want anyone to see their CSAT marks.

From here; it was taken on the 30th in Gwangju. More photos and articles about the test results being released are here.

Tear gas and prisonbots

2011-12-01T14:26:00.004+09:00

The Joongang Ilbo had an interesting article about the history of the tear gas canister set off in the National Assembly during the FTA vote last week by DLP Rep. Kim Sun-dong:

How Kim got his hands on the tear gas canister remains to be answered, as he refused to disclose the source. Debris collected by GNP Representative Cha Myung-jin after the melee helped identify the model. The detonator was marked with the model number SY-44, which was popular with riot police suppressing antidictator demonstrations in the 1970s and 80s.

The SY-44 model tear gas canister has a notorious history in Korea. During an antidictatorship demonstration on June 9, 1987, Yonsei student Lee Han-yeol was hit on the back of his head with an SY-44 and suffered a fatal injury. Lee died on July 5, 1987, and became one of the pro-democracy movement’s martyrs and rallying figures.

It’s not confirmed that Kim used an SY-44, as the police and the manufacturer raised the possibility that his canister could have been illegally modified. The National Police Agency and Samyang Chemical said the SY-44 canisters used by police have a larger diameter than Kim’s.

A police official said yesterday that the police discontinued using the SY-44 model in the 1990s. There are 278 units stored in the police armory, and all of them are to be disposed of next year, the official said, dismissing speculation that Kim’s canister could have come from the police.

Another official said Kim could have kept it from his days as a student activist in the 1980s. The canister used by Kim had the serial number 85E805, indicating that it was produced in 1985, the source said. Kim may have kept a dud canister from a demonstration, he said.

Others have pointed out the irony of a former student activist using a riot police weapon. Just for reference, here's a video of the incident, and of Kim being dragged from the building:

For an interesting comment placing the events in the national assembly in context, see here. Meanwhile, Korea Beat reports that Kim may not face punishment for the incident.

Not that we would expect him to face jail time, but if he did he might run into the new robots which are being deployed to select prisons in a trial program to "patrol jail corridors" at night, "lifting the burden off human prison guards." One hopes they don't get mixed up with the ones deployed to classrooms to replace possible criminals.

(From here)

As we see above, though the children responded quickly enough to the command, "Hands up," his next command ("remove all box cutters from your pencil cases and bring them up to the front one at a time") resulted in chaos, which the robot unfortunately resolved by unveiling its 50 caliber machine gun and mowing down the class.

Free screening of 63 Years On

2011-11-30T14:00:00.003+09:00

I was asked to pass on this information:

The House of Sharing’s International Outreach Team will hold a FREE Documentary screening of “63 Years On”, the story of ‘Comfort women’ at Jogyesa Temple Theatre on Sunday, December 4th 2011. The film is in multiple languages with English subtitles. There will be an introductory speaker and group discussion after the film.

Date: Sunday December 4th, 2011 Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm Film duration: 63 min.
Where: Jogyesa Temple Theatre
Jogyesa Temple is located in Jongno, on the street behind Insa-dong. You can walk there in a short time from Jonggak Station, or it's also accessible from Anguk Station (Exit 6).

From Anguk station Exit 6, walk straight & pass the main street to Insadong. Cross the street to reach the temple structure in front of you. The theatre is in the new museum building behind the main temple structure.

Info: www.houseofsharing.org
Email: info@houseofsharing.org

This is an opportunity for both the Korean and International communities to further engage with the ‘Comfort women’ issue and to support the continuing fight for justice. A brief Question & Answer session will take place after the film, an opportunity for those who wish to share their thoughts on the film and ask any questions to members of the House of Sharing’s International Outreach Team.

In this film, award-winning Korean director Kim Dong Won presents the harrowing experiences of 5 international survivors of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery during World War II. The very personal telling of their experiences is supported by excellent research and archival footage to create a powerfully honest, determined, and often heartbreaking documentary.

I still have yet to see this, but other films I've seen by Kim Dong Won have been well worth watching.

Weird

2011-11-29T03:24:00.002+09:00

I think I may have posted this before, but I missed it when posting my collection of English teacher cartoons. On February 19, 2010, the Donga Ilbo published an article which wasn't about foreign teachers at all (it mentions the native speaker way of thinking when studying English), but which included this bizarre cartoon:

"Correct expression", "accurate pronunciation"
(note that the artist also did this classic cartoon)

Absolutely bizarre. It certainly wins the 'big nose cartoon' contest. It would make a great t-shirt, though.

Korean teachers preferred over native speakers

2011-11-28T16:06:00.003+09:00

[Update:
Brian writes about this as well, and links to articles in English by Korea Times and Hankyoreh. The Chosun Ilbo has it in English here.

This GEPIK questionnaire for parents regarding foreign teachers is worth looking at as well.]

[Original post]

Yesterday Yonhap published the following article:

Korean students prefer Korean teachers for English education

Satisfaction in regard to native speaking teacher classes is high

Results of research by Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education into the realities of English education staff.

Satisfaction with native speaker English education in schools is high, but a survey has found that many think that in the long term, Korean teachers should teach English.

According to the results of the "Study analyzing the results of the Seoul English education strengthening policy and development plan" released by SMOE on the 27th, parents, students and teachers are satisfied with current native speaking teachers but the opinion came out that in the medium and long term Korean English teachers with English ability should be responsible for school English education.

The study was based on interviews with or online surveys by 28,761 students enrolled in 1,282 elementary, middle and high schools in Seoul, 11,980 parents, 2,406 English teachers, and 595 native speaking English assistant teachers, among others.

The survey found that 54.2% of parents thought that native speaking English assistant teachers helped their children improve their English skills.

The number of parents who were 'satisfied' with Korean English teachers' classes stopped at 39%. The reason for this was 'lack of English skills' (35.8%), lack of enthusiasm for class' (20.2%), and because 'students did not understand' (16.6 percent).

Among students as well, the number of those satisfied with the native speaking English teacher's class (60.0%) was slightly higher compared to Korean English teachers (55.3%).

However, when asked about what category of English teacher was most desirable, the most common choice among parents (62.2%) was "a Korean teacher with excellent English conversation ability who is good at teaching."

This was followed by "native speaking English assistant teachers" (26.9%) and "Korean Teachers who lack English conversation skills, but who are good at teaching (11.0%), which can be construed as a preference for Korean teachers as long as their English ability is sufficient.

Students as well chose "Korean teachers with excellent English conversation ability who is good at teaching" (53.7%) over "native speaking English assistant teachers" (29.7%).

62.4% of parents answered that there should be native speaking English assistant teachers, and responded negatively to the suggestion that English assistant teachers be reduced.

As for the opinion of Korean teachers in regard to native speaking English assistant teachers, they answered that they contributed to the improvement of students' English ability and confidence, but pointed out that there was difficulty managing co-teaching classes and level/graded classes (? 수준별 수업) with native speaking teachers.

As for their difficulties at school, native speaking English assistant teachers counted "Korean teachers lack 'know how' in regard to classroom management" (27.0%) the most, followed by "Korean teachers who are not familiar with co-planning lessons" (18.8%) and "lack of mutual understanding based on cultural differences" (14.3%).

This was reported by several other news outlets:

Newsis: 90% of native speakers say "Students' ability improves in my class"; but students prefer Korean teachers to native speakers.

Money Today: Half of students say "We can't interact with the native speaking teacher."

Financial News: "In the long term, it's better that Korean teachers teach English"

Asia Today: For English education in schools there is a preference for excellent Korean English teachers.

Money Today: Students-Parents: "Satisfied with Seoul public school English education"

Kukmin Ilbo: More than half of students and parents in Seoul prefer 'Korean teachers' over native speakers

Segye Ilbo: More participation by students in English class, increase Korean teachers

Hankyoreh: Native speakers are unconditionally the best in English education? "Korean teachers with excellent ability are preferable."

Financial News: "It's preferable that Korean English teachers with ability should teach."

Seoul Sinmun: "Preference for Korean teachers over native speaking teachers."

Asia Gyeongje: SMOE: "Reduce native speaking teachers and foster Korean English teachers."

EBS: "Korean English teachers more desirable than native speakers."

It's nice to see Newsis having some fun with their title. I'd be curious to see more of the actual questions/possible choices for answers on this survey. That people would prefer, in the long run, to have Korean teachers teaching English instead of importing foreign teachers is a bit of a no-brainer, really. Who would disagree with that statement? No one was ever planning to keep hiring foreign teachers in public schools into the 22nd century.

It's interesting that there is opposition to the idea of reducing native speaking assistant teachers by parents, according to the survey. Last week, Park Dong-u, a councilor on the Gyeonggi Provincial Council (which oversaw the budget cut that left GEPIK in limbo) said at a council meeting on next year's education budget that native speaking teachers should be reduced each year beginning in the cities, because one can be exposed to more English in the cities as opposed to rural farming communities. As they are reduced, guidance counsellors should be increased.

In related news, 50 schools (half of them elementary schools) in Gyeonggi are implementing remote video lectures by native speakers for schools in rural areas, and are holding workshops for teachers from these schools in Bucheon and Ansan today and tomorrow.

The gossip columnist from a hundred years ago

2011-11-22T12:59:00.002+09:00

Tonight's Royal Asiatic Society lecture will feature Robert Neff and is titled "Scandals and gossip from Joseon Korea’s past." Having heard a few of the stories before, I'm sure it will be interesting:

In the 1890s and early 1900s, the Western community in Korea was quite small and consisted mainly of American missionaries, advisors and diplomats – all very highly respectable men and women. But even admirable people have their secrets and faults.

Some of these faults included alcoholism and gambling, among other things:

And, of course, sex also played a key role in scandals and gossip. Secret romances, troubles involving mistresses, babies born out of wedlock and even alleged sexual assaults. Perhaps even more shocking were the acts of infidelity including those committed by the British representative’s promiscuous wife.

More details can be found here. The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Residents' Lounge on the 2nd floor of the Somerset Palace in Seoul, which is north of (and behind) Jogyesa Temple, and is 5,000 won for non-member and free for members.

Uncontrollable 'yougle,' and other tales of drugs and crime

2011-11-21T14:16:00.001+09:00

On August 15, 2011, the Chosun Ilbo published this report:

Drugs are entering through Yougle (Youtube + Google)
The age of ordering through Google and learning about growing from Youtube

Earlier this year, police police learned that R, who had worked until last year as a native speaking English instructor at an elementary school in Seoul's Gwanak-gu, had smoked the new kind of drug 'JWH-018 (known as spice)' several times and launched an investigation.

Using the world's largest portal, 'Google,' R accessed a drug selling website to investigate how to import drugs into Korea. Using Google, one can access a drug selling site by entering a simple query, and by entering a name and address and paying with a credit card, one can easily get a hold of drugs.

Police in Seoul's Guro-gu learned that T, who worked at an elementary school as a native speaking instructor until last year, imported drugs through the same method, and are currently investigating. T's acquaintance, who tipped police off about him, said, "T 'ordered through Google' and showed me a bag of marijuana that had been delivered through international mail." R ordered drugs in a similar manner using a site found through Google. Both of them fled the country before the police investigation began to kick into gear.

The world's largest video site, 'Youtube,' has also been utilized as a drug route. Last month police arrested Mr. Seo (23), who had studied overseas, for growing and distributing marijuana after learning how to grow it by searching on Youtube. The video he watched was easily accessible from Korea by entering only a few drug-related words. Police revealed that Mr. Seo used Google to order marijuana seeds and have them sent to him.

As it easy to use Google and Youtube in this way with no particular restrictions to import drugs, among police officers on the front line of drug crackdowns it's being said "Drugs are entering through Yougle (Youtube + Google)."

Police understand the facts about how 'Yougle' is used to order drugs, but are struggling to find solutions and control methods. Most of the drug selling sites which appear in Google's search results are based overseas and there is no special member registration or need to enter a resident registration number.

According to the report "Analysis of trends in drug smuggling arrests for 2010" released by Customs in January, the number of arrests for drug smuggling via international mail increased 53% over 2009 with 67 cases, while use of courier increased 44% with 13 cases. Most were purchased over the internet. A Customs official said, "We use x-rays and sniffer dogs for customs inspections, but with tens of thousands of goods every day, it's difficult to check them all."

I only noticed this article after reading about it on Anti-English Spectrum. In fact, they've added it to their list of accomplishments (first result):

20110815
Made successful an article in the Chosun Ilbo related to native speaking instructors distributing and using new kinds of drugs
"Drugs are entering through Yougle (Youtube + Google)"
Notified the nation of native speaking instructors using youtube and google to spread new kinds of drugs
Reported 20 drug distributing sites to authorities

It's nice to see the Chosun Ilbo getting another stamp on its 'frequent article about AES' card. Once again this year we have a story of "former" foreign English teachers involved with drugs (or, in this case, foreigners "who had worked until last year" as teachers). I could only find one other case (from last year) mentioning a former teacher in connection with drugs. Including the two teachers mentioned above (who were allegedly investigated), there have been three or four 'former teachers' connected with drugs this year - out of a total of 11 foreign teachers in the news regarding drugs (9 who were arrested).

Compared to the 34-38 mentioned in the media last year as being arrested (up until late July, after which there weren't any arrests reported for nine months), it's quite a drop.

Here are other articles mentioning foreign teachers and drugs this year so far:

2011.01.30 Korean Customs service announces 2010 drug seizure stats. Of 200 arrests, 95 were foreigners, and among those, 28 were foreign native speaking teachers, "29.4% of the total number of foreigners arrested," (or 14% of the total). While over-represented in this category, foreign teachers weren't, as the the Kookmin Ilbo put it in the title of one article, "The main culprits in drug smuggling."

2011.02.07 Several media outlets report on new drug testing regulations for foreign teachers, which are meant to catch "test-savvy drug users" who "avoid being caught." According to an immigration official quoted in a Donga Ilbo article, "Incidents of some native speaking instructors taking drugs during lectures have been never ending and this is to block this from happening in advance."

2011.02.23 After reports on the suicide of a foreign teacher in Busan are followed by an article in the Busan Ilbo painting him as an alcoholic, the same paper publishes an editorial stating that "One can only be aghast" that a suicidal drunk was teaching children, going on to say "Criminal acts and various scandals by native speaking teachers are nothing new. The various crimes that we know of up to now include assault, child molestation, sexual assault and, of course, taking and selling drugs. " It also asserts that "the current employment health exam cannot also determine drug or alcohol addiction."

2011.04.12 Doctor's News reports on a hospital chosen to administer new drug tests which will "distinguish whether a foreign English teacher is a drug addict or alcoholic." The article complains about foreign instructors who do not have legal visas who have "caused incidents which have led to social criticism" and then says that in order to determine whether these illegal teachers are alcoholics or drug addicts, more stringent tests have been developed for the... legal teachers.

2011.04.22 A British hagwon English instructor in Incheon is busted for importing 6.5 grams of synthetic marijuana (JWH-250) and marijuana seeds and growing marijuana in his home. This is the first reported drug bust involving a foreign English teacher in nine months.

2011.05.03 The Gyeongin Ilbo reports that a new bill will make foreign teachers working for hagwons have to take drug checks and all teachers (including Koreans) will have to have criminal record checks, among several other provisions. The title of the article? "'Expel' drug addicted, molesting foreign instructors."

2011.05.04 Yonhap reports on a meth bust involving a South African drug mule and a Nigerian in Korea who worked variously as a factory worker, clothing seller, and illegal English teacher, and chooses the title "Former native speaking instructor caught smuggling philopon." A police official is quoted saying "This is the first time that a native speaking instructor has tried to smuggle a large amount of philipon, rather than marijuana," ignoring the fact that Nigerians are usually not included in the immigration defined "native speaker" category in Korea. YTN follows this up later in the day with a report titled "Native speaking teacher arrested for smuggling large amount of Philipon," which effectively erases the South African (the actual smuggler) from the story to focus on the Nigerian who "worked as a native speaking English instructor." This is similar to a series of stories Yonhap and YTN published in 2009.

2011.06.15 The Maeil Gyeongje reports that Incheon Police booked without detention Korean American English instructor for taking philopon at a motel he was staying at. It quotes police who say that "[i]t is estimated that there are a good many foreign instructors working in Korea who have not had their qualifications verified." "We are expanding an investigation against them for drugs and various crimes."

2011.07.13 Medical Today reported about the availability of new kinds of drugs to children. One paragraph reads:

Section chief Yun Heung-hui explained that "The recent increase in new kinds of drugs has been greatly influenced by foreign instructors and young people who spent their childhood years studying abroad." "This is because sometimes they take the drugs they used abroad like yaba or ecstasy to Korea and spread it among their peers."

We'll see that section chief again.

2011.07.20 NoCut News reports in an article titled "From housewives to English instructors... Drug ring arrested for selling and using" that a Mr. Hong was caught after smuggling 2.2 billion won worth of meth into the country from China by using a freighter, and that "Among the 17 users who were caught were a former university instructor and native speaking instructor, a taxi driver and a housewife." It's not clear from the sentence if "former" includes the native speaking instructor or not.

2011.07.22 Yonhap report on drug busts in Busan, noting that American English hagwon teacher P (30) stood accused of smuggling 3.58 grams of marijuana from the US through international mail on February 5.

Also, three Korean Canadian English hagwon instructors including a Ms Park (22) were charged with smuggling 2.84 grams of ketamine through international mail in April or May and taking it ten times at clubs in Seoul and Busan. Busan MBC reported on September 11 that they were found guilty (though the substance changed to philopon/meth) and sentenced to 6-10 months suspended for 1-5 years.

2011.08.19 Asia Today published an article excerpted below:

[Republic of Korea, stoned] 3. The world's drug distribution hub, Korea
As native speaking instructors and foreign workers increase, there is an impact on the expansion of drugs [...]

As we greet the global era, foreign tourists and foreign workers increase, and due to an overheated English education boom, there is an increasing influx of foreign students and native speaking instructors who are having a large influence.[...]

As the number of foreigners living in Korea gradually increases, surpassing 1.26 million in 2010, the number and frequency of drug crimes by Chinese, Russian sailors, southeast Asian workers from places like Sri Lanka or Thailand and native speaking teachers from English speaking countries like the US or Canada is increasing, and drugs are expanding.

The United States, Canada, and Africa are the main countries from which marijuana is smuggled and it is mostly hagwon instructors from English-speaking countries who are responsible for much of the small-scale smuggling cases. [...]

The kinds of drugs that are smuggled include not only methamphetamine, but also various drugs such as ecstasy, YABA (a synthetic drug), kratom (a stimulant), benzyl-piperazine (a stimulant made from a pesticide raw material), JWH-018 (synthetic marijuana), and ketamine (a sedative), brought into Korea via various routes by international students/those who have studied overseas, foreign hagwon instructors, and ethnic Koreans from China.

It's nice to see Asia Today refraining from engaging in hyperbole ("The world's drug distribution hub, Korea" ??).

2011.08.23 Seoul Sinmun publishes an article titled "[Exclusive] Teens exposure to drugs, drug crimes increase, sex crimes also more serious," which includes a statement from the previously quoted section chief:

In regard to the increase in youth drug crime, Yun Heung-hui , Chief of Dongdaemun Police Station's violent crimes division, said "With the increase in the inflow of drugs via students who study abroad and foreign instructors, youths easily learn about drugs in the areas around Itaewon clubs." "These days things like hemp cookies and ecstasy pills are prevalent." Cases of young people inhaling butane gas or glue to get high have almost disappeared. Section chief Yun emphasized that, "It is necessary for school health education to actively make them aware of the dangers of drugs."

This same paragraph appears in an article published the next day titled "Our children exchange pencils...for drugs; Youth drug crimes increase by 4 times in 4 years," which includes this graphic:

(Drug crimes among youth aged 12-19)

(I suppose it's never too late to simply drug test every child in Korea.)

2011.09.11 Busan MBC, NoCut News and Yonhap report that the three Canadian gyopos whose arrest was announced in July (for Ketamine) were found guilty of importing and using philopon/meth and sentenced to 6-10 months suspended for 1-5 years. Yonhap provided the following photo:

It's just a file photo, however (one of two in the article), as one might guess from their clothes (not something one would wear being arrested in July!).

2011.09.16 KBS, in a news report titled "The new drug 'spice' spreads among young people... crackdown difficult" reports about a Korean dance teacher who was arrested for spice, who got it from someone in the US military. It also mentions the busts of US soldiers in Itaewon in July for selling spice, and then finishes with this statement:

Police, working with US military investigative agencies, are expanding their investigation into new kinds of drugs to target US soldiers and civilian workers as well as foreign instructors.

I guess now is not the time to mention that there have been only three cases reported in the media connecting foreign teachers with spice in the last two years.

2011.09.19 National assembly representative Park Young-a calls for stricter recruitment standards for foreign teachers after a teacher was rehired after failing a drug test - ignoring the fact that it was the lack of strict enforcement of existing standards (not the lack of standards) that was responsible for the teacher being rehired (due to a successful retest based on a claim that the first result was a false positive).

2011.10.02 A comparison between two Kukmin Ilbo articles that were published at the same time looking at 'unregistered' Korean and foreign hagwon instructors, in which the foreign teachers are portrayed as potential threats due to "never ending" "drugs and molestation." Job and Consulting is also used as a source (previously seen here: 1,2,3,4).

2011.11.07 Busan Ilbo reports that a Canadian teacher was arrested for taking a 'new kind' of drug - hashish. Yonhap then follows up a 'just the facts' article on this bust by reporting that Ulsan's reputation is hurt by fat, lazy, argumentative foreign teachers.

So out of a good many instances of foreign teachers being linked to drugs in the media this year, only a handful of cases involved actual arrests for drug possession or smuggling (8 arrested in 5 cases, if the Nigerian meth smuggler who taught English illegally is left out). I'm not sure what the relation is between reported cases and actual arrest statistics - it might be useful to review statistics going back to 2006 or so to find out. At any rate, if they are connected, then it looks like there may be a drop in the number of cases involving foreign teachers (so far) this year - which would certainly be a good thing. The odd thing, however, is that 5 of the 8 arrests were for meth, while the other three were for marijuana, which is certainly not how drug arrests for foreign teachers generally play out.

G'old Korean Vinyl

2011-11-18T16:28:00.002+09:00

Do check out G'old Korean Vinyl if you're into Korean music from the 70s and 80s - they provide downloadable songs at the site of rare songs from that time period. In addition, on November 26 @ Fabric in Busan they're holding a party:

G’OLD (Good Old) is a party featuring several hours of rare, vintage Korean tracks alongside all types of indie and dance music. We have been given access to a massive library of out-of-print Korean vinyl and are picking out the best Garage, Soul, Disco, Pop, Psyche and Synth from 1950-89 Korea. We will be showcasing these crazy, awesome gems at a series of parties. The party will feature rare Korean music finds from our archives as well as indie, dance and alternative sounds. Curated by Super Color Super & Gopchang Jeongol.

Gopchang Jeongol, if you don't know it, is in Hongdae (near Sanullim theatre) and is a fun place to hang out, full of tons and tons of classic LPs.
(Hat tip to Mark Russell)

On the classic front, the Seoul Sinmun has photos of dancer Choi Seung-hui to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birth; I've posted about her before. I hadn't known until I read The Cleanest Race that she performed for Hitler.

Bits and pieces

2011-11-17T13:51:00.003+09:00

The Joongang Ilbo interviewed Professor Lee Chong-sik, likely best known for co-authoring the book “Communism in Korea,” with Robert Scalapino. In the interview he talks about the trilateral meeting held in London from Sept. 12 to Oct. 2, 1945:

[R]elations between the United States and the Soviets deteriorated after the London conference. Before that, they were on lukewarm terms .?.?. but their ties froze up in London. We could describe this as the de facto onset of the cold war. [...]

The Soviets wanted the northern part of Hokkaido in Japan after the war, but the United States refused to agree. But what really enraged Russia was the refusal by the U.K. and the U.S. of its demand to take over Tripoli in Libya. The records of the London Conference show that then-Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov asserted Russia’s need for a port in the Mediterranean for its commercial vessels. He said it was for the country’s commercial vessels, but evidently the Soviet Navy wanted to have a base through which to expand its forces around the world. [...]

After Molotov disputed the port issue with his U.S. and British counterparts on Sept. 15-16, Soviet policies regarding the Korean Peninsula and China were completely changed. On Sept. 20, Stalin made a secret order to set up a “democratic government” in North Korea.

The article is titled "Revisiting Stalin’s role as Peninsula’s puppeteer." Some might object to such an idea, since Jeju 4.3 took place when Korea was under US control and the UK apparently helped design Japanese Zeros (hint for those wanting to put the UK in the 1등급 victimizer-of-Korea range - a search for 'Anglo-Japanese Treaty' might be more fruitful) (see more here). On a note related to the Joongang Ilbo's interview, this article has a great deal of information about how Korea came to be divided into zones of occupation by the USSR and US.

Also in the Joongang, in its [GLIMPSE of KOREAN CULTURE] series, is an article about the Yakult ajumma.

Korea Yakult first started with 47 saleswomen in 1971 but the number of saleswomen has jumped to 13,000 in the first half of this year, according to Korea Yakult. [...] The company said the average age of a Yakult ajumma is 44.3 years old and their monthly income is about 1.7 million won. They walk around 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) on average per day.

If there's one kind of food I can count on to be better in Korea than back home, it's yogurt.

Another article in the series looks at marriage officiants (Jurye); I hadn't realized that such a wide range of people could officiate at weddings until a friend who is a high school teacher told me he was going to do so for a former student. Which is kind of neat.

And the KT looks at a documentary (and photo book, etc) about stray cats. I used to have a lot around my old place (in a villa). In fact, I came home one night to see a dozen cats at the end of the alley where the gate to my place was. They scattered pretty quickly, which I imagine disrupted their planning session for the takeover of the neighbourhood from the humans.

And I'm no Picasso brought up Korean poetry in translation yesterday, so there are lots of links and suggestions in regard to reading material in the comments.

More Korea references in the Simpsons

2011-11-16T09:09:00.000+09:00

The hotties that he chills with...

On this week's Simpsons, Marge and the kids end up in an Ethiopian restaurant* after their car breaks down, and though skeptical, they love the food and, after meeting foodies, become food bloggers themselves. The foodies don't come off too well:

Foodie 1: "We discovered Korean barbeque in this town."
Lisa: "Uhhh... before the Koreans?"
Foodie 2: "Oh sure, they cook it, but they don't get it."

Of course, the Simpsons has taken on hipsters for a couple decades now, and that conversation pales in comparison to (and takes as a blueprint):
[Sarcastically] "That's cool."
"Are you being sarcastic?"
"I don't even know anymore."

It also pales in comparison to this evisceration of foodies (the responses are just as much fun).

At any rate, they end up hitting all kinds of restaurants, and make a trip to "K-town":

(I guess the coffee is hot...)

There's quite a bit of detail - comics, noraebang, video, pharmacy, galbi and even a golf place:

(Not being American, I knew nothing about Pinkberry)

One more step in the globalization of bibimbap and bulgogi, I guess....

*I've never come across an Ethiopian restaurant in Seoul. Has anyone ever seen/ been to one?

The land of rok and roll

2011-11-15T13:49:00.005+09:00

[Update]

Forgot to mention, as noted here, that the Wondergirls new cd has a song which takes a great deal from Shin Jung-hyun's Miin (titled 'Me in'). It can be found here, but the youtube video would need to be viewed through a proxy to listen to it in the ROK. I really can't decide if it's sacrilege or if it's a good thing to have JYP paying homage to Shin's work. I doubt it's going to attract many of the Wonder Girls' fans to his music...

[Original post]

I discovered Ju-Hwan Kim's dissertation "Relocating the Alliance: The U.S.-South Korea Military Alliance in Cultural Representations" (downloadable here) while looking for more information about Nam Jeong-hyeon's 1965 novella Bunji [Land of Excrement], which Kim describes:

In an epistolary format, the story of Bunji is narrated by Hong Mansu [a direct descendent of Hong Gil-dong] addressing to his deceased mother. Several days after the 1945 liberation of Korea, Mansu’s mother who came out to welcome the U.S. forces with hand-made Korean and star-spangled flags in her hand gets raped on the way by American GIs. Back home, she exposes her defiled body to her son and daughter, Mansu and Buni. Unable to overcome her shame, Mansu’s mother refuses to eat and dies in a few days after a convulsion. Upon his discharge from the military, Mansu, unable to find a job, begins black-market trading with American goods that his sister Buni obtains from Sergeant Speed, an American soldier she lives with. Buni also ends up in misfortune as she experiences sexual torment by Mr. Speed who often disparages the “lower half of her body” comparing that with his wife’s. In resentment of the sergeant’s abuse of his sister, Mansu determines to see Mrs. Speed or Mrs. Bitch as he names her, for himself.

By this time, Mrs. Speed leaves the U.S. to make an unexpected visit to see her husband in South Korea. Mansu, not to miss this God-sent chance, tricks Mrs. Speed to accompany him for tour during which he rapes her in a mountain. Learning the news, the U.S. government mobilizes a mass-scale retaliation dispatching “as many as ten thousand missiles and artillery pieces” including a nuclear bomb to destroy the whole mountain where Mansu is hiding.

Sounds like a blast. Needless to say, the authorities were not amused, and Nam was arrested and and given a 6 month prison sentence and a seven-year prohibition from publishing for breaking the national security law. Kim describes the story as a critique of the state, and places it at the opening of a chapter which includes examples of others who contested Park Chung-hee's view of the nation and state, including poet Shin Dong-yeop, and 'godfather of Korean rock' Shin Jung-hyun (which I obviously took great interest in). Kim's writing about Shin is engaging enough, though the specific details are based on Mark Russell's interview with Shin and especially the essay "The Birth of ‘Rok’: Cultural Imperialism, Nationalism, and Glocalization of Rock Music in South Korea, 1964-1975" by Pil Ho Kim and Hyunjoon Shin, which can be read pretty cheaply here and is the basis of this post (which has some great photos and music from the Add 4 up to Sanullim). I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but certainly plan to. Here's what they wrote about Miin (Shin's classic rock song with the Yupjuns (brass coins) from 1974, which apparently sold 100,000 copies - huge for its time (and probably even today)), as quoted in Kim's paper:

“Miin” had monumental cultural impact. Ordinary people, especially young
schoolchildren on the streets, were humming along with the folksy melody and
rhyme loosely based on changt’aryŏng, the traditional beggar’s chant for food.
Shin blended this with an apparent homage to Jimi Hendrix, borrowing a motif
from “Voodoo Chile” to create the famous guitar riff in “Miin.” In addition. Shin
gave it a touch of vibrato akin to nonghyŏn, a technique widely used with
traditional Korean stringed instruments. As a result, the lead guitar in “Miin”
sounds like the kayagŭm (a twelve-stringed zither), generating a hybrid of
Western rock and traditional Korean music.

“Miin” was soon banned by the government as “too noisy” and “vulgar"; as Kim notes, "a popular joke at the time was to change the song’s lyrics from, “Seeing her once, seeing her twice, and I can’t stop looking her” to “Doing it once, doing it twice, I can’t stop doing it.”

The same year (1974) that Shin found such success (showing that rock music had indeed become popular), director Lee Jang-ho's debut "Heavenly Homecoming of Stars" perfectly captured the youth culture that had been coming together and broke box office records (selling over 400,000 tickets). The music for the film was done by Lee Jang-hee, whose music is showcased in this music-video-like scene from the film:

Just like Shin Jung-hyun, Lee Jang-hee (who had been introduced to marijuana by an AFKN dj) and Lee Jang-ho would see their careers put on hold for half a decade after being arrested for pot in 1975 and 1976).

And on the academic paper front in regard to music from this time are also the two chapters by Roald Maliangkay - ‘Supporting Our Boys: American Military Entertainment and Korean Pop Music in the 1950s and early 1960s’ and ‘Pop for Progress: South Korea’s Propaganda Songs’ - in the book "Korean Pop Music: Riding the Korean Wave" (Keith Howard (ed.), Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental: 2006). For those not wanting to drop almost $200 on the book (fascinating though it looks to be), both Yonsei and SNU have it in their libraries (but not the main libraries, the music and international studies libraries, respectively).

I should also note that Roald Maliangkay's website has a collection of older Korean LP covers; the cover of the Kim Sisters' first album certainly wasn't designed to conform to any orientalist ideas about what Asian women should look like, right?

Stories Heard From a Girl in an Opium Den

2011-11-12T11:19:00.000+09:00

Byul's new CD '아편굴 처녀가 들려준 이야기 Stories Heard From a Girl in an Opium Den' is out now, and more information is at their site here. One of the songs on the album (which compiles a lot of their best stuff from the Monthly Vampire CDs over the last ten years, along with a new track or two) is Pacific:

More information about the release is also here, and here you can listen to another song on the CD, Blue Marble, which sounds a bit like Seefeel backing Spandau Ballet after taking codeine and playing backward... or something. Here's the video for the title track:

SECRET STORIES HEARD FROM A GIRL IN AN OPIUM DEN - BYUL.ORG 아편굴 처녀가 들려준 이야기 - 모임 별 from DNFF on Vimeo.

The album is being released on vinyl in the US by Burnt Toast Vinyl, and at their site I found this video of Byul's remake of 리듬속에 그 춤을 (the mid-80s Kim Wan-sun song written and produced by Shin Jung-hyun which I posted here):

Worth noting is that the Pacific CD (first video above) also has an mp3 disc collecting some of their earlier songs - between it and this new album you basically have a 'best of' collection...

Oh, and I just remembered Byul's remake of BoA's 'No. 1,' which can be listened to here (or the entire tribute album can be downloaded here).

Ulsan's reputation hurt by fat, lazy, argumentative foreign teachers

2011-11-10T11:02:00.001+09:00

Describing of the "mental structure that Koreans... hold," Hyunah Yang writes:

The main feature of the structure is the way that it dichotomizes Koreans and Japanese - us and them, victim and offender, good and bad. These categories appear exclusive and independent, but are mutually defined by one another. Through blaming, the existence of an enemy is made visible, and this in turn helps to define the collective identity of "Korean." Within this dichotomy, however, Korean identity is built only upon victimhood.*

Yonhap published the following story on Monday in the wake of the story of the Canadian teacher who was busted for the 'new kind' of drug - hashish.

Some 'poor native speaking instructors' in the Ulsan area hurt its reputation

Problems caused by some native speaking instructors who work in Ulsan area elementary and middle schools are hurting the reputation of Ulsan Metropolitan Office of Education.

At the end of last month, Ulsan MOE received a letter of resignation from S(35), a middle school native speaking instructor who was arrested and charged for smoking cannabis resin (AKA hashish) by the Busan prosecutor's office on the 7th,

S had 29 grams of hash sent to his school from Canada and is suspected of smoking it twice by the Taewha River in Ulsan.

Last year and in 2009, twelve (3+9) native speaking teachers did not have their contracts renewed and were expelled by the office of education for poor teaching methods and having a poor attitude towards their service.

Native speaking instructors renew their one year contracts after being reviewed.

The instructors who were expelled often yelled at students, argued with their co-teachers or dressed poorly.

As well, the office of education said some were too fat and visited the hospital often, so classes progressed poorly, and some refused to teach after school classes.

An official at the office of education said, "There are 180 native speaking instructors working at elementary and middle schools (119 and 61 respectively) in the Ulsan area and most have outstanding experience and carry out high level classes." "However because of some instructors, the image of Ulsan and of course the excellent instructors is being damaged."

Once again, Korea is victimized by foreigners, in this case instructors (or teachers - they can't seem to keep that terminology straight). It's good to see government-funded Yonhap reinforcing the xenophobic, victimized aspects of the Korean identity by reminding people of the harm caused by these fat, poorly dressed foreigners who do not understand that the term 'optional' (in regard to after school classes) means anything but (like the 'democratic' in 'DPRK'). One wonders if, by yelling at the students, the teachers were merely trying to be heard over the din.

"I don't think you'd even hear a nuke if the north dropped one on you!"
(Kyunghyang Shimun, June 11, 2007)

I love the assertion that "because of some instructors, the image of Ulsan and of course the excellent instructors is being damaged." Yes, I'm sure most casual observers (who think about Ulsan regularly (don't you?)) were willing to give a city that is mostly chemical plant industrial sprawl the benefit of the doubt until they read about the 5% of foreign teachers who didn't have their contracts renewed for being fat and lazy ("That's the last straw - we're going to Haeundae this summer instead!").

While I'm sure things have improved since this July 19, 1970 Stars and Stripes article was written, it gives some idea of Ulsan's past:

Ills Traced To Smog

SEOUL — The Ulsan city health center released a report, to local press sources Thursday charging that an almost epidemic rash of headaches and nausea caused by air pollution has hit that highly-industrialized city 185 miles southeast of Seoul.

The center reportedly said a low-pressure weather front had caused toxic sulfur monoxide fumes to hang over the city for several hours Thursday, causing residents of the city's three most crowded districts to complain of severe headaches and vomiting.

According to the Health and Social Affairs Ministry in Seoul, the 10 major plants of the Ulsan industrial complex, just two miles from heart of the city, caused almost $500,000 in pollution damage this year, as well as adversely affecting the community's health.

This event appears to have inspired a story in Cho Se-hui's The Dwarf, in which the city of Ungang (a barely veiled Incheon) suffers a similar incident.

As for the Yonhap article, one wonders what editorial decision led to its creation...

* From "Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing," in Dangerous Women: Gender & Korean Nationalism

Pagoda teachers clean Cheonggyecheon

2011-11-09T09:06:00.001+09:00

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.

Financial News

As Financial News noted, the teachers dressed in 'our traditional village teacher' clothing, students dressed as unmarried pupils, and staff as commoners.

Kyunghyang Sinmun

Yonhap

Yonhap again

Yonhap once again

Financial News again

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.'

RAS lecture by Andrew Salmon tonight on British and Australian Soldiers in the Korean War

2011-11-08T15:53:00.005+09:00

Tonight's Royal Asiatic Society lecture will feature Andrew Salmon and is titled "Scorched Earth, Black Snow: British and Australian Soldiers in the Invasion of North Korea." Salmon's previous book, "To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951" is well regarded (haven't had a chance to read it myself, but plan to one of these days), and the presentation sounds like a must-see:

In autumn 1950, UN forces defeated the North Korean Army in the South, and counter-attacked across the 38th parallel. The result of the free world's only ever invasion of a communist state would be utter catastrophe and the entry of a new superpower onto the world's stage. In a presentation illustrated with some 200 photographs and paintings Andrew Salmon, author of Scorched Earth, Black Snow (London, 2011) will bring this grim struggle back to life as he tells the story of Anglo-Australian forces in those dramatic and terrible months.

The description ends with this: "It is hoped some characters from the book will attend the presentation."

More details can be found here. The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Residents' Lounge on the 2nd floor of the Somerset Palace in Seoul, which is north of Jogyesa Temple, and is 5,000 won for non-member and free for members.

Canadian teacher arrested for taking 'new kind' of drug

2011-11-08T15:51:00.002+09:00

In a story involving a stakeout, a Canadian English teacher was arrested for mailing himself a 'new kind' of drug and smoking it. The Busan Ilbo broke the story yesterday morning, followed by Yonhap ("Busan prosecutors arrest and charge native speaking instructor with smoking marijuana"). The Maeil Gyeongje cribs a lot from the Busan Ilbo, which has some howlers about the "new kind of drug" the teacher used.

Canadian English instructor arrested and charged for hiding drugs in international mail delivery to school
Caught smoking new kind [of drug,] hashish

It has been exposed that a foreigner working as a native speaking English instructor at a middle school sent and received a new kind of drug through the international post and smoked it, for which he was arrested and charged.

The violent crimes division of the Busan Prosecutors Office revealed on the 7th that they had arrested an charged S (35), a Canadian, for importing a new kind of drug, hashish, through international mail and smoking it, contravening the Drug Control Law.

Hashish is the amber coloured resin separated from the leaves and flowers of the female marijuana plant and contains 3-4 times more THC than normal marijuana, and so is a more hallucinogenic narcotic. If one becomes addicted, it is known that it can lead to impaired endocrine functioning and mental illness like schizophrenia.

S began working at K middle school in Ulsan's Ulju county at the start of this year and on September 3 at a post office at Vancouver airport sent 29 grams of hashish using a different name in a plastic butter container in a box. The address he wrote on the package was his school's, and on October 21, the package was delivered by postman to the school. Prosecutors explained that after receiving it, he smoked 3.5 grams on two occasions by the Taehwa river and was charged for this.

An official from the Busan prosecutor's office said, "In this case, we were notified by the Busan International Post Office that a packaged assumed to be drugs had been sent to Korea from Canada, and after it was delivered to S we carried out a stakeout and arrested him at the scene where he smoked."

I guess we have to watch out for English teachers smuggling "new kinds" of drugs - how are police supposed to keep up with them when they keep trying to sneak in susbstances no one has ever heard of?! It'd be different if hash were something that has been used for thousands of years, or literary types had been writing about for at least 150 years - but no, it's not! And it's a shame a new drug that is so strong that it causes "mental illness like schizophrenia" is being imported into the country. When will it end?

This goes to show the lengths some will go to to make the connection between more serious drugs and foreign teachers stick (there have been only two reported drug cases this year that sounded for certain to have involved E-2 teachers). Other cases have involved 'former' teachers or Korean American/Canadian teachers. On the bright side, this is the first negative article about foreign teachers in over a month.

And, hopefully this case goes to show that the likelihood of being caught mailing yourself goodies from home is quite high (ahem).

There have been a few other cases which I forgot to post on - I'll do that soon. But first - tomorrow - I'll post Yonhap's response to this case, which is what I've come to expect from a news outlet funded by the Korean government.

Concerns about foreigners in 1995

2011-11-03T16:19:00.000+09:00

I stumbled across this August 28, 1995 Yonhap article about Seoulites' views of the foreigners in their midst.

As the number of foreign residents increases, there is concern about decadent, pleasure (seeking) culture

There is a great worry among Seoul residents that the increasing number of foreigners living in Seoul will lead to an influx of decadent, pleasure (seeking) culture.

According to a "Survey of citizens regarding foreigners living in Seoul" announced by the city on the 28th, among 273 people questioned about the increasing number of foreigners living in Seoul, 37.5% were concerned about the influx of decadent, pleasure (seeking), low quality culture.

This was followed by worries over problems with public order due to increasing crime, deteriorating working conditions of Korean workers, and the spread of infectious diseases such as AIDS.

As for what fields they would like foreigners to work in, 54% chose technically specialized jobs, 15.6% chose foreign language teaching, 14.4% chose simple laboring, showing that it was hoped they would enter the country to work at specialized jobs where cutting edge techniques could be learned rather than importing cheap labor from southeast Asian countries.

However, as to whether Seoul should adjust to globalization by hiring foreigners as public servants, 63.6% were opposed, showing an overwhelmingly conservative reaction.

In relation to the human rights of illegally overstaying foreigners, 88.2% chose the answer that they "should be protected," revealing sympathy for illegally overstaying foreigners.

Well, things have certainly changed in the last 16 years. One can certainly understand the aversion to pleasure seeking culture, since there's such a dearth of it here. Ahem. It seems a rather strange first worry though. One wonders what this survey actually looked like. It's interesting to see some of the same fears are still present: the fear of growing crime (despite the Korean crime rate being twice that of the foreign crime rate) and AIDS. Also interesting is the use of certain terms in the phrase "decadent, pleasure (seeking), low quality culture." "Low quality" (저질, 'low,' 'substandard') has been applied to foreign teachers by anti English Spectrum and their friends in the Korean media (for example Break News and New Daily), and also appeared on some of their posters, such as this one from February 2005:

Note also the inclusion of "퇴폐," translated as 'decadent' in the Yonhap article above and 'degenerate' in the poster above. Such language was used by anti American, anti-USFK activists in the late 1980s to describe American culture, and by none other than Park Chung-hee in the 1970s (here, for example), who justifed his crackdown on marijuana and youth culture in general in 1975 and 1976 as protecting the indigenous culture of the Korean race. As it was put at the time, the “indiscriminate” acceptance of “degenerate fashions introduced from foreign countries” had to be stopped to “protect and develop our own cultural heritage.” It was made quite clear that it was American culture that was being talked about.

On the other hand, it's interesting that 88.2% of people thought human rights of illegally overstaying foreigners should be protected, though I don't know how deep that well of 'sympathy for illegally overstaying foreigners' was, especially since the Industrial Trainee System, which essentially mass produced illegal overstayers, would lead to there being over 200,000 of them 8 years later.

Zombies march against university entrance exam

2011-11-02T10:35:00.006+09:00

I was walking through Hongdae Monday night and saw this procession:

The banner reads "University entrance exam zombie, spec zombie Halloween march," with the text below reading "대학입시거부로 세상을 바꾸는 투명가방끈들의 모임", or "The invisible 'schoolbag strap' group to change the world by rejecting the university entrance exam." 'Spec' refers to the combined educational background, grades and TOEIC scores of people looking for jobs, while the length of one's 'schoolbag strap' refers to the amount of education one has - PhDs have the longest 'straps', while high school graduates have the shortest. Those who haven't graduated high school, such as the students taking part in the protest, would have no 'strap', hence its 'invisibility.'

Those taking part in the march carried placards with messages such as:

If you don't go to university you are not a person
University entrance exam paradise = mistrustful hell

The zombies also had signs, often on their backs, detailing the reason for their death and zombiehood:

It’s because of my laziness
Suicide
Competition
Sudden death.

Rather clever, I thought. One participant handed me this small flyer:

An invitation for you to [take part in] the November 12 street action to change a society and education (system) which imposes competition and [emphasis on] educational background.

Let’s change our unhappy and anxious today and tomorrow!
The declaration of refusal of the university entrance exam

On the back it reads in part, "In a society that demands we constantly aim for a higher score, a better university, a better job, a better educational background and greater status, we are unhappy and anxious."

I don't have time to translate more, but their site, with its declaration of refusal of the university entrance exam, is here.

An in-depth look at the reaction to 'The True Origins of Pizza'

2011-11-01T12:47:00.003+09:00

For those who would like to delve into the various reactions to 'The True Origins of Pizza' video by western, Korean, and Japanese netizens, I recommend the article The True Origins of Pizza: Irony, the Internet and East Asian Nationalisms by Stephen Epstein and Rumi Sakamoto published today at Japan Focus. I had been unaware of the Japanese reaction to the video - and I now realize I missed some of the references in the video, such as zig zag man. Seriously, though, some of the different interpretations of the video depending on the positions of the viewers are quite interesting; do give it a read.

(I should also thank them for mentioning this blog!)

Music notes

2011-10-31T15:16:00.003+09:00

In response to this question, Stephen Epstein's RAS presentation last week about girl groups was well worth attending. There was a lot of textual analysis of lyrics and dissection of the narratives present in the videos. I liked his description of the dichotomy between girls presenting themselves as shy and inexperienced while at the same time 'anticipating being deflowered,' I think was how be put it.

The article which made him interested in the topic of Girl Groups can be found here (enter page 25 at the bottom). There's lots to tear apart - you've got to love a self described "middle aged man" asking, "Just what is it about them that drives us into such a frenzy?" and then match that with this: "Some are so surprised by the elder generation’s enthusiasm for girl groups that they cannot help but mention the Lolita complex. Nevertheless, that would be an example of an exaggerated principle that remains from the past authoritarian era." (Nice try, but I don't think wonjo gyoje began in the 1970s.) "In the course of shifting from a masculine-dominated era to one of feminine equality, the imposing frames of age and gender are being slowly torn down. The time has come in pop culture where a man in his 40s can cheer for teenage girl groups without being looked at suspiciously." Ah, so this is what happens when "the imposing frames of age and gender are ... torn down" - you get to ogle teenage girls "without being looked at suspiciously." One wonders if part of this brave new world will involve men getting something more than a suspended sentence for paying a 14 year old for sex.

This - "They are at the edge of the frontier of popular culture, but they are not just pioneers—they are the culture." - made me think of Verv's evisceration of celebrity worship in the new Broke in Korea (page 20).

As for this - "They render the term “singer” insufficient." - that's true, but not in the way he's thinking, as Gord Sellar argues here. And Gord - here's a video you're looking for - Kim Jung-mi performing with back-up dancers (near the end) - in 1974.

And in revisiting that time period, I should mention Mark Russell's article in the New York Times about Korean rock from the 60s and 70s:

Shin Joong-hyun remembers the first time he took the stage 55 years ago in Seoul. Just 18, he had passed an audition for the U.S. Eighth Army and was selected to play top American hits to the troops. “I was too young to be scared,” the 73-year-old rocker said in a telephone interview, “so I just tried to do a good job.”

Soon, he was playing 20 to 30 dates a month at U.S. military bases all over South Korea, songs like “Guitar Boogie Shuffle,” “40 Miles of Bad Road” and “Rock Around the Clock” — the first song Mr. Shin sang, instead of just playing guitar. “The soldiers seemed to like my guitar playing,” he recalled. “They were really enthusiastic and often asked for more solos.”

Bands that got their start rocking out on U.S. Army bases became the vanguard of a new music scene in South Korea. Mr. Shin was at the heart of it, creating bands, finding singers and writing many of the most memorable rock songs recorded in South Korea, especially from 1968 to 1975.

He also mentions DJ Soulscape, whose mix cd "More Sound of Seoul" is made up of selections of 1970s Korean funk, pop and rock from his massive LP collection. I highly recommend it, as it makes clear that a lot of the music back then represented more of a blend of traditional Korean music and western music, unlike what is popular today.

Mark also notes that two collections of Shin Jung-hyun's music have been released in the US. In addition to those releases, I just discovered that Pony Canyon has released eight cds of Shin's music, with cds focusing on the Pearl Sisters, Lee Jung-hwa, Kim Chu-ja, Kim Jung-mi, Jang Hyun, and The Three Travelers, as well as cd reissues of Hicky Shin (Shin's 1958 instrumental album, with interesting tunes like 'Twist Arirang') and the Add 4 (Korea's first rock and roll band, from 1964). Purple Record was cleaned out (after my visit), though I missed two (and saw no need for the Add 4 reissue, having purchased an earlier cd of it recently). The cds all come with introductions by Shin Jung-hyun and lyric sheets, and sound better than some versions of the songs I've heard (unfortunately, all of these reissues are mastered from the original vinyl, as the master tapes no longer exist, a situation that may be due to the Park Chung-hee government, as Mark relates). I recently picked up a Lee Jang-hee best-of cd, and the it's obviously based on the original master tapes - it sounds great. It's quite a shame Shin's music can be listened to in the same manner.

Deconstructing girl groups (tonight)

2011-10-25T15:18:00.005+09:00

Tonight's Royal Asiatic Society lecture will feature Professor Stephen Epstein discussing "Girls' Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment and K-pop." Here's a description:

This lecture will engage in a close analysis of the music and videos of groups such as the Wonder Girls, Girls' Generation, KARA, T-ara and the discourse that has surrounded their rise to popularity in South Korea, in order to challenge the notion that contemporary consumer society is making a radical break from more traditional, deeply embedded power structures and argue that a set of recurrent tropes in the studied media and marketing presentation of Korean girl groups undercuts claims to a progressive ethos.

It should be interesting - the last time I saw Professor Epstein speak he was introducing the documentary he made about the Korean punk scene over a decade ago. And readers of The Grand Narrative will note that he worked with James Turnbull on this material.

More details can be found here. The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Residents' Lounge on the 2nd floor of the Somerset Palace in Seoul, which is north of Jogyesa Temple, and is 5,000 won for non-member and free for members.

NYT on "The Crucible"

2011-10-24T15:47:00.000+09:00

The New York Times published an article last week looking at the reaction to the film “Dogani” (“The Crucible”):

At an appeals court in the southwestern city of Gwangju in 2006, a school official was convicted of raping a 13-year-old deaf girl and sentenced to one year in prison. When the verdict came, an outraged middle-aged man, also deaf, let out an incomprehensible cry from the galley, signaling frantically with sign language.

“It was clear that the man was shouting, ‘This is wrong! This is wrong!”’ Lee Ji-won, a newspaper intern, wrote in her blog later that day under the subject line, “I saw the foul underside of our society.”

The man was forcibly removed for disrupting the courtroom. And that might have been the end of it. Except that the intern’s blog inspired a best-selling author, Gong Ji-young, to write a novel based on the sexual assaults at the Inhwa School for the hearing impaired, the school’s attempts to conceal the abuses and the victims’ struggle for justice.

Now, a film based on that novel — “Dogani,” or “The Crucible” — has roiled South Korea.

It goes on to offer some distressing statistics:

The number of sexual crimes against mentally or physically disabled people reported to the police was 320 last year, up from 199 in 2007, according to the National Police Agency. But the government estimates that fewer than 10 percent of victims report sexual crimes to the police for fear of being shamed in public trials.

In South Korea, sex crimes generally can be prosecuted only if the victim presses charges, and charges are often dropped if a financial settlement is reached between the defendant and the plaintiff. Two years ago, the law was revised to require that all sex crimes involving alleged victims aged 18 or under be prosecuted, even if they have not themselves pressed charges. Following the uproar over “The Crucible,” the government has promised to extend this to cases where the alleged victims are mentally or physically disabled.

When sexual assault cases involving victims aged 13 and under come to trial now, roughly 95 percent of defendants are found guilty, but penalties are weak, with about a third receiving prison terms and the rest receiving suspended sentences or assessed fines. Half of the teachers who were convicted of sexually assaulting their students or others were given nothing more severe than a pay cut or a short suspension, according to the Education Ministry.

Do read the entire article. More statistics about teachers and sex crimes can be found here.

It's good to see that this is pushing the discourse on punishment for sex crimes (and legal responses) along, though, as I've pointed out here, this is a process that has been underway for the last five years, since a girl was abducted and murdered in Yongsan in February 2006.

Even earlier, in 2004, in response to a case in Miryang in which investigating police insulted teenaged girls who were gang-raped repeatedly over a period of months (and leaked their IDs to the media, and made them point out their rapists face to face), there was outrage by netizens and offline protests . Though 41 high school boys were involved, none were convicted of criminal charges.

"Rape is dismissed with a caution???"
(From here, where more photos can be found.)

Similarly, none of the children involved in a elementary school student on student sex abuse scandal at a Daegu were ever punished.

Lax treatment of sex offenders who have victimized children has led to furious public responses before. In the Yongsan case there was anger at the fact the killer had a previous sex crime against a child settled through compensation and was allowed to strike again (though this was due in part to it being incorrectly reported that he had committed many such sex crimes in the past), and of course the Nayoung case that came to light in the fall of 2009 made many waves.

Recently the Korea University med students who molested their drunken classmate were given tougher sentences than the prosecutors asked for, but at the same time, an appeals court judge reviewing the sentences of six years in prison and ten years of offender registry given to four men in their early twenties who gang-raped a 12 year old girl for four hours, opted to give them suspended sentences instead (see here, though it should read "a three year sentence suspended for four years", not "three years in prison and four years of probation").

Related to this is this rather shocking statistic (from here):

Some 50 percent of teenage rape cases occurred in groups, compared to 30 percent for adults. Experts say that this tendency is higher in Korea than in other countries.

I had wondered before if a good number of those adult gang-rapes were in fact university students. This comment illustrates this quite well, and is believable in the light of the above quote.

And, in discussions of revising sex crime laws, perhaps someone might want to consider raising the age of consent to something higher than 13. Just an idea.

This topic reminds me of a story a friend told me years ago (but reminded me of recently) which took place in a hagwon south of Seoul. A female student at the hagwon was found to have a dislocated shoulder and vaginal tearing, and it was discovered that two male classmates had held her by the arms while egging on a classmate to stick his finger between her legs; the dislocated shoulder came from her struggling so much. A teacher was in the room, but because they were under some sort of playground equipment (if I remember correctly) they couldn't be seen, and with other children playing, couldn't be heard. The age of the students? Kindergarten. It was all settled in house, the result of which was - nothing happened. The parents of the girl pulled their daughter out, unsurprisingly. I suppose the hagwon owner considered the simple economics and figured losing one student was better than losing three. So it goes. One wonders if there would be any reason for the boys not to take away from the experience the lesson that, if they work together, they can get away with anything.

A collection of newspaper cartoons about foreign English teachers

2011-10-20T10:22:00.006+09:00

I found the above cartoon the other day, and as I was trying to track down a specific cartoon on this site, I thought I'd put all of the anti-foreign teacher cartoons together. After I realized I had no cartoons from 2007 (when anti-foreign teacher articles and reports reached a peak before the E-2 visa regulations changed), I decided a search was in order, but found more than I expected. Here are all of the cartoons or illustrations related to foreign English teachers I could find, positive and negative. You may note the consistency with which the gender and race of the teachers is depicted, as well as certain racial characteristics.

This odd image of a couple kissing is from the incredibly bizarre column titled 'sickening face' published in August 1984 during the French teacher 'scandal.'

This cartoon comes from a Kyunghyang Sinmun opinion article from 1997 (which includes the phrase "Korea is a paradise for unqualified English teachers") :

(NSA: Native Speaking Assistant?)

This one is from a December 17, 2004 Donga Ilbo article titled "Foreigners see various aspects of corruption in Korean society," which paints some foreign teachers as victims of hagwon owners.

("I knew I shouldn't have accepted a job from Chun Doo-hwan!")

On April 5, 2005, the Donga Ilbo published an article titled, "'In Korea, English teachers have a fascinating life'; US recruiting site belittles Korea," which included this cartoon (obviously by the same artist):

"Unqualified"

From an August 15, 2005 Donga Ilbo article about apartment complexes having an English village with a foreign teacher titled "Our apartment's children don't go to hagwons":

From a November 23, 2005 Busan Ilbo article about apartments having English villages with a foreign teacher for marketing purposes:

From a December 7, 2005 Segye Ilbo article about foreign profs and visas (note the artist's signature - he'll turn up again):

"Visa?" 'lecture'

From a December 30, 2005 Kukmin Ilbo column about the Busan dialect:

From a March 6, 2006 Hankyoreh article about need for teachers in the countryside:

'Chungcheongbuk-do': "We have no budget!"

From an April 16, 2006 Hankyoreh article about companies introducing teachers to other businesses making lots of money:

From an April 18 2006 Kyunhyang Sinmun article which asked people, 'Which is more useful, an English camp or a native speaking teacher (55% chose the former, 40%, the latter):

As the teacher has no nose, I'll assume she's one of those 'fake' native speakers. The same question is pondered in this cartoon from the Hanguk Ilbo, April 25, 2006:

A June 4, 2006 Hanguk Ilbo article looks at the placement of native speaking teachers by province or city:

From a July 9, 2006 Segye Ilbo article titled “It’s urgent that measures be prepared for unqualified native speaking English teachers”:

The cartoon below is from an August 16, 2006 Seoul Shinmun article titled "Washout Native-Speaking Teacher Problem":

Late, absent/ gets money and does a runner/ molestation

Two days later, on August 18, the Segye Ilbo, mentioning the arrest of John Mark Karr, provided this cartoon in an article titled "As long as they just speak English... "Don't ask" recruiting of foreign instructors":

"Unqualified"

From an October 9, 2006 Kookmin Ilbo article about English names:

"My name is Jio"

On October, 23 2006, the Hanguk Ilbo provided this illustration for an article titled "US gangster drug criminals became hagwon English teachers?"

English instructor

From a November 22, 2006 Chosun Ilbo article titled "Foreigners started rumors about Hongdae? 'Street of pleasures,' a bitter distortion" (about a Korean woman studying in New York who met foreign men there who talked about Hongdae - and not because of art or music (gasp!)):

"The Girls of Hongdae..."

From a March 6, 2007 Hanguk Ilbo article titled “Public servant who can’t speak English? Don’t even dream of promotion [Ulsan]":

From a March 11, 2007 Hanguk Ilbo article about TOEFL and ways of studying:

I just liked it for the nose on the TV anchor:

From the May 9, 2007 Hankyoreh article ‘The reason for English teachers who speak poor English’ (at 46 places in capital area there were teachers hired for being white but were non native speakers):

From the May 26, 2007 Donga Ilbo article "Learn Korean in Andong":

From the June 11, 2007 Kyunghyang Shimun article "Native speaking teacher ‘low content’ – As long as they speak English, OK":

Translation: "It's chowdah! Chowdah!
I'll kill you! I'll kill all of you -
especially those of you in the jury!"

From the July 13, 2007 Munhwa Ilbo article “fake phone English teachers abound”:

"The pronunciation?" "Shallashalla"

I don't think they could be much clearer about how they feel about talking to a Filipina.

From an October 4, 2007 Donga Ilbo article about co teaching, and the need for training:

From an October 17, 2007 Segye Ilbo article titled “Native speaking teachers work in the country? NO”:

"Big city"

From a November 12, 2007 Gangwon Ilbo article titled "The power of English":

From a February 10, 2008 Kyunghyang Sinmun article about enticements to buy apartments like English camps:

From a February 18, 2008 Hanguk Gyeongje article about a free language chatting site:

A March 20, 2008 Hanguk Ilbo article titled "Killer wanted by FBI openly teaches in Korea" published this cartoon:

"Wanted" "Teacher"

From a March 24, 2008 Maeil Gyeongje article about English immersion education:

From a March 29, 2008 Maeil Gyeongje article about Konglish:

This was in the June 18, 2008 edition of the Weekly Chosun:

"Native speaking instructor"

Ironically, it's a translation of an article written by a foreigner criticizing the abilities of foreign teachers in Korea. As for the cartoon, I love the sign he's holding. Who doesn't want a foreign teacher blow-up doll? If you can't get a robot, I mean.

From a June 25, 2008 Sindonga article titled, “By memorizing a framework of only 200 sentences, you too can master practical English”:

"Shalla shalla"

(It says that the Korean person is someone who has "studied using this method for 1 year." For those doubters out there, perhaps the foreigner is praising him because he isn't a native speaker, as can be seen by the lack of a huge nose.)

From a July 18, 2008 Kyunghyang Sinmun article about taeglish and piglish (taekwondo, piano + English):

This cartoon appeared in a September 26, 2008 NoCut News (and Gyeongin Ilbo) article titled "70% of Incheon native speaking assistant English teachers are inexperienced":

"Experience" .

From a December 5, 2008 Seoul Sinmun article titled “Study English with a native speaker through the computer”:

From a December 17, 2008 Maeil Shinmun article titled "Why do unqualified foreign English teachers abound?," which opens with the question, "If you're white, all goes well?," had this pointy-nosed foreigner holding an (incorrect) graph:

From a January 28, 2009 Hanguk Ilbo article about Seoul shouldering private education costs:

This cartoon accompanied a May 20 Donga Ilbo article titled "'Drug instructors' caught and still teach - schools and hagwons take no action and cover it up":

An August 9, 2009 Segye Ilbo article titled "In a single year, thousands of dollars are spent inviting... fraud native speaking teachers" provided two cartoons:

The August 24, 2009 Weekly Chosun had several articles about English Teachers (see here for translations) and provided these cartoons (the first is meant to comment on how the media views foreign English teachers):

The Hankyoreh published four positive articles about foreign English teachers on November 29, 2009 and had these four cartoons accompany the articles:

"Forty students?"

"Why doesn't she ever consult with me about classes?"

"Do this today, OK?"

"I want to improve my skills as a teacher" (Book:"Teacher training")

"Are they going to ignore me?"

On February 19, 2010, the Donga Ilbo published an article which wasn't about foreign teachers at all (it mentions the native speaker way of thinking when studying English), but which included this bizarre cartoon:

"Correct expression", "accurate pronunciation"
(note that the artist also did this classic cartoon)

On March 24, 2010, the Donga Ilbo published an article titled "By day he teaches, by night he sells drugs... Teacher wanted by Interpol" with the English subtitle "He is a killer, drug dealer… and your teacher" (which depicts the teacher as a gumiho or fox with 9 tails who has turned into an English teacher):

This cartoon is from a Gyeongin Ilbo editorial from October 26, 2010 titled "Opium eater Native speaking teacher":

The Munhwa Ilbo published an article on December 8, 2010 titled "Native Speaker Phone English? Turns out it's a korian. Deception by yuhaksaeng [posing as] 'neitibeu seupikeo'" that included this cartoon (it's not hard to figure out which one is foreign):

From a December 13, 2010 Kyunghyang Sinmun article about a foreign teacher stealing a trophy from other teachers while drunk:

On December 15th, Sports Seoul published an article following up on the 'fake' native speakers titled "'Ddeokbokki should be pronounced 'ddeobbogi' - the sorrow of fake native teachers." The accompanying cartoon, depicting the ddeokbokki incident and a teen talking about her sexual experience in earshot of the teacher (who must play dumb since he 'doesn't understand Korean') raises questions:

Do they have blond hair (and a goatee and earring) and look grotesque (compared to the Korean girls) because they are masquerading as foreigners?

This cartoon is from an August 9, 2011 Chosun Ilbo article titled "Famous Gangnam hagwon owner was LA gang member 14 years ago":

Gyopo murderers working as English teachers in Korea always seem to be fodder for cartoonists; this makes quite clear the person in question is Korean.

This cartoon is from an August 9 2011 Hankook Ilbo editorial about the hagwon owner wanted for attempted murder in the US:

Note the knife in his back pocket. As the teacher has no nose, he has also been pretty clearly depicted not to be a westerner.

From an August 19, 2011 Chosun Ilbo article titled "[Why] Ethnic Koreans in Korea suffer discrimination - wronged native speaking English teachers":

It's good to see the newspaper that printed "White English Teacher Threatens Korean Woman with AIDS" [Korean, English] so concerned about the plight of non-white, ethnic Korean foreign teachers.

Some additional, non newspaper cartoons include this and these (NSFW) comics, which I also looked at here. The graphic accompanying this article is also amusing.

Vaguely related is an October 23, 2009 Kyunghyang Shinmun article titled "Foreign school students do 'lots of drugs'" depicted mostly Korean students doing drugs with this cartoon:

Plus a 'best of' compilation:

No one is safe. No one.

Last but not least, this is from a cartoon on a blog about a Korean teacher's foreign co-teacher ("shalla shalla" represents what Koreans think English sounds like). For some reason, the gif's animation only seems to work if you click on the photo - so click away:

45 years of calling for revisions to the SOFA

2011-10-17T11:05:00.003+09:00

This year there have been a handful of articles portraying Itaewon as dangerous and complaining about the 'shocking' behavior of foreigners there since the curfew for US soldiers was lifted last year. Now that a new curfew has been put in place, Itaewon is being portrayed as a place of peace and calm.

This is quite reminiscent of what happened in Hongdae in January 2007, when YTN broadcast a report on the outrageous behavior of foreigners, especially GIs, which was turning Hongdae into a "lawless zone." Shortly thereafter, USFK command banned U.S. soldiers from Hongdae, and YTN celebrated with a report which stated that, "Since U.S. soldiers stopped going to Hongdae, peace has returned to the area."

Despite there being SOFA in place, if the media place enough pressure, the US has shown that it will place bans, or, most recently, re-instate the curfew, which is wanted mostly for symbolic reasons than for any practical reason. The idea here is to assert sovereignty over the soldiers in an indirect way.

Well worth reading is Gi-wook Shin's paper, "The Media and the U.S.-ROK Alliance:
The South Korean Case," which can be found here. As he notes,

Observers of Korean affairs note that the Korean media have contributed to the rise of the South Korean public’s adversarial attitude toward the U.S. and its changing perceptions of the alliance with the United States.[...]

When excessive media attention is based on misinformation or overly normative judgments, there is ample potential to adversely affect otherwise sound relational dynamics within the alliance. Nonetheless, the perceived U.S. “insensitivity” propelled South Korean public resentment, thereby eventually forcing a U.S. concession.

The concessions referred to here are apologies for the 2002 accident and a ban on beef more than 30 months old in 2008.

Oddly enough, a group claiming responsibility for contributing to the 2007 Hongdae ban was Anti-English Spectrum:

2007.01
Personally went on location to shoot a report on the problems with Hongdae Club Day, the gathering place of low-quality foreigner English teachers, for the purpose of broadcasts and press exposure. Breaknews, YTN broadcast the report numerous times by the hour. A barrage of civil petitions were sent to Mapo Police Station, and after the news broadcast, the police announced that it would implement a crackdown.[YTN: "Hongdae, Foreigner 'Lawless Zone'" - links: English Korean]
2007.02
After our cafe’s broadcast went out on the atrocious behaviors of foreigners at Hongdae clubs, Commander Bell’s U.S. forces in Korea were completely prohibited from entering Hongdae clubs.
[YTN: "U.S. Forces Banned from Hongdae" - links: English Korean]

What's interesting is that though the SOFA may shield soldiers from Korean law - or at least that's how the Korean media describe it - the fact that they are subject to military command means that, through media pressure, soldiers' free time can be controlled to some degree through blanket curfews or bans. This is not the case with foreign teachers, hence AES's call for "continuous monitoring" of foreign teachers.

At any rate, with more calls to revise the SOFA in the air, it might be worth mentioning how it was first negotiated:

Yes, indeed - after the draft was released to the public, the media decried the fact that the Philippines had a "better" SOFA, and calls were made to revise the treaty. So Koreans have been calling for revisions to the SOFA since before it was even ratified.

Calls for the SOFA to be revised after it was ratified first occurred after 'Anti-American Hatefest '88', otherwise known as the XXIV Summer Olympics, but that's a story for another day.

An early article about migrant workers in Korea

2011-10-12T15:10:00.000+09:00

On September 23, 1989, the Korea Times, with great subtlety and grace, reported on an emerging social problem:

It may be difficult to discern, but I think a close reading of the article may turn up a bit of disgust at the 'hobos,' 'bums,' 'vagrants,' and 'loafers' infesting the country, and gives some idea of how migrant workers would be treated in the future. Actually, once the Industrial Trainee System (ITS) systematized their entry into the country two years later, it could be said that things got worse for them, since they were forced to pay outrageous recruiting fees to come to Korea, and then had their wages controlled and kept low (with forced 'saving plan' deductions making them even lower), while being considered 'trainees' (and so not subject to labor law protections) and only allowed to stay for two years, which was not enough time to pay back the loans back home they took out to pay the recruiting fees in the first place. That system - and the fact that working illegally could pay twice as much for the same work - essentially mass-produced a colony of illegal foreign workers, who amounted to 80% of Korea's 350,000 migrant workers in 2003. On the other hand, since the ITS did allow them to enter the country in (eventually) sizable numbers, it at least meant that not every south or southeast Asian seen on the street was considered to be illegal, as may well have been the case when the above article was written.

More of the development of the ITS can be found here.

Directions to Maple Tree House

2011-10-11T17:27:00.004+09:00

[Update:
It was great to meet readers last night, and in such a setting. Thanks again to Mr. Devolin and Senator Martin for hosting the event.]

A bit late, I realize, but anyone going to the dinner at the Maple Tree House tonight can catch bus 종로 11 (Jongno 11 - it comes every 5-8 minutes) from the bus stop near exit 2 of Gwanghwamun Station or from in front of the Press center (from exit 4 of City Hall Station) and go six or seven stops, respectively, and get off at 한국교육과정평가원 (Korea Institute of Curriculum & Evaluation), and then walk back a bit to the restaurant. In the photo below, the restaurant is at far right, and the bus stop would be at far left.

The true origin of pizza

2011-10-08T11:54:00.004+09:00

This is probably the best pizza commercial ever:

More videos related to this can be found here (and more commentary is here). There are lots of comments at youtube written by Koreans who clearly 'get it,' but there are also some from those who obviously don't understand that it's satire. Having recently read Hyung-il Pai's 'Constructing "Korean" Origins,' the bit about the archeological evidence made me laugh (as she argues that the use of archeology in Korean historiography has at times involved putting square pegs into round holes). At any rate, kudos to Mr. Pizza - it would be nice to see more like this.

Police arrest man for indecent assault against a foreign teacher

2011-10-07T08:51:00.005+09:00

Yonhap published this report yesterday evening:

Seosan Police issue warrant for man in his 50s who indecently assaulted an American native speaking instructor

On the 6th, police in Seosan, Chungcheongnam-do requested an arrest warrant for Mr. Kim (57), who is suspected of molesting (indecent assault) a foreign woman in an apartment elevator.

According to police, on September 23 at 10:05 pm in an apartment in Seosan, Mr. Kim indecently assaulted K (25), an American native speaking instructor, by groping her while riding in an elevator with her.

The police investigation found that he was drunk when he committed the crime, and he was caught after police followed up a report from the victim.

In other news, that the GI accused of raping a 19-year-old in Dongducheon has been put under Korean jurisdiction isn't surprising, but I found this to be interesting:

The U.S. military transferred him to South Korean investigators after the court issued an arrest warrant for the 21-year-old serviceman, identified as “K.”

He was immediately taken to a detention center and will remain in custody during trial, prosecutors said.

After the 1995 subway incident, activists demanded the ability to do what the Korean authorities are now doing, ie. keep US soldiers in Korean detention while the investigation and trial progress. When did the rules change to allow this?

Dinner Hosted by Maple Tree House and Canadian Parliamentarians

2011-10-06T14:34:00.005+09:00

Next week, Canadian parliamentarians BC Senator Yonah Martin and the Honourable Barry Devolin, Assistant Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, who are co-chairs of the Canada-Korea Parliamentary Friendship Group, will visit Korea.

On the evening of Tuesday October 11, 1at 7:00 pm, Mr. Devolin and Senator Martin will host a dinner reception for Canadian English teachers in Seoul at Maple Tree House, Jongno-gu, Samcheong-dong 31-1 (02-730-7461) for a casual exchange of ideas and open discussion on a range of issues over Korean BBQ. If you are a Canadian English teachers interested in the idea of having a meaningful discussion on Korea-related topics or issues of concern to English teachers in Korea, contact information is below:

RSVP: eslreception@gmail.com
Attendees: First 50 to reply
Cost: Free
Time: Tuesday, October 11, 19:00-21:00
Location: Maple Tree House (Samcheong-dong)

I can post more detailed directions to the restaurant next week.

An interesting comparison

2011-10-04T15:35:00.001+09:00

On October 2 two articles went up on the Kukmin Ilbo's website (and later in the hard copy paper itself) with in a minute of each other. The first was titled "'Unregistered instructors' abound in hagwons as part-time workers.'

The article introduces Ms. Lee, a 23 year old 4th year student at a private university who works at a hagwon for 3 hours a day, 5 nights a week teaching math to elementary and middle school students after her university classes. She'd previously worked there marking tests and cleaning, but when the math teacher suddenly left in May, she, with an engineering related degree, became the replacement. Saying that most parents don't realize she's a university student, and that there's no need to prepare classes, it's noted that since she's not registered with the education office, she is an 'illegal instructor.'

It notes that incidents of part time workers turning into unqualified hagwon instructors are increasing. "Though the government passed an amendment strengthening the hagwon law on August 15, there are still many blind spots in regard to unregistered instructors and illegal private lessons."

It then quotes a hagwon owner who says that the part time teachers are cheaper and don't have to be paid insurance. As it turns out, according to the laws, it's not impossible (though it would be difficult) for a university student to teach legally, but parents do not want university students teaching their children.

According to the law, hagwons should submit information about their new teachers to local education offices, and the information about the teachers (such as their qualifications), as well as hagwon fees are posted publicly. As the Ministry of Education notes, however, "In reality, enforcement of this is difficult."

Note the lack of judgement. These instructors, and the hagwons that hire them, are not condemned for doing things against the law. There is no worry that these illegal instructors are, say, not being checked for a criminal background, or are a threat to their students.

This stands in contrast to the other article the Kukmin Ilbo published yesterday:

Drugs, Molestation... Holes in supervision of 'delinquent native speaking instructors.'

In August Korean American Mr Kim (33), the operator of a language hagwon in Gangnam and former gang member wanted for first degree attempted murder was caught by police. Mr. Kim was wanted for a 1997 attempted murder charge in the US, came to Korea and taught SAT, Toeic and Toefl.

Drugs and molestation by native speaking instructors in hagwons are never ending. Education authorities are also strengthening the supervision of native speaking instructors but it's beyond their capacity to crack down on unregistered native speaking instructors.

Under a recently passed amendment to the hagwon law, when foreign instructors are hired, they must submit things like a criminal background check, a health check including marijuana and drug test results, and educational certificates. As well, the education superintendent will conduct training about Korean culture aimed at foreign teachers who have entered the country more than once. According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology there are currently 15000 hagwon native speaking instructors registered with city and provincial education offices.

The problem is the effectiveness of the law. This is because government's measure affects only native speaking instructors registered with city and provincial education offices. Even today, most native speaking instructors hired by large hagwons are instructors who received 'Conversation instruction (E2) visas' when they were hired. The E2 visa is for native speakers from 7 countries which use English as the native language such as the US, and even now in order to be issued the visa one must submit a health check which includes a marijuana test. If the hagwon law is introduced then the only difference is that a health check must be received once again.

However 'unregistered instructors' who do not go through the registration procedure are in fact a blind spot in their supervision. According to hagwons, if they bring instructors from countries which can receive an E-2 visa, they normally have to pay over 3 million won a month for housing and a round trip plane ticket. Large hagwons can hire formally registered instructors who have received an E-2 visa, but small hagwons which have issues with expenses have no choice but to hire unregistered instructors. Because unregistered instructors mostly enter on tourist visas, they don't have exacting E-2 visa-like verification. Even after coming to Korea, they can work as native speaking instructors unregistered without any sort of supervision.

On October 2, Byeon Geon-mo, head of Job and Consulting, a company which recruits native speaking instructors, said, "The phenomenon of parents prefering white instructors is clear and large hagwons find it difficult to normally hire non-white native speaking instructors." "Instructors with E-2 visas must be paid 50,000-60,000 won per hour, but because unregistered instructors are only paid 20,000-30,000 won per hour, small hagwons can't help but prefer them."

The difference between these two articles is pretty clear. They harken back to the two articles about Korean "fake native speakers" last December, one of which looked at the "sorrows" of Koreans who pretend to native speaking gyopos in hagwons, which stand in contrast to how "fake" or "unqualified" foreign instructors are treated by the media. To paraphrase B.R. Myers, just as foreigners are inherently evil, while Koreans can only do evil, so it is that Koreans are uniquely virtuous, while foreigners can only do the occasional good deed. Additionally, when Koreans do wrong, it was a mistake, or they had no choice, and understanding is needed.

Unlike western, foreign instructors, small hagwon owners "can't help" but hire illegal, unregistered foreign instructors, who then perpetrate the most outrageous crimes against Koreans who are powerless to stop them due to blind spots in the system. That these 'blind spots' are caused by Koreans who hire these teachers is not worth looking into - like the Koreans convicted of war crimes after World War II who were absolved by a government commission, they had no choice.

An even more stellar example is an article by the Weekly Donga in May, 2010 which looked at the fate of David Nam, a second generation Korean American who shot and killed a "white man in his 70s" as a teen in 1996 and fled to Korea where he eventually worked as an English teacher in a hagwon for the better part of a decade before being arrested in 2008 and extradited to the US where he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The title of the article? I kid you not: 'The "cruel fate" of the Philadelphia fugitive.' In it, it is suggested that the racism that Nam faced as a child from white children helped set him on the path that led him to "pull the trigger" (he didn't mean to kill the man, of course).

When Nam's arrest was reported on March 19, 2008, Yonhap quickly released a story titled "There is nothing to stop foreign criminals from fleeing to Korea," which ended with this:

With the private English education craze, there is an explosive increase in native speaking instructors, however a system to confirm their qualifications is not properly provided for, and as demand for native speaking instructors outstrips the supply, instances of people known to be unqualified being hired have occurred, so in fact there is a need to strengthen enforcement regarding this.

The Hankook Ilbo also published this cartoon the next day:

"Wanted" "Instructor"

As it turned out, Nam had dual citizenship and was under no obligation to get an E-2 - or any - visa, though his arrest led to calls for strengthening the E-2 visa (which had just had a criminal record check, drug and HIV check added to it three months earlier).

Also, the Kukmin Ilbo article states that "Drugs and molestation by native speaking instructors in hagwons are never ending" without giving a single example. None is needed, I guess, since it's simply 'known' to be true, but it might be worth pointing out that of the three reported cases I could find of foreign hagwon instructors being investigated for molesting students, the last took place in April, 2008, or three and a half years ago - so these crimes are hardly 'never ending.'

It's nice to see recruiters Job and Consulting back in another 'news' article (number 6!) depicting western English teachers as potential criminals in order to drum up business for themselves. While 'unregistered' Korean instructors have been a problem reported on occasionally by the media for some time, this is the first time the term has been applied to foreign instructors. You'd think with the vast array of crimes and flaws foreign instructors are already accused of there'd be no need to come up with something new, but the media (and recruiting companies hitting them up for some publicity) is nothing if not inventive and relentless in this regard.

As for the amendment to the hagwon law, I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but this summary says that

When hiring foreign instructors to work in hagwons, the law legislates that in addition to criminal record checks, health checks, and education certificates, that their passport, visa, and alien registration card also be confirmed.

I'll try to find out more about this.

The Constitutional Court rules on the Vandom case

2011-10-01T21:48:00.000+09:00

It was over two years ago that the Constitutional Court agreed to accept Andrea Vandom's petition to find mandatory in-country HIV tests for non-Korean non-citizens on E-2 visas unconstitutional. For more background, see these articles:

Foreign Teacher Renews Visa With No Health Checks
A letter criticizing Vandom and her response to it.
Teachers to Go to Court Over Visa Rule
Prejudice or ineptitude? Let court decide
Teachers Fight Over Unfair Visa Rule
Infected, Detected, Rejected in South Korea
Victims of HIV-related Travel Restrictions in Korea

Two days ago the court gave its decision - the petition was rejected. It should be pointed out, though, that "the Court has not ruled the tests are "constitutional" - it has rejected the petition."

A summary of the decision can be found here (in Korean).

Hopefully I can post a translation before too long, but for now, Benjamin Wagner's comments on the decision are worth reading:

At 2PM on Thursday the Court rejected Andrea Vandom's petition because in the Court’s opinion the immigration office didn’t force Andrea Vandom to do the HIV and drug tests "required" by the E-2 visa, they just requested her to do the tests. The Court said that just asking for the tests isn’t enough to constitute an action by the government that would violate the rights of a foreigner in Korea.

We had hoped the Court would decide the constitutionality of a rule that required foreigners to be tested for AIDS and drugs merely because they were foreigners and give us a clear ruling that such a practice is discriminatory under the Korean Constitution. We didn't get that but there is much that is positive about this case. First, the Court has NOT said that it is constitutional to conduct mandatory in-country HIV and drug tests on foreigners. Second, the Court’s decision cast a great deal of doubt on whether the tests are mandatory. The government's argument was that it had merely asked for Vandom's HIV status and it made no attempt to argue that mandatory rules were in place to force her (i.e., deportation, visa cancellation) to comply. If someone were to refuse a blood test and argue that a self-declaration of HIV status was all that was required, this case would offer support for that position.

In its decision the Court focused on regulations promulgated on April 3, 2009, which the immigration office calls a "self-health statement" or a "self medical check" (this link downloads a .hwp copy). The questionnaire looks like this (note that the "self" part is only in the Korean version, marked yellow):

The Court looked at questions 7 and 9, which ask:
7) Have you taken any Narcotic (Drug) or have you ever been addicted to alcohol in the last 5 years?

Yes □ (Narcotic name: ), No □

9) Are OR were you HIV (AIDS) positive?

Yes □, No □
So for E-2 visa holders who have taken AIDS tests, and repeat AIDS tests – some 80,000 of them over the past four years – the immigration office says (in this case at least) they were just asking for them, not requiring them.

I discussed this so-called "self-health check" in Feb. 2009 and mentioned how it disingenuously tried to pass off the tests as voluntary measures, pointing out "it appears to be a 'self-check' until you get to the bottom of the page," which reads:
"You MUST make Alien Registration at you District Immigration Office (OR Branch Office) within 90 days after your arrival in Korea. And when you register. You MUST submit your Health Certificate from the hospital which has been designated by the Korean government."
While examining the questionnaire, the Court, for whatever reason, does not take this binding language ("You MUST submit...") into consideration. And perhaps, according to the Court's opinion, this statement should be interpreted as a mere request since the Court's opinion indicates that it's not clear whether the government would take any action if an E-2 holder refused to comply with a hospital exam and just submitted a self-declaration.

Nevertheless, before anyone makes the decision to refuse the hospital tests they should be aware that (in 2009 at least) the immigration office has said the following:
※ 'Recruitment health exam' MUST include TBPE test(tests for drug abuse) and HIV test (tests for AIDS) results . . .

※Those that list history of drug usage, AIDS, or other disease the law defines as serious contagious disease in their self health verification are not allowed to be issued a visa issuance certificate

※Those that are found to have drug intake, AIDS or other disease the law defines as serious contagious disease in their health examination will have their stay cancelled and be deported.”
(This dire warning, to my knowledge, is no longer posted on the immigration’s website. I mentioned this in the NHRCK report (p. 8, FN 27) and there’s copy of it here.)

In 2010 the immigration office stated that persons with HIV will not be rejected for E-2 visas, will not have visa status canceled and "will not be forced to leave Korea." If this is indeed the case then a self-declaration should suffice.

Yet, keep in mind that Andrea Vandom, who made it known that she was not HIV positive, was threatened with deportation by the immigration authorities on numerous occasions for refusing to provide hospital test results – including this threat in the press:
"After the incident, the immigration office said the approval was a mistake by an official and that it would ask her to submit the necessary documents. The office added that it would deport her if she didn't heed the request."
The Court did not take these deportation threats into consideration, however, and focused on the so-called "self health check" document.

* * *

I'll conclude with a thought provoking statement from the case that Judge Kim Jong Dae gave in a separate (concurring) opinion. Judge Kim stated that
"[Under] our Constitution only 'nationals' [kukmin] are entitled to fundamental rights while the legal status of foreigners falls within the range of international law and international treaties . . ."
While the Constitution does indeed use the word "national/citizen" [kukmin] when referring to all fundamental rights, there are several Korean Constitutional Court decisions asserting that foreigners in the territory (and in one case outside of the territory) are in fact entitled to fundamental human rights under the Korean Constitution. Not to mention the repeat declarations by the Republic of Korea (“ROK”) to the international community, which state:
“The principle of respect for human rights and the principle of equality of individuals before the law, as enshrined in the [ROK] Constitution, also apply to foreigners.”
Judge Kim's opinion on foreigners' rights under the constitution is disappointing, but his validation that foreigners' rights are indeed guaranteed by international law and treaties (which is clearly stated in Art. 6(2) of the Korean Constitution) is very positive. However one wonders why this Court didn't go ahead and apply them in this case. If it had, it would have given us a clear ruling that requiring foreigners to submit to HIV tests which are "just intended to assure the parents" is a stigmatizing and discriminatory practice that is forbidden by international law and treaties.

In January 2010 the ROK announced to the world that it was abandoning HIV restrictions on foreigners and was congratulated for it by the UN [link]. In March of the same year, before the Human Rights Council, the ROK said that “early this year as part of the effort to eliminate all forms of discrimination” the ROK had revised restrictions on “foreigners living with HIV in compliance with UN recommendations.” [link to video]

This case should be seen as progress toward confirmation that HIV tests for foreigners on E-2 visas are voluntary. The Korean immigration office should make it clear that those who intend on treating them as such will suffer no adverse consequences.