Land of the giants

"They're so... beautiful!"

More on the photo here.

Guryong Maeul

Above is a shot of a house in Guryong Maeul, with the Tower Palace, Korea's tallest building, in the background. This article has more information about the village:

Against the backdrop of Tower Palace and other luxury residence complexes in affluent southern Seoul, tiny, shoddy shacks unevenly built with boards, vinyl and cloth stand side-by-side.[...]

Located at the foot of Mt. Daemo in Gaepo-dong, Guryong Village is one of the largest unlicensed shack clusters. Currently, some 1,300 households are in the village of about 491,000 square meters, according to the local district office.

The village was created around 1988 when the government removed illegal houses under redevelopment projects ahead of the Seoul Olympic Games. The people who lost their houses were driven into the village and built their shacks on private land owned by others. [...]

These unregistered houses don't have addresses and mail doesn't reach them. The residents pay their water and electric bills together and share toilets.

The village may be redeveloped at some point in the near future, as the rest of the article notes. At the moment, a year after the article was published, it's still standing.

Park Chung-hee's "act of terrorism" and other tales of saving Kim Dae-jung

I stumbled onto this article while looking up information about former US Ambassador to Korea Philip Habib. It's written by Donald A. Ranard, and tells the story of how his father, Donald L. Ranard, a Korea specialist at the State Department, and Ambassador Habib saved Kim Dae-jung's life in 1973 after the KCIA kidnapped him from Japan. As Kim related, he was on a boat in the East Sea with weights tied to his legs when the US intervened; Ranard clarifies this by noting that it was the actions of Habib and his father, a critic of US Korea policy, that saved him. Both "were... old Korea hands who had served as political counselors in the embassy in Seoul in the 1950s and 1960s," and knew that there was no time to ask Washington for instructions, and that "they were unlikely to get the kind of strong and unequivocal response needed to save Kim’s life."

In Seoul, Habib gathered the senior embassy and military staff. “I know how things work here,’’ he told them. “They’re going to wait 24 hours, and if we don’t say anything, Kim will be killed.’’ After the CIA station chief ascertained that the KCIA was indeed the culprit, Habib told his staff to contact every Korean of importance they knew. If they weren’t in their offices, he said, go to their homes. If it was the middle of the night, that was better still - then they would know the United States meant business. [...]

Habib himself met with the prime minister, Park’s number two, and told him straight: If Kim doesn’t come back alive, you are in deep trouble, although “trouble’’ was not the word that Habib, known for his scatological flair, used.

In Washington, my father worked on a statement with his deputy, Wes Kriebel. The wording would be critical. [...] Together, my father and Kriebel worked out the statement. In unusually strong language, it said the United States “deplored’’ the abduction, calling it “an act of terrorism.’’ Washington had a high regard for Kim and a great interest in his security. The statement invited Kim to the United States and called for his “imminent release.’’ There was no reference to the communist threat from the north or any of the other coded phrases that would tell Seoul, in essence: “We don’t like what you’ve done, but we’re not going to do anything about it.’’

Somehow I doubt such actions would be described as an "act of terrorism" today, and it's certainly strong language for an ally, though as the article notes (read the entire thing), Ranard may have released that statement by bypassing the state department's top tier.

This photo (originally posted here) was taken after his release:

Kim Dae-jung faced death again at the hands of Chun Doo-hwan, who blamed him for the Kwangju Uprising (even though he had been arrested before it took place):

He was again saved by diplomatic action by the U.S., and in return for Chun Doo-hwan commuting Kim's death sentence and eventually allowing him to leave Korea for the U.S., the U.S. would allow Chun to visit the White House.

I just stumbled across this interview with Richard Allen, former national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan, who talks about his role in saving Kim Dae-jung's life (the second time).

Initially, Chun wanted a weaker punishment in exchange for attendance at Reagan's presidential inauguration, Allen said. "That was when I knew I had gained the upper hand,'' he said. "Because it was a silly, ignorant mistake.'' Traditionally, no heads of state have ever attended the inauguration of the U.S. president because it is strictly a private affair, Allen said. The security advisor compromised, instead offering that Chun could be received at the White House.

At first, Chun wanted Kim to still serve life in prison, an offer that was "unacceptable'' to Allen and Reagan. He later lowered the charge again to exile, which was officially labeled as "going abroad for medical treatment,'' according to Allen.

This behind the scenes dealing was not known at the time, and the Korean public saw instead only scenes like these:

Chun in the White House.

Chun with an incredibly goofy smile on his face.

Chun with Ambassador Gleysteen.

Then-ambassador William Gleysteen's book Massive Entanglement, Marginal Influence also spends a great deal of time discussing the deal with Chun to save Kim Dae-jung's life. Gleysteen complained about the timing of Chun's visit to the U.S., and the fact that Reagan dispensed with the planned criticism of Chun's regime and instead celebrated their anti-communist alliance.


In one of the more interesting stories of the diplomatic wrangling involved in saving Kim before Reagan took office, Chun told Gleysteen that there were those in the military whose support he needed who wanted Kim dead, and that it would be much easier for him to save Kim in the face of those who wanted him dead if the U.S. refrained from criticizing a guilty verdict at his trial (not too difficult - the U.S. hadn't been publicly criticizing Chun anyways, and Horace Underwood wrote that the "strong undercurrent of anti-American feeling" at the time was "compounded... by platitudinous statements for U.S. domestic and world consumption, which, when transferred back here, come out endorsing the status quo.") In Washington, however, Secretary of State Muskie wanted to publicly condemn Kim's death sentence (perhaps to appease domestic supporters of human rights), which Gleysteen tried to explain would be counterproductive. In the end, Muskie met with Richard Allen, and asked that "Allen join him in a public denunciation. Allen declined after consulting the president-elect."

The Times article details Allen's response to criticism of Chun's visit:

"(His) was an official visit; it was nothing more than that. It was not a state visit nor was he given a state dinner or any other trappings,'' he said. "I made sure of that.''

Other criticisms were based on the belief that Chun was the first foreign head of state to visit the White House during the Reagan administration, granting him a sort of special recognition. Allen arranged the meetings, however, so that Chun would not be the first, but the second visitor, following the prime minister of Jamaica.

Something I didn't know was that even Kim Dae-jung had apparently been unaware of the deal made to save his life [Update - this is considered highly unlikely; see below]:

The secretive nature of the exchange for Kim's life prevented the truth from being leaked, which led to Kim openly criticizing Reagan for "coddling dictators,'' such as Chun.

"So some years later, not even having met Kim Dae-jung in the first place, it occurred to me on one of my many visits to Korea that I should go to see him and straighten him out,'' Allen said. The former security advisor made a trip to Yeouido to meet Kim and his political party, to speak with him personally on the matter. After the details were relayed, Allen said the former president asked, surprised, if the story was true. After reconfirming, Allen was asked to visit his office the next day and the story was told publicly to the press.

"He sat next to me and was really straightforward,'' Allen said. "I really admire that kind of courage. Instead of perpetuating a myth, he obviously wanted to destroy it.''

Not that the myth of U.S. involvement in Kwangju has gone away, of course. It's necessary to separate the U.S. actions (or lack thereof) during the Uprising (taking into account that Chun controlled the newspapers and actively tried to paint the U.S. as sharing responsibility for Kwangju) from the U.S. response to Chun post-Kwangju, which seemed (and was in many ways) supportive of Chun, as this cable suggests:


More is said about this here, and it's worth noting Gleysteen's assertion that the missionaries could "not be counted on for support", especially considering that Mark Peterson wrote about a meeting between US citizens in Korea and the embassy in 1980 where Horace G. Underwood warned that “Chun is wrapping himself in the American flag. If the United States doesn’t do something about it, it will have ‘hell to pay’ in the future.”

The future was not long in coming. On December 9, 1980 the US Information Service in Kwangju was firebombed, starting a tradition of attacking symbolic targets of US influence and power.


1982: Busan American Information Center arson
1985 5.23-25: USIS in Seoul occupied by 73 students demanding US apology for Kwangju
1985 11.4: 14 students occupy US Chamber of Commerce in Seoul

The US Chamber of Commerce was last attacked by activists in 2002.

As for Kim Dae-jung, he spent three years in the U.S. before returning to Korea in 1985. It was only at some point after his return that he was finally able to visit the Mangwol-dong cemetery, where those killed during the Kwangju uprising were originally buried.


While anti-Americanism in Korea reached its peak in 1989, another spike occurred in 2002, at a time when Kim was president. While I've looked at the events of 2002 before (here and here), I'll leave further comment on it for another day.

Korean Queer Culture Festival this Saturday

In 2000, Hong Seok-cheon became Korea's first openly gay celebrity. After coming out, however, he was fired from his broadcasting jobs in TV and radio. This November 2000 article about Hong also interviews gay rights activist Seo Dong Jin, who

was nearly kicked out of the elite Yonsei University a few years ago for organizing a support group for gay and lesbian students. In 1997 he tried to convene a gay film festival, but local authorities cut off the electricity. The Queer Film and Video Festival only got the green light in 1998 after censors relaxed their conditions.

By 2005, however, a gay couple was featured in a TV advertisement, and in 2006 Korea's best selling movie ever at that point (12 million tickets, meaning 25% of the population saw the film in theatres), The King and Clown, was also its biggest surprise hit - especially considering that the drama centered around a clearly gay relationship. 2006 also saw the release of a film aimed at teens which featured transsexuals, transvestites, and gay characters [Dasepo Girls], and another Joseon-era film released in 2008, A Frozen Flower, featured a gay love triangle and was a moderate hit.

An openly gay couple is now focused on in a TV drama for the first time, SBS's “Beautiful Life,” and in this May 29 interview with the writer of the series, Kim Soo-hyun, she makes clear that her "main goal is to make homosexuality a subject that is no longer taboo." As this article notes, "Its viewer ratings exceeded 20 percent on May 23 when the two came out of the closet, pointing to Koreans’ growing interests in the once-social taboo." Not everyone is happy with this, however:

With more soap operas and other entertainment programs shedding light on homosexuality, conservative religious groups have begun stepping up on criticism against what they call the “glamorization of gays and lesbians” by TV program producers seeking to draw a larger viewership.

[According to t]he Korean Association of Church Communication (KACC) ... “Everybody knows that homosexual relationships are ‘not a social norm.’" The organization then said it is not right for the society to generalize and approve homosexuality, stressing that a series of recent TV programs have overly beautified gays and homosexual love, negatively affecting the acceptable growth of adolescent sexuality.

“The problem with soap operas featuring gays is that homosexuality concerns only a small number of individuals. Most of us have nothing to do with it,” KACC spokesman Shim Man-sup said. “Gays can pursue their own lifestyle privately. But when homosexuality is highlighted and glamorized by TV programs, it not a private matter anymore. Broadcasters must stop commercially exploiting the issue for the common good.”

I hope they start complaining that many dramas glamorize wealth and greed, since living in mansions "concerns only a small number of individuals." But then, considering most protestant ('Christian') churches here require that their members pay tithes amounting to 10% of their income, I doubt they have many concerns about widespread avarice.

The Korea Times also recently reported that

The Constitutional Court is expected to soon decide whether Article 92 of the Military Law stipulating the punishment of homosexual soldiers is a violation of their constitutional rights. [...]

Jeong Yol, one of the handful who came out of the closet, said he was tormented by the military which has defined homosexuality as a mental disease. "I was sent to a hospital where people beat me, mocked me and ordered me to harass a man," he recalled. [...]

There have been several unsuccessful attempts to overcome such obstacles here. In 2006, gay riot police officer YuJung Min-seok refused to return to his post after a month of holiday, claiming that the masculine and oppressive military culture was offensive to him. In 2008, another riot policeman Lee Gye-deok requested the Ministry of National Defense to remove him from the riot police squad because the "heterosexual-dominant culture has constantly suppressed gay staff members."

One hopes the Constitutional Court makes a humane decision, but in the past conscientious objectors have been ruled against because national defense is considered to be of overwhelming importance. At any rate, the fact it is being considered by the court is a good sign, and you would think that, since movies and television shows depicting gay relationships have become more numerous, and some have been popular, that Korean society is becoming more accepting of homosexuality.

According to the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, Korea's results on this topic were the opposite of what I expected:

According to this survey, support for homosexuality in Korea dropped 7% between 2002 and 2007, during a time when the best selling Korean film at the time featured a clearly gay relationship. Perhaps the backlash expressed by the churches above is felt by more people that expected; I'd be curious to see the results in the next survey.

With this regression in mind, I post this message from the Amnesty G48 chapter of Amnesty International Korea:

This year there will be a parade in downtown Seoul at 4:30 pm on June 12, 2010 to mark the 11th annual Korean Queer Culture Festival. Amnesty G48, an official chapter of Amnesty International Korea, is calling for people to join its section of the parade to celebrate the message of solidarity with LGBT communities in Korea and demand human rights for all.

The Korean Queer Culture Festival began back in 2000 and has its humble beginnings as a small two-day gathering around Sinchon and Daehangno. It moved to Itaewon and Gwanghwamun in 2002 in order to attract more attention from the mainstream public before settling in its current location, Jongno, in the very heart of Seoul. Over time, participation from a number of organizations and politicians has grown and the event has developed into a 10-day festival with a diverse program.

This year the program offers participants many ways to get involved including parties, lectures, exhibitions, a film festival, parade and many other special events.

The parade itself begins at 4:30pm and runs until 5:30pm.

11:00 Booth Opening (Free Face Painting, Cosmetic, Fitting Room)
12:00 Booth Exhibition (until 6PM)
15:30 Opening Ceremony
16:30 Street Parade (The path: Berlin Square -> Samil Bridge ->
Jongno1ga -> Jongno2ga -> Berlin Square)
17:30 Congratulatory Ceremony (Until 6:30PM)
20:00 After Party (Until 5:00 AM)

*For more information on the Korean Queer Culture Festival, visit the festival’s official website.

*Register to join Amnesty G48’s LGBT Solidarity section of the parade at its Facebook page.

For further reading, Korea Beat's Gay and Lesbian Life in Korea category is worth checking out.

Nextour offers these reasons for traveling:





One of them seems a little more chaste than the other.

Putting SMEs in a more 'positive light'

It seems some middle school textbooks have the nerve to make companies that pollute the environment look bad, according to the Joongang Ilbo:

Korean textbooks that negatively portray small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are expected to be revised by the end of July, the education ministry said Tuesday, in a move to prevent students from shunning jobs with such businesses.[...]

One ninth-grade textbook mentions a small dye factory that discharged contaminated water because it could not afford to run its purification equipment, causing a nearby rice field to dry up. Another textbook by a different publisher wrote that SMEs face financial difficulties because large corporations do not pay subcontractors on time. Such descriptions could also give big companies a bad name, Kim said.

“We have expressed our concern to the authors and received verbal responses that they recognize there is room for misinterpretation,” said Yoo Dae-gyoun, senior supervisor for the division of textbook planning at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. “The authors are currently thinking of ways to depict the same material in a more positive light.”

What's next? The military complaining that textbooks that talk about the killing and torture of citizens by the governments of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan make careers in the military look bad? ('Chapter 17: The 1980 Kwangju citizen surplus reduction.') One wonders what lobbying took place by the federation of small and medium businesses. Also, we wouldn't want to make big companies look bad in textbooks, considering how the media is always tearing them down a peg.

[Sound of crickets.]

Oh right, it was the LA Times, not a Korean newspaper, that broke the story of Samsung suing Michael Breen for a satirical article he wrote (which was quickly followed by the suit being dropped) Not that Korean newspapers are the only ones afraid of Samsung. One wonders what what they think of this.

Isn't corporate rule grand?

The Joongang Ilbo also reports that the Economic and Social Development Commission has said it plans to reduce the average annual labor time in Korea by up to 10 percent, down from the OECD high of 2,256 hours per year (in 2008) to around 1,800 or 1,900 hours. Don't start the countdown just yet, however - they don't plan to start this until 2020. Only ten more years!

Writings about protectorate-era Korea

When I saw the title of this Korea Times article by Robert Neff the other day, "Emperor's secret letter over protectorate treaty," I assumed it would tell the tale of Homer Hulbert's futile attempt to convey a letter from Emperor Gojong to the U.S. in order to get America to help Korea in 1905. In the end, he was ignored by the state department for a few days until the anticipated protectorate treaty was signed, allowing them to wash their hands of Korea. A fairly detailed telling of this story can be found in Frederick McKenzie's Korea's Fight For Freedom (this section of the book tells the story of the signing of the protectorate treaty - do a page search for 'Hulbert' to jump to the story of his mission.)

Instead, Neff's article looks at the story of Douglas Story, a well-known war correspondent who came to Korea in early 1906 to see if rumors that the protectorate treaty was illegitimate were true:

It was while he was at one of these homes that a member of the palace arrived at 4 a.m. and presented Story with a message from the emperor. In order to avoid its interception by the Japanese, the servant had smuggled it out of the palace hidden in his baggy trousers.

The message, which was dated Jan. 29, 1906, declared emphatically that the emperor had not signed or approved the treaty with Japan. Furthermore, the emperor "invite[d] the great powers to exercise joint protectorate over Korea for a period not exceeding five years, with respect, to the control of Korean foreign affairs." The message was signed with the emperor's own seal.

Realizing what he possessed, Story confided in a fellow European, possibly Ernest T. Bethell ― the editor of the Korea Daily News. He then copied the letter, sealed it, and left it in a safe spot. He then returned to his hotel only to discover that his room had been ransacked and his personal belongings searched, presumably by the Japanese secret service. This was not an uncommon occurrence.

The rest of the article tells of how Story managed to smuggle the letter out of Korea. Mention is also made of Thomas F. Millard, a correspondent for the New York Times whose post-protectorate treaty articles from 1908 about Korea are well worth reading (and looking at for the photos). Links to pdfs are below:

"JAPAN'S REAL ATTITUDE TOWARD "THE OPEN DOOR"; Administration of Korea an Illustration of the Methods by Which Japan Seeks to Crowd Out Competitors and Secure for Herself a Monopoly in Business." May 10 1908. [Link]

"High-handed Methods by Which Japan Has Seized Every Office of Administration and Left Koreans a People Without a Country." May 17, 1908. [Link]

"KOREA PAYING THE COST OF JAPAN'S "REFORMS"; When the Japanese Came the Country Was Out of Debt--Now It Is Deeply in Debt" May 24, 1908. [Link]

While much has been made of the protectorate treaty, it seems clear now that Korea had, for all intents and purposes, lost its sovereignty when thousands of Japanese troops poured into Korea at the beginning of the Russo Japanese War in February 1904.


On February 23, 1904, after holding out for a week while soldiers surrounded the palace, the Korean cabinet signed a treaty of alliance with Japan which allowed transit to Manchuria, rights to build or complete railways from Busan to Uiju, and the right to occupy strategic points in Korea should encroachment by a third Power or an internal disturbance necessitate it. In addition to this agreement, another agreement in August, 1904, allowed the Japanese to place advisers of their choosing in the ministries of foreign affairs and finance, making it quite clear that the protectorate treaty of November 1905 simply made official the control over Korea that Japan already had.

The story of Dr. Ernst Kisch

I picked up Philip Deane's 1953 book Captive in Korea last summer at a used bookstore in Montreal, and am glad I did. It's a well written account of Deane's almost three years in North Korean / Chinese-run prison camps during the Korean War. Here's one excerpt that has stayed with me since I first read it:

Of all the tragedies of this internment Dr. Ernst Kisch’s was, perhaps, the most ironical. Until the Anschluss in 1938 he had been a fashionable physician in Vienna. His was a brilliant clientele of people, who liked his knowledge and ready wit. And then he found himself forced to wear, sewn on his clothes, the yellow star that marked him as a Jew. He was put in Dachau, and afterwards in Buchenwald. In 1939, some friends – diplomats – managed to get him released. The tired, almost broken man, was offered employment in the Shanghai Methodist Hospital, from where he went to the American Methodist Hospital in Kaeson[g], right on the 38th Parallel in Korea.

At five a.m. on the morning of June 25, 1950, North Korea tommy-gunners jumped into his room and dragged him, in his underwear, to the prison. There he found other members of the American Methodist Mission. All day, as is the rule in Oriental gaols, Dr. Kisch was made to squat. He was shouted at, starved, and taken to the lavatory only once a day. Then, packed into a cattle truck with so many people that one could sit only with legs drawn up right under the chin, he was made to wait for days in Seoul station, forbidden to get out, even with United Nations planes strafed the sidings. Miraculously he was not hit, and arrived finally in the dilapidated school where he treated me. Dr. Kisch’s country, Austria, is not a member of the United Nations. Even in the times of her empire, she had never attacked Korea in any way. Dr. Kisch, who for a pittance had devoted his skill to the service of the Koreans, who had been imprisoned by the Nazis for being a Jew, was now imprisoned because he was not a communist. During the captivity his greatest hardship, he said, was not being allowed to use his knowledge in curing anyone. Dr. Kisch, who survived Dachau and Buchenwald, died of starvation in North Korea.

Subway station car mystery solved

The other day I posted this photo of two cars on display at Line 9's Express Bus Terminal station and wondered how they got there:


As it turns out, Brian left a comment linking to a Donga Ilbo article with the answer. It notes that this is the first time cars have been displayed in a subway station in Seoul, and people were curious as to how they got 4 stories underground. As it turns out, on May sixth Kia got Metro 9 to allow them to take a special train with freight cars and brought the cars disassembled into pieces small enough to fit through the sliding doors (and to be taken up the escalators). They had only a window of three hours from 1:30 to 4:30 am, and it took them 5 days in total to move and then reassemble the cars in the station. Pretty nifty, but it seems like a lot of work just to advertise a car. On the other hand, I'm sure it involved just as much effort and money as filming a TV commercial would. I wonder if we'll see more of this type of thing (though most stations are not as large as Line 9's Express Bus Terminal station). Just for fun, here's a shot of it two years ago, as it was being built:

Broken in half

We are one!

Students in a grade 5 class at my school made these North Korea-related posters recently (post Cheonan sinking). They all stress the one-ness of Korea and there's nothing negative to be found about North Korea in any of them. The most elaborate is this comic strip-style poster:


Here are a few panels close-up:

'We split up: 'This is my land!"

[But] We are one minjok (race/ethnicity/nation)

[We have] different [kinds of] jobs; farming, service jobs.

We are one minjok.

It goes on to show North Koreans starving and South Koreans sending them food, and ends with this:

Let's not fight, become one, and let our country be reborn.

I thought the break down of the different jobs North and South Koreans hold was interesting. Here are a few others:

Now is the time to meet.

We want reunification.

We are one.

We want reunification! We don't want another Korean War!

Let's reunify now

I can think of something else that's also broken in half, but I imagine putting the Cheonan on one of these posters wouldn't be too cheerful. I'm rather curious as to when the demonizing of North Korea stopped in schools (older people have mentioned being told the North Koreans had tails), and the 'We are one, we want reunification' education began. I remember at the hagwon I worked at in 2001 the kids wrote letters (in English) to kids in the north, many of which mentioned 'I like Starcraft.' One imagines the fate of those letters was the same as the letters taken up on the space shuttle in the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes an astronaut, where we see a canister labeled "Children's Letters to God, To Jettison." At the time (2001) it was still illegal to display a North Korean flag (though I wondered where the right wing groups got the ones they burned from), and when I had kindergarten kids color flags from around the world (including the DPRK's), some of the (Korean) teachers didn't know what flag it was.

Peace, quiet and safety

I hope everyone enjoyed the peace and quiet yesterday. I certainly did. I was getting a little tired of the noise - and sight - pollution.


Not everyone agrees, I guess:

As I entered a subway station on my way to work yesterday morning, I witnessed the local elections being treated with contempt. As I stepped down the stairways, I saw hundreds of candidate name cards had been thrown on the floor. Campaigners started giving these cards to voters at the station early in the morning, but apparently no one bothered to look at them. The voters don’t care to think about the elections. Inside the station and on the platform, it was easy to spot “election materials” receiving disdainful treatment. It was a scene I’m sure was repeated across the nation, and it simply depicts a pitiful portrait of the June 2 local elections.

Uh, do you think that 'contempt' was because those people had already received the same cards eleven times over the past few weeks? This article doesn't exactly make it clear what the hours were supposed to be for broadcasting speeches and jingles from trucks and vans:

According to the National Election Commission (NEC), candidates running for mayors, provincial governors, district chiefs and city or province council members can use only one speaker. They can make speeches from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. with car speakers and from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. with portable speakers. "For recorded songs or speeches, we reduced the hours to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. starting in 2010 to mitigate inconveniences," an NEC official said.

I'm surprised to see the DP did so well. It's nice to see LMB get a bit of a kick in the pants (I've never been a fan).

Moving from speakers to CCTV, I'm sure everyone's seen these posters telling citizens that if they're worried about crime happening to kids on the way to school, they should tell them which streets have CCTV cameras installed. [Correction made]

Seoul is good!

I guess the CCTV cameras will help police identify killers and kidnappers... after their victims are already dead or missing.

Speaking of safety, has anyone else noticed police in subway stations lately?


I've never noticed police at local stations before, but now I see them every day. I wonder if their presence is related to this:

Oh found out Kim was a spy in June 2007, but continued to supply her with information including contact information for officials working at Seoul Metro’s main command and control center and at the control center for subway line No. 1, which cuts through the heart of the Korean capital. Oh also allowed Kim to access reports filed by late-shift workers. Authorities here feared that such information could be used to plan terrorist attacks on the Seoul subway.

On a more light-hearted note, I took this photo in Express Bus Terminal's Line 9 station:


How exactly did they get two cars down into the station?

Oh, and it seems 'The Housemaid' is no longer being shown with English subtitles. And in mentioning that, I can segue into this article about Seo Woo.

Unqualified English teachers in Korea - a tradition dating back 127 years

At his RAS talk last week, Robert Neff mentioned that an article on early English teachers during the Joseon dynasty was to come out this week. As he notes on the Marmot's Hole (check out the photo there), here it is. I enjoyed the reference to the unqualified teacher, who was, in fact, the first 'native speaker' English teacher in Korea:

In September 1883, the Korean government, under the advice of Paul G. von Mollendorff, a German advisor to the Korean court, established Dongmunhak, an interpreter school, in Seoul.

English was initially taught by two Chinese instructors who had studied in the United States and came to Korea with Mollendorff. They were soon joined by Thomas E. Hallifax, a 41-year-old Englishman who had come to Korea to establish a telegraph system but became a teacher by default.[...]

[T]he success of the school is somewhat debatable. It has been disparaged as a tool of the Chinese government (Mollendorff was appointed by the Chinese) and staffed by unqualified teachers.

Hallifax's qualification as a teacher was questioned not only by his students but by the small foreign community as well. Some described him as "agreeable, clever, and thoroughly conversant with the Far East" but others derided his checkered past noting that his "attainments were self-acquired" and he was nothing more than "a common sailor."

To be fair, Hallifax, prior to coming to Korea, had served as a sailor for only two years but had taught English part time in Tokyo for four years. Later, in 1895, he became the assistant headmaster of the Government School for Foreign Languages in Seoul ― a position he held until his death in 1908.

Obviously, he had some teaching ability but some of the Korean students felt betrayed. [...] Yi Sung-na, a former student at Dongmunhak who had quit, claim[ed] Halifax had "disgraced us (the students)."

It's a great misfortune that Korea has been beset by such low-quality foreign teachers for so long. It seems the first English lesson in Korea took place in 1816.

Also worth looking at at the Marmot's Hole is this post by Robert Neff featuring text of a letter describing Seoul in 1952, as well as contemporary photos.