Gusts Of Popular Feeling: Xenophobia or Nationalism

Showing posts with label Xenophobia or Nationalism. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making concrete plans.

Dividing up the leaflets before our earnest work.

Smoking a cigarette after hard work....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 7, 2005

"Anti English Spectrum"

July 24, 2006

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

October 16, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, March 20, 2017

Strange bedfellows

[Update, March 30: Gord Sellar has written about this article as well.]

[Update, March 21: I added a link to the Rape Crisis Center (hat tip to John Power), which is in Daehangno, (not Itaewon). I also added explanations to two photos and added two more photos to illustrate attitudes toward white women.]

Original post:

The other day Robert Neff discovered an article titled "Who Gets Sick From Yellow Fever? What Carceral Feminism Does Not See." To answer the obvious question, carceral feminism "is used to define any feminist who believes the criminal justice system should protect and serve women who are victims of rape and other forms of male violence". The term is used by those who criticize such an approach, as the author of this article does. To understand why, we start in... Itaewon.

When the dark glides over, it masks the emptied beer cans and vomit stains, and brightens up with neon lights to welcome couples and tourists to trans bars, massage parlors, 'Homo Hill,' and hip-hop clubs.

Thus Itaewon is seething with sex of all sorts. Though she does end the paragraph by saying that "Itaewon has rebranded itself as a hotspot for foodies, tourism, and nightlife," tales of streets full of Koreans dining at upscale eateries and drinking in craft beer bars is not the first impression she wants to create. [For more on the gentrification of US military camp towns, see this interview with Geoffrey Cain.]

One of its staple landmarks 'Hooker Hill' echoes its legacy of sex workers, criminals, and foreigners. It is in Itaewon that I first overheard young white men talk about their sexual conquests of 'tight Asian pussies.'

Sadly, she seems unaware that its been 12 years now since the wretched hive of white scum and villainy expanded to Hongdae. Or as the Herald Gyeongje put it in 2005, Hongdae was "an area hot with youthful passion that has degenerated from being mixed up with foreigners," which led to certain rumors that caused great bitterness.

Yellow fever, however, is not a simple matter of preferences. During my time working at the Seoul Rape Crisis Center, one of the more well-established response service in Korea, I saw how yellow bodies silently absorbed this cost: sexual assault of Korean women by white men, mostly American, constituted at least a third of the Center’s cases.

That's a rather shocking statistic. This is partly because this list (#21) of registered, non-gyopo foreigners in Korea (by city / district / province / county) as of the end of December last year (from the Korean Immigration Service's website; a list of registered gyopo is here (#41)) reveals that the population of registered foreigners from Western countries with the largest populations in Seoul consisted of 9738 men; for Gyeonggi-do, there were 5929 men. As those from other Western countries might add up to another 1000 or so, that would make for a total of 16,667. This would not include tourists, however. This chart (#3), showing the total number of foreigners in Korea in December 2016 by country and visa category, shows that there were 14,027 men from North America and 3163 men from Australia (the two largest Western countries represented in that category by far) who were in Korea on a B2 Tourist visa. We have no idea where they stayed or what percentage were white; among registered foreigners, gyopo make up about a third of Americans and half of Canadians. I would imagine an estimate of 15,000 white male tourists from these countries being in the capital area would be a very generous one indeed. Also not included among registered foreigners are US military. There were said to be 29,300 in Korea in 2014, With the closure of bases near the DMZ and expansion of Camp Humphries in Pyeongtaek, I'm not sure how many are in the capital area now. Let's be generous and say 20,000.

Thus, 16,600 registered male westerners + 15,000 male western tourists + 20,000 US military = 51,600 western males in the capital area, the population of which is 10,290,000 (for Seoul) and 12,342,448 (for Gyeonggi-do) for a grand total of 22,633,000, which should be divided in half for the male portion of the population (11,317,000). 51,600 thus makes up 0.46% of the male population of the capital area, and yet somehow they are responsible for a third of the Rape Crisis Center's annual cases, suggesting they rape at a rate 66 times more than their percentage of the population. This is, frankly, unbelievable. Perhaps this center is a branch in Itaewon; referring to it as "the Seoul Rape Crisis Center," however, gives the impression that it is not a branch. Needless to say, I'm rather skeptical. [Update: A link to the center's site is here; it's in Daehangno, so my skepticism just increased by a few orders of magnitude (hat tip to John Power).]

Just who are these dangerous, sex-crime-committing white men?

From what I could gather, they were recent college graduates from the US who had come to Korea to ‘make easy money’ (read: teach English in one of many hak-wons, or tutoring academies) and ‘experience the nightlife.’ [...] With the constant influx of young, college-educated white men in Korea, yellow fever flows back to the East.

Ah, so it's English teachers, then. Her problem with "carceral feminism" is that these men cannot be incarcerated due to the freedom their American passports and globalization gives them:

If the American state can prove its neoliberal conviction through deploying Korea as an example, so too can whiteness assert its masculinity by consuming ‘tight Asian pussies.’ Under white gaze, Korean girls, available and desperate, come with no strings attached; when there are strings, they can be severed easily by flying back to the US.[...]

The normalization and prevalence of sexual violence against Korean women by white men demonstrate the material consequence of the unequal distribution of mobility.[...] The Rape Crisis Center’s record quantifies this kind of assault as a third of its annual cases[. ...] These assaults often take place in bars, clubs, and motels of areas like Itaewon. Survivors rarely know their assailants, and do not recall enough identifiable details to file a report. Those who are able to make a report find themselves in a dead end when they find out that their assailants have left the country. White men come and go–untraceable and unaccountable. [...]

He has been removed, but at his own will, and his ability to return cannot be removed from his whiteness and Korea’s neoliberal development. Without the assailant to prosecute, carceral approaches can neither support individual survivors, nor address the root cause. The cycle of white men leaving behind survivors continues.

There's nothing wrong with examining structural reasons for a phenomenon that most certainly does occur. And to be sure, "carceral approaches" face limitations when their targets can flee the country with relative ease. But there there is not enough of the concrete here (beyond the exaggerated statistic above), and readers are faced with this:

Interrogating the process through which yellow fever becomes embedded in Korea’s cultural economy presents a compelling case study of the intersections of neoliberal development and racialized colonial desire. [...]

[We must move] beyond yellow fever as fantasy. To resist the fantasy, we must begin by restoring its bodies–bodies that echo the history of American GIs and the women they used up and left–and reckon with the forces of globalization, borders, misogyny, and colonial desire that lie at its heart.

And so we deal with embeddedness, intersections, colonial desire and bodies. There may be another academic term missing from all of this, however. That these "assaults often take place in bars, clubs, and motels of areas like Itaewon" and that the women "do not recall enough" suggests perhaps that they were drinking with these men. The reason they might be drawn to them? The US is the land of milk and honey for these women:

For women, dating white men is a means through which they can access this fantasy. A friend of mine recounted her peers’ reaction when she revealed her partner to be a white American. “That’s the dream!” they exclaimed. In this dream, life is prosperous, exciting, and stable. The white man lives this dream and, thus, the proximity to him brings the dream closer. The white man becomes the dream.

These women are portrayed as being deluded by the fantasy of America. Which might suggest why the author never uses the term "agency," since she basically robs these women of it by portraying them as nothing but victims, both of white men and of their own delusions which prompt them to approach these likely rapists in the first place. Korean girls, she says, are "available and desperate," but this sounds more like a description of Korea decades ago (at least regarding the use of 'desperate').

And when she writes that "their immobile bodies absorb the cost of whiteness," I'm reminded of cases like this, and the way in which white women are perceived by some Korean men who want to "ride the white horse" and post tips on "hunting" white or other foreign women. One gets the idea, however, that Koreans can only serve as victims, and not perpetrators.

(Both scenes are from the 2003 film "Please Teach Me English")

What is rather disturbing is the degree to which the attitude above, particularly in demonizing white men and portraying Korean women as dupes and victims, is similar to others we've seen before, such as this:

It's always just sad that some thoughtless women sympathize with foreigners who they don't realize have approached them with this (sexually demeaning) way of thinking about Korean women." "This is a place where people who are worried about this and who want to make an issue of foreigners who demean Korean women as if they are all cheap whores."

The place in question is the Anti-English Spectrum cafe, and the writer was 'Bba'allyuchi,' its founder. The cafe was founded during the 2005 English Spectrum Incident, and responded to women seen dancing with foreign men in a less-than favorable fashion: "Some online articles and the Anti-English Spectrum cafe branded us as whores, yanggongju, and pimps." Likewise, for members of the cafe and critics of these women, there was a corollary to "tight Asian pussy": "but later when a Korean guy takes her home, he'll know by her massively stretched hole he's been tricked and she's a whore."

Such criticism has appeared more recently, of course. A 2012 report on MBC portrayed women in relationships with white men in a negative manner (complete with an AIDS scare), and the producer said that "the piece intended to portray 'Korean women who are out of their sense and get involved in these kinds of affairs.'" He also said that "We need to be awakened and try to change this culture," NoCut News that same year published its 12-part "The Reality and Twisted Values of Some White Men" Series, while the next year JTBC described foreign men who try to pick up Korean women as having committed "sex crimes" and even dramatized a 'pick up' manual:

In a similar manner, the internet tabloid Ilyo Sisa also published a tour de force in the summer of 2012 titled "'Tips for targeting Korean women' spread by foreign English instructor spreads quickly: Treat them as 'sex toys' and throw them away when they're finished":

The disparaging of Korean women by foreign English instructors and foreigners living in Gangnam or Itaewon is not something that just started yesterday. White men who deliberately approach Korean women for sex or to defraud them commit all kinds of illegal acts against Korean women. Even worse, anyone can commonly hear about incidents of illegal drug taking and rape by foreigners. However, claims that the cause of these incidents is a national character which is lenient towards white people are gaining traction. We are publicizing detailed excerpts of some posts from "Anti English Spectrum," a blog which denounces the barbarity of foreigners.[...]

Though Korean men have a more outstanding financial capability than white men, Korean women absorbed in white supremacy prefer white men more and think they can learn English for free and choose white men without hesitation. Among northeast Asians (Japan, China, Korea), Korean women are considered the easiest and fastest to sleep with[.] [...]

Because of the open sexual consciousness Korean women have towards white men, there are countless instances of harm done to them. One woman became pregnant after a one night stand with a white man she met in a club, and after finding out contacted the white man but he had already left the country and she decided to get an abortion.[...]

Another woman's case was even more serious. C, a university student who had dated a foreign man once, said in a media interview, "Foreigners' habitual fraud can be seen as charming. They often move in together with a girl and pretend to be her lover and then pocket the rent and deposit and leave the country, and a girl I know who dated a foreign man had a health check and was diagnosed with AIDS and sank into depression." "Most of them (white men) think of Korean woman as targets for one night stands, and there are almost none who think of having a romantic relationship with them. When something happens with a girl, they get afraid and evade responsibility by changing their phone number beforehand or by leaving the country and disappearing."

The tone of these such articles vacillates between portraying these women as victims of dastardly white men or as clueless dupes who are far too willing to trust white men (and thus are responsible for their predicament and deserve criticism (or worse)). I'll leave it to the reader to decide where "Under white gaze, Korean girls [are] available and desperate" fits.

As for depicting them as victims of white men who would rape them, such one dimensional portrayals can be found outside of newspapers or websites:

(From the 2008 TV show "Sexy Mong Returns," billed as "an episode involving sexual assault by foreign English teachers, something that has been a social issue for some time." The rapist is in fact a Korean man who pretends to be a foreigner because women like foreigners more... but he still needs to drug and rape them for some reason.)

(From the 2008 TV show "Shin Hae-cheol's Damage." The episode, "Foreign Instructor and Club Girl," which features "Memories of an unforgettable gang rape!" can be watched here. Shin has performed at least one rather Anti-American song, with a little help from Psy.)

The latter film, Queen Bee, is from 1985 and features white and black foreigners violating their way through Itaewon. At that time there was a great deal of discussion on the place of white foreigners in Korean society (which led to the French foreign language teacher scandal of 1984), such as when an American was caught forging checks and living off the generosity of Korean women ("Koreans have a weakness for foreigners"), as well as an article about Itaewon from 1984 which differed from articles about Itaewon from the previous year in the Maeil Gyeongje (October 8, 1983) and Donga Ilbo (July 27, 1983) in that it portrayed foreigners in Itaewon in a very negative manner,

In January 2005 Ilda, a feminist journal, published an article about the English Spectrum incident which argued that "when extreme nationalism and patriarchal views meet, they run counter to the issue of women's rights." What happens, then, when nationalism and feminism meet? In the 1980s and 1990s there was a great deal of feminist organizing in regard to issues surrounding the US military presence in Korea. In many ways this is understandable; foreign men are a much easier target (one that Korean men would agree on) than taking on home-grown patriarchy. A Donga Ilbo article from 1988 titled "Obscene magazines, decadent movies, AIDS: 'Let's expel low American culture'" gives an example of the post-1988 Olympics mood:

There are many incidents of the ravaging of Korean women by U.S. forces in Korea and even crimes such as molestation, and in the climate of the unfair ROK-U.S. Status-of-Forces Agreement, Korean women wind up being thoughtlessly treated like "conquered women."

While such negative portrayals of foreigners can (and did, and still does) move into racist territory, women are clear-cut victims in the stories it relays. One aspect of American culture which was bitterly criticized was an article by Hustler magazine called "Hustler's Olympic-goer's Guide to Korean Sex," which focused on paid sex in Itaewon and made some comments which raised the ire of Koreans who read it:

Korean women are the horniest, lustiest, most fuckable females on earth. Whatever she is like in the 'outside world,' bring a Korean female into close proximity of a cock, and her passions take over, [...A] huge cadre of the country's females are today sexual enthusiasts of the first order. They are available to all comers, black and white, foreign and domestic.

In the view of the 1988 Donga Ilbo article above, the Hustler article "introduced Korean women as all being prostitutes," something which was understandably insulting. In discussing the international position of Korea, the activists criticized such things as the Korean government's kisaeng tourism and the resulting position of women vis-a-vis foreigners. Such criticism may have functioned in a more coherent manner when dealing with prostitution, but when it deals with sex outside of prostitution, problems seem to arise. This situation had already arisen by 1984, and people did not have kind things to say about the young women who 'gave it away for free' in Itaewon:

"It's not just foreigners' prostitutes, now it's female university students or teenagers from good families who chase after foreigners and spend money on them, and when I see it I think it's pathetic," said Hong Gwan-pyo, who has sold souvenirs in the area for 8 years, with a sour look on his face.[...]

Han Hyung-sik (46) said "On average I carry out marriage procedures for about 20 international couples a month, but more than 70% return to divorce. Wearing a bitter expression, he also said, "When you see the unbearable sight of girls who come from university who fall only for the the appearance of white people who seem to be imbued with 'ladies first' kindness and then marry badly, even one's sense of national pride is ruined."

When nationalism comes into the picture, attempts to wrestle with "yellow fever" often end up taking on the tenor of yellow journalism, complete with misleading statistics and incredibly negative portrayals of certain (racial) groups. White men make easy money and rape and flee in the picture presented in the article. Relegating the Korean women involved in militarized prostitution to the category of 'victim of American imperialism' and nothing more was criticized in Hyun Sook Kim's chapter (in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism) "Yanggongju as an allegory of the nation":

[W]e must recognize that military sex workers have not been completely colonized by patriarchy, militarism, imperialism or neo-colonialism; the women do assert agency and subjectivity as Korean women. In what ways to the outcast military sex workers resist, reject, and try to invert the power hierarchy that relegates them to the lowest social standing? Do we retain the metaphor of nation as the representative discourse for collective unity and female identity, or can we develop an alternative discourse on/for military sex workers that will not re-colonize or subordinate their bodies or identities? This essay raises these unresolved questions and emphasizes the need to further investigate the ways in which the subject positions of working class women in sexual labor are constructed in defense of the nation. The first step towards 'pivoting the center' may be to chart the multiple, fragmented subjectivities of working class Korean women, such as military sex workers who have historically been excluded from scholarship and represented as passive objects in popular and radical representations. Answering these unresolved questions would thus require a critical feminist analysis of the power relations inscribed in the reading, writing and public presentations of women as the victim, the oppressed, and the exploited. Instead of essentializing the experiences of the women of Kijich'on as categorically "Yanggongju," we must begin acknowledging the agency, subjectivity, and resistance of working class women.

Her chapter is critical of those who would define these women for their own purposes, rather than actually talking to them and hearing their own stories and understanding of their experiences. I haven't come across any more of her work, unfortunately.

As can be seen in the excerpts from Korean news media above, with criticism of the "open sexual consciousness Korean women have towards white men" and of "Korean women absorbed in white supremacy" or "Korean women who are out of their sense and get involved in these kinds of affairs," the portrayal of these women as deluded victims overlaps with what appears to be a Korean male desire to discipline these women, or at least demand more moral behavior from them (like not engaging in "sex crimes" with foreigners).

This isn't to say that sex crimes aren't committed by some white men in Korea, or that some don't treat women (or girls) in incredibly callous ways with long-term consequences. They do. But they aren't the only ones, and to focus on them alone suggests another agenda is at work. Even worse is the fact that by portraying Korean women as devoid of agency, or as passive dupes ("Under white gaze, Korean girls [are] available and desperate." "The white man becomes the dream."), this not only echoes the xenophobic and misogynist responses of Korean nationalists, it also inadvertently reproduces the discourse of those being criticized in the first place. Is there really that great a difference between "Korean girls [are] available and desperate" and Hustler's claim that "a huge cadre of the country's females are...available to all comers"?

Making use of nationalist tropes without first unearthing the assumptions embedded within them can undermine the very argument one is trying to make, and leave one, as in this case, stuck in bed between neocolonial pricks and misogynist xenophobes.

Friday, September 02, 2016

Frustration with low-standard foreign instructors: "Korea's pride damaged"

Frustration with low-standard foreign instructors: "Korea's pride damaged"

On the evening of the 19th the SBS current affairs show "I Want to Know That" episode "Is Korea their Paradise?" hurt Koreans' pride. Viewers who watched that night's broadcast, which reported on the rudeness and immorality of foreign instructors working in Korea, vented their anger, which went as far as suggesting attacking foreigners living in Korea.

The broadcast reported on foreign English instructors making fast money at Korean hagwons, universities and companies by faking their academic background, having sex with middle and high school students they met as students at hagwons, and using drugs like marijuana and even selling them to students.

As well, shocking testimony was televised such as "I think barely 5% of foreign instructors working in Korea have qualifications." "Korean women are the easiest sex partners to get." "I think of Korea as an ATM." That day the broadcast had 12.5% of viewers, which is extraordinarily high for a current affairs program in a late night time slot. Until now, on the 20th, there have been over 1000 comments left on the [show's site's] viewer bulletin board.

The anger expressed in cyberspace by viewers was aimed at foreign English teachers as a group. Among these there were not a few extreme opinions such as "Let's hunt foreigners," so there are even fears that hostility aimed at nearly [all] foreigners living in Korea will spread. Already at the beginning of the year, after the spread of images of foreign instructors having a lewd party with Korean women incurred the wrath of young netizens, a movement to expel English instructors developed on the internet and this will add fuel to the fire.

On this evening the broadcast also increased distrust towards English hagwons. That not even 5% of instructors had qualifications was shocking but as parents reeled in shock from reports on [their] habitual sexual assault and drug [use], one well-known foreign language hagwon unprecedentedly posted a notice on the 20th saying "This hagwon has absolutely nothing to do with the broadcast."

Along with this, voices are being raised in opposition to our society's English fever and sadaejuui towards white people. The abnormal, white-hot English education fever is leading to the mass production of unqualified English instructors and the illusion of white people who speak English as their mother tongue.

Hurt pride, criticism of sadaejuui towards white people, fears of spreading hostility towards foreigners, distrust of hagwons - quite a nice reaction to SBS's sensationalist broadcast. The next post will show how Dailian illustrated this hostility by quoting from netizens.

Thursday, September 01, 2016

Foreign instructor: "Korea is a cash and women dispenser."

Foreign instructor: "Korea is a cash and women dispenser."

"[He] gave a high school alcohol and marijuana and took off her top and..." (English conversation student); "A middle school girl could see he even made spelling mistakes..." (female middle school student); "Class preparation. Absolutely none. I just have a shower." (Illegal foreign instructor); "It's easy to pick up one or two girls a week. I've slept with 50 girls in a year." (foreign instructor); "I look at whether they are white and their appearance. These are all the qualifications they need." (Hagwon owner); "Hongdae. I go there to pick up women. The easiest place to pick up Korean women is Itaewon, and after that is Hongdae, and Apgujeong is the hardest." (Foreign instructor); "Korea is a country that doesn't realize that, even though [they're both] foreigners, it gives preferential treatment to white people and discriminates against Southeast Asians." (Filipino worker).

This is what appeared in interviews on the SBS show "I Want to Know That" broadcast on the 19th which dealt with the problem of illegal foreign instructors. These interviews showed plainly just how serious the illegal foreign instructor problem is.

As writing was posted at a foreign instructor internet site which regarded Korean women as sexual playthings, it went beyond the seriousness of the realities of illegal foreign instructors, which had become a social issue, representing just how sick the perception of our society and some people is.

The things shown on the broadcast that day, the evils of the conduct of those illegally hired, through means like faked backgrounds, as foreign instructors in Korea even though they didn't have any qualifications as instructors, were incredibly shocking. From sexually assaulting a high school girl to dishonest classes, there wasn't a part [of the broadcast] that wasn't a problem.

An instructor who took one of his high school students to his house and not only gave her alcohol but smoked marijuana with her and then took off her top; a foreign professor who, even though he was a bellboy with only a high school education, was appointed as a professor at a famous private university because he faked his background and, because he claimed he published an article that was well-known abroad, he even received 12 million won in research expenses; a foreign instructor who couldn't even spell words elementary school students would know; a foreign instructor who went to Hongdae clubs only to "pick up girls"... there are now crowds of illegal instructors taking over our nation's hagwons.

This phenomenon of illegal foreign instructors abounding has been caused by a mix of mistaken English-first-ism and the terrible delusion that as long as someone is a white foreigner they can all speak English well, hagwon owners and brokers who know only money even if [the teachers] are illegal, relevant government offices and organs which put the blame on a lack of personnel, our thoroughly dual consciousness regarding the west and the US versus Southeast Asians, and inadequate laws and systems.

Peter Park, a Korean American who graduated with high marks from a university in the US and, after working at a bank, came to Korea and works as an English instructor, showed our present hiring situation regarding foreign instructors when he complained, "Even though I have instructor qualifications and English skills, because my appearance isn't white I can't find a job at a hagwon. In the US I was discriminated against as an Asian, so does it make sense that in my homeland as well I'm discriminated against because of my appearance?"

As well, though they have legal work qualifications and are working at their workplace, just because they are Southeast Asians immigration officials will violate their human rights in ways like putting them in handcuffs, while, on the other hand, white people like Americans and Canadians are not cracked down on properly for marijuana, drugs, rape, or illegal employment, and this two-faced foreigner management system is also one reason why illegal instructors are taking over in our land.

Because of this problem, "Korea is a country where you can easily get cash and women," flies sarcastically out of the mouth of an illegal foreign instructor. To stop further ridicule like "Korea is a cash and women dispenser" from coming out of their mouths, not only must the law and system, but also our consciousness must be improved.

Bae Gung-nam, Multiculturalism Special Reporter

This is quite typical of the confusion seen in the Korean media between a news-reporting article and an editorial. One also has to appreciate the way in which My Daily serves up the most sensationalist aspects of the SBS broadcast - which was itself already incredibly sensationalist. Of course, My Daily had been peddling this tabloid take on foreign teachers for weeks and someone there must have felt some validation in seeing the site's accusations suddenly get a national spotlight. And then there's the fact that an incredibly sensationalist article calling for a more critical consciousness regarding white people was written by a "Multiculturalism Special Reporter." You can't make that stuff up.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Comfort Women, nationalism, and the inculcation of anti-Japanese feeling

[Note: There are some disturbing images below.]

The image above was posted on Facebook along with a message in Korean asking for support for this to be the new 100,000 won bill; it received 31,000 likes last I looked at it (awhile ago now, admittedly). For me, the movie title 'How to lose friends and alienate people' comes to mind. Well, it's not the first time a "ruthless political terrorist" has been suggested for the 100,000 won bill (the difference being that the above An Jung-geun bill hasn't been officially suggested). Should something like this come to pass, however, it would be amusing if Japan issued a bill with Hideyoshi Toyotomi and the 'ear mound' that stands in Kyoto on it.

On a similar topic was this column by 'foolsdie' in the Korea Times, titled 'Are we still allies?' which complained about Donald Trump's comments on the US-ROK alliance before turning in another direction:

Then, Obama's recent visit to Hiroshima acted as a wedge. It's laudable for him to try to free the world of the fetters of nuclear weapons. But here, memories of Japan's brutal occupation remain fresh even after the passage of 70 years. Obama was perhaps too engrossed in the heat of the moment to say out loud that the nuclear attacks were the result of Japan's aggression and those killed and maimed were the victims of its failed leadership. Ironically, his visit has freed ultranationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ilk from the atrocities it had committed. Human rights are one of two pillars of U.S. foreign policy, with nonproliferation being the other. For sure, Obama's visit didn't help much on human rights.

Regarding "memories of Japan's brutal occupation remain fresh even after the passage of 70 years" (and I wonder why that is?), perhaps it's worth noting that most countries don't dedicate their education system and media to instilling historical bitterness quite like the Koreas, and thus not everyone believes that any given Japan-related news item is an occasion to dredge up memories of suffering. But I'll concede that it's a great way to keep people's minds off more important things. The Korean government itself apparently had no such complaints; a foreign ministry official said, "In such a historic speech, it is meaningful that he clearly mentioned Koreans, putting them on par with American and Japanese victims." Which might suggest that confirming victim status is a diplomatic victory. The problem is that it seems like aspiring to victim status is part of the Korean national identity, and thus there are some who would insist that Koreans' suffering should be elevated above everyone else's.

Michael Breen touched on the topic of Korea-Japan relations when he wondered if the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese Embassy should be moved to the exit of Gangnam Station near where a woman was murdered because of her gender in May by a man who had been rejected by women. (Of course, he was mentally ill. It's interesting how when someone commits a crime that could be construed as sexist or racist (like murdering a foreign English teacher or a military doctor) they're often described as 'mentally unstable' or 'deranged'.) Breen describes

an interview with a prominent expert on prostitution. When I asked what she thought of the comfort women issue, she asked me to put my pen down so that she could rant politically incorrectly off-the-record.

"It's a joke," she said. "Pure hypocrisy."

We all know Japan was guilty of terrible things up to 1945, but, she said, this chauvinistic focus on justice for a historical matter is popular with Koreans because it conveniently distracts us from the real issue and our own continued guilt.

The real issue is the attitude in Korea of men towards women and human trafficking in the sex industry that operates on the scale it does as a consequence of that attitude.

That explained for me the odd fact that the comfort women story did not surface until 40 years after the war. People in 1945 were of course angry about the Japanese occupation but the comfort women did not appear important then, few even knew about it because male attitudes toward women and the trafficking of young women to service them hadn't changed with national liberation.

In a Korea Times column, Maija Rhee Devine (who will give a lecture for the RAS in September on the comfort women) asks "Are comfort women lying?" Her ultimate answer is no, but she points to criticism of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, who are suspected of having "coached" the comfort women in some of their testimony.

In the spring of 2014 I visited the Museum of Korean Modern Literature in Incheon and came across a large exhibit on the first floor about the comfort women. There were many comic books presented with each page as a poster affixed in order along the walls. One, below, was titled '70-year-long nightmare':

As always (as I've noted before regarding films here, and here, and here) it all begins with an overly simplistic tale of happy-go-lucky innocent children picking flowers (hell, even Peppermint Candy 'begins' this way) before history (or an evil invader) bowls them over.

Another was titled "Where are we going?" - I've posted a few pages below:

One has to admire the design of this work, though I couldn't help starting to feel that perhaps the artists were depicting the women's suffering a little too enthusiastically. And then I saw this comic:

What follows (I chose not to photograph it) is an incredibly graphic depiction of the rape of a child. That she was a child was made clear by the size of her breasts and lack of pubic hair - it was actually that graphic - and I was appalled that something like that was on display for people of all ages to view at the museum. That said, I wasn't particularly surprised by it, considering the apparent approval there is for such depictions of suffering, as well as the lack of concern there has been regarding raising the low age of consent in Korea. It also brought to mind this photo (of a foreign woman) posted in public as a photo contest entry at the Boryeong Mud Festival in 2011, at least in terms of female nudity being thoughtlessly allowed in a public forum. Also worth remembering is a blog post by Oranckay back in 2004 when the Korean government went out of its way to block its citizens from seeing videos of the beheading of Kim Sun-il in Iraq. In that post he referenced a Korean feminist website (perhaps Ilda) which criticized the government for trying to hide images of the death of a Korean male from the citizenry while letting images of the bodies of prostitute Yun Geum-i (killed by a G.I. in 1992) and the two girls run over by a U.S. bridge-layer (in 2002) proliferate without comment. These images were used to mobilize resistance to the U.S. presence in Korea, and in thinking of this - and of depictions of the comfort women - I'm reminded of a passage in Sheila Miyoshi Jager's 2003 book Narratives of Nation Building in Korea : A Genealogy of Patriotism which, while it refers to anti-USFK campaigns, is also applicable in some ways to the comfort women issue (and is very applicable to Anti-English Spectrum):

Like Sin [Ch'ae-ho], chuch'eron [the (supposedly) North Korean-influenced anti-imperialist 'philosophy' of leftist South Korean students popular from the mid-1980s to the 1990s] sees the entire history of the Korean people as an epic struggle to overcome foreign domination and feudal oppression. The historian's task, in other words, entails the examination of the experience and legacy of the Korean people's struggle to preserve their "core" identity. [...] Perceived as a significant threat to this core identity, miscegenation became associated with a whole host of related themes about the defense of the social body - the retrieval of a superior "core" Korean identity in the name of a phantasmic Korean essence. The ability of the foreign male to penetrate (literally) the inner and inviolable sanctum of Korean women and to establish conjugal alliances with them was perceived not only as a threat to the viability of the family, but as an act that undermined the fundamental cohesion and identity of the Korean nation. Thus we find in Korea that those women who formed marriage alliances across racial lines were popularly perceived as being women of "loose" morals: prostitutes, bar hostesses, or entertainers. In fact the were represented as the polemical inversion of the idealized virtuous female associated with Korea's traditional romance narratives. By allowing themselves to be appropriated by the West, these women were simultaneously perceived as being victims of Western imperialism and faithless profiteers of American capitalism. Both pitied and despised, the whore thus became the symbol of the nation's shame as well as the rallying point for national resistance. (Pages 71-72)

One can't help but notice the role women other than the comfort women play in depictions of the colonial era. Years ago I posted excerpts of children's books depicting the colonial era, which depict certain events the publishers thought were important, such as the murder of Queen Min by Japanese assassins;

The torture of Yu Gwan-sun by Japanese police;

The suppression of the Samil protests by Japanese police;

The assassination of D.W. Stevens in 1908;

The assassination of Ito Hirobumi in 1909;

Also included was Yun Bong-gil's bomb attack in Shanghai in 1932. What we see there, of course, is that the (passive) women serve as victims to motivate the (active) men to carry out acts of ~~terrorism~~ justifiable revenge. Likewise, images like these posted in a public space seem to promote or justify a continued antipathy towards Japan:

Having been reading about Canada's participation in World War I lately (in Marching As to War: Canada's Turbulent Years, 1899-1953 by Pierre Berton) I couldn't help but remember the final stanza of "In Flanders Fields":

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

As is noted in the poem's Wikipedia entry,

[Paul] Fussell criticized the poem in his work The Great War and Modern Memory (1975). He noted the distinction between the pastoral tone of the first nine lines and the "recruiting-poster rhetoric" of the third stanza. Describing it as "vicious" and "stupid", Fussell called the final lines a "propaganda argument against a negotiated peace".

Is the propagation of such images as those above (especially in a manner meant to communicate to the young) not, in its own way, similar propaganda? This is not to say Korea is the only side at fault, of course - political realities in both Japan and Korea militate against solving the Comfort Women and Dokdo issues, and Japan's apologies (listed here - to 2005 - by Konrad Lawson) have often fell short of the mark (though a cultural tendency towards indirectness plays a part in this). Another elephant in the room is the effect on Japanese attitudes towards the war of the U.S. occupation of Japan and the American decision to preserve the imperial institution and protect the Emperor from prosecution during the Tokyo trials; as John Dower has put it, if the Emperor, in whose name the war was fought, wasn't going to be held responsible, why should anyone else feel guilty? One can only hope that, much like an ascendant Germany pushed the UK and France into an alliance before WWI, China's rise will have a similar effect at some point in the future. But as long as the Korean Gordian Knot - its division - remains in place, other problems related to mid-20th century history will be difficult to solve. An insistence in Korea on allowing displays (and popular culture) to portray Korea as a historical victim to inculcate historical bitterness in order to distract the populace and/or encourage a nationalist belief in Korea's moral superiority strikes me as something that will be counterproductive in the long run - even if it has its uses in the short term.