iPod Touch from HiExpat... sweet!

It's time for a bravo my life update readers. A few weeks ago, I got word about a new website called HiExpat. It's a page run by a guy named Dan, and he and his buddy are working to get it off the ground, to carve out a little corner of the Koreanets for themselves.

One way they tried to do that was by having a little contest: the submitters of restaurant reviews had a chance to win holycrapaniPodtouch!!!

I'd already been thinking about getting some kind of mobile device anyway, so if I could have a chance to get one for free, well, giddyup! I got on that restaurant review board like Tiger Woods on a well-contoured, attractive. . . fairway, and even requested he add some of my faves to the list.

Well, happy to say, after getting my verbosity on and pounding out a whack of reviews, and then writing the webmaster and asking him to add a few more of my favorite restaurants, so I could review them, too, I hammered out as many as I could (meaning six) before the deadline.

I got a message that I'd won the contest, and went down to Itaewon on my night off to collect my prize. It's pretty sweet. I'm pretty proud of myself for having put nothing but productivity programs on it so far -- save that silly lightsaber app that everybody thought was cool two years ago -- Here's the post about the contest from Hi Expat.

It's given me a lot of thoughts about mobile technologies that I'll share with you sometime, and given me a clearer picture of what I want for the next mobile device I buy (gonna need 4g or something: this searching for wifi hotspots thing is cramping my style) but for now, let's leave it at a simple squee over the joy of getting a new toy: I've been playing with it almost nonstop ever since I got it, and it's awesome. Here's me showing off my swag: (from Hi Expat's write-up on the contest)

Now, anyone who gives me free stuff totally gets a write-up on the blog, so let me tell you a bit more about Hi Expat:

Hi Expat is a pretty cool website so far. And I'd say that even if they didn't give me an iPod touch, and writing this post was NOT a precondition of my winning the iPod touch, so's you know - that was never requested, nor even implied. However, I've been looking around Hi Expat, and I had a nice talk with Dan, who just started the site in its current form. His head's in the right space for a guy trying to create something useful for expats online, and he's committed to keeping it "positive and productive" (those were the words he used).

(useful pages include: preparing to move here and places to volunteer in Seoul - if this keeps up, the site's shaping up to be as useful as the Seoul City Blog.)

Along with the job board, Hi Expat has a nifty restaurant review section where you can submit reviews of restaurants listed, and if your restaurant isn't listed, you can request one. It's as easy to use as the mini-review section on Zenkimchi Dining, but because each restaurant is added manually by the site administrator, each review also comes with a little google map of how to find it - extremely useful in a city like Seoul, where street numbers are an afterthought.

I'm happy to see an increase in people setting out to write English blogs that are useful for others coming to Korea - that's heartening to me, as that inherited knowledge about how to have a good time, and where to eat and such is a crucial factor to enjoying life in the ROK. It used to be (back when I first came, and hooker hill was uphill both ways), that the only way you'd hear about those places is if a coworker showed you personally, and you were well-oriented enough to remember how to find it back. Pretty sweet that we're no longer at that point.

I'm going somewhere with this... and the lady outside my window is having a sweet shouting meltdown... but for now, I'll post this about my cool new iPod Touch and say: go visit Hi Expat... and propose my idea for a Korean eating guide on the next post.

By the way, while we're on the "I'm famous" theme, I also just got linked on Korean News Feeds: a total honor.

Women's Safety: a close call and a reminder.

I'm No Picasso, a sweet K-blog that's been attracting attention lately, had a creepy/scary incident where she got followed by some weird guy a few nights ago. You should read it, especially if you're a woman living alone in Korea. "Girls, Be Careful"

This also seems like a good time to remind everybody of ALTAWATSAC's post from last year, discussing, and giving some tips, regarding women's safety in Korea.

Horrific things have happened before, and the simple fact that some of us look different from the general populace tends to attract the attention of loonies, and we'd best be mindful of that.

K-Pop: SNSD Buffalaxed! Gee/Cheese

Buffalax is an internet coinage that's actually named after the Youtube User who first did it: some clown took a music video from another language, and wrote in subtitles of the English words it sounded like, to quite hilarious results. The original was a viral video legend: the great, hilarious Bollywood Benny Lava.

Here, Girls Generation gets a full Buffalax treatment for their song "Gee Gee Gee" (or "Cheese Cheese Cheese")
There are a few bad words, and some absolutely absurd randomness. Enjoy.


Maybe one day I'll post on why "Gee" is one of the quintessential K-pop songs, and possibly my favorite song of 2009, in retrospect, now that I don't have to hear it every time I pass a cosmetics shop. It may well also go down as SNSD's peak, especially now that they're dressing in black and looking not just exactly like each other (as they always did) but also exactly like every other K-pop girl group. They even recorded the transition in the last ten seconds of this video, which includes some bad English, and that most annoying/sometimes contentious of Korean words: "Oppa"(explained) (see #8 of this list), leading to this video, which looks too much like this video... except Brown Eyed Gulls do it better.

OK. I'll admit; SNSD are a guilty pleasure of mine; they're fun, or at least were when they wore bright colors and stuff. We'll see if they remain fun now that they're trying to sound like Katy Perry and Goldfrapp instead of working that cheerful after-school-party vibe they did so well.

Memo to K-pop: there are already lots of bands dressing in black and doing sexy dances. Differentiation sells. I think.

Brown Eyed Girls

(source)

After School
(source)

SNSD

(source)

I could go on. K-pop needs another girl group wearing black like Jongno needs another Starbucks.

But then, without black leather sexydance groups, we wouldn't have had the greatest K-pop name ever: 혜나, whose music and dancing are nothing special, but her name, when transliterated into English, reads, "Hyena." I wonder if she has a distinctive laugh. Hyenas have one of the strongest bites in the animal kingdom. I have no idea what that means for the K-pop version.

Question of the day:

Which sport's highlights are the most fun to watch?

Hockey


Soccer/Football


American Football


or Basketball

2S2 Saturday: The Skinny

OK, readers. Here's the news for our blood donation trip:

(Facebook event page here)

1. 2S2 Anguk will need to split into two groups: one group will go to donate blood, but those of us who don't meet the requirements for donation will still meet up and do something else that'll be fun: at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, there's a photo exhibit of National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, the guy who took this photo, and a bunch of others: (more here) Admission is 8000 won for adults. (photo source)

2. But if you want to donate blood...

A wonderful lady names Ms. Ban helped me get the full information about the blood clinic situation, and I'm passing it on to you.

First of all, as mentioned earlier, there are some caveats to donating blood; if you're B- or, under specific cases (if I have this right), if you're AB-, you might have the platelets necessary to help out our man Yoo-woon. If you're not, you might still be able to donate blood, but it'll be out of your own general awesomeness, not for helping out his boy specifically, provided you pass these hurdles.

Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.

Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.

If any of the questions/explanations on those two pages preclude giving blood, sorry: you can't do it. Yep, that means our UK friends can't give blood in Korea. Enjoy the photo exhibit!

Next: if you meet those requirements, and want to donate...

First of all, the nurse we talked to wants saying that everyone at the blood clinic really appreciates our desire to contribute. Next, here are the other requirements for foreigners who want to donate blood. There isn't much information on whether Korean-Hyphenated expats will have an easier time of it than straight-up non-Korean foreigners, but this lady had no trouble.

1. you need to have been in Korea for at least a full year. The person interviewing might take that to mean continuously (without leaving) or they might take it to mean you've lived here for a year with a few excursions, as long as you haven't traveled to those malaria-risk areas mentioned in the donation interview linked above.

2. you must have an Alien Registration Card.

3. you must be able to speak enough Korean to answer the questions in a personal interview about your medical history. There aren't English speakers in the clinic who can interview you, and we tried to suggest some work-around options, but we couldn't get it done. Sorry folks, but that's just the way it is at this point. I'm sure by 2015 there'll be workarounds in place, but for now, there aren't. Sorry.

So if you're stuck at "멕주 하나도 주세요" then look forward to hanging out at the photo exhibit.

If you're confident enough in your Korean that you could still donate blood, here's the next thing.

There are several types of blood transfusions. Our man Yoo-woon needs a different type of transfusion than the regular blood donation, because of his situation. It's a bit more involved than a normal donation: it takes 1-2 hours, and it can rupture blood vessels in some donors, so if you've given blood before and had no problems, you're eligible for this one. If you haven't given blood before, even if you're B-, the nurse suggests giving a regular, 10-15 minute donation on Saturday, and getting your name on the list of people they call when they need B- platelets (there's a list that they have, kind of a volunteer group of people whom they regularly call when they need it; the nurse says the B- supply is not reaching dangerous lows, but the larger that pool of volunteer donors is, the better off everyone is).

The nurse recommends this, first to check that your blood vessels will be robust enough to handle the more involved donation, second, because the special kind of donation Yoo-woon needs is perishable, so they can't keep it in storage: collecting a week's worth of B- platelets doesn't help much when it only lasts 3 days, and third, if we have a group going, it'd be really hard to process a bunch of 1-2 hour donations at the clinic's busiest time of week (Saturday afternoons) - we don't want to overwhelm the clinic on our first try, so that they decide "Forget it. Accommodating foreign donors is too much trouble. And start rejecting us out of hand, rather than just putting us through a rigmarole" If it's a smaller group and people meet all the criteria, they might be willing to go for the long version, but if we have a big group, I think that the best thing we can do is make this a really positive experience for the clinic, so that they think, "Yeah, we really SHOULD make it easier for foreigners to donate, if they're all as nice and cooperative as that group was."

So, given that this is going to be a first-time experience for this clinic, let's make sure this is a positive experience for them, so they'll be more amenable to accepting foreign donors in the future, and will be more likely to see the value of finding workarounds for that Korean language interview that, for now, rules out a lot of healthy, eligible donors from donating: I think that kind of long view is a good one to take, because it will enable us to help out more people in the long run, than if we come on too strong this time, and cause a negative reaction.

So, on Saturday afternoon, at 2PM, meet me on the second floor of Twosome Place, to the right of Exit 1, Anguk Station. At 2:30 sharp we'll head out to our various destinations.

See you there!

A Very Special 2S2 on Saturday (possibly)... Korean/English Bilingual Person Needed

Hey there.
You've probably heard about this guy: There's a Korean student, about 19 years old, who's suffering from lymphoma, a kind of blood cancer. There's a page for him on Facebook. Basically, he has B- blood, which is extremely rare in Korea, and also a bad blood type to get sick with, because it can only receive from O- (in certain cases) and other B- types. There's been a push to get some help for him, and because so few Koreans have B- blood, word has been circulating among the expat community.

Now, on Saturday, for 2S2, I'd really like to bring a group down to the blood clinic to donate blood. If you have B- blood, especially, really, seriously think about coming out and helping out, because this kid is not doing well. Even if you don't, giving blood is a cool thing, and, frankly, a powerful symbolic action that projects a really positive image at a time when English teachers in particular are taking a beating.

I've located a blood donation clinic in Sinchon, and I even went down there today with a good friend to talk with the people. After a bit of talk, here's the score:

They don't usually take blood donations from foreigners, because of communication problems, concerns about where we (typically well-travelled folk) have been, and maybe also other... um... less scientific reasons, that aren't the focus of this post.

Now, we might be able to go down there and give blood on Saturday, but before we do, the lady we talked to gave me her phone number, and has asked me to have a bilingual friend contact her, to make sure she can explain the process in detail, and have that information accurately relayed to any would-be expat donors. She spent a lot of time talking about the correct process for donating blood... fair enough.

So, readers, here's where you can help: I really want this to happen, and I have a phone number, but not the language skill. Is there a reader out there who's fluent in Korean, and able to talk to this lady, and then explain the "process" to me, so that I can clearly pass that on to anyone else who needs to have it explained? I'd totally owe you a beer at the microbrew of your choice.

And that's our tentative 2S2 for Saturday: Meet at Anguk station Twosome Place (same time, same place, every month), go down to the donor clinic in Sinchon, and give blood... IF we can get the communication issues cleared up. This means that if you can talk to the lady tomorrow, I need you to send me a message tonight, to roboseyo at gmail dot com, with your phone number, so that we can clear up her concerns about misunderstandings or improper adherence to due process.

Also, if any of my bilingual readers are free on Saturday afternoon, please accept this as a gentle nudge that your presence would help de-stress these poor, nervous nurses at the clinic. It would be hugely appreciated, even if you're not B-!

If you want to donate blood, here's the nitty gritty:
1. You need to have an Alien Registration Card. Bring it, and be ready to present it.

2. You need to have been in Korea for a year.

3. You need to be able to answer some questions about your medical history... this part was a bit murky, and this might be the deal-breaker which will decide if we can go ahead or not. The guy at the Seoul Global Center, while very helpful, was pretty sure that if you don't speak enough Korean to answer the medical history questions yourself, you wouldn't be able to donate; hopefully we'll learn a way that we still can tomorrow, even if we can't speak all the Korean. I'll keep you posted.

If this doesn't work out, we'll do something else for 2S2, probably involving really, really good food. But I hope we can make this work.

2S2 on Saturday

Clear your schedules, readers. 2S2 is coming on saturday... look for a post soon about the details. I'm hammering them out myself right now.

Sure, why not? Ten Books that Rocked My World

The Korean, and my buddy Danielle posted on this. May as well weigh in, because I like books. I notice with dismay that none of these books made it onto my radar more recently than my first year in Korea - six years ago. That's too long no not have my mind totally blown by a book. Don't know what's happening. The ones that came closest in the last five years were probably... Dune (Frank Herbert), Coraline (Neil Gaiman), "The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking" (Dale Carnegie another great teacher in writing), and the Tao Te Ching.

1. Ahead of All Parting: The Collected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell - This was the book I carried with me everywhere for about three years. I first read The Duino Eulogies and the Sonnets To Orpheus before I had any idea what they were really about, but they reached a deep part of me that hadn't been awakened yet. When my mom died, that part of me woke up into grief, and Rilke was my counsellor: while other friends saw me though my grief, Rilke taught me how to grieve.

2. The Catcher in the Rye/Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger: catcher in the rye is an amazing portrait of a person who hasn't quite figured out yet how to take his sensitivity and perceptiveness, and use it to fall hopelessly in love with the world... but he's on the cusp. Franny and Zooey's last five pages make me happy for a week, and have put me to rights a number of times when I've been depressed. But you have to read the whole book for the last five pages to mean anything.

3. The Art of Happiness - The Dalai Lama - this book is not only applicable to Buddhists; the Dalai Lama makes sure to teach only principles that are universally applicable in this one, and does it in style. He's the best teacher in writing, that I've ever read.

4. The Book of Job - The Bible - stark, harsh, this is the most difficult book in the bible, and the one that lays bare the lonely, starkness of grief and tragedy most powerfully.

5. The Annie Dillard Reader - Annie Dillard - whenever I open this book, I look a little more closely, live a little more mindfully, for about a week.

6. Ender's Game/Speaker For The Dead - Orson Scott Card - Dune was the best written, Asimov's Foundation books were the most thought provoking, but Ender's first two books were the most compelling to me, personally: Ender is an everyman portrayed with compassion and sympathy, and Orson Scott Card creates a world that resembles the real world: one where people don't do bad things because they're fundamentally evil, but because they think they're doing what's right, and they happen to be incorrect, or misinformed, or lacking perspective.

7. Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak - The movie was OK, but nothing will ever take the place of the book. I remember being fascinated and haunted by this book when I found it in the library as a kid, and then fifteen years later, in university, a friend had it on his shelf, and before I even picked it up, I knew this was the book that had stuck in my head for a decade. Only had two or three other "aha!" moments like it in my life.

8. Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie - One of the very few books I'd recommend just as enthusiastically to a university professor as to a twelve-year-old bookworm. Witty, charming, fantastical, and full of the life Rushdie infuses his other books with, but without the sometime pretension.

9. Mirrored Minds: A Thousand Years of Korean Verse - trans. by Kevin O'Rourke - Kevin O'Rourke translates a group of Korean poems from a huge variety of different poets. Some are shockingly beautiful, and the spareness of these poems - putting so much philosophy, or sensuality, into three or five lines -- cured me of the wordiness of many English poets.

10. The Harry Potter Series - My enjoyment of these books peaked at about book 4, and bottomed out in the last fifty pages of book 7 (see here for the rundown of why); after that, I kind of started hating Harry, and thinking he was a sort of a dick of a role model for kids. But the first four books especially are absolutely awesome.

More of Busan: Taejongdae and Haeundae

I'm kind of loath to bury the post I wrote yesterday about ATEK under a bunch of pictures, so if you want to read something more important, rather than just seeing a travelogue, here's that thing about ATEK again. The pictures are nice, but this article matters more, in the grander scheme.


After my trip to Busan, I added a bunch of pictures from Jalgalchi market, which was great.

Next, I have more pictures from some of the other parts of Busan I visited.

The very best ones are all in this video, including some video of knife sharpeners and waves crashing. But below are also lots of pictures. The video has music. The pictures below have explanations. You must pick. Or do one, and then the other. That's OK too. I don't mind.


Taejongdae is a resort/cliffy rocky place/park on the edge of town: Girlfriendoseyo explained that while Seoul traditionally had only the one, main downtown area, because Busan is a port city, it always had two main strips - the city's always been spread out more than other cities in Korea.

So we took a bus out to Taejongdae, and saw this on the way:



Busan is one of the busiest harbors in the world.


Hong Kong Harbor just about blew my mind, but this sure wasn't anything to sniff at, either.

Taejongdae had beautiful rocks and water. Mmm.


Here's a white guy photoshopped into a picture of Taejongdae. There's a Japanese island somewhere on that horizon, that's close enough that you can sometimes see it with the naked eye. Tee hee. I said "naked".


There were extensive, winding, and uneven steps and stairs all the way down to the water at Taejongdae. We opted not to take the ferry to Haeundae Beach, but we could have. The waves were crashing. it was sweet.


The rocks there looked really interesting: there were some sedimentary, layered-looking rocks, but some other formations that made me wish I knew more about geology.



Once I took a rafting trip with my sister-in-law's brother, who is a High School science teacher, and he was pointing out all kinds of cool stuff about the rock formations in the Rocky Mountains where we were paddling. Very informative. I love that kind of stuff. you can see more of the rocks' neat features here:

Everybody's photogenic at beaches in the mid-late afternoon.


right down at the water in taejongdae


Hey buddy: wanna eat the freshest seafood in the world? The only way to get it fresher is to put on diving gear yourself.


This was waiting for the bus near a restaurant/lookout on the top side of Taejongdae cliffs, after we climbed down and came back up again.




Then, our hotel was near Centum City, and the monstrously huge "Bexco" - Busan's answer to COEX. It was big. Also in Centum City were a Shinsegye and a Lotte Department store built right next to each other in a kind of "who's the boss of this town" one-upmanship thingy, where Lotte built a huge department store, and then Shinsegye built a bigger one right next to it, just because screw you, Lotte group!
Lotte


Shinsegye (note the frame built above the actual roof, in order to make it seem to dwarf Lotte more than it actually does)

the red sign actually says "world's largest department store" Eat that, Lotte!

But the other Lotte Dept Store in Busan had an anchor. No Shinsegye department store didn't have no darn Anchor. Or maybe only a small one. So they can suck it too.

One thing that really struck me about Busan was how different it was than Seoul: here are some things I saw there that are impossible to find in Seoul:

Really tall, kind of ugly apartment buildings.




crowded subway cars.


big grey, monolithic highway structures


all kinds of coffee shop chains




and shiny cosmetics stores. It was all so unfamiliar.


And somehow, down in Busan, they love talking about "Hub" stuff


Nah just kidding, you can find those things in Seoul, too. But actually Busan DOES have a very different feel, and often a different look, than Seoul.

But the subway cars in Busan are narrower.
Also: not many of the apartments in Seoul are built on waterfronts this pretty, frankly:



Busan WAS different from Seoul, and quite a bit cleaner, to be honest.

Finally, Haeundae was fantastic.






The "what to do if a Tsunami comes" sign amused me, too.






I wonder if this sign was up there before the movie "Haeundae" came out.




We had a great time eating: Girlfriendoseyo's mom is a real food aficionado, not afraid to demand the best, or to set aside stuff that's less than the best. We went to a 복 (Blowfish) restaurant, which I've always wanted to do, and had all kinds of variations on Blowfish. Blowfish is cool, because if you slice up the fish wrong, there are some deadly poisons in the fish, but if you cut it right, it's really really good. Whichever brave soul discovered the edible and inedible parts by trial an error wins my respect. I've always wanted to try it, and right next to a beach is always a good place to have a first experience of a seafood.

This restaurant was mad packed already at 9:30 in the morning, when we came. By the time we finished eating at 10:30 the line was going out the door.


one version of the blowfish - the nurungji squares on the bottom were the best.


another restaurant - I don't even know how she found it, it was tucked away in a winding back alley, but she'd found it on the internet, and it was one of the better-reviewed restaurants to be found in Busan.

The name of the place;


and the location:


Last few kicks: climbed a steep hill and walked around this nice park: can't remember the name of it, because I'm either dumb, or too lazy to find out, or too inattentive to find out the name when we went there. Busan Mike has helpfully let us know it's called "Yongdusan" and he even wrote about it.

The dragon was cool, but we also got to see our first flowers of the year, which was a big reason why we went down to Busan in the first place. Seeing as most of march was snowy in freaking Seoul, we were due for a bit of spring's promise.



Spare pics: the downtown shopping area:


you can see the covered, escalator-d entrance to the hill/mountain park at the end of this lane.



and I don't know what to do with this shop name... it kind of fits with "red face" another Korean brand of hiking gear... but I don't dare say anything more. But I had to include it.

Rumblings about ATEK: Response to Chris

Over at Chris in SK, there's a long post about recent events at ATEK.

You might want to read up on the whole thing.

April 5: Also, it's now been updated to include a statement from Greg Dolezal, which is worth reading.

According to the post, a few former ATEK officers have quit the organization, and are starting their own group. There was some he-said, she-said disputing some stuff, which looked petty, but there was also some earnest questioning about "what has ATEK done for me lately"

Chris said,

"I'm not making any more money than I was before ATEK was around. I'm not in a more stable position because ATEK is around. ATEK has not done anything that makes a modicum of difference in the world of Korea - sure, it's a great-sounding idea among the world of expat teachers, but what power does the organization actually HAVE?"

and then in the comments, Brian said,

Trying to be as diplomatic as I can, I'll say that ATEK didn't work, and that probably poisoned the market for teachers' organizations.

I nearly left a long comment there, but instead I'm putting it here.

I can understand why a group of people who have decided to get an advocacy group started would feel frustrated with ATEK. For the last year, ATEK has mostly been staying out of the controversies, and really focusing on the structure and numbers aspects of the organization. This kind of stuff is slow, and the first-things-first process is time consuming and frustrating, especially if someone is hoping to get results, and especially if you're thinking in terms of the one year contract of many English teachers.

Well, here are a few initial responses:

Let's start off with this: have we forgotten that everybody involved in ATEK is a volunteer, trying to do this on top of other jobs? Let's factor in the fact that membership with ATEK is free, and that everybody involved is a volunteer, while we set expectations and make judgements. These guys aren't doing it for the money, or for their health; they care about something.

But let's take a longer view here, folks.

First off, I think it's either immature or premature to judge an organization like this after its first year plus change. For one thing, you don't know how many people have been connected with the labor lawyer or mediator they needed: a lot of the people who get that kind of help don't want it publicized. If I knew I'd have my picture published on ATEK's website if they helped me, I might not call them when I'm in a pinch. Next, it's hard to measure how much easier a teacher's first year would be if they got their hands on the "English Teachers Guide to Korea" book they published, but I sure wish I had one like it for my first year, even if one of the several hundred pages was lifted from Wikipedia.

Secondly, for the people calling for high-level changes in Korean education policy and regulation, come on, folks. Rome wasn't built in a day. That stuff only comes after a long time of building relationships -- you really think a year is long enough for a group to decide to take on the Hogwan Owners Association, with all their connections and resources and lobbying power? Let's take a longer view of this: while the ECFA campaign made a splash, it also drew a lot of harsh criticism, and it may have generated incorrect expectations that ATEK would continue to be that kind of a loud, public organization, but those kinds of loud groups often get ignored (sometimes after being roundly mocked). If ANY group wants to get into advocacy, who's going to listen to them if they

1. haven't been around long enough to prove they aren't a flash in the pan

2. haven't put in a lot of time and energy making relationships with the kinds of people who influence decisions, nor made allies at those high levels of policy-making

3. don't have a membership large enough to really say they're representative (If there are 20 000 E2 visas in Korea, I'd say that you can't really speak authoritatively as a representative group until you have about 35-40% of them as members. ATEK's currently at somewhere around 1000, or 5%, which is small enough for a policy maker to sniff and dismiss them as a fringe.)

These kinds of prerequisites for ACTUAL, not just perceived influence, don't appear overnight, and they certainly don't make headlines. You don't know which officials and government liasons ATEK's in touch with, and neither do I, because those kinds of back-channel communicators often don't want to be named; however, without them, advocacy is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

So maybe ATEK hasn't been in the headlines, though compared to some of the headlines during their controversial kickoff, let's acknowledge that that might be a good thing. However, by establishing some institutional longevity and momentum, they're building up the credibility that will add legitimacy to their voice when it IS time to weigh in on those issues. If they try for too much, too soon, they're going to get pigeon-holed as another lefty labor group, and ignored or marginalized.

Remember that when you say "English teacher's association" to government policy makers, they hear "Labor group" and when you say "Labor group" these are the mental images that flash to mind.

You'll have to forgive them for being cautious about engaging, and taking a longer-term wait-and-see-if-atek-proves-they're-in-it-for-dialogue-rather-than-just-rabble-rousing approach.
If ATEK bites off more than it can chew, too soon, if their tone gets shrill and standoffish without having built relationships patiently, all the leaders will find themselves out of the country, just like Minu Moktan. How does that help us? And is this the relationship we want to have with policy makers? Given that English teachers are in a privileged position, compared to the other migrant laborers in Korea, we have the luxury of taking our time. Why wouldn't we?

So let's step back a little, and look at what's going on. In the long view, ATEK's task right now SHOULD be to get its ducks in a row, to build structure internally, and relationships externally, to gain the trust of the people who will eventually be its allies when it starts asking for stuff, and to grow its membership so that when it speaks, it has the weight of a SIGNIFICANT proportion of English teachers behind it. I really believe that.

If ATEK manages to build its membership and streamline its organization in the first year, while building connections with various people in Korean government, that's a pretty good job; jumping in over their heads (like they might have with the ECFA campaign) won't help anyone.

I like Chris Backe; he's a great guy, but I'd like to see a little more perspective in judging what is meant to be a long-term, nationwide organization.

Next: I don't know the whole story about the e-mails back and forth, as expressed on Chris Backe's page, though I don't know if it was fair to print specific e-mails from Barbara and [Redacted see footnote], without also giving Greg Dolezal a chance to respond with something more than a form letter sent to every ATEK member. Regardless, this kind of public back and forth only damages the credibility of everyone involved, both ATEK and FREED, if it manages to get going. [April 5 update: Chris has now updated his post to include a statement Greg Dolezal wrote to him in an e-mail.]

OK. Next thing: from Barbara Walden's e-mail: to begin with, FREED sounds like a good idea, and while I've said before, and will again, that any group of expats that are deciding to get together and organize, and represent, and try to make the expat community more than the sum of its parts. I'd look forward to reading and seeing a good public discussion over "Aspects of developing this support network farther are being researched." - to see how it takes shape. I hope it's a good, open, fair process, and I hope that the organization takes off. I'm strongly in support of AFEK putting together a strong network of support for F-series visa holders. And if other organizations are getting started, I hope that they succeed, thrive, and work productively with the others.

In my "On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists" series, I wrote:

Another thing we've got to do is support and get involved in the expat and English teacher organizations that are already out there. ATEK, AFEK, KOTESOL, all the regional and interest-based facebook groups and meetup.com clubs. Join up, sign up, show up... it's worth it. And if you don't like one of the groups, start your own, or get involved with another. As I said before: if we have a dozen groups that can help people form communities with like-minded people, we're miles better off than if we ask one or two to pull all the weight, and then if all those groups can join in on the big issues, we're looking way better.

All along, I've strongly believed that the English teacher community in Korean needs as many groups and organizations as we can, focused on different things. I'd love if we had half a dozen organizations, each focused on different areas. AWESOME! Then, when something big happens, when another Christopher Paul Neil gets arrested, there are a whole bunch of voices pitching in, representing us in the media and with the lawmakers. Wouldn't that be awesome!

So it dismays me when Barbara's letter ends with, "There has been no collaboration and will not be collaboration with ATEK about FREED" -- I hope that door doesn't remain closed, because if English teacher groups are forming, basically to spite or repudiate each other, then we're heading in the wrong direction, and hurting our cause. I don't know the whole story between ATEK's council members, and the two ladies who e-mailed Chris Backe, but I get a feeling that there's more to the story than what they've sent along.

So when Chris asserts that "ATEK has not done anything that makes a modicum of difference in the world of Korea" I'd have to ask him what his sources are, and how he's so sure about that, and without a lot of evidence, I'm disappointed to hear him make that assessment.
After a year of watching, and communicating, and reading up, after the whole debate last spring, during which I moderated a lot of ATEK-related discussions, here's what I think.

I joined ATEK two weeks ago.

I've been in touch with Greg Dolezal and talked with a few people on the council, and my assessment of ATEK so far is this:

They're building the relationships and contacts. After the KOTESOL conference I had the chance to sit down with a bunch of them, and to talk with Greg for a while, and he's been hard at work figuring out what ATEK's direction needs to be right now, in order to achieve its long-term goals; they're streamlining the bylaws in order to operate more smoothly, and they've been dealing with internal politicking, and they've been building relationships with the kinds of people who need to be on our side if English teachers decide to ask for big stuff, or throw down against the Hogwan Owners' Association, or if there's another Korean media blow-up. Appearing at the KOTESOL conference is one example of the kind of relationship ATEK needs to build, and I'd be glad to see some kind of mutually beneficial affiliation between the two organizations.

The area where Atek is failing so far is in communication, in my opinion. There isn't enough knowledge in the general population about what they're on about, about the kinds of connections that are being formed, and the reasons why things seem to be going slowly. Meeting notes ought to be published somewhere on their websites, and regular national council meetings should be announced, with their agenda and notes published, at least in some form that doesn't impinge on the privacy or trust of the people involved in certain ATEK actions. (for example, government liasons who prefer to stay on the back channels, or teachers who don't want their name publicly attached to a labor dispute with a hogwan boss while applying for new jobs).

These things are difficult to schedule and plan with an all-volunteer council, and PMA leaders who work different hours, geographically dispersed, but this might be the next step in building credibility. They've been around for more than a year now, and that's good in itself, and that and its thousand or so members lends ATEK about a bajillion times more credibility than a group that started last month (though I certainly wish the best to that other group too, if it exists).

So what's ATEK's next step? We'll see. There's a vote to approve a set of bylaws coming up, and there are still areas of Korea that need to get organized, with PMAs and local chapters. That's a high priority. So is convincing membership that "what have you done for me lately" is a less helpful question than "How have I helped enable ATEK to help English teachers all around Korea," and that might be the real crux of the struggles.

As baseball hall of famer Satchel Paige said, "Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines" - and if ATEK's members are focusing on what ATEK can do for them, rather than on the bigger picture of how English teaching in Korea needs to improve in reputation and quality, and whether they can contribute to that, they're missing the point of being part of a group like ATEK.

Oh yeah, and ATEK IS doing stuff. They presented at the KOTESOL conference, and they just sent this letter to the Prime Minister's office, as an attempt to open a dialogue and a relationship with them. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? To have a connection with the Prime Minister's office? But that takes time and patience and relationship building.

One of the people involved has asked her name to be removed from this post. It's easy to figure out who if you go back to Chris's post, or read the threatening comments below. I have complied with her request, because her name is already there to be found, and because I'd rather not deal with threats at this juncture.