A little more about Blackout Korea, and then I'm done

The last post about Blackout Korea was fired off in a hurry, so I'd like to add/refine/retract a little, before I'm done with this topic.

The comments below the original post have been really awesome, though: thanks, readers, for your contributions.

1. It's interesting to note that the person who started the "English Teachers Out" blog seems to be having second thoughts about the wild generalizations s/he made in the original post.

The writer of English Teachers Out has also impressed me, no so much with his logical reasoning, but with his willingness to put his own name and other blog address out there, after being called out by the Metropolitician.

2. As several readers pointed out in the comment: I overstated things when I said "Public drunkenness is a national disgrace"... it's fairer to say that Korea's drinking culture can be polarizing: in the comments I said:

then again, the WHO's recent report tags Korea as the world's biggest per capita consumer of spirits, and the fifth biggest per capita consumer in the world...it IS kind of embarrassing that I have to tell my friends visiting Korea, "Unless you want to see Korea in its worst light, be back in your hotel room by eleven"
http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsruprofiles.pdf

To qualify that, I wouldn't say that to all of my friends, but certainly to the friends of mine who don't like drinking, or who get embarrassed or upset by seeing that kind of...uh...unrefined behavior.  To other friends of mine, I'd say that the drinking culture might well be the best thing about visiting Korea, depending on their position, age, background, concern about stepping in vomit puddles, etc..

So yeah.  Off my puritan high horse now.

The fact remains that, the amount of public drunkenness in Korea makes the country/drinking areas ripe for the formation of blogs like this: low hanging fruit gets picked.

3. Black Out Korea seems to be plugging along unapologetically.  For now.  We'll see what happens next.  I don't know who or how, but last year a few other K-blogs got traced to their homes by netizens, such that one told me in an e-mail that s/he even moved houses because s/he didn't feel safe.

4. Black Out Korea DOES show the faces of some of the passed out people.  I was incorrect to assert that faces weren't shown.

5. Passing out in public is one thing.  Taking pictures of a passed out person is another.  Posing with a person who's passed out like a "trophy" - one phrase I read somewhere - is stupid and reprehensible.  Whether we want to be or not, we're cultural ambassadors in Korea, because we look different, and we're making our group look like assholes with these kinds of frat-boy pranks: Korea is not one big college town, and Koreans are human beings, and those who act as if those two statements were untrue make things harder for those of us trying to make a good life here, and for those who come after them.

6. It's disheartening that after a really successful event on Sunday, talking about improving the image of English teachers in Korea, and exploring the confluence of cultural phenomena that led to English teacher scapegoating, that this has been the main focus of attention on many expat k-blogs and forums I've visited this week.  ESPECIALLY when two English teacher deaths in Busan SHOULD be the subject of a rallying cry for more support for English teachers and expats in Korea.

7.  Blackout Korea, particularly when it's publishing the "trophy" pictures of white people shaming Koreans, is pretty asinine, and it should be made clear to anybody that the vast majority of foreigners and English teachers think so.

However, it's not even close to the offensiveness of the worst "korean culture" blog: Texts From Korean Girls, which, while the work of just one blogger out of the tens of thousands of expats living in Korea, really takes the cake for making Korean women look like idiot whores... and by doing so, makes western men look like vile scumbags who first take advantage of them, and then laugh at them afterwards...

The only good thing I can say about Texts From Korean Girls is that it hasn't updated since October.

Come on, guys.  Seriously, fucking grow up.  This is the reason Wifeoseyo, shortly after telling her family she was dating a Canadian English teacher, had to have a conversation with my future mother-in-law, to assuage suspicions the had developed after reading some news reports about foreign English teachers in Korea.

And I'm done. The outliers on either side don't deserve any more attention from me.  Or you.

Update: to be fair, after talking so much shit, I should link Blackout Korea's defense/explanation of what he's doing, and how it should be understood.

Google "Is Chungdahm a Good School to Work At?"

This is very interesting.

Chungdahm recruiters are going to regret their school operators are allegedly trying to stiff the English teachers working for them: from now on, every time a recruitee thinking about coming overseas to teach googles "Is Chungdahm a good school?" this article will show up.

Kudos to Kangnam Labor Law Firm for taking up their case, and kudos to The Korea Times for helping the teachers find a voice.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2011/02/117_81897.html

And anybody who's getting stiffed by their school:

There ARE options. Don't walk away from a situation where you're getting screwed, because that just empowers a dishonest employer to try to screw the NEXT teacher who replaces you, even worse.

Seoul Global Center's Support Page
Kangnam Labor Law Firm (associated with the case linked above)

English Teacher (probable) Suicide in Busan...Counseling Services in Korea

Got this from ATEK: good job preparing a quick response here.

Press Release: Contact: Rachel Bailey, Communications Officer
media@atek.or.kr

ATEK Responds to Recent Death of “Teacher K” in Busan
Busan, South Korea – February 21, 2011 – As reported earlier this week on Chosun.com, an American English teacher based in Busan, identified in the report at Teacher K, fell to his death from the 14^th floor of his apartment building on February 19, 2011. The teacher had apparently been absent from his hagwon for some time prior to the incident, and, while it’s not explicitly clear that his death was a suicide, it does appear that alcohol abuse contributed to his death.
We at ATEK are deeply saddened to hear of Teacher K’s death. We recognize that life abroad can cause stress and alienation that sometimes result in tragedies like this, but members of the English-teaching community should know that there are systems in place to help them in times of need. ATEK has local emergency needs officers in both Gangwon and Gyeonggi as well as a president and vice president whose doors are always open to those suffering from substance abuse or severe mental distress. We stand ready to offer support and assistance in finding appropriate treatment programs and counseling for anyone who needs it, whether or not they are part of our membership. Any English teachers who are in need of help can visit atek.or.kr/emergency for information on how to get it or email our emergency needs officers at the addresses listed below.
We would also like to take this opportunity to invite anyone interested in assisting members of the English teaching community in need of assistance finding counseling or treatment for substance abuse or mental health issues to join our Emergency Needs Committee. Please email officers@atek.or.kr for more information about how to join.
Gangwon Emergency Needs – Caroline Barsellotti – gangwon.emergency@atek.or.kr
Gyeonggi Emergency Needs – John Fojut – gyeonggi.emergency@atek.or.kr
ATEK President JaeHee Oh – president@atek.or.kr
ATEK Vice President Adrian Lake – vicepresident@atek.or.kr

I'd like to add a few other links to free counseling services in Korea:

KoreaBridge has this web discussion about counseling in Korea.

The excellent website Korea4Expats also has these directories where you can connect with communities also counseling groups, and hospitals or doctors.

Don't try to go it alone, folks.  There ARE people who want to listen.

If anybody knows of other sources and services, please please add them to the comments.  Moderation is on because of the previous post, but they'll show up as soon as I can.

International Counseling Hotlines
http://suicidehotlines.com/international.html
http://www.suicide.org/hotlines/international/south-korea-suicide-hotlines.html - south Korea suicide hotlines - can't say which have English service.

Google search for "International Suicide Hotline"

On Netizens finding Blackout Korea, And Rampant Public Drunkenness

So that one-joke novelty site blackout Korea got discovered by the Korean netizens.

And while a few comments on the blog post that brought BOK to the Korean blogosphere include sentiments like "Yah, public drunkenness is kind of a cultural embarrassment," others were quick to blame the usual scapegoat: English teachers.

One blog, the subtly titled: "Englishteachersout" even compares the pictures on BlackoutKorea to the photos at Abu Gharib.

Now that's just stupid. The English teachers didn't trap these Koreans, force-feed them alcohol until they passed out, and THEN take the pictures.

Also: the passed-out Koreans' faces aren't shown. I don't know if the writer of EnglishTeachersOut noticed that... so when people aren't personally being singled out (other than the dumb foreigners who DO show their faces in shaming them), what remains is the cultural shame, I guess, of one of Korea's dirty secrets (rampant, extreme public drunkenness) being posted on the internet.


I wrote about the mean-spirited battle between stupid, mean-spirited expat blogs in Korea, and knee-jerk raging K-netizens back when death threats prompted a number of K-blogs to shut down last year.

Those points still stand.  In fact, I encourage you to go read them.

(source)

A few points, then I’m out:

1. The "hate Korea bloggers" and the "why are you hate the Korea go home" netizens deserve each other.

2. Nobody deserves to have their personal details published, or their life threatened, because of their practicing of free speech.  Even if their free speech is offensive to some people.

3. The people in these pictures ought to have thought more carefully about including their faces in the photos: you own everything you put on the internet, forever. Generally, Koreans behaving badly are smart enough not to publish pictures of their hijinks on the internet. They know how the K-internet works: they all remember dog poop girl. Expats in Korea ought to take a page from their book.

4. While it would be nice to let the "Hate Korea" bloggers and the "Why are you hate the Korea?" defenders just cancel each other out, but it doesn't end there. The bad blood generated there contributes to the poisonous English Education atmosphere in Korea, because English teachers are always blamed: notice how nobody suspected any of the expats in the pictures to be investment bankers or engineers. It also raises the pitch of the mutual alienation between the archetypal "complaining expat" and the "crazy netizen defender," and worst of all, sometimes legitimately interesting K-blogs are caught in the crossfire: Korean Rum Diary started off kind of mean-spirited, but as it went on, the tone became much more thoughtful and fair, but because it started off on the wrong foot, the K-defenders kept hounding the writer, and when he left Korea, he took the entire site down. That's a loss for the English K-blogosphere. The fact that the defenders' English may not be sharp enough to catch the nuance, or that they only skim the angriest post (which got linked) and decide to hound the writer, leads to undeserving writers getting treated like trolls, from time to time.

5. Nobody knows the real motivation of Blackout Korea: we've seen before that international attention of an embarrassing kind can be the thing that prompts some self-reflection in Korean society, and maybe Blackout Korea was pitching for bringing it home to Korea that the amount and degree of public drunkenness here is a national disgrace.  Maybe the writer tried every other method he/she could imagine before resorting to a stupid blog like Blackout Korea.  And yes, I think the blog is stupid.

6. There are better ways to bring that point home.

but

7. Public drunkenness in Korea IS a national disgrace. It is.  Undeniably.  Shooting the messenger doesn't change the fact I had to dodge street pizza walking to work at 7am on Wednesday mornings, back when I worked in Jongno.

My final point:
Some people say Blackout Korea is just a funny website.

As I wrote in the Lousy Korea post: Is the laugh that South Park got for taking cracks at Mohammed worth the mutual alienation that develops between Muslim and Western society when their controversial episode airs? I don't know.

Is the laugh that BlackoutKorea got for taking cracks at drunk Koreans in public worth the mutual alienation that comes out of the K-netizen backlash? I don't know, but I'd rather not have to be asking the question.

And to the people whose faces are now on this guy's blog front page (see below): does it still seem like a good idea?

[Edit: the pictures have been blacked out on the English Teachers Out page, so I'm taking it out of this post.]


And memo to all non-ethnic Asian expats in Korea: go ahead and act however you like, but don't put pictures of that shit on the internet, and don't do it in my neighborhood, because you can do what you like (within the law) but I'd rather not be held responsible for your behavior, just because neither of us look like Koreans.

(more background links: Asian Correspondent, Chosun Ilbo (who found the site), the Korean blog of the guy who wrote the EnglishTeachersOut blog, and an interview with Blackout Korea... let's say of all the motivations to create the blog... the ones stated are somewhere at the bottom of the barrel.)

Embassy Conference... Smashing!

The Embassy Conference happened today; I'd like to report back in detail, but that will probably be over several posts that discuss different aspects of the topics.  If the video taken by the Canadian Embassy turns out well, I'll be posting video as well.

The turnout was very, very good for such a beautiful day, the presentations were awesome - I felt a bit out of my league, sitting next to Popular Gusts, Metropolitician, and Prof. Ben Wagner, but I got a lot of positive feedback, and best of all, the three organizations I discussed: ATEK, KOTESOL, and AFEK, all showed up in style, to represent their groups.

Great day, thanks to everyone who came, and especially thanks to the Canadian Embassy for putting on the event.  I hope there will be many more like it.

More later.

Itaewon Hannam Seoul Global Center Living in Korea Info Session

Just got this e-mail from ATEK, and thought I'd share it with you:

Seoul's Itaewon-Hannam Global Village Center was established to help foreigners living in Seoul with any difficulties they may face and to facilitate cultural understanding between foreigners and Koreans. This month, they will be holding a Living in Seoul Orientation for anyone interested in learning more about the city and some tips for living there. Though this is not an ATEK function, it may be beneficial to our members living in the area. Below is a description of the event from the Global Village Center, as well as information on how to RSVP.

On Friday February 25th at 10:30am the Itaewon-Hannam Global Village Center in Seoul will be having a Living in Seoul Orientation Session. At this session you will be able to learn about the services and opportunities that are out there for foreigners living in this city. Seoul is an exciting place with lots of great things to see and do. Whether you are new to Seoul or even if you have lived here for years, you will be able to get some useful tips and learn more about what Seoul has to offer.

The session will consist of an informative presentation, a Q&A session, and finally refreshments and a chance to mingle with the other guests at the end. All those who attend will also receive a package of brochures, maps, and guides that will help make your life in Seoul a lot easier and more enjoyable. This event is free of charge and anyone is welcome to attend.

Please RSVP by phone or email:
Tel: 02-2199-8884
Email: itaewon at sba.seoul.kr

For more information and to find directions to the center please visit the website:
http://global.seoul.go.kr/itaewon/

Things I've Learned about Korea by doing the Radio Show

Soundtrack: Press play and start reading.

Haven't done a bliss-out in a while, and you don't know this one is going to be one, until the last minute of the song, when it keeps celebrating, and then ends with about fifteen seconds on an entirely different plane... but like other good bliss-outs, you have to listen to the whole song, or those last fifteen seconds don't have the support to actually launch you into that other place.

I've always liked Stevie Wonder, but those ten seconds at the end of this song made me love him.

So yeah, I've been doing a section of The Evening Show for TBS eFM: the show's hosted by a fella named Mike, whom you can find here @MikeOnTBS.  You can also keep up with what The Evening Show's doing at @TheEveningShow.  Or follow me on twitter @Roboseyo (didn't see that coming, did you?) or friend me on facebook (facebook.com/roboseyo).  I'm a facebook friend whore: I'll totally accept.

The show's been hella fun so far, mostly due to the awesome callers we've had call into the show.  (and you can be one of those callers, readers!)

Anyway, before I turn into a pure pimp, one of the fun things about the show, to me, is this:

Every day I get a new Korea-related topic, and I have to become a fifteen-minute expert in it.  Fifteen-minute expert means not that I spend fifteen minutes researching, and bluff, but that I have to learn enough about a topic to talk about it in an informed way for fifteen minutes.  Every day the topic's different, which means I've learned about all sorts of things since I started the show three weeks ago.

So, here are ten things I've learned about Korea by doing The Evening Show's call-in segment:

1. Korea's actually doing quite well in trying to improve its environmental standing.

Given that Korea has very few energy resources of its own, it's important for Korea to use the oil it imports, or the nuclear energy it generates, as efficiently as possible; Korea's currently the world's fifth largest oil importer.  That's bad news.  The good news: Korea's actually put a LOT of energy and money into environmental initiatives.  Natural gas buses, public transit, bus lanes, Samsung's lithium batteries, smart, efficient buildings (which, I learned, burn more fuel than cars): Korea's working hard.

Now if only the country also took care of its wetlands...

The four rivers' project has become too politically embroiled to get a straight story about it from either side.

2. Korea's traditions of gift-giving for marriage are really interesting... and the richer you were back in the day, the more ridiculously extravagant the gift-giving became.

Chests full of silk, carried by the bride's family, bribed into the groom's house, watches, clothes, three keys (car, office and house) and more: the gift-giving expectations for Korean weddings are mad lengthy, and the higher your position you'd attained, the more your family demanded from your spouse-to-be's family.

3. In recent years, the largest demographic decline in Korea's smoking rate was in middle-aged men.  Young men (20s and 30s) has remained about the same.  Meanwhile, the smoking rate for women is probably waaay under-reported.

4. The secretary general of the Korea smokers' association doesn't like people using the term "smokers" - he prefers "cigarette consumers" because it's less stigmatized.

5. The experts we spoke to think the black market (where food is traded and distributed in North Korea, when the centralized food-distribution system falls short) is good for North Korea, for two different reasons: one because that's where North Koreans learn about how life is in the South - that's where Korean wave illegal DVDs are bought and traded - and the other because a mini-free enterprise system will help North Koreans adjust to living in a free market system, in the event of reunification.

6. North Korea has its own international economic zone, called Rajin-Sonbong.  So far, the main investor there is China.

7. There's a movie called Bangga Bangga about a Korean who pretends to be from Bhutan in order to get a job in a factory.  Sounds super-interesting: I heard about it from Paul Ajosshi, and I hope he has a chance to write about it sometime on his blog.  On that same topic, another reader commented that a farmer he knows started hiring migrant workers not because they were cheaper, but because the Koreans she employed kept stealing from her.

8. I already kind of knew this, but covering it from different angles really brought it home: long working hours, women's workplace rights, the low birthrate, lack of government support for parents, the aging population and the approaching welfare crisis, and the need to give migrant workers a more recognized place in Korean society, all connect to each other in a big, ugly bundle.

9. Pay day loan companies in Korea are very, badly under-regulated, and though it's illegal, some of them charge interest as high as 3000% per annum on their loans.  Yep.  All those zeros are supposed to be there.  The payday loan companies are supposed to be regulated by their gu office, but those offices are too under-staffed to be properly vigilant.

10. Standard versions of language are a kind of expression of cultural hegemony, and the degree of connection between language, culture, identity, and power, are quite inextricable.

More later, readers.

And all the best...

Roboseyo

Winter 2011 so far, in two-second bursts...

I think two seconds is a perfect amount of time to make an impression, and then move on.  You get to know what's happening (unlike with those MTV videos), but even if it's boring, it's only two seconds.

Here are some of the clips I couldn't fit into full videos, but wanted to share.

Memo to The Korea Times

I'm willing to let the alien graveyards slide for a little while...

Just make these maddening little text-obscuring popup ads go away...

and once you've done that, we'll talk about putting ads on the side of your paper that include spankable anime ass, or gross dental clinic ads featuring pictures of the insides of mouths, as well as what it says about your newspaper site, that the hotlinks for the "First in the Nation" English newspaper are in Korean.

first things first, though.

How the Internet Gets Inside Your Head

Great article from the New Yorker about how the internet changes the way we think.

Go read it.  "How the Internet Gets Inside Your Head" by Adam Gopnik

Best line - from talking about anonymous commenting:

Thus the limitless malice of Internet commenting: it’s not newly unleashed anger but what we all think in the first order, and have always in the past socially restrained if only thanks to the look on the listener’s face—the monstrous music that runs through our minds is now played out loud.