On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists, Part 4: Racism, Culture-Shock, Acclimation and Integration in Minjokland

On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists: Let's not all crap our pants now: Part 4: Racism, Acclimation and Integration in Minjokland

This is part 4 in a 5-part series about racist reporting on English teachers in Korea, and how the English teaching community should respond. For the other parts of the series, see these links.

On Ugly English Teachers and Racist English Teachers: Let's not all Crap our Pants Now: Intro
Part 1: But You're TEACHERS!
An Open Letter to new English Teachers in Korea
Part 2: Why, Yes, Korea DOES have a Batshit Media! Why do you ask?
Part 3: Yeah, Some Self-Reflection Is Called For, but not From You, Ms. Choi
Part 4: Racism, Culture-shock, Acclimation and Integration in Minjokland
Part 5: The PR Campaign: 'Seyo's Marching Orders

So here we are in Minjokland: Korea is a country where, (particularly during the difficult climb from being a third-world, impoverished shithole [Image source] , to a legitimate global force,) people were very explicitly and intentionally inculcated, indoctrinated, and programmed, to take pride in Korea for surviving many foreign menaces in the past, and yet remaining racially pure during all that time. I'm not scholar enough to trace the history of the one-blood myth, much less deconstruct it, nor am I thorough enough to demonstrate whether Korea's historical "foreign menace repelled...TWO THOUSAND TIMES!" myth holds a lot, a little, or no water at all, and I'm certainly not going to assert conclusively that the largest proportion of the crappy things Koreans suffered throughout Korean history were actually inflicted upon them by other Koreans (say, the elites who had money and power, on the proletariat), and not foreigners at all. I'd venture a guess, but couldn't say for sure whether Koreans' exploitation of their own nearly matched, matched, outstripped, or far outstripped the bad business that was done to Koreans by people from other countries. That's outside the scope of this article anyway, because how Koreans view their history is more important than whether that view is accurate, when we're discussing a country's self-perception, and where we fit into that matrix.

So what we have is a country proud of its pure blood (that focus on blood isn't as strong as it used to be, but it used to remind me of, uh, well... and the pure bloodline is called "Minjok" - hence the title. More about minjok here.), and told of a long history of being invaded by Bad People Who Want To Wipe Out Korean Culture, and of Korea repelling those invasions. Now, since 1910, if North Korea counts as Korea, and since 1950 if North Korea now counts as a different country (which I think it does), nobody's invaded Korea. There's much less reason for the people to band together and lock elbows and fight for their nation's very identity... yet that myth of some kind of monolithic "Real Korean Culture (That Must Be Defended and is Constantly being Threatened)" lingers: it's hard to unlearn an entire childhood of rah rah propaganda from an all-powerful dictator.

Don't believe old habits die hard? Here's another place where you can see ingrained patterns perpetuate, even after they (probably? most likely? clearly?) are no longer necessary, is in the Korean National Assembly. You know why those old guys keep reverting to extreme, overblown, wildly demonstrative and melodramatic rhetoric and tactics? Because back in Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan's days, when they were in High School and University and learning how countries work, that WAS the only way to make your point. The ordinary channels were blocked, or corrupt, or mere tokens, so sit-ins, hunger-strikes and molotov cocktails were the way to get stuff done, and those were the methods that earned Korea an actual democracy, instead of a sham dictatorship.

So now, without a military aggressor/villain trying outright to outlaw the Korean Language from being spoken in legal proceedings, official functions, and educational institutes (as happened during the Japanese Colonial period), there's this wacky Western Culture, and rather than hammering iron spikes in rocks to screw up the geomantic power of Korea's important sites, it's causing young people to tan, dye their hair yellow, wear pink men's shirts and speak a weird dialect full of alien, new words, and it's seeded the whole country with huge, ugly-as-hell tombstone-apartment blocks, and western brand-name shops, and people aren't learning to respect their elders like they used to, and instead of being forbidden from speaking Korean, they're being forced to learn English, not on pain of corporal punishment anymore, but on pain of stunted career opportunities, and finally one morning they wake up and don't recognize the country where they were born. Can you imagine anything lonelier than finding yourself a stranger in the only land you know, anything colder than being called anachronistic and outdated in the place you grew up, at an age when you'd expected to be growing old with honor and respect?

So it's anybody's guess just how much of Korea's hate-on for English teachers is actually redirected anxiety over Korea's rapid modernization and the loss of some romanticized image of "the old ways".

The whole percieved cultural hegemony thing sure can rankle, and while, deep down, I think Koreans recognize that yeah, they DO need America's military protection, and America's economic partnership to hold their place in the world, and that Koreans ARE generally better off now than they were getting ripped off and held down by their yangban overlords in the Chosun days, and certainly better than when they were having their culture boot-stomped by Japanese colonizers, we English teachers are a nice vent for the resentment that springs from the feeling of inferiority born of NEEDING that help (or at least having needed it in the past). And us English teachers? We look different, and we're from the countries Korea can't OPENLY alienate, and we're right here next to them on the bus or at the next table in the restaurant. We're easy [photo source] backlash targets, conveniently located three doors down, so let's remember that at least SOME of the bile directed at us is of a passive-aggressive, "I'm punching the wall because I'm not allowed to punch my father-in-law" nature, and not really about us at all, in the same way that the beef protests weren't really about beef. The exact same way.

As we struggle to find our place in Korean society, and as our expectations of Korea bump up against Koreans' expectations of us, let's consider this, too: On both sides of the (especially older male) Korean/foreign (white & especially male) English teacher head-butting binary, many, probably most of us are spectacularly unequipped to deal with culture clashes.

Let me explain.

See, to begin with, until this very most recent generation of kids whose families have had the resources to send them overseas, almost all Koreans have pretty much spent almost all their lives in Korea, speaking Korean, hanging out with Koreans, and doing things the Korean way. Even when Koreans travel outside of Korea, as anybody who's gone on a group tour knows, Koreans do it The Korean Way, and effectively carve out a little mini-Korea in the middle of the country they're visiting, going to the same Korean guest-house, eating at the only Korean restaurant in town (almost every night on some tours) and sneaking soju and kimchi in their carry-ons, in order not to have to eat any of that weird-smelling non-Korean food (the delicious irony of the country that invented dwenjang and the world's strongest garlic, complaining about the smell of Pho noodle soup, is not lost on me. Pot, meet kettle.) [image] Being surrounded by people doing everything the Korean way, and having no reason to seek out alternative ways to do things (the pressure to conform is also beyond the scope of this essay, but it's sure there) basically, most Koreans have never been asked, nor challenged themselves, to color outside the lines. Why would they? Those lines got there through years of the auspicious ancestors perfecting the system, and it worked for them!

Then, take a white English teacher. Especially a white male English teacher from a primarily-white home country (I don't think I can speak for South-Africans here...maybe one of you would like to explain the phenomenon I'm about to describe as it pertains to your countrypersons in the comments?). Yeah, we Westerners (though I've heard those Oceanians rankle at being called Westerners: sorry my Aussie and Kiwi readers) have generally had a little more experience meeting people from different cultures, and with different skin colors than born-and-raised Korea Koreans, but for the white of us (and I'm not saying that all English teachers are white, nor should be [heaven forbid!] but the Korean preference to hire whites has been fairly well-documented), and especially the white males, we've always been the face of the majority in our country. Sure, there might be a little white-priviledge guilt mixed in there, and we might be very open-minded in our choices of lifestyle, friends, association, and whatever else, but when push comes to shove, the onus lies on the other cultures immigrating to and living in our home countries, to learn OUR language. In our home countries, blending in, for those immigrants and ethnic minorities, means becoming more like us, in speech, dress, behavior, attitude, whatever. I ain't saying it's right, and I ain't saying our countries are as anti-diverse as they might have been in 1955, but for now the fact remains, we're still the face of the hegemony, and are used to things being done the way WE do them.

Whew! All this broad-brush painting is tiring!

[image]

So take Koreans who have had things done their way ALL their lives (and the assumption that things will continue to be done THEIR way is strongest in older Korean males), and English teachers who have had things done THEIR way all their lives (and, not to say it doesn't appear in other genders or colors, but I'm pretty confident in saying that this feature is also most concentrated in white males), put them together in a situation where one has a lot of money at stake, and the other is deep in culture shock, in every part of his/her life, and they have wildly different ways of doing things, and neither have ANY experience in their lives of being the one who accomodates, instead of being the one who is accomodated: we are, on either side, Speck-TACK-yoo-lair-ly unequipped to deal with eachother. At least white females and non-whites have had to deal with white male bullshit all their lives! Expat Jane has valuable things to say about this. Go read. With this in mind, is it any surprise that it has been reported to me, by a few friends whose observations I trust, that first-world white males complain about Korea, and racism, and whatnot, more than any other group of expat? So, again, neither side is off the hook, but we can at least be mindful of where we're coming from, and hope for the same from our counterparts.

This is not a point to be thrown in the face of the person who disagrees with you; this is not just more fodder for certain English-teacher-hating Korea Times trolls: this is simply something to be aware of in ourselves. Somebody with a sprained ankle ought to go slower down the stairs than an athlete, and someone who's never in his life been asked to so radically consider other ways of doing things ought to approach conflicts with a bit more open-mindedness, humility and flexibility than that multicultural whiz-kid diplomat's daughter, who navigates cultural barriers as easy as breathing.

Another thing about this culture clash is that, Korea is not like our western countries, where the diverse population includes a mix of F.O.B.'s (fresh off the boat), semi-experienced, very experienced, and second generation immigrants, and the diverse populations in our countries increase both by immigration AND reproduction. Many of the mixed-ethnic people in our home countries are from immigrant families, many are second-generation kids who grow up culturally hip, smart and capable code-switchers who can blend in smoothly both with their own immigrant communities AND with the majority culture. They can act as a buffer between the shocking otherness of their parents, and the dominant culture. [image] But here in Korea, immigration is rare, so such code-switching kids are only coming from international marriages, many of whom (especially in the case of the international marriages in the countryside between Korean males and Southeast Asian women) are still quite young, and some of the Koreans returning from living overseas (though they have their own troubles re-acclimating to Korea, I'm told) and those mixed kids are still struggling to find their place in Korean society, rather than acting as go-betweens between their less-culturally hip parents and the culture of the majority, as a kind of semi-Other mediating the more concentrated Otherness of their parents, who might never lose their accent, and don't like seeing their kids marry non-theirethnicgroups. I don't dare say much more than that about where returning overseas Koreans fit into this... any of my Kyopo readers want to throw in a thought or two in the comments? (As a non-Kyopo, I haven't, and I'd ask other non-Kyopos not to speak for them). What about Korean adoptees? Jeez, I don't know.

Anyway, what that all means is that for all the ethnic diversity in our home countries, there're also a bunch of visible minorities in North America who are skilled code-switchers, able to blend in and even mediate between the Other and the majority. For us English teachers in Korea, many of us ain't so hot at code-switching. For us, the more common pattern is "F.O.B. arrives, goes through a year or two of spectacularly difficult culture-clashes and personality-clashes that are frustrating on both sides, and just as he/she reaches a point where he/she is starting to "get" Korea, and can start to go with the flow, leaves to be replaced with ANOTHER F.O.B. who goes through the same frustrating travails, and also then leaves, and so forth. That pattern sets us up to be disliked by the people who have to deal with us every day, and deal with the same bull again with each new teacher, like a hamster on a treadmill. Now sure, part of the blame for this is, again, on the gatekeepers: the employers who are not willing to add enough incentives to make it worthwhile for more of us to stay longer and put down roots here, and (seemingly) would rather suffer those clashes, than pay what our experience is actually worth in ease of dealing with us and improved teaching ability, professionalism, and cultural awareness. This, again, is where it's a shame that so many long-termers and high-level Korean speaking expats don't continue to associate with the newer English teachers, because, again, they'd be helpful as a buffer for the shocking otherness of the F.O.B.'s, and better at explaining the score than that OTHER F.O.B. who's only really been there six months longer than the new guy. Plus, unlike second generation immigrant kids, who are buffering for their FAMILY, long-term expats feel less, little, or no obligation toward the new ones.

So, acclimation is hard. Harder than we ever realized it would be. It's part of the package, though, and we've got to find the healthiest way possible to deal with it.

[image: not quite a melting pot, but...]

Next question: what about integration? One of my friends has a brother who lives in Sweden, and he loves it there, and his Swedish is good enough that he can almost fit in without being noticed...but not quite. He says that while he appreciates the special treatment that comes of being an outsider, he'd rather be ignored. That's what integration is. He wants to be just another joe (or Bjorn, as it were), who happens not to speak Swedish as well as most....but well enough, thanks. Rather than pointing a neon sign at the differences between him and the rest of Sweden, he'd rather move around without making any waves.

And here's the next thing about the expat experience. See, I think a lot of us are a bit confused about what exactly we want from our Korea experience (likewise, our bosses often don't know what to do with us). Integration would mean that we are treated EXACTLY the same as the Koreans around us. If it could truly happen, imagine: no kids would shout "FOREIGNER!" and point when we pass a field-trip, no more shouted "MY NAME IS SUJI!" from across the street. No old guys leering, or cursing at us, or no old ladies grabbing our love handles and laughing to her friends. Nobody approaching us in bookstores with "Free English Lesson" written all over their face, or staring at our erogenous zones in saunas. (Yes! Foreigners have them too!) Wouldn't it be nice! But it would also mean being ignored on the bus by those cute kids. It would mean facing the same obstacles and expectations a Korean mate would face in dating, and, even worse, in the workplace. It would mean being expected to learn the language, because "This is Korea" ("Learn English. This is America:" how often have you heard that?) and sure, the cops would treat us the same in a scuffle, but the landlord's wife wouldn't bring us fruit just because we're foreigners, the young people wouldn't afford us those curiousity dates that drop in our laps from time to time, and we'd have to work harder to get phone numbers, and if we were lost downtown, nobody'd approach us and ask if we need help. I don't think we can separate the good from the bad, and ask for only the good parts. It's a little disingenuous to expect it, but it might help us to remember that being called "handsome" or "beautiful" regularly, getting away with stuff by playing the "foreigner card" (gee, sir, sorry: I couldn't read the "park closed after 10pm" sign) getting free bonus-stuff at shops or restaurants, having an easier time getting away with approaching strangers to get a phone number or whatever, comes out of the same perception of uniqueness and otherness that attracts the weird drunk guys to come and talk to US, over all the other people on the subway car. So would we give it ALL up, in order no longer to be singled out in the news, on the street, by the big hairy old-guy eyeball, and such? Maybe I would, but I'd have to think about it for a while. I kind of like the well-meant "can I help you find something?" strangers who approach me at subway stations, or the coworkers who say "I want to take you to a traditional Korean restaurant" or invite us to eat with their families, or to come to their houses on holidays and observe the ancestral rituals. I kind of like being special here. I think a lot of us do, and after glowing from the special attention, it's a bit hypocritical to complain in the next breath about the people staring at us who AREN'T cute young Koreans of the opposite gender.

This is the part of the essay where I mention that every time unqualified English teachers get mentioned in the media, coverage conveniently fails to direct any scrutiny toward the gatekeepers of the ESL industry: the recruiters, the employers, and a little farther removed, Korean immigration. More attention SHOULD be paid to the clowns who are letting these clowns into the country, and the word unqualified really only highlights how badly recruiters hogwan owners and immigration are bunging up their job as gatekeepers... especially when immigration does it, because first they set the bar, and then they moan hypocritically that it's too low, when THEY decided where it should be. One of the best comments I ever read on this topic was also one of the simplest: it was on the Marmot's Hole, and all it said was "1. Many native English teachers. 2. Well-trained, professionally qualified native English teachers. 3. Cheap native English teachers. Korea has to pick two." Can't remember who wrote it, though.

But there's plenty of blame to go around for who gets in. The moms who settle for discount frat boy instead of paying extra for a real educator are also to blame, as are the hogwan regulatory institutions that are either too lazy, too understaffed, or too corrupt to fix a failing system.

[image] Fact is, as long as there's a place for jokers and deadbeats on the demand side, there will always be deadbeats and jokers ready to fill the demand. And then we get into the vicious cycle where those jokers convince people that Native English Teachers are just singing white monkeys anyway, therefore we are assigned tasks and curricula that demand nothing better from us, which ask far less of (most of) us than we are capable, or put us into conditions where actual professionalism is impossible: split-shifts, insane working hours, unreasonable demands, unpaid overtime, and so forth... so we do the bare minimum we can, either because too much is asked, or because we've given up because the curriculum is insultingly simple, or because the boss just wants warm bodies in the classroom and flaunts his lack of care about education, creating a culture of complacency about education, and despite our initial intentions or qualifications, we're doing no better a job than that white, dancing monkey after all. Upon seeing such work, the boss's idea is confirmed that skimping for a cheap native speaker makes more sense than paying the kind of money it would cost to bring in teachers with qualification, and we're going in circles, playing "the chicken or the egg?"

Next thing about the racism dialog: it's happening simultaneously on two levels: on the Macro Level -- that is, the big picture, where English teacher organizations and Anti-Defamation Leagues should be interacting with groups like the Press Arbitration committee and the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, and also on the Micro Level, where we demonstrate good character and professional conduct to our coworkers and the Koreans we meet, and walk away from provocation instead of stirring shit up, wherein our behaviour is so unimpeachable that instead of reading articles by bigots like Choi Hui-Seon and thinking, "Yeah! We really SHOULD do something about English teachers! [image] I wish somebody'd done something about those awful weiguks I saw last weekend...," the Koreans around us read such articles and think, "Wow! This is so clearly racist bullshit: I've known a bunch of English Teachers, and all of them have been polite, global-minded, professional and altogether above reproach!" These two levels of discourse are not always in step: while the civil rights movement had LEGALLY forbidden certain acts, and extended certain other rights and priveledges to African-Americans, racist hate-crimes and various forms of discrimination or profiling did, and still do, continue. Changing laws is a lot easier than changing minds, and changing enough minds to comprise a change in culture takes time. It might be a full generation, or two, before Korea fully recognizes the role foreigners and mixed-blood citizens will play in Korea's future: it was two generations between the Civil Rights movement and Obama's election, and even in American black-white race-relations, there's still work to be done. Until then... work in progress. Sorry about the mess. Please be patient with traffic stoppages.

The Devil's Post

This is post 666 at Roboseyo, and I want to know...

a little while ago, a New Zealand company made an ad that mocked Korea's national assembly for looking more like a rugby scrum than a group of lawmakers, and Kiwi-Koreans protested and got it pulled. Does anybody have a link or video of that commercial?

A Moment to Acknowledge...

After the fuss made about it earlier, and even my Korea Herald Article, it should be noted that the news reports I've seen on the swine flu in Korea are no longer focusing on English Teachers as carriers.

I'm happy about this, and it's important to note when things are done responsibly, especially if we get all shrill when they're done badly.

Two Sports Stories. Usain Bolt 9.58, EJ Yang

Just look at Usain Bolt's 9.58 race.


And EJ Yang, a Korean, becomes the first person to catch Tiger Woods when Tiger's leading a major tournament after 54 holes. Bringing down the deadliest assassin in golf, and the most reliable closer, is pretty darn impressive, too. In fact, I'll have to check the rules on this, but getting smacked around by a Korean in a Major might mean that Tiger now becomes part Korean, and Koreans can henceforward take credit for his future successes. (I might be wrong there, though.)

Roboseyo's Guilty Pleasure Corner: The Rise of the Craptacle

So, it's been so hot lately, and without an air conditioner, I've been feeling like this guy: (face-melting wrath of God warning: Raiders of The Lost Ark)


Been going to the movies lately, too (mmm. Big, air-conditioned rooms) and got to watch my childhood in some big action movies.

And I'm still not sure whether my childhood has been violated, or whether Transformers and GI Joe got EXACTLY the movies they deserved.

Transformers 2 starred this guy.


And I have to agree with this (must, must, must read) review: "Michael Bay Finally Made an Art Film"

See, I kind of thought, with Titanic, that movie budgets had reached a breaking point: I remember a movie reviewer predicting that the failure of spectacles like Pearl Harbor would lead to movie studies giving up on glamour and spectacle, simplifying, and going for lower budgets with better characterization and writing, because sinking a hundred mill into one movie was just too risky, when that hundred mill could instead be used to support smaller projects that, even with modest returns, would be turning profits. We overestimated Hollywood. Instead of budgets becoming smaller and stories becoming more important, Hollywood's swung exactly the opposite way these last few summers.



The first death-knell of story was the rise of the sequel: when The Mummy Returns made more money (and was actually a better movie) than The Mummy, when X-Men was written specifically in order to spawn sequels, and when the first couple of Batman Sequels were reasonably watchable and profoundly profitable, sequels became a safer bet, which put less stress on original story ideas.

The second death-knell were the especially bad sequels like Matrix: Revolutions and Pirates of the Carribean 3, which seemed to show us that audiences don't really even care about consistency of story: familiar characters moving through familiar scenarios with ever-bigger set-pieces and effects was enough to put bums in movie seats. Character died? Who cares? Bring them back! Logic? What's logic? If the movie's loud enough audiences won't notice logic until they're in the bathroom after the movie's finished. Case in point: Terminator 3.



The next death-knell was the rise of high-speed internet. You see, acting, good writing, and well-plotted stories show up just as well on my computer screen as on the big screen, so why wouldn't I download that art film which I heard was really well-made? In fact, the only element of a movie that DOESN'T show up just as well on a computer screen is spectacle. That means big, sweeping cinematography (Lord of the Rings), or big, noisy explosions are the only thing that can give watchers an experience they can't get at home by downloading... so is it any surprise movie studios are loading up on exactly that... even at the expense of stuff like story, dialog, and characterization?

We're slowly, inexorably, moving toward this, and I've got a name for it. A craptacle. Spectacle + crap = craptacle.



And with Transformers, Die Still Harder Than You Ever Thought About Dying Before!, Terminator, G.I. Joe, X-Men Wolverine, and last year's Indiana Jones 4: all either sequels or meant to have them, all profitable, but all crap, as well as noisy failures like Speed Racer and profitable but unlikely to have a sequel movies like Hancock, the craptacle is the latest genre to take over Hollywood. Often they're sequels, but not always: Speed Racer was a non-sequel craptacle, but then, it was a manga adaptation, which isn't far off: several other graphic novel adaptations have come dangerously close to being craptacles, and if it weren't so ponderously paced, Watchmen would have been.



So they're dumb. Epically dumb. But they aren't pretending to be anything other than exactly that. And the funny thing is, as long as the movies know they're dumb, I'll forgive them, just like as long as Abba sings cheesy songs about dancing and fuzzy bunnies, they're a great dance band, and I'll forgive them. If Abba had gone through an existential phase where they tried to channel Bob Dylan, I wouldn't buy it. Nobody would - that's why Abba never made a Bob Dylan album. That's why Michael Bay didn't direct Kate Winslet's latest Oscar vehicle, and will probably never work with Meryl Streep (unless she wants to get paid). If it succeeds at being dumb and fun, well, they hit the mark they were aiming for, didn't they?



But the funny thing is... my expectations have gotten so low for Hollywood movies, that I'll take it. Go ahead and make a dumb movie about stuff blowing up. Just make one or two of the characters likeable, and don't offend me, and blow the stuff up REAL GOOD and that's enough. The racist tweedledee and tweedledum in Transformers offended me; other than that, it was an amazing craptacle, and a hilariously stupid way to kill some time. Plus, remember that part where Sam's mom totally ate a pot brownie? Or that part where those other decepticons totally joined together into a mega-decepticon? Or the way the mega-decepticon had balls? Or when the old transformer farted and a parachute came out? Or when Optimus Prime stole parts from that other Autobot (who might have been Leader 1 of the Gobots trying to sneak in for a cameo) and became Optimus President's Super Prime With A Baked Potato? That was awesome! I mean, (SPOILER ALERT, NOT THAT SPOILERS MATTER) how much awesomer can you get than a movie with not just one, but TWO resurrections from the dead during the final scene? AND a Mega-Optimus transformation, too! I think I just peed a little bit in my pants!

I feel like Chris Farley in those SNL skits where he'd interview movie stars, but instead of asking them questions, he'd just say things like "Remember that time when your character jumped out of a helicopter and landed in a convertible and said, 'I'd like that to go' -- that was so awesome!"

Ditto for G.I. Joe: in which the underwater arctic fortress hit the self-destruct button, and when it started blowing up, huge chunks of ice started to fall. But who cares? There were NINJAS! And they blowed up a buncha stuff, plus, they blowed it up real good! And blowing stuff up real good is FUN! So yeah. Let turn loose your inner seven-year old (and what seven-year-old won't suspend disbelief all the way down the block?) and bring earplugs if you like (it's not like the dialog is really worth it anyway), and enjoy the heck out of the next craptacle to come to your theatre!

It's my new guilty pleasure, and I barely feel guilty at all.

In the Irony Section at Kyobo Bookstore

I've totally changed my mind. the Misuda girls are dignified representatives of our various cultures

Really, it's like a model united nations there! Just look at this clip.

On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists, Part 3: Yeah, Some Introspection is Called For, but not from You, Ms. Choi

On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists: Let's not all crap our pants now Part 3:
Yeah, Some Self-Reflection Is Called For, but not From You, Ms. Choi

This post is one entry in a series:
On Ugly English Teachers and Racist English Teachers: Let's not all Crap our Pants Now: Intro
Part 1: But You're TEACHERS!
An Open Letter to new English Teachers in Korea
Part 2: Why, Yes, Korea DOES have a Batshit Media! Why do you ask?
Part 3: Yeah, Some Self-Reflection Is Called For, but not From You, Ms. Choi
Part 4: Racism, Culture-shock, Acclimation and Integration in Minjokland
Part 5: The PR Campaign: 'Seyo's Marching Orders

No, Choi Hui-seon is not the one to ask the English teaching community to do a little introspection, though whoever sent that name-calling text-message SHOULD think a little more carefully about the fact that HOW one does something is sometimes just as important as WHAT one is doing. Especially when it concerns actions which might be taken to represent one's community.

Ms. Choi has a lot of self-examination of her own to do, looking more carefully at why she is so quick to measure a population by its low-water mark, and whether she would want other countries to treat expat and immigrant Koreans as harshly as she treats us. Packs of Americans roving the streets to torch Korean-owned grocers in the wake of the Cho Seung-hui VT Massacre is what we'd have if the world were as quick to profile outsiders as Ms. Choi, but I'm sure she hasn't thought of that. But then, she's not the only one who's been calling on the English teacher community to take a look inward.

Brian Deutsch has expressed similar thoughts, and while on the Seoulpodcast, Joe Zenkimchi has assured us that the Expat English Teacher's douche proportion is decreasing, there's more we can do, if only so that we know our footing before we head into the arena.

The old philosopher Sun Tsu said that "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result". Now that's a nice, tidy, over-simplification, to be sure, but it's how Batman defeats much more powerful enemies, time and time again, and while it's unhelpful to start off assuming the Korean media has an antagonist hard-on for us, and I don't like framing the English Teacher/Korean Media relationship in military terms, we need to take an honest look at the English teaching community in Korea, in order to at least know the position from which we are responding to the racism and scapegoating which targets us as a group. In the last article, I looked a bit at Korea's media, so now it's time to look inward.

Here are a few features of our community. What can we do about it? Well, let's talk about it to begin with.

The expat community at large, and even the English teacher community in particular, have been accused before of being too disjointed, too diverse and fractious, to ever amount to more than the sum of its parts; in fact, thanks to the actions of a few, and the reporting on those actions by a few journalists, I'd even submit that the English teacher population has so far amounted to significantly LESS than the sum of its parts. The famous Scott Burgeson, who will appear on the comment board if I write his name three times, even formulated Bethell's Law, which states

"the foreign community in Korea has always been much too fragmented, transient and diverse to broadly support any publications that fail to hew closely and safely to the proverbial lowest common denominator. That is as true today as it was a hundred years ago, if not more so."

Now, Baeksu was talking about publications like his own defunct zine, Korea Bug, however, since he coined Bethell's law, the basic meme, that expats in Korea are too fragmented and diverse to broadly support...anything, has grown to cover other abortive expat endeavors as well, particularly the attempt to form a functional community.

And it's true. The fractious and diverse part, that is. The English teachers in Korea run the entire gamut from human train-wrecks to model citizens, from ex-burger-flippers plying on their community college chemistry degree, to kickass, highly trained career educators, from one-year transients to long-term, rooted, and deeply entrenched. According to Scott Burgeson (that's two), the attempt to form a teacher's union in Japan failed, because there were too many disparate interests: it was like herding cats to administer such a fractious group. (Can't find the source: it's on a comment board somewhere)

So why bother trying?

Well, for one, the people who are trying to stiff us ARE organized: Anti-English Spectrum and the Hogwan Owners' Association are active operations trying to toss our reputations or our rights in the shitter, and some members of both associations have the ears of people in high places, if it's true what my friend said after joining The Anti-English Spectrum to get access to its archives and reading around; without groups in place to push back, we're done!

Also, even though we're a wildly diverse group, we are thought of by many? most? Koreans in the collective. Nobody stops to check the color of your passport before shouting "Yankee, go home!" ("Oh, actually, Mr. Aggressive drunk guy, I'm from New Zealand, so kindly direct your racist hate elsewhere" "Oh! So sorry! Loved Lord of the Rings! Have a nice day, my precious!" "Haha. I've never heard that before.") nobody stops and checks how well you speak Korean before calling your Korean date a whore or a blood traitor (to steal a phrase from Harry Potter). Nobody checks the stamp in your passport and verifies your visa status before lumping you into the "probable unqualified miscreant, possible HIV carrier, pedophile, drug-user" category. E-2, E-5, F-2, E-whatever and whatever the F, those letter-number combinations mean nothing to that drunk guy cursing you (or your significant other) in the street, and I'm an ignorant fool if I think I haven't been slapped in the same boat as the rest of all's y'all, just because "I'm a nice guy" or "I speak Korean pretty well" or "I've been here a long time," or "I have lots of Korean friends, and they tell me I'm not one of 'those' foreigners (are you carrying around a letter of reference to show to the drunken thugs looking to start something? Think it'll help?)". We're in this boat together, folks, and the sooner we start acting it, the better off we'll be.

So yeah, we ARE A fractious community, but in some areas, we DO share interests.
We want our rights to be protected.
We want to get paid what we were promised for the work we do.
We want our bosses to keep the promises they made in the contract, and to deal with us legally.
We want to have recourse when the shit hits the fan.
We want to be treated equally under Korean law.
We want to be covered in the media in the same way Korean professions and groups are treated (that is, a moral failure by one isn't made out to define the entire group),

Even if we have different goals and reasons for being in Korea in other areas, we should be able to lock elbows on those issues, and recognize that if one of us is exploited or stereotyped, that opens the door for any of us to be exploited or stereotyped. It's not Tommy Expat's fault his boss screwed him over any more than it's Jane Shortskirt's fault someone grabbed her ass in the stairwell, and blaming the victim does nothing to change an atmosphere where people feel free to take liberties without consequences.

Consider too that the deck is stacked against us in another way: every legal English teacher in Korea and most of the illegal ones, I'll guess, are university educated citizens from some of the richest, most advanced and privileged countries in the world. Plus, by default, we speak the lingua franca! It's harder for us to stir up the same kind of sympathy that a battered Indonesian housewife with nowhere to turn could, or the illegal Chinese worker who can't even buy a plane ticket home, and would have nothing waiting for her there anyway, so she starts considering the sex trade. I doubt any of us, ever, have considered the sex trade as a next option if our hagwon jobs go sour, but that's the reality migrant workers from other countries face.

Because of this, we have a bit of that "poor little rich kid" resentment going against us, which means that people simply feel less sympathy for us. I think this is where some of the "If you don't like it, go home" responses come from... I'm still convinced that's a totally unhelpful response: nobody gets any farther ahead, and everybody loses a chance to learn, and/or make a difference, if we have no recourse but to go home if we don't like things; however, the question remains, in a way that is much more poignant for us Canadians, New Zealanders, Americans, Brits, Irish, and South Africans (six of the seven E2 eligible countries rank higher than Korea on the Human Development Index) than it is for, say, Cambodians, Vietnamese, or Phillipinos whose "if you don't like it, go home" strands them in a much worse state.

We're choosing to be here, for whatever reason. If putting up with the bullshit is cramping our style too much, we CAN go home (even those of us who are married to Koreans: it would be easier to convince the in-laws to let their son/daughter emigrate to Canada or Ireland than to convince them that better opportunities await if we return to the hometown in rural Vietnam). We have that option, at least much more than other expat workers in Korea.

It should be reiterated too that sometimes (as several people mentioned during the "why do expats complain?" series) Korea online is a lot less fun than Korea in real life, and reading fifty other "my boss is screwing with me" stories at Dave's makes workplace frustration that much worse, and leads us toward making blanket judgements, where it'd do us better to climb a mountain, see a great view, and then get back to wrestling with the boss with a clear mind.




So as for forming a community... do we want that? What would that community look like? And, would it be worth the effort?

Well, first off, we're never going to include every teacher. We're spread out too far and wide geographically, and too many people come and go too often, and the internet isn't quite a powerful enough binding force to create community and unity on its own.

Meanwhile, a lot of the meaningful connections that DO form between expats get broken by people returning home, or otherwise moving on. This sucks. Seriously, it recently passed The Language Barrier as the biggest ongoing frustration/downer about living in Korea. I'm tired of pouring my energy down a hole, so to speak, and having nothing to show for the friendship-building work I put in, every time another meaningful connection splits.

Between the diversity and the transience, no, we're never going to be as tight and interpersonally connected as a church congregation in a small town, for example, where everyone grew up side by side. The cohesion that develops just won't here.

Yet it remains crucial that we STILL find a community of some kind, and put some energy into it. Organic communities fall apart when people leave; this is why I recommend people form and join structured communities with clearly defined roles, which have an easier time perpetuating than social groups that formed through interpersonal chemistry. "The group's communications director is going home next month. Who will take on the job of writing update e-mails?" is an easier conversation to have than "Janice was good at mediating Tom and Anna's arguments. Who will smooth things over after she goes?" Clearer roles make high turnover easier to negotiate.

Personally, the sooner I accept the revolving door as coming with the territory, the better I can cope, and make the best of what I've got. For a bit of pure speculation, I suspect this is why a lot of long-term Koreexpats end up losing touch with the first and second year teachers: we have less in common with them after a while. We get tired of hearing the same stories and complaints we heard last year when that other pal was new, and we end up investing in the people who are going to be around for a while, forming a kind of inside clique, the invitation-only veterans' club. I suppose this is natural...but on the other hand, it's a shame. In the same way it sucks that those with a lot of Korean ability often are out of touch with the expats who would benefit most from their ability (probably for the same reasons), it sucks too that those who have been here a long time also lose touch with the hoi polloi English teachers.

The variety of people you meet can be stimulating, if you approach it the right way, and the payoff might be surprising, if we DID let down the guard and let more newbies past the defenses. It might lead to more of those short-termers deciding to stay longer, and put more into this place.

And as for resources, a quick inventory reveals: Korean Media Watch, ATEK, Korea Beat's mad translation skills, Popular Gusts' mad research skills, The Wagner Report, an online sector more connected than ever before, and often making the leap from online to real life, and a lot of people saying, "I wish there was more" so let's get behind what we have, and look forward to what comes next. Anything I'm missing?

So our community DOES need work. Sure, we're only humans, but there's more we could be doing both in our willingness to help eachother out and our willingness to put ourselves forward in the kinds of groups that WOULD stand up for us. For example, I'd like to see more of the expats who have been here long enough to acquire the level of Korean needed to help in something like an anti-defamation committee, offer up their abilities to a help the community. I'm sure there are enough of you that, if we networked well, nobody would be taking on too much work.

At this point, a lot of the veterans, and especially those who really speak the language, seem to go native instead, and drift out of touch with the expat teachers who lack the language chops to defend themselves from Choi Hui-seon and her ilk. This would seem to be Bethell's law in effect; however, I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this point.

Meanwhile, this wildly diverse group has only one association. ATEK will have its hands full trying to represent every type of English teacher who's signed up there, given so much variance in training level, time of stay, visa status, region, and type of institute. I submit that instead of just one, we English teachers should have five organizations operating simultaneously, so that the different groups can focus on the needs of different types of teachers. Why not a Native Hogwan Teachers' Association, a Public School Foreign English Teacher's Association, an F-Visa Holder's Association, a Long-Term E-Visa Holder's Association, and an Anti-Defamation Committee for starters, all pitching for their different interests, and then coming together with one voice on the big stuff. That'd be friggin' AWESOME, and good God, we need all the help we can get! On the other hand, it'd also be good to get some good support, in numbers, energy and effort, behind the one organization that already HAS formed, to make sure it gets rolling. We haven't heard a lot from ATEK since its National Council formed (though I hope members have heard more than I have, not yet being a member myself), but I wish for nothing more than for every association, interest group, hobby club, book club and drama-kids circle to flourish, gain members, and meet more often.

Finally, though we aren't as cohesive as that small-town church, we DO share some pressing concerns, if only because we share the same, or at least a similar lot, and it's time to start initiating and supporting groups that articulate those concerns. Arguing for maintaining the status quo of being a silent, easy target is not enough when there are organized groups mobilizing and peddling influence explicitly to make things WORSE for us here, and the option to go home is moot when some of us do not have that option, and even if we DO throw up our hands and go home, the teacher brought in to replace us will inherit a shit sandwich, thanks to our disengaged apathy.

It's time to recognize that we ARE a community, folks, and start to act accordingly. We need to take responsibility for what we ARE, by taking a good look at ourselves, for what we want, by forming groups and speaking out, AND For How We Are Perceived. That public perception war is pervasive, every veteran and newbie is part of it, whether we want to be or not, and it trumps everything else we are doing as a community when party photos hit Naver's front page. Each new teacher coming to Korea should be made aware of the state of Native Teacher Nation in Korea, and if necessary, admonished not to bung up the public opinion war we are fighting. That talk should be part of the "Welcome to Korea" introduction, along with "Let me show you the nearest supermarket," and it should come from a peer, a drinking buddy or a fellow foreign coworker, not from a manager or supervisor, and certainly not from a Korean boss or manager. We need to keep our own in check, which is part of what every community does, in order to be seen as something better than our own low-water mark, and hopefully to one day equal, and then amount to more than, the sum of our parts.

And you know what? Now is the time!

Stay tuned for part 4: Racism, Acclimation and Integration in Minjokland

Speaking of Korea's messed-up media...

remember that foreign girl who was raped? turns out the Korea Times and the Chosun Ilbo [thanks, Brian] never even talked to her before making up her quotes and writing up her story.

Story in the Korea Herald

Maybe this is my western judgement of Korean culture, but I still think it's messed up that criminals can often pay in order to have their prison sentence reduced, and that such "blood money" deals are often brokered by the police. In some cases, it almost comes across as "hush money"

HT to Extra Korea

Took this picture of Gwanghwamun Square

Idle Thought:

Isn't the book 1000 Places to See before you die a kind of cruel trick? I mean, how many people in the whole durn world would have enough free time and coin to see all 1000? Any number larger than 100 and it starts seeming a bit overwhelming, doesn't it? I've always thought 7 was a good, concise number: 7 wonders of the world are about right.

In a similar vein, I've always fantasized about writing a satirical book titled "72 Tips to Unclutter Your Mind"

In other news, last week I was walking around between Euljiro and Chungmuro, and saw this sweet little alley. I love that right down the street from one of the busiest urban centers in the world, and around two corners, there's a little back alley like this.

On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists, Part 2: Why, Yes, Korea DOES have a Bats&!# Media! Why do you ask?

On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists: Let's not all crap our pants now Part 2: Why, Yes, Korea DOES have a Batshit Media! Why do you ask?

Table of contents:
On Ugly English Teachers and Racist English Teachers: Let's not all Crap our Pants Now: Intro
Part 1: But You're TEACHERS!
An Open Letter to new English Teachers in Korea
Part 2: Why, Yes, Korea DOES have a Batshit Media! Why do you ask?
Part 3: Yeah, Some Self-Reflection Is Called For, but not From You, Ms. Choi
Part 4: Racism, Culture-shock, Acclimation and Integration in Minjokland
Part 5: The PR Campaign: 'Seyo's Marching Orders

OK. Last time, I talked about what we English teachers can do to avoid living down to the sterotypes written about us. I'd like to spend one more sentence emphasizing that... This. Stereotyping. Goes. Both. Ways.. When Westerners say that Koreans are all credulous drones ready to swallow any piece of drivel the media serves up, it grates on the sane, savvy, Korean media consumers just as much as it annoys US when Choi HuiSeon says the whole lot of us is no better than that one yahoo who published that one blog that one time about selling fake diplomas. It's exactly the same thing: holding up the dokdo-finger-choppers as the quintessential Korean is just as lazy and flip and unfair as Lee Eun-eung telling everybody that none of us are any better than the worst photo of the worst night of the worst of us.

In fact, let's extend that a little farther, and acknowledge as well that, despite the title of this post, it is ALSO irresponsible of us to unequivocally say, "Korea has a batshit media," painting it all with the same brush: just as with the deviant English teachers being held up as the norm, let's remember that the racist smear job is, for all we know, the deviation, rather than the norm, as well, and let's also remember that the media in our home countries, be it British tabloids publishing addresses of sex offenders or Fox "Barack Hussein Obama" news, can be pretty batshit insane, too. At best, it would be hypocritical for us to be selective and generalise about the Korean media's selective reporting, ya know? And yeah, that "what I know of it" qualifier pretty much has to stand until I can read enough Korean to see for myself.

Alright. So now that that's been said, let's move on to what exactly IS going on when these kinds of reports get printed.

In the English language Korean media:

It's one thing when Korea's English media publishes this kind of junk. The Korea Times is fond of these kinds of stories, as we know... we also know that The Korea Times' circulation more often ends up in the hands of Koreans studying English than it ends up in the hands of anybody, Korean OR otherwise, using it as an authoritative news source for world news. We all have other sources, and even for our K-news, we mostly read the Korea Times to get riled up or offended...admit it. Frankly, one of the main reasons I end up going back to The Korea Times, despite all its faults, is because out of all the Korean English news websites, it has the best layout, so it's an easier source to access what I'm interested in reading. That's all. Like that psycho ex who's always good for a booty call, it's hard to stay away, even when you know all the baggage that comes with. Any time a story comes up, if it's important enough for us to read the entire article, or get upset enough to write about it, it's also important enough that we cross-check it against other sources and news feeds, isn't it? There's no real need to get SO worked up about it, when you consider all the other sources people are using. It comforts me to remember that Koreans usually use English media sources for English practice, not for forming their final opinions on English teachers, so in the end, all the times and similar sources really accomplish with these stories is make Korea look bad to those who DO check it as a local source, to learn about Korea, so again, lets not all crap our pants here, OK?

And why the hate-on for English teachers in English K-media sources? Who knows? To venture a guess... perhaps it's for a bit of vicarious, passive-aggressive revenge. See, a lot of Koreans living in Korea kind of resent that their bosses demand that they improve their ability in a language they rarely, if ever, use. If they've achieved a high enough level to read the Korea Times, they've had tons of time to build up a nice, healthy hate-on for the forces that insist they study English, and if reading a bunch of teacha-hating on The Times' pages gives them a bit of satisfaction, bully for them. Anybody who's studied English enough to read The Times MUST have had enough interaction with Foreign English Teachers to have formed their own impressions of Foreign English Teachers, and to identify the smell of bullshit when The Times starts trolling... right?

So, given all that, can we cool the histrionics over English language smear jobs on English teachers? Actually, on second thought, we don't NEED to cool the histrionics, because there's nothing more fun than getting all righteous and angry on a comment board somewhere, but there's no REAL need to get QUITE so worked up, unless it IS just for the fun of it.

That leaves hack jobs and hit pieces published in the Korean language media, and this IS cause for a little more concern. See, if these hit pieces are written in the English media, we can rest assured that anybody with enough English to read it, also has enough of the global perspective that intensively studying a language provides, that they'll have the savvy to take such one-sided junk with a grain of salt. However, when it's happening BEHIND the language barrier, it's a bit more problematic, first because foreign teachers might not know about it, and have no chance to respond, but more dangerously, because some? many? most? monolingual Koreans DON'T have the experience with global citizens that comes of learning English, or any other language. This increases the risk that, for some? many? of these kinds of people, ALL THEY KNOW about foreign English teachers is what they're told. This is dangerous: in the same way that, as Kushibo reminds us, getting all our information about Korea from K-blogs will draw in our minds a mental picture of what I like to call a composite FrankenKorean -- a mix-and-match patchwork of all the wackiest, worst stories we've heard about Koeans at their craziest, which, while originally based in stuff that actually happened, after so much selective filtering, has almost no resemblance to any single Korean we might encounter. In the same way, and for the same reasons (that is, being trapped on opposite sides of the language barrier blocks us from understanding each other more accurately) if Koreans are only getting second hand information about foreigners and foreign teachers, depending on those sources, we might end up with a frankenTeacher just as easily -- the portrait of an English teacher we have seen before on Anti-English Spectrum and other media scare-bits, but which, just like FrankenKorean, has no resemblance to any ACTUAL human beings whatsoever, at the end of the day. When it occurs in the Korean media, it is more dangerous, because of the increased danger of profiling, and because of our diminished ability to defend ourselves. This is where I believe it IS time for an English Teacher Anti-Defamation committee to form, whether associated with other English teacher organizations or not. I would like, love, to see a group established that is in touch with the Korean Press Arbitration Committee, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, and the editors of Korea's major papers, as well as some major news sources elswehere, and (to inflate my own importance) the kinds of bloggers who are often the shock troops when media slur-jobs come up, in order to make sure that Korean media decision-makers know that English teachers, and the international community, ARE paying attention, and we will not stand for being ripped unfairly, and we know where to go, what to do, and who to call, if it happens, so that some semblance of accountability develops. I'd join the club myself if it existed, but I wouldn't be much help to it, because my own Korean is rubbish, and such a project would require bilingual humanpower. But I'd still join, and fill out forms, or draft letters for someone to translsate, or whatever.

A couple more things need to be said here.

One: English teachers are not Korea's only whipping boys and girls. At other times, the Korean media scapegoats lawyers, lawmakers, chaebol owners, private academies, the political left, the political right, the politicized church, the rich and arrogant, the poor and angry, Japan, and everything associated with Japan, and America, and everything associated with America, have all been tapped as the source of what ails Korea, too. We English teachers actually get a pretty small slice of the blame-shifting pie, in the grand scheme of things.

Two: (Most) Koreans know this. Seriously, Koreans know their media isn't working the way it should, and that should be acknowledged. And if I approach conversations with Koreans about Korea's media in a high-handed "You know, where I come from, the media is..." attitude, I'm going to dig myself a hole if I forget the all-important qualifiers: some, often, sometimes, it seems, when I talk about this stuff. Koreans ain't as credulous as they are made out to be on comment boards about Mad Bull Shit, and telling them they are won't make you any friends. It's also intellectually lazy.

So yeah, the Korean media CAN be batshit, and yeah, English teachers should be banding together to speak out against media hysteria, but a lot of Koreans also want a new media, and know that it's messed up, know that the connection between the media and big money, the media and the government, the media and political extremists, are not how they should be, and Korean journalists are taking part in this corrupt culture instead of stepping out of it. Yeah, excuses can be made that Korea's still learning how to have a free press: depending on who you ask, the Korean media has only been free from government intervention since 1987 or 1993, or some would say it still isn't, or that it's just as deep in the pockets of big money as it used to be in the pockets of big government. But many of Korea's people aren't satisfied with this situation either, so, as one of the wisest blog comments I've read at The Marmot's Hole (Yeah. How about that!) says (wish I could find it back) it helps us to consider Korea like a construction site, with a big sign at the entrance saying, "Work in Progress. Pardon the Mess". Korea hasn't had a whole lot of time to put the pieces in the right places, so yeah, we should be part of the dialogue on deciding where the pieces should go, but we should also be patient. I'll talk about this more in part 4.

Stay tuned for
On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Korean Journalists, Part 3: Yeah, Some Self-Reflection is Called For, but not From You, Ms. Choi

oh and one more thing: winky or no winky, it's still insulting; there are a dozen politer ways to have drawn attention to this.

So I got to meet my nieces and nephews

I met my nieces and nephews while in Canada, two of them for the first time, and they're great.

Here are some pictures, and a video clip.


My brother's kid, Silas.My favorite pictures of him are a series I took while he was playing with my hat.


This is how Silas moves around.

There are fewer pictures of my other nieces and nephews, not because I took fewer, but because fewer turned out really well, or because their cutest moments were while I didn't have my camera out.

My oldest sister's family turned out best in pictures involving spectacular scenery from the town where they live.
I love this picture because Silas is just about to bail after tripping on his Dad's foot.
The best picture I took of my niece, Aria. She's super-cute, and her huge eyes make her face mega-expressive.

There's more, but most of that's just for the family. They were great, and I'm so glad I got a chance to meet the two youngest, finally.