Foreigners expose abusive daycare center.

Last week a Dave's poster snapped pictures of toddlers being locked outside, naked, in the January weather by people at a Seoul daycare. A couple of posters and spouses got together, went to the police, and eventually to the media. An article ran in Ohmynews and was on the front page of Cyworld today. I just saw that Naver picked it up (same article), too.

The Dave's thread is here. The media reaction starts on page 7.

* Update 1: Definitely worth pointing out that the police did nothing. From one of the posters involved:

The conversation with the police basically went like this:

"Do you have kids going to this daycare?"
"No."
"Do you know someone who does?"
"No."
"Then why do you care?"

The cop then told my wife she couldn't report the crime because she hadn't witnessed it, even though she had the pictures.

* Update 2: Koreabeat has posted a translation of the article floating around. The name of the daycare has been left out, owing to some screwy libel laws. You can find it if you dig through the Dave's thread. The people at the daycare initially denied the charges:

Park Ahmugae, the owner, angrily said, “the 25th was our sports day, so nothing like that happened. This is an untrue rumor which should not have been spoken. Who says we used naked punishments? Somebody is speaking nonsense.”

Another employee at the daycare denied the allegations. “How could such a punishment have been used on such a terribly cold day? This isn’t the 19th century, I would feel sick just to hear of such a thing.”

“I could sue you for slander,” the employee said. After reproaching the reporter, the employee raged, “old people have no work to do, don’t you know we’re running a day care? Doesn’t Oh My News have anything better to do?”

* Update 3: The networks will be having short pieces on the story tonight, as the poster involved was interviewed several times. The first one to air was from SBS, although it made no mention of a foreigner or that the story was broken by her. You can see a 41-second video report on the SBS site, although it wasn't the one that just ran on the 8 o'clock news.

* Update 4: Korea Beat has appended an Ohmynews update to their original story. In spite of the denials earlier in the day, the nursery has now admitted abuse took place. The latest piece is pretty tough to stomach, and I really hope the "severe punishment" coming from the Yongsan-gu Office (don't know what that is) will be more severe than we've seen with other cases of teacher misconduct. Here's an excerpt from an interview with the 25-year-old woman who carried out these punishments:

“I didn’t make him take his clothes off, he did that himself. And how could I have put a little girl out into the cold in just her underpants? I didn’t do it for very long.”

L added, “the responsibility is mine and I will put in my resignation. Though I cannot work with kids again I hope that the school will not be closed.”

The initial Ohmynews report, and the Dave's post, say the school is for low-income families, so hopefully its clients aren't left without a place to go.

* Update 5: Video from KBS (click 동영상보기). Contains a short soundbite from the foreign witness.

* Update 6: I also saw the report on MBC, though it doesn't seem to be available online. They had more with the foreign witness, although they didn't do a great job of masking her identity. They didn't give her an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" voice, like they did the Koreans, and there was only a subtle blur on her face.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out: whether the teacher and school are held responsible, or whether they'll get slaps on the wrist. I (naively) hope this emboldens others to take a stand on abuses they see around them. Foreigners know the risks that go with intervening in domestic squabbles, bar fights, or animal abuse cases, and I'm not really talking about them. It's too risky and too dangerous, and from this story, the Metropolitician's, and others, we know that the police are unreliable and generally incompetent. I'm actually talking about Koreans, and I wonder if this incident will inspire some to come forward and stand up to what they believe is wrong. The original poster on Dave's, after all, wasn't the only neighbor of the school, and almost surely wasn't the only person to witness these abuses. But the foreign witness was the only person to come forward. From the news reports and the netizen reaction, we can see some Koreans are upset about this abuse case, and I wonder how many of these commenters are pissed that nobody else in the neighborhood did anything. Moreover, this isn't a case that can easily be intpreted as foreigners imposing their own value system on Korea . . . cases of animal abuse or domestic violence, on the other hand, are often written off as cultural differences that foreigners just can't understand, and in which they oughtn't interfere. If the teacher and the school get off with a light punishment, however, or no punishment at all, it will probably prevent others from coming forward in similar situations in the future.

And I don't mean to cheapen the situation, but it's worth mentioning a point Zen Kimchi made. He's right when he wrote:

I wonder if [the media] get the irony that it was one of those foreign English teachers (which they broadly portray as pot smokers and molesters) who exposed the practices of this Seoul daycare by taking this picture and posting the details on Dave’s.

No secret that Korean teachers behaving badly get better treatment in the media than foreigners---foreigners behaving badly or otherwise. I'll go out on a limb and predict that, whatever happens here, this woman and this school will get off much more lightly than a foreigner would in a similar situation. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if her excuse---she was mad---is enough. I'm not trying to start a pissing contest between "us" and "them" because we wouldn't win it's not appropriate in a story like this. But I hope that in all the hoopla the whistleblower isn't simply relegated to "witness" or clever foreigner, but that it's made clear that she exposed this nasty abuse in the first place. That when others were content to live and let live, and not intrude on anybody's or any school's privacy, the only person to desire any sort of change was the foreigner.

Special thanks also go out to the other Dave's poster. I'm wary of using their IDs, but you know who they are. He and his wife took the original post to the next level and got results. I still can't believe the gall of those police officers, who didn't want an investigation to interfere with their 8-hour coffee break. Now that's an angle I wish would get covered.

* Update 7: The post on Dave's has been pulled is back, minus a few pages of flaming.

* Update 8: See Korea Beat's translation of an interview with the foreign eyewitness and whistleblower.

Missionaries in Suncheon

An earlier incarnation of Jungang Church, est. 1907, in Maegok-dong. The photo was stolen from here.


I've rushed this entry a bit, and wasn't as thorough as possible in a few spots, because I wanted to get something out before I go out of town for most of the rest of January. I've been sitting on this post for over a month, and I'll have to do a little more digging later. This also isn't meant to be exhaustive or authoritative . . . I was just curious about some stuff around town, that's all.

I first wandered through Maegok-dong in late-November, when I was looking for some information about a monument to the Yosu-Sunchon Incident that was supposed to be there. Maegok-dong is just west of Suncheon's Old Downtown, just across the Medical Rotary (의료원 R) from McDonald's and Bukbu Market. I don't know the exact boundaries of Maegok-dong, but it occupies 1.42 square kilometers and includes the medical rotary in the south, the university in the north, and in between reaches a few blocks west of Jungang-ro (중앙로). According to Naver it had a population of 10,309 in 2001, but according to the Maegok-dong website, that number decreased to 7,421 four years later. In 1931, Maegok-ri was incorporated in Suncheon-eup (eup/읍 means town), and when Suncheon-eup became Suncheon county in 1949, Maegok-ri was elevated to a dong/동, a larger administrative division.It's an interesting little neighborhood, with lots of little alleys, homes seemingly piled on top of one another, a couple of Confucian academies, a few crumbling Japanese-style homes, and several big schools. (Okay, so it's probably like a lot of other Korean neighborhoods, but I'm easily amused.) Anyway, turns out it was also one of the first places in the region to host American missionaries.



(Top) A picture of a village in Maegok-dong, circa 1913. Really remarkable. I stole it from this Naver blog, but I wanted to upload it myself in case the other blog went down. (Bottom) Old picture of Western-style buildings in Maegok-dong. The one on the left was a hospital that is no longer there. This photo, along with about a dozen others, are on dislpay in an alley across the street from Suncheon National University.

A timeline* at the Historical Museum of Korean Christian Mission (sic) (한국 기독교 선교 역사 박물관) in Suncheon says that missionaries were first dispatched to the southern region---the two Jeollas and Chungcheongnam-do---in 1893. In February, 1893---according to the timeline, anyway---Reverend William Davis Reynolds and Reverend Lewis Boyd Tate arrived in Jeonju and stayed for two weeks. Dr. Alexander D. Drew, M.D., arrived the following year and was the first medical missionary to the country. The timeline continues to mention that Reverend Reynolds and Tate toured the Jeollas in March, 1894, making trips to Gunsan, Yeosu, Suncheon, Mokpo, and other lesser-known towns and counties. In March, 1897, Reverend Eugene Bell established Yangdong Church (양동교회) in Mokpo, apparently the first church in the Honam region. In 1901 Fredrica Straeffer started teaching girls in Mokpo at what would become Jeongmyeong Girl's High School two years later. Incidentally, that school's website has a small gallery of pictures from the early 20th century here. Also in 1903 in Mokpo, the Youngheung School, known today as Yeongheung High School (영흥고등학교), was established. In commermoration of the 100th anniversary a few years back, the school put together a newsletter with a bunch of articles (in Korean) and some pictures of campus buildings through the years. It is available as a .pdf file here. There is also a gallery with 81 pages of photos of people, events, and buildings through the years, available here.

Getting back to Suncheon, the timeline is actually a little vague about initial efforts in the city. As mentioned the two early missionaries made a tour of the Jeollas and stopped in Suncheon in 1894. The next mention is in 1909, when "John F. Preston and Rev. William D. Reynolds suggested a station in Soonchun." The following year, Deacon Yoon Soo Kim (김윤수) bought ten acres of land "which was named Mai-san-deung"---매산 등, currently occupied by the three Maesan schools and the old seminary---"with the help of Mr. Eok-pyung Kim of Soonchun-Eub Church (now Soonchun Central Church)." If you happened across Suncheon Central Church (순천중앙교회) in December, you'd know that it's celebrating its "101th Christmas" (sic), and the church website confirms that the church was founded in 1907 by John F. Preston. The building that stands now was finished in 1983, but in front of the main entrance is a small statue with a plaque of J. F. Preston.


Another old picture of Central Church, the second incarnation, I believe. I don't remember where I stole this.

Reverend Preston would have a hand in founding three other local points of interest: Maesan Middle School (매산중), Maesan High School (매산고), and Maesan Girls High School (매산여고). All three are private Presbyterian schools founded in 1910 by Preston and Robert Thornwell Coit. Maesan Middle School made the news last year when a bus crash claimed the lives of 5 students on Jirisan. There are a few older Western-style buildings on the campus, although I don't know exactly when they were built, and quick searches for cornerstones turned up nothing. If you start from Jungang Church and walk past the clinic and up the hill, you will first pass the middle school, then the girls' high school, then the high school. In between the girls' high school and middle school is the site of the old seminary. On the campus of the middle school, bordered on two sides by a construction zone, is a large Western-style building presently used as the library and probably for other things, too. The girls' high school has two Western homes, one on each end of the playground. The most dominant feature on the high school campus is a large, brand new gymnasium that you can see from a few blocks away.




(Top) Large building on the campus of Maesan Middle School. (Middle) Old, one-time house at the entrance of Maesan Girls' High School. Currently the "교목실." (Bottom) Old building at the opposite end of Maesan Girls' High School.

I mentioned the clinic and museum, located right behind Central Church. The clinic (순천기독진료소) was established in 1960 by Lois F. Linton and is located on the first floor of a Western-style brick home. On the second floor is a small museum with a collection of photographs, letters, and other artificats of and from early missionaries not only to Suncheon but to other cities like Gwangju, Yeosu, Mokpo, and Jeonju. On the third floor is a cozy little apartment with furniture dating to the mid-20th century. I was pleasantly surprised by the museum, and its worth a visit if you're in the area. There isn't much English, though, and I'm sure the trip would have been much more useful could I understand more of the displays. Anyway, when you get there you'll have to first stop into the clinic and ask them to unlock the door.


The clinic and museum, behind Central Church (중앙교회).

The clinic there is one of three related tuberculosis (결핵) care facilities set up in Suncheon by American missionaries. There is also a "rest village" (요양원) a bit east, and the "Lois Village" (보양원) in Haeryong-myeon. You may be able to glean a little more information from the official site, stoptbkorea.com. A couple blocks west of the schools is a care facility called 애양재활원. I haven't been able to find any information online about this at all, and I don't know what it does or what, if any, relation it has to the other care centers in the area. There are a few Western-style buildings on the site, though, although I don't know how old or authentic they are.


A building at a care center (애양재활원) a few blocks west of the three Maesan schools.

While doing a little write-up on Missionary Wilson's House in Gwangju I came across some familiar names. For example, the Reverend Thomas Dwight Linton served as principal of the Honam Theological Seminary from 1973 to 1978. That seminary was formed when the Honam Bible School, the Suncheon Maesan Seminary, and Gwangju Night School merged in 1961, and is known today as Honam Theological University and Seminary. The HTUS campus includes a small hill, on top of which is a cemetary where many early missionaries and their family members are interred. Among those at that cemetary is Eugene Bell, who first arrived in Korea in 1895 and who established the aforementioned Yangdong Church in Mokpo in 1897. His wife died in 1901 and is buried at the Foreigner's Cemetary in Seoul. One hundred years after his arrival in Korea, the EugeneBell Foundation was established to provide medical and developmental assistance to North Korea.

It was founded by Dr. Stephen Linton, great-grandson of Eugene Bell. He has a very sloppy wikipedia page here. His brother, Dr. John Linton, is director of Severance Hospital International Health Care Center at Yonsei University, and is one of the most notable foreigners in the country, if you could even call him a foreigner at this point. There is a little interview with Dr. Linton here, from the Tour2Korea website. [Update, March 11: Thanks to The Marmot's Hole for the tip about an article in the Washington Post on Dr. Linton and his work in North Korea.]

Another group with familial ties to the original settlers that provides assistance to North Korea is Wellspring, a project out of the Western Carolina Presbytery in North Carolina. The "Ruling Elder" is James Linton, another great-grandson of Eugene Bell. The Wellspring homepage says that Mr. Linton's father founded some 165 churches in Korea.

The relative youth of these "old" buildings in Maegok-dong is something that struck me when I first learned about all those buildings on campus, and even back when I visited the Wilson House in Gwangju. These structures date to the early-20th century---the Wilson House to 1920---and are some of the oldest buildings in the region. But all the houses in my grandparents' neighborhood in Pittsburgh are older than these buildings, and I chuckled a little when I realized I was taking pictures of buildings that wouldn't attract the slightest bit of attention back home. That's the way Korea is, and because of wars, invasions, natural disasters, and neglect, it's not uncommon to have family members older than historical sites here. In fact, I'm older than the present-day Nagan-eupseong Folk Village, although there have been different versions of it for 1300 years.

* A lot of the names and dates in this post are based on the timeline. When possible I've tried to check against other online sources. I'm inclined to trust the timeline, although because the romanization and the Western names are a little inconsistent, and some known facts aren't included, we can't be sure that other information is completely accurate.

The Negro Problem.

Looks like my students put their dictionaries to use, although part of me does wonder whether they were trying to spell "beach."

Negro seems like an odd word to write, and a surprising word to retain. The second-graders just finished a lesson on the singer Marian Anderson, and no doubt learned different ways of talking about black people. Grade 2's textbook, Lesson 12 tells us:

Anderson soon won a contest over 300 other singers. But she was black. People would say, "Wonderful voice! But it's too bad that she's colored."

I have no doubt that people said that, though I wonder if it's really necessary to teach about America's social ills in English class. I'm especially wary of cross-cultural education in the hands of textbooks and some Korean teachers.

For example, the government-mandated elementary school textbooks are designed for Korean teachers, and are accompanied by a Korean-language teachers' manual. The manual has a bit of English, including cultural tips. The cultural tips usually touch upon the chapter's theme, and can be a bit outrageous. From Grade 5, Chapter 4 (emphasis mine, errors theirs):

Western people show exclamation even over trifles. This phenomenon isn't found an oriental culture that appreciates people who control their feeling and taciturn. We can usually see Americans who are moved so easily by things that Koreans aren't effected by. This means they are accustomed to expressing feeling freely and frankly. In Western culture, they start a conversation about the weather when they meet someone for the first time: "It's a lovely day, isn't it?" This is reference to the inclement weather in England. The people who live in an area with nice weather like Korea aren't touched by this kind of thing but Englishmen can be impressed.

For those who don't know, Koreans pride themselves on thinking Korea is the only country in the world with four distinct seasons, and they don't hesitate to remind people at every opportunity. Also, Koreans talk to themselves constantly and are always exclaiming "it's cold," "it's hot," "it's delicious," "I'm hungry," "I'm full," etc., making this particular cultural tip a bit froginthewellish.

From Grade 6, Chapter 7:

Perspectives on jobs differ across the countries. There's no sexual discrimination in jobs in America. So we can easily see many women who are bus drivers or fire fighters. Also, women soldiers played a great role in Gulf War. But, it's not so difficult to find sexual discrimination in English vocabulary. In Korea, people have preferred to have jobs which end with 'sa' such as Ph.D,([bak sa]), a judge([pan sa]), a prosecutor([gum sa]), etc. However, people's perspectives on jobs have changed with the development of technology and science. Besides, sexual discrimination has disappeared and women choose jobs according to their ability and competence.

From Grade 5, Chapter 16

Usually, in America, the elderly live alone. Unlike the elderly in Korea, who are supported by their oldest son. In America there are certain care centers for elderly people unable to care for themselves called, nursing homes or retirement homes for the aged. These are not government supported centers. The cost to live in these centers is quite high. Therefore the people who live on a pension can't afford to live there without assistance. They envy the Oriental family system because their golden years can be very lonely.

From Grade 3, Chapter 8

American and British people tend to be less sensitive to cold than the people of Korea. Therefore, when Koreans travel abroad, they often asks for extra room heat or hot-water. From time to time, they can't get it for them before the temperature falls down to the prescribed limited temperature level of that country. In regards to perspectives on wearing clothes, people of western societies are usually dressed simply. Westerners tend to focus on practicality instead of trying to following the fashion trends.

If you've been to Korea, you'll know that they judge temperature based on the calendar, not on a thermometer. You'll also know that, in 2007, most Koreans dress like it's 1983.

If you can navigate Korean and can view .hwp files, you can browse all the teachers' guides online here.

Anyway, there's also a CD-Rom that goes along with the books, and there's often a small claymation skit at the end of each chapter. Grade 6, Chapter 1 dealt with "Where are you from?" and the characters put on an international fashion show (always a recipe for disaster). This is how Uganda was depicted:



Blackface turns up occassionally in 21st-century Korea, like when singing "What a Wonderful World," or when trying to amuse an African-American panelist on a talkshow, or as a gimmick for a pop group.


The Metropolitician has pretty extensive articles about race and The Bubble Sisters (must read), and this post won't even attempt any of that. Just seeing "Negro" spelled out with magnets in my classroom reminded me of a few things I'd been thinking about lately.

Getting back to it, Chapter 12, from the middle school textbook I mentioned at the beginning, continues with a little blurb about different ways of talking about black people:

흑인을 가리키는 표현에는 어떤 것이 있을까요?

미국에서 흑인을 가리키는 표현으로 가장 일반적인 것은 "black"이며, 그 밖에 "colored"라는 말이 사용되기도 합니다. 간혹 "negro"라는 말을 들어 보았을 것입니다. 그러나 이는 경멸감을 담는 표현이기 때문에 잘 사용하지 않습니다. 얼마 전까지는 "Afro-American"이 자주 사용되었으나, 요즈음에는 "African American"이 가장 널리 사용되는 표현입니다.

It's important to learn how to talk/write about black people, because any student will invariably have to deal with it during their studies or in the real world. But I wouldn't trust such education to a textbook, a Korean teacher, or a dictionary. Naver---the most popular Korean webportal---is infamous for its translation of "흑인," the word used to talk about black people in general:

a black (person), a colored person, a darky, a nigger, a Negro.

The entry also shows you how to say "black ghetto," "negrophile," "the colored problem," and "niggerlover." Nowhere on that page does it mention that four of the five words are offensive, which means students and non-native speakers will inadvertantly use them. If you click on the entry for "nigger" it does say

N-COUNT Nigger is an extremely offensive word for a black person. [[[ VERY OFFENSIVE ,]]]

but the warning is in English. The other words, by Naver's standards, are fine.

Daum's dictionary turns up the same results, but with a little explanation about which terms are in circulation today. "He goes to a Negro college" is no longer acceptable, but "The victim is a black male" is. (LMFAO).

If you click on Daum's nigger, it is indicated that the word is scornful (경멸), but the entry continues with usage examples like "nigger driver," "nigger in the woodpile," and "work like a nigger," then gives illustrative sentences like (LMFAO again):

”But you're a nigger, aren't you?” he asked.
”그렇지만 너는 흑인이잖아?”라고 그가 물었다.

충실하게 일하다
serve[work] faithfully;work like a horse[nigger]

a nigger lover
흑인차별대우

We don't keep niggers, we don't want social equality.
우리는 흑인들은 받지 않아요. 우리는 사회적 평등을 원하지 않습니다.

For any students reading this, Daum indicates that these are advanced phrases (고등), so don't worry if you haven't mastered them yet.

Dong-A's Prime Korean-English Dictionary (3rd edition, 2001) has the same five words and has a small useage guide for negro vs. black vs. Afro-American, the same blurb that appears on the Daum entry. There's no indication that nigger, colored, negro, or darky are offensive terms, and like the Daum entry one of the examples sentences is "The victim is a black male."

The issue isn't that these words are in the dictionaries. They are legitimate words with a long history of usage in English, and to exclude them would be revisionist and insulting. The problem is that they aren't accompanied with proper warnings. Look, for example, what accompanies the first search result from dictionary.com:

The term nigger is now probably the most offensive word in English. Its degree of offensiveness has increased markedly in recent years, although it has been used in a derogatory manner since at least the Revolutionary War. Definitions 1a, 1b, and 2 represent meanings that are deeply disparaging and are used when the speaker deliberately wishes to cause great offense.

When dictionaries fail to provide appropriate usage guides, and when textbooks and teachers lack the proper cultural grounding to give such lessons, you'll have non-native speakers causing great offense not only to the target, but also to the rest of the language community, who will be surprised that so little effort and thought went into acquiring English.

You'll also have more people like Lee Hyo-seon, the mayor of Gwangmyeong. In May he said, to a visiting delegation from Washington D.C.:

When I visited Washington D.C., I saw niggers swarm all around the city. How can you live in such a scary place? I was so afraid that I didn't come out of my hotel at night.

Boycott Korea?

Readers not in Korea might not know about Christopher Paul Neil, a 32-year-old Canadian who was arrested in October in Thailand. He was wanted by Interpol for molesting children in Southeast Asia, and had been working in Gwangju at the time. Police had been tracking him, sort of, for three years, but it wasn't until his photographs were un-doctored and released to the public that they got some leads. Neil fled the country on October 11, shortly after his photograph was released, and he was apprehended 8 days later.

It has turned into a huge story, as probably should have been suspected. As I mention in an upcoming Gwangju News piece (from which I will plagarize parts below), the English-language media in Korea was pretty silent at first, and it wasn't until October 17---six days after he left Incheon International Airport---that the first news article came out. (The Korean-language media was silent at first, and I remember watching the evening news a few days after I learned about the story, and after it was big news in the West, but it wasn't even mentioned. Because my Korean sucks and because I don't read or watch Korean-language news, I can't testify to how soon he became the lead story.)

It didn't take long after that, though, for the ugliness to show up. Two days after his arrest, government-owned KBS ran an "In-Depth 60 Minutes" program that, under the guise of investigative journalism, profiled the scum and villany that reside among the foreign community here. On October 19, the Chosun Ilbo ran a factually inaccurate article about the rise of crime committed by foreigners, accompanied by this image:



As is wont to happen, all the ugly stereotypes were trotted out and mixed together: foreigners as pedophiles, as drug-users, as academic frauds, as alcoholics, as skirt-chasers, as AIDS carriers. An October 25 Chosun Ilbo article, for example, outlining the new regulations, reported that

[o]ver the past five years, over 800 foreign English instructors have been caught with forged degrees or having worked in Korea without proper visas. Some have even been found to have taught under the influence of drugs.

And an October 28 Korea Times article, while reporting on the same regulations for E-2 holders, refers for some reason to “two alcoholics and five sexual harassment offenders” caught in Daegu in July. Other sensationalist headlines from this year have included the Chosun Ilbo’s “White English Teacher Threatens Korean Woman with AIDS” and the Chosun Ilbo’s sports insert’s “Beware the Ugly White Teacher.”

And it's really worth remembering this gem from last year. In 2006, two Koreans were charged with molesting students at English Villages in Gyeonggi-do, to which the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers Union replied “the English camp sexual assaults are a structural problem brought on by unchecked native speakers, [and] such incidents could potentially occur at any time.”

Shortly after Neil was apprehended new visa regulations were proposed, to take effect December 15 and ostensibly to clean up the industry and put a stop to the practice of hiring anybody and everybody. Foreigners wanting an E-2 visa would have to submit their diplomas, their academic transcripts, a criminal record check from their home country, a medical exam from their home country, a medical exam from Korea, and would have to interview at the Korean embassy or consulate nearest their hometown, and would have to be fingerprinted as part of the background exam. There are a few other requirements that have slipped my mind, but I do know some schools are demanding their teachers verify their own transcripts by logging onto their university's website and producing a list of students.

This all would be extreme even if it were applied to all foreign instructors, all foreigners, or all English teachers (domestic and international). However, as Neil was an E-2 visa holder---one of about 17,000, according to a November Joongang Ilbo piece---the restrictions were only aimed at E-2 visa holders and applicants, like me. (Neil was an E-7 holder but the legislation was aimed at E-2 visa holders.) In a November notice sent out to schools, immigration couldn't hold back from attacking on all fronts. Here is the choicest quotation (translated by Pusanweb):

The Korean Government will prevent illegal activities by verifying requirements of native English teacher and tighten their non-immigrant status [...] [and will] eradicate illegal activities of native English teachers who are causing social problems such as ineligible lectures, taking drugs and sex crimes. English teachers, who disturb social order during their staying in Korea such as illegal teaching, taking drugs and sex crimes, will be banned from entering South Korea.[...] [They will] prevent illegal English teaching activities and the taking of drugs and sexual harassment of English teachers, [...] teachers who disrupt the social order by taking drugs, committing sexual harassment and alcohol intoxication.

There's no reason to get into how inconvenient, expensive, time-consuming, short-sighted, xenophobic, and blatantly racist that all is. Moreover, anybody who follows the news a little will not need reminded how ubiquitous problems like forgery, alcoholism, sexual harassment, prostitution, child abuse, domestic abuse, corruption, rape, sex crimes, and private tutoring are among Korean society.

It is good to see that foreign embassies are telling the Ministry of Justice to fuck itself, as per the following Joongang Ilbo article. However, according to the December 14 piece, the MoJ won't ease regulations, and its spokespeople still have the gall to say shit like:

I just don’t understand why they cannot make some exceptions to accommodate the needs of their own nationals. In Korea, criminal records can be easily obtained online. But they don’t have a centralized system.

As if---when we remember the anti-American protests of 2002, the anti-FTA protests, the pardoning of convicted war criminals, the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the "Yankee Go Home" talk, the visa protests---South Korea has done anything in recent memory to justify any exceptions extended it.

I wrote on another messageboard that I didn't expect much of a backlash from Koreans. I wrote that a few days after the story broke, and while Korean media outlets hadn't yet picked it up. There were a few relatively recent stories of Korean teachers behaving badly---taking students to Chinese hookers while on a field trip---and of sex crimes committed by Koreans, such as the case from Gwangju of a middle school girl held captive in a motel and raped by 800 people, for example, that I thought Koreans might have been humbled a bit. And, I thought that a lesson might have been learned from the example of Cho Seung-hui and the Virginia Tech massacre, where Koreans and Korean-Americans feared reprisals that never came.

Koreans had good reason to fear widespread racially-motivated attacks based on a single incident because that's how they operate. In 2004 (or 2005, can't find the source now) the US Embassy issued an advisory for its citizens in Seoul, after Korean men became angry when images showing foreign men and Korean women dancing together at a bar surfaced on a website that also had some sexist content. In 2002, the country erupted in anti-Americanism after a US military vehicle accidentally struck and killed two middle school girls. (More on that incident here and here)

I've maintained that should these rules and all their ugliness go into effect, I would have to leave on principle. Obviously I'm qualified and I'm not a criminal, but I don't like it implied explicitly stated that I am. I've handed in my degree 7 times since arriving in July, 2005, I've handed in several sets of transcripts, and I've had to forfeit my passport a few times as well. In December, 2005, all foreign teachers in Seoul and Gyeonggi province were rounded up and sent to immigration for a degree verification procedure, supposed to be a "be all, end all" for such checks. Apparently nobody has any recollection of that, and nobody kept any records, because I'm still being asked for my diploma. This year I've refused to hand over my documents a few times, on principle.

Part of me feels silly forfeiting a chance to live, work, study, and travel abroad because of a few new regulations, and I know that many teachers would go along with the new regulations because, well, they don't have any principles. When I brought up the idea on waygook.org of standing up to our local education board, I was mocked, and I sense a lot of (uncle)tomfoolery going on in the name of "tolerance and acceptance." A lot of folks are so self-satisfied by their "When in Rome" attitude---until something infringes on their own pet issues like domestic violence, cats, or imported beer---that they are incapable of any perspective whatsoever.

The Metropolitician, one of the better-known bloggers in Korea and a resident since 1994, put up a few pretty angry posts today. Can't say I blame him, since he was arrested last month for assult for no good reason. One of today's posts discourages foreign teachers from coming here in the first place. An excerpt:

Let me just say right now that the only reason I'm staying in Korea is because I have an F-4 and am not subject to these requirements. But I am ever required to give drug and HIV tests in order to work, or rip out my single original copy of my diploma sitting in a frame in my mother's home in Ohio, it will be time for me to leave this country.

He continues:

I've got shit I need to do here, and shit I enjoy doing here. I'm grandfathered in. I've put too much energy into this country, society, and language to quit now. That's why I'm staying. That's the only reason.

But my patience with this country has worn pretty thin, and I'm having trouble right now not going over to the "dark side" and starting to hate this place. I might have to start looking for ruby crystals for my lightsaber soon. I'm struggling with another "dark time", just as I did in early 2003, when I would hear the word "nigger" more times in a week than I had in all the time I had spent in Korea to that point (more than 3 years, actually).

Things are changing, people, and it's for the worst.

My advice for newbies interested in teaching English as a means of living in Asia, I am sad to suggest:

DON'T COME TO KOREA. GO TO JAPAN OR CHINA.

Korea and Koreans, no matter what is said, doesn't really want foreigners here. We are treated like criminals by the law, and in the law. The media represents us as nothing more than drug fiends, AIDS carriers, and child molesters.

If you don't want to be treated as such by the law, required to submit a criminal background check, submit to drug and HIV tests, and have to submit your original diploma just to teach in some unprofessionally-run institute or elementary school in which whatever skills and ability you have won't be respected anyway...

DO NOT COME TO SOUTH KOREA TO LIVE AND TEACH.

Something to think about. My ideas aren't sophisticated enough yet to get into it, but I just wanted to pass his message along.

I also wanted to pass along a few nice links that give better timelines and overviews of all this garbage:

Gusts of Popular Feeling has an extensive timeline of English teacher scapegoating.

Jellomando incorporates the timeline and also gets into other areas of discrimination, such as foreigner-unfriendly banking restrictions.

The Metropolitician has a ton of good write-ups on race, education, history, etc., and I recommend reading his "starter posts" linked at the top-right of his blog, and also reading the articles in his "Korean Education" category.

US in Korea has a lot of entries on the political motivations for fanning anti-US feelings in South Korea, such as the above-mentioned 2002 incident, which was shelved until after the World Cup and exploited to curry favor with North Korea. Candlelight vigils continued two years later, and dwarfed the much bigger story of 2002: a skirmish between the North and South that killed 5 South Korean soldiers.

* Edit: I'm not well-travelled, but based on what I've read and heard I think it's a little naive to think that more tolerance is to be had in places like Japan and China. Even if these regulations go through, the start-up costs of Korea would be still be much less than Japan and Taiwan. I've had my fair share of days when I question what the hell I'm doing, and wonder how many of my acquaintances could give two shits whether I'm here or not. I'm not quite ready to give up, because I have a lot invested in staying here, too. Teaching EFL in Asia involves a lot of hard choices . . . just looks like making the decision to come to South Korea in the first place is becoming more difficult.

Sisters of Charity

No disrespect intended, but when this first popped up on their website I thought they were worshipping an electrical box.

Foreigners were scarce in Gangjin county, and I was thrilled to meet a fellow American there last year, a nun, working at a girls’ high school. Turns out the school was affiliated with the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill (사랑의씨튼수녀회) and Seton Hill University, located an hour or two east of Pittsburgh.

Volunteers were first invited to the Jeonnam area in 1960, and in 1962 St. Joseph’s Girls’ High School opened in Gangjin.

Google didn’t bring up too much on the Sisters of Charity in Gwangju or Jeollanam-do, although I did come across two interesting pieces. One is a Seoul Times interview with Pittsburgh native Sister Jane Ann Cherubin, who first came to Korea with the Sisters in 1976. I also came across a collection of poems (in .pdf form) “physically and visually impaired children attending schools run by the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill in Gwangju and Chungju,” translated by Brother Anthony of Taize.

According to this page the Sisters of Charity operate a few community centers in Gwangju, about which I couldn’t find much. Koreabeat does translate an article about the “Blue Eyed Guardian Angel,” Patrick O’Neal, a 75-year-old Irish priest who has been in Korea since 1957. An excerpt:

He came to Korea in 1957. The Priest from Ireland came to Korea the year following his ordanination as a priest assigned to the Saint Columbanus Church. Starting his post as the head priest at Gwangju Cathedral in 1969 he realised the condition of the mentally handicapped people housed in the Mudeung Rehabilitation Centre with unfavorable facilities and made a new resolution. He was especially sad about the death of a mentally handicapped young girl in 1979. “As soon as the girl with the name Yoa died from acute pneumonia instead of the funeral expenses the hospital demanded the body for dissection.”

Accordingly the Priest rejected this in one line “as she lived she couldn’t receive humane treatment and even though she has died you can’t do this.” Despite this after she was buried in the Yangsan Church Cemetary he said to the grave “Are you going to forgive me? Are you going to forgive society? For a long time he impressed on himself the words “I disregarded you” and repented through tears. The priest still tidies up Yoa’s grave with his own hands.

Michelle Wie and Jangheung.

I rediscovered an article from February, 2006, on Michelle Wie that I posted to Dave's before I even heard of Jangheung county. The article talks about an upcoming tournament, and contains this interesting paragraph:

Wie's parents are from South Korea. Her grandfather Wie Sang-kyu lives in Jangheung, a remote South Korean city where a few locals used to pass the hat to support his granddaughter in her earlier days playing as an amateur in Hawaii.

I saw another article that said there were plans to build a Michelle Wie golf course in Jangheung, incorrectly listed as her hometown, but apparently those ideas were the work of an imposter. From the Donga Ilbo, November 15, 2005:

Police have arrested a Mr. Wie (46) on November 14 for posing as 16-year-old American professional golfer Michelle Wie’s close relative and swindling hundreds of millions of won.

According to police, Wie courted investors beginning in late 2004, saying, “a ‘Michelle Wie golf course’ will be constructed in her hometown of Jangheung, Jeonnam, and we will build a shoe sterilizing factory there, which will give a 940 percent rate of return in just four months.”

He is suspected of gleaning 14.7 billion won from some 970 investors by promising principal and interest, and embezzling 300 million won outright.

Police reported, “Wie introduced himself as Michelle Wie’s relative and printed pictures of him and Michelle Wie taken together on advertising fliers.” Police noted that Mr. Wie was an unacquainted remote relative of Michelle Wie’s.

Korea Times: "About Foreign Teachers"

You know, unless you're a sports writer there's no need to paragraph every goddamn sentence.

I wrote a longer, more whiny entry about Kang Eun-hee's article here.

Read Gwangju News online.

You can read the Gwangju News online, as well as each issue online via issuu. Published by the Gwangju International Center, if the link breaks in the future you can probably find it by poking around the organization's website.

This post originally had a different title, and was about an unpleasant error in the magazine, but since it was still turning up third in Google search rankings four years later, I wanted to replace it with something more useful and more positive for the local community. There are scores of other outlets for news and information in the area; the "Jeollanam-do resources" page lists many of them.