A Year in Mokpo

Last Post

2008-04-29T22:51:00.000-07:00

That pretty much sums it up. My contract has expired and with it so did my year in Mokpo.

Google keeps these blogs around forever so if you're just discovering this site looking for information about working or living in Mokpo feel to look around, but you'll probably get better answers over at waygook.org or any of the other blogs by the ex-pats who are still living down there.

Stay classy, Mokpo. 안녕히계세요.

The Last Lesson

2008-04-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

I've posted my last lesson over at waygook.org and, for the curious, this is how I spent my last day with the high school students:

Who is Jello Mando?

2008-04-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

On average I get a couple of hits on this blog per day. It's mainly the drifters from Brian's blog, the Korean Blog List, and people looking for southparktv, but recently my count skyrocketed thanks to the Marmot and his link to the garbage bag story. So in case any of you new people were wondering who is the person spending a year in Mokpo, you can find out right here.

Lonely Planet Fraud

2008-04-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

In case you've missed it,

The Lonely Planet guidebook empire is reeling from claims by one of its authors that he plagiarised and made up large sections of his books and dealt drugs to make up for poor pay.

There's plenty of information out there but I have to agree with Aaron Hotfelder's take on it over at Gandling.

Parade of the Stereotypes

2008-04-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

I use Dave's ESL as a last resort for information since threads often degrade into the usual Korea-hate but I want to share Majolica's story for a couple of reasons:

It happened in Mokpo.
It's a catalog of Korean stereotypes.
It's my apartment building.

Majolica is actually my other half and decided to vent on the forums since (if you don't have a blog) that's the only place where she felt she could vent. I was out of town and out of cell phone reach when this happened and I only heard about this late at night when she broke down in tears telling me this story. Majolica's tale is a cavalcade of Korean stereotypes, including useless police, drunk ajussi, and assault on women:

I was busy cleaning my apartment since the new NS were supposed to arrive in the afternoon. When we were done cleaning we started taking down the first load of garbage and recycling. We dropped of a pile of bags and went back to get the remaining ones when the "garbage" ajossi came out and started screaming at us. We were trying to explain that we were just going to get the rest of the stuff and then sort everything into the right piles, when he grabbed my friend and started hitting her. We started walking away fast, went back to my apartment, locked the door and decided to wait until he was gone before going back down.
Five minutes later, who is outside my door but the garbage ajossi carrying all the bags that we had left by the dump. Along with ajossi is ajumma, and when we open the door, they start yelling at us again(and speaking WAY too fast for my slow ears anyway).

Not crazy enough for you? But wait, who is coming now? Why, it's drunk abusive neighbour man, who joins in the "screaming and shouting at white girls" fest. He keeps trying to come into my apartment, and I kept telling him, "get out"... finally, the super shows up. This guy is nice enough, but kind of rude and overly belligerent when we can't understand what he's saying to us, so my heart started sinking when I saw that he was coming in.

He comes in, (WITH HIS SHOES ON!!!) and starts walking around my freshly mopped floors, going on about special garbage bags and inspecting my place, while I'm trying to ask him to step out and figure out what he wants... meanwhile, garbage ajumma and ajossi are still standing in our hallway, and drunk neighbour is still screaming racist slurs at us from the doorway. Finally, my friend manages to get a Korean friend on the phone, explains about the hitting and the screaming, and hands it over to the super. It turns out that she's freaked out and has called the cops.

At this point, drunken neighbour's screaming has reached a cresendo, my nerves are fraying, and I shut and lock the door. Then starts the banging on the door, the ringing of the bell. Super is still on the phone with Korean friend, ajumma and ajossi are still standing there. I'm now trying to explain through our Korean friend that I can't do anything about the garbage now, I really have to leave the apartment and go to my school and run errands and I don't have time for this insanity.

Everyone still with me?
FINALLY, the police show up. They are super nice, but sort of useless. I'm still trying to explain that I was expected at my school quite a while ago, and I will promise to do whatever it is with the garbage that I'm supposed to do when I come back.

The second policeman is outside the apartment with drunk guy, when drunk guy goes absolutely batshit crazy and starts kicking all our carefully piled garbage bags and recycling down the stairs. One of the bags busts and there's food and garbage all over the stairs, the glass starts breaking, it's just a big fucking crazy mess.

I take one look and start bawling. The super is still trying to convince us to take the garbage down, but I'm so pissed off about the mess the drunk guy made that I tell him I'm not doing it now. The police are still sort of ineffectually standing around and telling drunk guy to knock it off, when garbage ajumma shows up again, carrying the right kind of garbage bags.

SHE starts cleaning up (of course, although she wasn't the one hitting us, or kicking garbage down the stairs, or doing anything at all really). We start to help her, but the police make us come with them, drive us to my bank and school (with SIRENS!!) and drop us back at home. No idea what happened to drunk neighbour or anything else, but the sweet ajumma had cleaned up everything by the time we got back.

So anyway, that's a warning to you. You can throw out anything you want, in any kind of bag you want, in any quantity you want, but you got to wrap it all up in the fancy coloured bags before they'll let you put it in the trash. And also, it takes two policemen, two waegooks, two old people, and one drunk to throw out 4 bags of garbage and 2 boxes of recycling. Also, said garbage dumping takes exactly 3 hours and 20 minutes.
ahhh Korea, how I'll miss you.

I, on the other hand, am not impressed by the sad comedy of a foreigner living in Korean society. Korea, consider yourself warned: You're on notice!

A Review of 전남 제일 고등학교

2008-04-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

This past year I was an English Native Speaker at 전남 제일 고등학교 (aka Jeonnam Jeil Godeung Hakkyo). The school is one of Mokpo's language school and specializes in English, Chinese and Japanese. Funny enough the Japanese course is taught by a Japanese native speaker although since she administers the exam (let alone creates it) I suspect that she is more qualified than a native speaker like me.

Contract
My contract looks similar to this one. I didn't post it but feel free to compare it to other contracts.

Staff
The staff is at the school is friendly and professional and it's safer to have my care packages delivered to the main secretary than to my apartment. I would even use the word warm despite the fact that my only communication consisted of brief nods and 안녕하세요's as I pass each member in the hall. Even the principal is a kind and friendly man (I am allowed to skip teacher meetings) but smart enough to use the vice principal as his enforcer. The English department consist of eight English teachers placed at two per grade level. Despite the horror stories from other schools, the English teachers here have a decent understanding of English. They all have various degrees of proficiency but decent English is the rule not the exception at Jeonnam Jeil; if you were to dropped the entire English department in Big City America most if them would thrive while only one or two of them would die of starvation.

Lunch
For ₩50,000 per month you can purchase meal tickets redeemable at the school cafeteria. The food is unfortunately not very vegetarian or vegan friendly and sometimes you really lose out with the only edible things being rice and kimchi. The past native speakers was also a vegan so I know that the school understands the concept but the cafeteria has never offered me a vegan alternative, even if it was rice without the sprinkled chunks of ham. My predecessor soon opted to go home for lunch but I've kept going since it works with my schedule. In protest I've supplemented my lunch from the local Kimbap Nara place just beside the school and stopped paying for meal tickets. Cashing in the meal tickets is done so on the honor system so surprisingly nobody really noticed or really cared when I pick up a tray without putting a ticket into the bowl. I'm not really proud of this fact, it's just the system that evolved over the year.

Accommodations
My school did not pay for my apartment so there's nothing really to review about it.

Schedule
I was a supplementary teacher and taught, according to the confusion between my contract and my main co-teacher, either English culture or conversational English. Regardless, each week I taught 50 minutes of something to 8 classes of Grade 1 and 8 classes of Grade 2. I used an online calendar to manage my teaching schedule and vacation times.
Since the only one who really looked at the calendar was me there may be some mistakes, but for the curious it gives you an idea as to what my schedule was and how my year was structured.
There are some notes to my schedule:

My predecessor and I never taught any winter or summer camps.
You will be required to supervise English exams with the co-teacher.
The high school semester is different than elementary and middle school semesters; the starting and end dates of the summer vacation was slightly off by a week so vacationing with a friend may cause some problems.
The principal requires that you be at school at 8:30. If you don't you will be invited into his office for a discussion about your problems. So I have interpreted this to mean that I leave when I am finished my classes, even if that means at 2pm. Since I have yet to be brought before him for a second time I gather that this is not a problem. Actually as long as you walk out with purpose and greet all teachers in the hall, they won't even think twice.
You are required to be in school during 3 days in February for Graduation Week. You will not teach during these days so as along as you make announcement your arrival at 8:30 am you're free to vanish. Although I didn't, feel free to negotiate a removal from these days by way of a family wedding or two; nothing is going to happen during this week.

Lessons
As to what I taught I was given absolutely free reign, something that I think is a bad idea and have posted about it before. I was expected to make my own lesson from scratch with no connection to the students' actual proper English education; my work is stored at waygook.org and the lessons are indexed on the side bar.

I started (as do other native speakers) a few months into the school term. This means who ever is going to replace me in the upcoming month should know that I've basically gone through the entire lesson collection with the Grade 2's but since I've only had the grade 1's for a couple of months. I've only done:

Now people like using my lessons but if my replacements are better than me (i.e. know what they're doing) then they should probably do their own thing. The only things that I introduced to the students were the concepts of a themed lesson, powerpoint games, and South Park. This is an education program with no measurement or accountability; no one will care what you do.

Classroom Management
Classroom management is something that I learned on the spot while teaching in Korea. All native speakers have these problems and they vary according to school and teacher. For my replacement here are the class rules that each student should and does know:

Students are required to bring their pen and dictionary to class. If they forget they are sent out of the class room to get them.
I do not allow food or drink in my class room. If they are eating or drinking I tell them to go outside in hall with the garbage can and do not come back until they are finished. I continue the lesson without them.
If students are misbehaving I kick them out in the hall where vice principal or co-teacher will deal with them privately. I continue on with my lesson trying not to skip a beat.
Students do not touch the air condition or heating machine. If they are cold or hot they have one opportunity to ask me to turn the heater or air condition on during the ritual "Hello. How are you?' If they respond 'Fine thank you and you," they've lost it and they'll suffer. Usually one student will pipe up saying "Teacher! Cold!" I stop class to explain that when I asked 'how are you' they replied 'fine.' I'll repeat the exercise, writing down on the board what they should say to me, until I get a clear majority rule of what they want. Having spent summer and winter with me the the grade 2 students know this all too well and they'll usually ask the smart kids in the class to help them with the words.
There are student mug shots files that list the students, their photos, and their student numbers, organized by class. I use these for attendance and have arrange the student's in-class sitting chart based on this list. I.e. in table 1, I have student 1 through 6, in team 2 I have 7 through 12, and so on.
Volunteering is sometimes painful for my students but they know to expect it. My classes are usually full with 30 students so I'll never get to all of the kids. Instead I take advantage of the team tables and ask each team to choose a captain of the team. If they gang up and choose the quiet kid then I give the quiet kid captain the choice to choose the volunteer. If they squabble I give them the option of kai-bai-bo while I count down to five on my hand. If they're still squabbling at the end of five I randomly choose one kid and give him the option of front of the class or in the hall. Fortunately I have never had to give this option since my counting down to five, in conjunction with the rest of the class counting down to five, encourages one of the team members to step up.
I keep cell phones and do not give them back after class. I don't pretend that I'm calling Canada or pretend that I'm calling their mothers, I just keep them, ignore whatever pleas the students have. I'll usually give them to co-teacher during the day and let them deal with it but I show no sympathy to the kids.
I do not and have never done candy. I have started giving them titles of Genius Team and if the students themselves introduce this concept in class, Rock Head team.

While my rules maybe strict I can pull it off though my patented friendly way of mocking the students and feigning surprise when they say something intelligent. On my first class I got many "Teacher, smile?" But on my last class I got many "I love you, angry teacher."

Co-Teachers
Jeonnam Jeil has some great co-teachers but that doesn't mean that I've been free of problems. Co-teachers know and understand that they are required to supervise my class. And by know, I mean that I have no problem of making misbehaving kids the vice principal's problem; the vice principal in turn will openly wonder why I am dumping misbehaving kids in his office by way of yelling at the English department. I had eight co-teachers who were responsible for co-teaching 2 classes with me this year. That sums up to two hours out of their week and, in comparison, lunch took up five hours out of their week.

But on average most of the teachers were excellent, arriving and even participating as a co-teacher in my class. The process to get the problematic co-teachers to come to class evolved through the year and ended up in this format: Before each class I would fire off an instant message (my school has an in-house instant messenger system, aptly name School Messenger) to the specific co-teacher, reminding them to come to class through a "Could you help me teach this class?" This was the best Korean way of handling this since I was explicitly asking for help in a documented way (school messenger keeps chat histories) that would be readily available come the next meeting of the vice-principal and the English department. Now in exchange for coming to my class, if they came to me and asked me to be excused from this lesson because of work, then I granted immediately. Or if I knew I was having a easy lesson I told them to not worry about coming to class.

The most productive way that my class ran was when the co-teachers acknowledged me as the dominant teacher but supplemented my explanations (on games, vocabulary, etc.) with Korean while keeping the kids in the back row from misbehaving. Again I've talked about this before, but a good example of this relationship happened when a student stood up in class one day. I stopped whatever I was doing and watched, along with the other students, as she walked over to the co-teacher and asked her something in Korea. The whole class looked on as the co-teacher gestured towards me and replied 'Did you ask Native Speaker?' She sulked back to her seat and we all waited while she said in broken English 'Teacher may I go to the bathroom?" I did and class resumed. Going back to classroom management, I have a rule that I will let students do whatever they want, provided they ask me in English. They're not allowed to open the window or go to the bathroom without first asking me first; nobody has realized that if they asked me 'Teacher, I am feeling sick, may I go home," I wouldn't hesitate.

Teacher X.
While I can safely say that I had a perfectly professional relationships with all of my co-teachers my only real negative opinion of working at Jeonam Jeil came from working with the one teacher who was assigned to be my handler. On paperwork each native speaker has one co-teacher and Teacher X was mine; in addition to being one of my eight co-teachers the teacher also had to file the paper work for my airplane ticket reimbursement, etc. Looking back on the year I realized that X was a classic example of a person with the largest ego with the least ability. Now it would be unfair to paint the teacher as a one dimensional cartoon character but at certain times X acted like something lifted out of TV.

The teacher had applied for and received the job of handler not because of X's experience, but explicitly for her lack of experience. X (and I guess the school agreed) that this would be an excellent attempt for the teacher's English to improve by way of a personal tutor. Any consideration for my well being was obviously not a part of the decision process.

In the classroom Teacher X was my worst teacher. X would try to come across as an English expert in front of the kids but both the students and I could see that X wasn't. For example X was the only teacher who was afraid to ask me a question about English in front of the class. All of the other teachers both male and female, older and younger, would never hesitate to ask me the difference between two words or ask me to explain or the clarify something I had said in class. Instead X would vanish into the back office and research the word on Naver. This process took five minutes so that when X decided to return both I and the class had moved on to another part of the lesson. And this happened many times during a class.

Another example of this teacher disrupting my class was the way X helped the students. Most teachers understood that when I asked a question to the students I expected the students to respond in English. If they didn't know the answer the students knew full well how to say 'I don't know' so that I could re-ask the question and I could keep the class going. The most annoying thing that a teacher could do was to tell the students the answer. Teacher X would do this and usually it was the wrong answer. This infuriated me to the point that when I saw this in class I pointed to the whispering teacher and scolded X in front of the whole with 'Cheater! Cunning!' The students laughed and so did Teacher X, unaware whom the students who laughing at. I've talked to X many times about this counterproductive behavior but the teacher refused to see it as such, under the belief that the students needed the opportunity to practice English. It was through these experiences with Teacher X I've learned that for some Koreans age caries more weight than anything, including common sense.

Now if the problem with Teacher X was limited to just the classroom I could deal with since I would only have this particular teacher twice every week. But outside of the classroom it was worse and I should have recognized it immediately but assumed that it was the culture shock that everybody was telling me about. For instance on my first day X told me that I must write an introduction, memorize it and give back to the teacher. I did learned that the X's real intention was to memorize whatever I wrote and present Xself as translating 'on the fly' to the rest of the staff while I introduced myself during the morning meeting. I have had so many of these moments that I'm going to limit them to my top five incidents with Teacher X.

Incident 1
Last year all native speakers had to deal with the new security requirements. This included a verification of our university transcripts and our criminal background check; however since many of us had submitted them through the provincial office they had already been verified and processed and we were exempt from process, as told by our liaison at the provincial office of education.

Despite my insistence that X should call the office of education for clarification Teacher X refused to believe me when I said that I was exempt from this process. We danced around this issue for a couple of weeks and in the end I had to get the provincial office to call the teacher. To Teacher X this was an act of rudeness since I was bypassing the school's authority and embarrassing my co-teacher and the school. I know this because X felt like giving me a lecture afterwards. The incident launched a couple of rants performed in front of friends but the important point to learn is that this kind of thinking is detrimental to the well being of a native speaker or the image of the Jeollanam-do Education Program; basically if the native speakers are not allowed to phone the board of education during matters like these then they are isolated and open to abuse. I tried to argue my case but again you do not win arguments with Teacher X.

Incident 2
X was sent to a teacher camp for a month and I thought that I would receive a little time off from dealing with her. Unfortunately X telephoned me constantly with English questions and sent me essays to correct. I wouldn't have minded except for X's special instructions that I should not tell anybody and it should be secret. Well, naturally I did tell somebody, one of my friends who had been a native speaker at a workshop before she told me that this kind of thing is all too common. So I politely refused citing my fears about it being illegal, and while this was something that X denied, X did stop sending me request for corrections.

Incident 3
I was constantly used as a novelty (and this sums up X's view of our relationship) pet. This is one of the most insulting aspects working at Jeonnam Jeil. X would introduce me to Koreans who were X's friends but couldn't speak English, in effect making me wait a hour or so while X sat and gossiped. The awkwardness was compounded when X, in X's most perfect example of uncomfortable vainness would ask, 'how do you think about figure?" implying the friend, acquaintance, or whoever's appearance. X expected me to say 'she is beautiful' or 'he is handsome' or something like so that X would laugh and clap her hands as if I had just yipped and yapped for a treat. It was a suffocating relationship. In the school I had to eat my cafeteria meals with this teacher, alway sit beside X in meetings and assemblies, and always include X when I talked to the other teachers. Somewhere along the lines of 'taking care of me' X automatically assumed a relationship level of intimacy that stepped over many professional boundaries. The other co-teachers labeled X as my 'mother.'

Incident 4
One week X happened to overhear a student asking me about teaching extra English classes. X immediately jumped into this and told the student something to the effect of no, it is illegal. That same week X asked me to help the gym teacher (who was also the coach for the national gymnastic team -- well, maybe, I couldn't understand what X was trying to convey). The students were so busy training that they were unable to attend school and they needed an English teacher and my co-teacher volunteered me. I didn't quite understand this situation but it was completely outside of my contract and I politely refused. X kept on countering my refusal with words like 'duty as native speaker in this country' by this time I had become wise to X's ways and the insistence of reinforced my refusal. X left visibly disappointed.

Incident 5
Early on in the term X came to me and asked me a favor and feeling sorry for her, I ended up loaning X ₩2,000,000. X wouldn't tell me what the money was for and to this day I still don't know. This was the most stupid thing that I would ever do in Korea, but I was still under the impression that X was in control of my winter and summer camps, those little bits of extra work in your summer and winter breaks that stop you from month long vacations. Two weeks later I got the money back and everything was fine. But as a note to my replacements it is important that you do not do this and do not feel pressured into doing this--even if X tells you that he or she knows how much money you have.

(Incidentally I have heard many stories about Koreans lending money that they do not have. In Korean society it seems that people have yet to learn financial responsibility and will go into debt to preserve the image that they are visibly affluent.)

Bonus Incident
X made me 'correct' my comments during the exit interview (i.e. teacher feedback form) and I was not allowed to see what other teachers wrote about my performance.

So after these incidents (and more) I developed a unfortunate habit of immediately being filled with dread every time X wanted to talk to me in private. These incidents do create a harsh impression of X and some part of me wants to believe that there are some redeeming qualities about this teacher. After all it would be unfair to describe X as evil, but X's way of thinking is so far removed from my own--and my other Korean teachers--that working with the teacher proved to be one of the challenging aspect of my time here. I don't know what kind of paperwork X has to deal with concerning me (X will not let me know, informing me that I should not worry about it) but during my term with X I learned to become as independent as I could. The result is this blog and the information that is gathered by learning Korean, asking questions to other Koreans and other native speakers in Mokpo.

And it has to be noted that I was the first foreigner that X had to deal with and I hope that X has mellowed a little thanks our interactions. But, again, I found X to be the kind of person who is insulting without intention and unable to recognize discomfort in other people. While crazy is a word that may be better on the flip side, lack of patience may be equally applied to me. Throughout this year correcting Teacher X's social faux-pas all the time became too exhausting and in the end I gave up and started to avoid the teacher as much as possible, wishing that X magically would 'get a clue.' This is not the best way to handle this situation, but I lacked the drive and ambition; the effort involved in proper mediation was too much for me and my one year in Mokpo.

Out of Five Stars
While Teacher X was the main problem at 전남 제일 고등학교 it would be unfair to the other members of the school, most notable the other members of English department, to simply say 'avoid this school.' The English department and it's members keep the school from failing my (one and only) school review.

Working at 전남 제일 고등학교 gets a 3.5/5 rating. It's an acceptable rating that acknowledges the staff, the students, the teaching resources and even the teaching environment while noting that there are still some areas in need of major improvement. Of course there are schools worse than mine, schools that are more strict and are more antagonistic towards their native speakers. And of course then there are those schools that will make you join the volleyball team.

Cell Phones In Mokpo

2008-04-21T02:43:00.000-07:00

It's safe to say that cellular phone companies are the most discriminatory establishments in Korea. And since we're not in Seoul we don't have many of the side-steps that comes along with being in an international city. Now this topic has been covered before so this post will be short; after a brief survey of Mokponians, it seems like your best bet is in two options:

Korean Friend
Get a Korean friend. Arranging an informal arrangement where the phone is in the Korean friend's name will give you access to the ~~Whites Only~~ "Phones for Korean People" but this does introduce a dependency. If your friend is a co-worker (i.e. co-teacher) then you run the gambit of him or her insisting that your cell phone is not really your cell-phone but company property. In this situation, despite the fact that you've been paying the monthly bills, you may be forced to return the phone at any time.

Pay as You Go
Get a pre-pay phone. For a foreigner it is comparably cheaper but less convenient since they require monthly charging by way of handing money over to the clerk at the store. It is important to note that SK does not offer any such service but most Korean tour guides are oblivious to this fact and will take you there anyway. From a brief survey of Mokponians it seems that both LG and Show offer pre-pay phones plans that can be registered in a foreigner's name. In an e-mail from Angie I got this helpful information:

I use the "Pre-pay" service with LG. 30 000won one-time connection fee, then 10 000 won a month after that. Still quite expensive (I think you only get about 20 minutes of talking time for your 10 000won, so I stick to text messages and receiving calls only).

I always find the LG shops in Old Mokpo, near the railway station to be much more cooperative and friendly. They even gave me a bonus renewal once my phone credit had expired.

Important Vocabulary
From Emanuel I got some useful words:

PrePaid: 선불한 (aka Seonbulhan)
Monthly / Month contract: 매달의 / 월정의 (aka Maedarui / Woljeongui)
Desire to enter into a contract (contract start-want-to): 계약을 시작하고싶습니다 (aka Gyeahyageur Sijakhagosipseupnida)

Korea Same-Same

2008-04-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

Korea Same-Same is what I'm going to call Korean wackyness that is shared by both North and South Korea. I brought it up during my ramble on North Korea but now that I have a category name for it, I am seeing it everywhere. Consider this post from A Geek in Korea:

She said that if she traveled outside Korea, she would spend some money. That money would not be going to Korean people, so she was in fact hurting her country. She would never travel outside Korea because she LOVES Korean people, and would never want to spend money that didn’t go to other Koreans. (Never mind she attends a school that pays my salary, and I’m not Korean.)

The Mokpo Transit System

2008-04-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

Mokponians either buy their own transportation (it should be noted that, like wearing socks with sandals, scooters are socially acceptable in Korea) or simply use the cheap taxi system to get from point A to point B. Consequently the transit system is often an overlooked resource, but consisting of a variety of buses the Mokpo transit system is clean, efficient, and comparable to any counterpart city in North America. Sadly English information about this system is non-existent (and again if you're in Seoul you'll have better luck). Here's what I've figured out.

Routes & Services
Routes are classified into four different lines.

Red Lines (간선 – The Main Line) cut through the city along the major streets, going from east to west and back again along the same route.
Green Lines (도심 순한 – The Gentle City Center Line) circle the city.
Yellow Lines (지선 – The Branch Line) cuts through the city like the red lines, but travel along minor streets, resulting in longer routes and less frequent buses.
Orange Lines (외곽 연계 – The Outside Connection Line) all focus on the outskirts of Mokpo.

The buses themselves are colored accordingly except that the yellow line buses look more orange and the orange line buses are white. The orange line buses are also a higher class of bus, more like city coach than city transit and demand a higher fare.

Schedules
There is a bus guide online but it was last updated in 2005 and it doesn't believe in implementing maps. Some bus routes are non existent while some exiting bus routes are missing. But it creates a useful picture of the system; the transgooglelated version lists some information, like the interval time between buses and the operation times for each bus. On average each bus operates between 6am and 10pm and its frequency can be as quick as every 15 minutes or as slow as every hour; generally the lower the bus number the more frequent the turnover.

Luckily printed guides do exist and there is at least one location in Mokpo where they can be obtained, free of charge. Students may know of other places, but the main map poster-pamphlet is available in 시청 (aka Shi Cheong), Mokpo's city hall, at the 교통행정과 (aka Gyotong Haengeonggwa), the Transportation Administration department (pictured).

The process to get one is very informal: ask for a bus map and one of the office workers will lead you to a box and you can take as many as you want. They're free like like leftover Hallowe'en candy. The guides are written in Korean but the maps are easy to interpret. Scans are available at the bottom of this post.

Terminals
Each bus route has a starting and stopping point and it's important to recognize where these are in your schedule. For some routes that operate in a straight line across the city the terminals are fairly obvious; the bus starts at one terminal, travels until it reaches the other terminal and bounces back again. But other, more circular routes, hide their terminals within their loop so if you're not paying attention you'll end up with your bus pulled over and watching the driver's smoking break pass the half hour mark.

Bus Stops
Everybody in Mokpo (and I guess Korea as well) can't be bothered with streets; each bus stop is named according to its closest landmark. On the bus, a pre-recorded voice will announce the next two bus stops and help you practice your Korean listening skills.

Fares & Passes
As of of this post's date the regular fare (at least the one applicable to English speaking Native Speakers) is ₩1,000 for Red, Green and Yellow Routes and ₩1,400 for Orange bus routes. The seniors, students, and other special cases have a reduced fair.

Bus Passes
There are Bus Passes – translated as Traffic Cards (교통카드) – and in it's popular form resemble key chains more than North American credit card sized passes. As of this post you have a couple options. There actually is a credit card size pass but everyone I spy on seems to choose the more popular circle key chain and the rectangle key chain. All of my students have these key chains and they run in between ₩4,000 and ₩6, 000. I used have one and use it as an actual key chain; the proper Korean way is to use them as cell phone jewelery.

Using the Traffic Card is fairly easy; each bus is equipped with a Traffic Card touch pad right by the driver and you simply touch the traffic card to the key pad. Upon a successful transaction the pad will play a pre-recorded 감사합니다 and the LCD displaying the time will switch to funds remaining. There's a similar pad near the exit but that is uses for transferring.

There’s no concept of unlimited ride; the traffic card is really a debit card (also usable in other supported transactions around town) and nothing similar to a North American bus pass where we would expect to pay for unlimited transportation in special 7 day or 30 day increments. Apart from the convenience an added bonus of using the traffic cards is fare reduction by ₩50. Basically use the card traffic card 20 times and the next ride is free.

Cards can be purchased and re-charged at local book stores, convenience stores, etc. all around Mokpo; look for the 마이비 (aka MYBi) signs. Or to find one closer to you, ask your students or get somebody who can translate to call the Traffic Card Hot Line (1588-8990) for more information.

Transfers
Only the Traffic Cards allow you to transfer from one bus to another. The 30 minute transfer window starts when you swipe the Traffic Card on the exiting Traffic Card pad. The transfer is only valid on a different bus; you can't hop off and hop on. And if you've paid cash you're out of luck.

T-Money
T-Money is Seoul's transportation payment system that's viable for Bus, Subway, and even Taxis trips. Normally the two systems are incompatible but this hasn't been tested or verified. I found a story once that T-Money was trying to buy out MyBi, but that link has expired and any Google search come up empty.

Bus Etiquette
Entering a bus is always done at the front door and exiting is always done out the rear door. Do not try and exit out the front door. Bus drivers will yell at you. And when you want to exit you can press the little buzzer found on the walls and ceiling of the bus. Hyunwoo Sun has some key bus phrase in the case there is a break down in communication:

You can say "내려 주세요(Nae Ryo Joo Say Yo)" to mean "Let me off here, please", or add "죄송합니다(Jae Song Haam Nih Dah)", meaning "I'm sorry" in front of that.

Miscellaneous
Here are some notes that don't quite fit in anywhere else:

All buses are equipped with a commercial radio and pipe in radio stations for the enjoyment of the passengers. It is the bus driver who is in charge in the in-trip radio entertainment and they do not take requests.
The bus rides are crowded during rush hours. You will be forced to stand and consequently people will fall into you. Be strong.
I inherited the booklet guide from the previous native speaker but I have yet to find where they hand those guides out. To cut costs it looks like the city has switched to cheaper, 'pamphlet' printings.

Red Line (간선) Bus Map:

Green Line (도심 순한) Bus Map:

Yellow Line (지선) Bus Map:

Orange Line (외곽 연계) Bus Map:

Mokpo's "Casual Dining" Restaurants

2008-04-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia describes Casual Dining Restaurants as

A casual dining restaurant is a restaurant that serves moderately-priced food in a casual atmosphere. Except for buffet-style restaurants, casual dining restaurants typically provide table service. Casual dining comprises a market segment between fast food establishments and fine dining restaurants (see also Fast casual restaurant).

Family-style restaurant is often a synonym for a casual-dining restaurant, particularly used for chains such as Denny's and IHOP that serve mild breakfast-style foods around the clock. A diner is a specific casual-dining restaurant in the United States that emphasize traditional food such as hamburgers and sandwiches.

The closest American Casual Dinning restaurant to Mokpo is a couple of Outback Steakhouses in Gwangju (most of the Mokponians use the one across the street from Starbucks).

I'm not a big fan of casual dinning restaurants. In a snobby kind of way I see them as the awkward puberty stage in your palate's development, where young boys and girls can learn about the wonderful world of asking for menus and tipping waiters. They allow you to graduate from McDonalds with the training wheels of cheese sticks and fried onion rings to something that’s considered good sports bar food. Now there's nothing wrong with sports bar food, it's just that it's food that you get while polishing off a couple pitchers of beer and yelling at TV screens. Unfortuntely, if you're in Korea, it also happens to be the ambassador food of your home country. Sometime that's a dangerous precedent to set:

Mokpo has at least two Korean causal dining restaurant 그랑삐아또 (aka Gerang Piatto) and 베네치아 (aka Beahneahchia), or as the English translations tell us Gran Piatto and Venezia. The fare is imported western food with Korean twists. Such twists include putting shrimp in the spaghetti and spam in the salad bar. Using kimbap as an economic unit, the average price of a single meal hovers between 10 to 15 rolls. Brief surveys of Koreans that I know consider these restaurants 'too expensive for the food portions' and I tend to agree with them. Venezia seems to be the more expensive of the two and the least appealing choice. And the opinions in the foreigner community are mixed. From a couple of e-mails I received I have this:

It has steak and pizza and maybe some other stuff (been a while since we were there) and a salad bar, and I don't recall the rest of the the entrees. We actually didn't think it was worth the money spent or the time we were in line waiting to be seated either (over 30 minutes on a busy Sat. night). The way they do the steak isn't that great either.

And this:

I like the buffet, but the meals were okay-ish. Pretty much I order the cheapest non-meat thing, then eat bread sticks burritos and fruit all night. But yeah, it's nothing special and is rather overpriced.

But on the flip side I have this from Todd Hurst's 2005 post:

The weekend started right - eating grubs. A restaurant called Venezia. It does fusion food. Hearing mixed reviews, I was a little apprehensive but the big red neon sign had been calling my name since November. It’s hard to say no to neon. I managed to convince Laura and May Lynn to meet me and try it out. One of my adult students told me the food was delicious. It was the kind of place a Korean can go for a juicy hamburger steak.

The food was plentiful and delicious. The atmosphere was what I expected. It was done up nicely, a real classy joint.

The salad bar went on for ten miles, they brought free wine (well, they called it ‘wine’) and my spaghetti could drown Genghis Kahn’s army with the amount of cheese it had.

More information can be found on both restaurants' online menus and I can think it's safe to say that, even with my own food bias, these restaurants are actually on par with their western equivalents of casual dinning. The food is Koreanly okay and the prices are a little high. But at least they don't have flare:

Lesson 28 - Word Games

2008-04-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

Lesson 28 - Word Games is published over at waygook.org.

North Korea

2008-04-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

I was about to reply to a post on Brian's blog about his bad day, but after organizing all of my thoughts, finding the web links, the videos, and doing a little bit of more research, I ended up with enough material to write a post.

The only thing that I knew about North Korea before I came to Mokpo was largely informed by TV, movies and the occasional dip into Wikipedia when something interesting would flash across the news desk. To me the North Koreans were part of the axis of evil. And I don't mean the political axis of evil, I mean the Hollywood axis of evil that generates one-dimensional villains, usually consisting of unpronounceable rogue nations who have inherited the same world domination goals as 1930s Nazis:

And star in James Bond music videos:

Books
My first educational supplement was Bradley K. Martin's Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, found by aimlessly browsing at Seoul's WhatTheBook. Published in 2004, the information is a bit dated and needs an updated chapter or two but it's a good way to understand the rise of the communist state and its current state of mind; Martin creates a mosaic of knowledge by drawing on a large collection of interviews and personal visits. There's plenty of reviews and interviews with the author and a good example is FrontPage Magazine's interview that covers the major points of the book.

In that same trip I also picked up The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a memoir about 강철환 (aka Kang Chol-Hwan), his ten years in the Yodok concentration camp, and his defection to South Korea via China. It's a more personal story and a completely different read from Martin's textbook but they complement each other well.

Unfortunately those are all the books I've read on North Korea; I'm a slow reader and by the time I had finished them I had discovered the Internet.

Blogs
If a place like Mokpo can generate multiple blogs about Korean wackiness then surely an entire country with kimchi and nuclear weapons should have a couple of loyal observers. I don't necessarily agree with all of the views all of the time but I still read the following:

DPRK Studies
One Free Korea
DPRK Forum
Two Koreas
ROK Drop (A US Military blog dealing with South Korea)

Videos
Through the blogs I've watched some interesting videos and documentaries about North Korea. The top of my list is North Korea, A Day in the Life, a 2004 documentary film by Pieter Fleury:

In this narration-less documentary the family of Hong Sun Hui, a female worker in a textile factory, is taking us through an ordinary day in the country of the Beloved Leader Kim Jong Il.

The people undergo an endless stream of propaganda. Unmoved they perform their duty. At the nursery school, Hong's daughter learns that 'flowers need the sun and she needs the love of the Great Leader to grow'. The system of indoctrination, control and self-criticism seems both frightening and ridiculous.

Although unexpected, an escape is underway: English lessons for Hong's brother seem to bring a spark of hope. But 'Internet' is still just a word: it means International Network!

Unfortunately I could only find a sample of the film online and had to resort to other methods to watch it.

The lack of narration is incredibly powerful and it allows the watcher to put the scenes into their own context. For me I not only saw it as a westerner, but also as a person living in South Korea, comparing the two different countries.

Another documentary is Peter Tetteroo's 2001 documentary, Welcome to North Korea and it is available online:

This is a fairly typical documentary of North Korea and many themes that you see here are repeated in other documentaries. A perfect example is the 14 slightly entertaining parts of the Vice Guide to North Korea. It's available from their website:
Again there's tons of other videos online, like this report:

and this documentary on undercover filming:
and this video from Yodok prison camp in North Korea, mentioned in previously mentioned Kang Chol-Hwan's The Aquariums of Pyongyang:
On a lighter note there even a full copy of the Mass Games online for the curious. But after all of this information what can I say about North Korea? Well there's the obvious lessons about Kim Jong Il and the corruption of the worker's paradise but there's also some peripheral lessons that I've picked up along the way.

Same Same but Different
In the west we're accustomed to a political border running somewhat parallel to an cultural border. Coming to Korea I was under the assumption that North Korea went over to the dark side of the force, while South Korea, with the help of the Obi-Wan Kenobi U.S. used the force only for good. Sure the North Korea's wackiness involves human rights violations, but that same wackiness is here in South Korea on a much smaller and less despotic scale:

This photo (from here, via Korea Beat) shows some foreigners taking part in a "Winter Sea Penguin Swim" on Jeju-do. Interestingly enough, Lost on Jeju tells us that local English teachers working under the EPIK program were convinced to take part due to the offer of an extra vacation day for doing so. I have no idea if the people in the photo above are related to that or not, but I can't help but see such photos and think of this painting from the 1984 book "The People's Great Leader" (from here) titled "All the peoples of the world praising Kim Il Sung."

It's not so much the concentration camps but it was in the smaller things where I saw the same-sameness. Like how meetings were handled at the school in A Day in the Life compared to meetings in my school, or how the workers must work harder for the party when I've heard a similar mantra used by English teachers improving English education in accordance with the new administration's policies. In reality it seems like the people in both Koreas are more similar to their counterpart than most people understand; the 50 odd years of communist-capitalist cease-fire seems like is really just sediment laying on centuries of common culture.

North Korea is South Korea's Mexico
This is a concept that was introduced in Bradley K. Martin's book and I'm probably twisting it all to pieces but the gist is this: Reunification is something both sides want, the North maybe a little zealously more than the South. Now, the South is doing all right for itself while the North is at best struggling so the only ways that unification will happen is through a second Korean war or the absorption of North Korea by the South. While it's easy to see how the former is bad the latter is viewed with just as much dread. Germany's unification is a living example that reunification is going to be costly and the sheer volume of people matched with the difference in living conditions is going to be difficult to manage. Basically the South doesn't want to deal with all of the poor people.

So what can the South do? The current plan seems like it is going to help the North understand how wonderful capitalism by working together in economic projects and establishing economic bridges before political ones. While most of this is wrapped up in overtures of inter-Korean brotherly cooperation, I'm going to be cynical and suggest that Korean corporations are more interested in the untapped pool of cheap labour and resources than liberating their fellow man.

Now the corporations are acting just as corporations usually act, out of self interest, but in the context of unification this is a dangerous precedent; while the government sells this as unification baby steps, what incentives do Korean corporations now have to raise the standard of living of their northern brother? If I play devil's advocate then, in some weird Korean way, unification becomes even more costly to South Korea.

With labor costs rising in South Korea, many owners of small and medium-sized factories, say they face two options: closing and moving to China, or closing and moving to Kaesong.

But this is all speculation on my part; in the here and now the new administration has to figure out how it will deal with the current policies. I'll leave the matter of North Korea to the experts and the Koreans who think they're experts.

Garrett's Lesson Plans

2008-04-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

Garrett came to Mokpo roughly at the same time as me and ended up being the neighboring native speaker at Mokpo High School. His school had a completely different take on English education and didn't give him any fancy stuff that I used in my lessons. He had no video projector, no big screen tv, and no computer. He was old school. Literally.

Sadly his contract ran out and now he's gone. He will be missed but for those that remain he did leave his lessons plans on his blog in two parts.

Lesson 27 - Analytical Thinking

2008-04-11T17:56:00.000-07:00

Lesson 27 - Analytical Thinking is published over at waygook.org.

This was largely inspired by Professor Layton and the Curious Village a game that I'm playing on the DS. It's all about puzzles and you can check out the demo on the official website.

Even Better News!

2008-04-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Dave,

These are awesome. (And congratulations on the baby!)

Mokpo's Oldest Blog

2008-04-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

In the same way that Matt at Gust of Popular Feeling delves into Korea's history I present you with a rare anthropological find from Mokpo's past: the oldest waygooken blog.

I'm welcoming corrections on this but after some searching I'm going to nominate Bulgogi and his Teaching English in a Fishing Town blog dated to the pre-jellomando year of 2002. It's a small sample but it does document a slice of the FIFA World Cup:

Tickets are pretty hard to come by for the world cup. First off only 8% of the stadiums are open to public tickets, the rest are corporate allocations. Thats why for most of the games the best seats are empty, and the stadium only looks half full. there are two ways to get tickets in korea. the first is for international ppl, tourists. you have to apply and they are usually allocated out as part of a package deal. they are also bloody expensive. The other way is for korean residents. You have to apply way in advance, so by the time i got to mokpo, the expats here had already applied, as both korean residents and international visitors. a coupla weeks ago they came through, and of course i didn't have one. then one of the guys had a huge falling out with the girls he was going with, and so he suggested that i use the ticket. if i got in (i might not have because everyone's name is on the ticket) i could pay him the 66,000face value. If i couldn't get in, i wouldn't owe him anything, as he wouldn't have gone anyway. good guy. this was all told to me only last tuesday, so i was stoked that i was going. We took the bus to Kwangju, only 1 1/4 hrs away from Mokpo, good fun, enjoyed the ton of extra expats, including the spanish chicks (i am going to spain soon. the women are phenominal. Everyone remember Andy from Oz Big Brother [the Brazilian dominatrix who got kicked out first]? these chicks looked like that). we watched the world cup games playing before ours (8:30pm, Spain Vs Slovenia, hence the spanish chicks), including the excellent England Vs Sweden (1-1 draw), at this cool dingy pup with abot 100 other expats. there are a sum total of 28 expats in mokpo, 14 of which i hang around, so it was really special. there were no koreans in the pub, including behind the bar (it was an aussie pub), and we loved it.

There's another candidate, one Daniel Roy, dated to April 2001. Unfortunately it's about his wife giving birth to their son in Mokpo while he's in Mongolia. I like this anecdotal proof that Koreans are dicks to people other than waygookens:

Ah, Korea... Sun-duk told me that Hye-young's son was born in Seoul last Thursday, but that his boss (Hye-young's a government employee in a town near Mokpo) wouldn't grant him leave on account of "urgent business". In fact, Hye-young had to work all weekend, and has seen even less of his son than I of mine! I mean, at least I've got a photograph; but the hospital where Soon-joo gave birth doesn't have a web site... Poor Hye-young! Poor us!

National Assembly Elections

2008-04-09T01:30:00.000-07:00

It's election day today and another chance for a day off. Unfortunately it's also the first real rain storm of the year.

The National Assembly is a different legislative body but the process is pretty much the same as the presidential election I mentioned a few months ago. Now if you care about it you already know who won, so the only thing I can add is that I am happy election season is over. And I'm not alone in either; I wasn't the only one who got woken up by friendly reminders to vote:

I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of clapping hands, tacky Korean songs, and some dude yelling in a mike. It felt as if someone was slowly bolting a screw in my brain. I hate Korean elections because they are LOUD.

or who had to put up with it during school hours:

They are dancing with the sound of loud music. I enjoy listening and watching them but i can't stand it sometimes specially during our class discussion. Even when i close all the windows in the classroom, we can't concentrate in the class because students are busy listening and sometimes stand up, sing and dance, too!

But this is the perfect summary of the whole spectacle:

This has meant that for the past 3 weeks rigorous campaigning has taken place in every nook and cranny of this tiny country. Let me assure you that campaigning Korean-style looks nothing like our tacky lawn-signs and occasional door-to-door hand-shaking. No, here we've had dozens of trucks circling the city, blaring our campaign songs from 7am to 10pm DAILY. There are advocates for each candidate positioned at the major street corners, dressed in matching outfits, singing songs, handing out yogurt drinks and dried squid, whose ceaseless attempts to pester pedestrian and distract drivers grew old after day 1. Some of the larger apartment complexes (read: mine) even have advocates positioned at the driveways leading in and out of our buildings to ensure that we are bowed to each and every time we pass through. If you're really lucky you'll get an impassioned Adjuma (read: older Korean woman) taking up the mike at one of the many soap-boxes which have sprung up in our parking lots, admonishing the transgressors and extolling the virtues of Mr. Mokpo 1-9. All of this is delivered directly into our apartments via the 1000000000mhz sound systems that are installed in each one of these temporary lecterns. Long-story-short: sleep has been hard to come by recently. I am thanking the heavens above that it will be over by nightfall but even that doesn't seem quite soon enough.

You Can’t Buy Anything On-Line in Korea, Mr. Foreigner

2008-04-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

I've talked about it before but Brendon Carr in his Korea Law Blog throws in his two cents on the matter.

산정스포렉스

2008-04-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

산정스포렉스 (aka SanJeong Sporex) is a fitness center right in front of 중앙하이츠 (aka JungAng Heights) in Old Mokpo and it's a pretty decent gym even by North American standards. It has the usual fare of treadmills, exercise bikes, weight machines, free weights, and (a real selling point for me) a swimming pool. But it also has the usual fare of Korean accessories:

Loud N-R-G Music
It's a safe stereotype to make that Koreans enjoy cranking up the volume in their daily activities:

The city here is like a giant amusment park without any rides. Lights are flashing at you from every direction, there 101 different pop-and techno-music songs always within earshot, and billboards assault your English skills with strange slogans like "Happy Awesome 100" or "Ace Perfect". It's never really wrong, it just feels so far from being right.

While places like grocery store will probably have the same repeating mix of top 10 k-pop hits, all gyms are regulated to have loud techno music turned up to eleven. I don't know why but SanJeong is no exception.

Televisions
I could really enjoy the TVs if it wasn't for the lack of ear buds. In SanJeong there's a good collection of 20 or so treadmills lined up all along the windows on the second floor and in front of each treadmill is a decent flat screen television. It's even better than other fancy fitness centers since we get our own personal TV. But Korea (and yes I mean the country) doesn't believe in earphones and FM transmitting technology so the only way to hear the TV is to over-crank the volume past the eleven-dialed techno music resulting in the perfect metaphor for Korea's work harder, not smarter mentality.

Vibrators
Foreigners are often confused about certain aspects of Korean society. We think that either they're so backwards that they're stuck in 1950s America or they're so frickin ahead of us that their minds have literally evolved to a point beyond our comprehension. Using vibration machines for exercise is one of these contradictions and SanJeong has both old and new school body vibrators. Now, the academic opinion is that vibrationizing is a just a fad exercise that is coming back for another round but at SanJeong theses machines are right next to the massage machines. So I guess the Korean see the value of a jiggling rubber band tied around your waist as a relaxing Swedish massage chop. Westerners have other ways of recognizing their value:

Lesson 26 - Geography V

2008-04-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

Lesson 26 - Geography V is published over at waygook.org.

The Mokpo Mega-Store Review

2008-04-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

Despite it's small stature Mokpo is home to three competing big box stores: E-Mart, Lotte Mart and (new this year) Home Plus. All three are what you expect, playing the economies of scale game and and delivering goods that might otherwise be unobtainable at the local market. And by unobtainable I mean foreign goods like Maple Syrup (available at the same, universal price of 12,000).

The usual exercise that helps foreigners understand the big box store here in Korea is to start with the image of Wal-Mart back home and think it better; the make-up of a Korean big box store is typical of the Wal-Mart model, something along the usual mix of grocery, clothing, animal (eating & pet), sporting goods, housewares, and home electronics store under one warehouse roof.

But even though Wal-Mart is painted as an evil soul-sucking, community destroying entity, the foreigners in Mokpo actually appreciate their stores and are thankful for their existence even if they too are probably putting small business out of business. We like them cause they remind us of home -- especially the grocery section. In Korea all grocery sections in the big box stores are more like the grocery stores back home and occupy an entire floor in their respective multi-level buildings.

As a side note, there actually was a Korean Wal-Mart; it started in 1998 but ended up selling all 16 stores to Shinsegae (owner of E-mart) in 2006:

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) announced Monday that it is withdrawing from the highly competitive South Korean retail market, agreeing to sell its 16 stores to the country's top discount chain.

The world's largest retailer said Shinsegae Co. would buy Wal-Mart Korea for 825 billion won ($882 million), pending approval by South Korean regulators. Wal-Mart said the decision to withdraw is part of its global strategy.

"As we continue to focus our efforts where we can have the greatest impact on our growth strategy, it became increasingly clear that in South Korea's current environment it would be difficult for us to reach the scale we desired," said Mike Duke, vice chairman of Wal-Mart Stores.

...

"They failed to attract customers to the stores," said S.K. Lee, a retail analyst at Hyundai Securities in Seoul, adding that housewives in particular were dissatisfied with food and beverage offerings.

The New York Times, in a similar article describing Wal-Mart international difficulties, gives us this little graphic depicting Wal-Mart's world:

But I digress. As I mentioned before, the big box stores in Korea are like Wal-Mart but better and that includes food. ZenKimchi's video tour of Home Plus illustrates what's on par with mega-store food offerings.

Click To Play

Now ZenKimchi focuses more on the wacky (i.e non-western) aspects of Korean grocery stores (and, trust me, come Chuseok even convenience stores will have Economy Size pre-wrapped gifts of Spam) but for the Mokponian Waygooken, which store is better?

E-Mart
E-mart is located in the center of town and ranks 3rd in my list. On an random sampling it appeared that E-mart offered the cheapest prices but the difference never went higher than a 1,000. Cheap prices should have placed it closer to the top but unforunatly E-mart was the cause of the Great Brown Bread Depression of 2007 in which E-mart management decided that 'whole wheat white bread' was not worth keeping in stock. This caused cartoon sadness ripples throughout the entire foreigner community. And by foreigner community, I mean me.

Lotte Mart
Lotte Mart is located in Peace Park and is more convenient for people living in Hadang and a more expensive taxi-ride for people living anywhere else. Lotte Mart ranks a solid second place. On the same random sampling that determined that E-mart has lower prices it was also made clear that Lotte Mart has more variety than E-mart. As an added bonus the location is right next to Lotte Cinema if eating in movie theaters is you thing. Unfortunately, as of this blog post, it has nothing resembling brown bread.

Home Plus
Home Plus has the luxury of being the last arrival to Mokpo and has taken advantage of E-Mart and Lotte Mart's shortcoming. It's closer to old Mokpo, right off of 3rd Square and awesomely enough right next to my school. It wins 1st place since, in addition to having that 'whole wheat white bread' thing it also carries tortilla shells, dairy-free ice-cream, ginger ale (along with black cherry and orange soda), and waffles. The downside is that yes, prices are more expensive but until people can show me another place that gives me something resembling Mexican food and vegan friendly organic ice-cream waffles, Home Plus shall remain the undisputed leader of Mokpo Mega-Stores.

Emergency Escape Routes!

2008-04-02T21:10:00.000-07:00

Always Be Prepared!

아줌마병

2008-04-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

아줌마병 (aka Ajummabyeong) is an often mis-diagnosed but common disorder affecting post-menopausal Korean women. While at first it may seem controversial that a condition is linked to an ethnic type, it is not uncommon. For example, scientists have long identified Sickle Cell Anemia as being,

...found in people of African, Mediterranean, Indian, and Middle Eastern heritage. In the United States, these disorders are most commonly observed in African Americans and Hispanics from the Caribbean, Central America, and parts of South America.

But what's puzzling the current research is the high density of the affected women living within the Korean peninsula. In comparison, samples of ethnic Korean women who live in other countries have a remarkably low probability of developing ajummabyeong. In the fact the relationship between developing the condition and proximity to Korea is almost exponential; while nearly 100% of Korean women living in Korea will develop some degree of ajummabyeong, the likelihood for a Korean woman in neighboring China was shown to be drastically lower. This trend continued, and as Dr. Ha Foon Ni in his paper Relationships between Ajummabyeong and Ethnic Korean culture points out, his team links

...smaller probability with longer distances, up to a point where the furthest distance sampled, North America, contained almost negligible cases of developing ajummabyeong with this caveat: the numbers were reported lower since, of the discovered cases in the target cities, it was shown that a large percentage of these females had a high ratio of Life in Korea vs Life in Host Country. Likewise, Koreans who had a lower ratio, that is people had spent more of their life in their host countries, were virtually free of symptoms attributed to ajummabyeong.

Again it seems absurd that a condition could target a specific gender from a specific country. But after Googling some similar results I found out that ajummabyeong isn't the only affliction targeting Koreans. There's also stomach cancer.

While Gastrical Cancer is another emerging Korean-only condition, it doesn't discriminate as blatantly as ajummabyeong, again, statistically speaking and compared to neighboring countries. But nonetheless Korea somehow has an improbably high rate of stomach cancer and while the cause of ajummabyeong is so far a mystery, scientists are blaming kimchi for the cancer. This idea is something that is at best described as contradictory to Korea's collective belief. For example, consider this lead paragraph from the Digital Chosen Ilbo:

Cancer is Korea’s biggest killer, responsible for 25 percent of deaths. Its causes are still not fully known, its treatment too often remains a stab in the dark, but it is clear that a diet rich in kimchi and other traditional Korean dishes can be highly effective in preventing cancer.

And compare it to this study, conveniently name kimchi and soybean pastes are risk factors of gastric cancer.

While the argument between kimchi and cancer may be convincing, it would be premature to suggest a connection between kimchi and ajummabyeong. A cause (and heance cure) is still unknown at this time. However, the symptoms for ajummabyeong are fairly easy to identify but the tragedy is that many women fail to recognize their own symptoms before it's too late. And even then most women tend to go without treatment due to a lack of awareness. From a quick search on the internet I can list these most common symptoms:

Drastic metabolism reeducation. Unfortunately the high metabolism that is generally acknowledged in keeping young Korean women fairly slim simply stops working, resulting in immediate weight gain. As a side effect the addition weight bears down on lithe skeletal frames and most women, as ajummabyeong progresses, lose a considerable amount of height. In serious cases this results in a stoop.
Hair protein realignment. Scientists don't know why during the on-set of ajummabyeong the subject's scalp will start producing a different strain of hair protein. The closest related phenomenon is female balding, except that the effect is slightly different. The average Korean 'straight' hair will start to contract, resulting in wavy or curly hair. As the disease progresses, the realignment becomes so severe that the subject's hair will contract to a point of oxygen starvation and (for lack of a better term) the apparent suicide of the hair folical. The end result is permanent hair loss.
Polymorphic light eruptions. More commonly know as light allergies, PLE are skin complaints triggered by exposure to natural light affecting roughly 80% of women diagnoses with ajummabyeong. The more severe cases will require the subject to cover all exposed skin including the hands and face. While in the past many women were held prisoner by this aspect of ajummabyeong, the invention of UV-coated plastics has greatly liberated their suffering. To avoid the 'mummy' look, Korean women can wear a face visor, a UV-coated shield that covers the entire face from the painful rays of the sun.

Many experts agree that the first obstacle in curing ajummabyeong is awareness. And, like the Green Ribbon, the Pink Ribbon, the Red Ribbon, and even the Pink and Blue Cloud Ribbon, ajummabyeong has its own kimchi-colored awareness campaign ribbon. I don't quite understand the logic behind the selection of Red, Orange, and Green to signify the disease but I have to applaud the effort that Koreans are just now starting to make toward fighting this terrible affliction that affects nearly all Korean women. After all, awareness is vital in the fight against any diseases and hopefully the more Korean women that recognize that they are suffering from ajummabyeong, the more Korean scientists can learn and come closer to finding a much needed cure.

The Generation Gap

2008-03-31T20:24:00.000-07:00

From a paper on high tech worker stagnation I found this little chart on tertiary education that probably helps explain some aspects of the Korean generation gap.
Similar data is presented here, albeit in individual graphs. The various shapes represent age demographics within the country and the line length is a measurement of the difference. The delta (the largest one there) between the generations in Korea is a good measure of the education divide. Of course 55-64 years ago Korea wasn't the same as it is now:

33% of primary schools destroyed, 60% of classrooms unusable, 80% of books and equipment lost, 38% of teachers missing, 25% of upper secondary schools demolished, 20% teaching staff missing. Such was the situation of Korea’s education system in 1952.

The E-2 Interview

2008-03-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

The mandatory E-2 interview is a new part of the Korean E-2 (i.e Teaching English) visa process. The new regulations came into effect shortly after the great pedophile scandal of 2007 in which Christopher Paul Neil, a Canadian national and target of a international pedophile manhunt, was arrested for sexually assaulting a nine-year-old boy in Thailand. Shockingly enough, before living in Thailand, Neil was working as an English teacher Gwangju at the Gwangju Foreign School.

But after roughly 3 months in to the process, it's still fair to say that the regulations have done nothing but increase criticism of Korea's TEFL hiring process and many ex-pat commentators view this a classic case of a knee jerk reaction leading to poor policing making. The new rules are doing more harm than good to Korea's ESL industry; the simple matter is they simultaneously fail to stop more Christopher Paul Neils and deter qualified teachers from considering Korea.

The thing that I'm finding the most useless about the process is the interview. From the initial stories coming in it seems like they are beyond wasteful and border on insulting. Even way back in November, a Korea Herald article voiced some initial concerns:

There are concerns about the logistics of the consulate interview part of the plan. "It's about time they had criminal record checks, and the health check is a good idea," says Tricia Elliot, a teacher at a private institute in Seoul. "But this interview at the consulate is a bit overboard because it cuts out a lot of people from smaller areas of large countries.

"A lot of the Canadians who work as teachers are from the East coast and the nearest consulate is in Montreal," she explained. "That's really far away, and impossible for most people to get to on short notice for an interview that doesn't guarantee a job."

So at first it seems like nobody really thought of mandatory interviews in a country that has 3 consulate and 6 timezones. But is the Korea government that short-cited to force mandatory travel on distances that are five times the journey from Mokpo to Seoul? This wouldn't be the first time that I've come across this phenomenon. I've talk to friends and family from Japan, England, and other small countries and they don't quite grasp the shear magnitude of Canada's landmass. Of course they all think that Canada is mainly a permafrost country where we eat baby seal eyes for breakfast, live in igloos, and our policemen have yet to discover car technology. But I digress; consider this quick map mock-up:

View Larger Map
Basically the distances involved for some people are equivalent to asking people to travel to and from Japan, China, Russian and even Taiwan. And it seems like still there's a lot of confusion about these interviews; for example you can submit an Introductory CD if you're in the jurisdiction of the Vancouver Consulate (but live outside of BC) and a rumored telephone interview if you're in Montreal Consulate's jurisdiction. But if you're in Northern Manitoba it looks like you're out of luck; I couldn't find anything about a compromise on the Toronto Consulate's website.

Geographical and logistic ignorance aside, the actual interview itself comes across as shear stupidity. At first it seemed normal:

1) Where will you be employed?
2) Do you enjoy working with children?
3) What is your educational background?, transcripts were reviewed and discussed with interviewer.
4) Why do you want to work in Korea?
5) What is your teaching philosophy?
6) If you weren't going to teach in Korea, what would you be doing?
7) Do you smoke?
8) Cool Have you done drugs in the past?
9) Have you ever broken the law?
10) How long do you want to stay in Korea?

But then there's the other stories, like in a comment over at the Marmot's Hole:

I just spoke with two Canadians who arrived in Korea this evening, fresh off the boat. They’d done the whole rigmarole: Degree double-checking, background checking and even an interview at the Korean Embassy in Montreal. Apparently, the interview involved a guy who “barely spoke English” asking them where they went to school, then checking on the school’s existence. Then it got weird. One girl was asked how many high schools there were on Prince Edward Island. She was also asked if she’d heard anything about teachers working in China and Japan, and what her feelings about Japan were. The other, who’s got a degree in Psychology, was asked to “Please psychoanalyze me [the Korean interviewer].”

I don't know if you can put that much weight with one comment but there's more, like over at Cows by the Fence

My name was written Zauhory, good times. The diplomat asked me my name, where I was from, my educational background, and my opinion of the Spitzer affair. The whole process took less than five minutes to do. Then I had to hop the bus home which was another four hours out of my day. Eight hours on a bus for a five minute interview?

And at ESL Daily:

"The interview was HILARIOUS. He asked: 1) Where my last name came from 2) About my experience in my two years in Daejeon 3) My possible long-term plans in Korea and 4) Was surprised and delightedly commented on the little Hangul I wrote on my visa application. It was less than 10 minutes. [After] a $45 fee, another week [delay] and today I FINALLY HAVE MY PASSPORT WITH MY E2 VISA IN IT."

And at Tree Top Chatter:

A few minutes later, probably an hour ahead of my 3 PM appointment time, I was called back for my interview. Behind a tiny table wedged into a corner of some forgotten area of the office was a Korean man in a bad gray suit. He seemed pleasant enough. He asked me a few questions about why I wanted to come to Korea, what I knew about Korea, and what I had studied in school. He made a few notes on the visa form I filled out, and I mentioned that I had left some things blank, but he said, “Don’t worry about it.” I’m pretty sure I would've flunked the interview if I was being scored on it. It lasted five minutes, and he said, “Thank you, there is the door.” I stood, bowed slightly, thanked him, and left.

Then I drove home in inclement, snowy weather, another 3 hours. My total time spent in Chicago was probably an hour and a half. Thankfully I know the city pretty well so it wasn't as big a deal as it could've been if I was unfamiliar with driving around in Chicago.

And at Alia in Korea:

I was forced to drive to my "local" Korean consulate where I had mailed the application materials to complete an interview with the consul to determine my eligbility. This meant taking three hours to drive to Newton, Mass. for a ten-minute interview and driving all the way back. Had I known this (and they could have told me when I called and asked a bunch of questions about the visa process), I would have scheduled the interview and brought in my application at that time, instead of paying FedEx to overnight the docs. What a hassle. I went, though, and got even more angry that all the consul asked me was already written on my application, plus the question about why I want to teach in Korea, all of which could have been done over the phone (they refused a phone interview).

And one more, at Uncertainty can be happiness, just for good measure:

I wasn't sure what kind of questions to expect when I went there, and the interview was more of a getting to know you type conversation then a formal interview. I did the get ones I expected, such as: How long do you want to stay in Korea? If given a situation A as a teacher, what would you do? Where do you want to be in Korea? What subjects have you taught?

The last one was amusing; the interviewer stopped me in the middle of my answer to say that this question was more for his own sake than as a part of the interview, as his son needed help in AP Chemistry (which is one of the subjects I am currently tutoring). And no, he didn't offer me a tutoring job for his son.

At the end of the interview, he also mentioned that being a Korean-American will work in my favor in the decision making and more than offset my lack of any teaching certifications.

I've probably copied and pasted enough examples to make my point but I really appreciate this last example. If I'm reading this right, then a member of the Korean consulate just said that ethnic origins also play a factor in the visa application process. Does that mean that belonging to some other demographic will be detrimental? That's a policy that hasn't backfire:

South Korean police have arrested a Korean-American man wanted by the FBI for first-degree murder. The suspect had fled the U.S. to South Korea 10 years ago and had been teaching English in private language institutes until he was captured.

The Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency on Wednesday said it had arrested a 31-year-old Korean-American man identified as Nam on charges of killing a retired American policeman in the U.S.

...

Nam was finally arrested on Tuesday. He had been teaching at a private English-language institute in Toechon, Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province for two months.

Over the past decade, Nam had moved from one English-language crammer to another in Seoul, and Gyeonggi, Jeolla and Gyeongsang provinces, working two or three months at each institute. A South Korean court will rule on his extradition.

Now I doubt that was the true intention of the comment; I would vote for properly trained Korean-anything as a teacher but the consulate interview by the government's own admission is about security, not teaching qualifications.

So the policies, the logic, and even the implementation behind these interviews belongs to some understanding that eludes most westerners. Maybe the real reason behind the mandatory interviews is to physically examine the candidates and somehow spot the eugenically bad seed since its obvious that the questions do nothing to filter out the potential Christopher Paul Neil, or, to finish on a big rhetorical twist, the next Seung Hui Choi.

The Shinan Ship

2008-03-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

As I mention during my trip down Museum Road, Mokpo is home to the Shinan Ship, a 14th-century Yuan ship discovered in 1976 just north of Mokpo in Shinan. Surprisingly it's one of the things that really puts Mokpo on the map. Well, at least for Nautical Archeology and Asian Maritime Trade and History nerds; they all stopped by for the 30th anniversary in 2006:

From 17-19 November 2006, approximately 30 scholars including underwater and maritime archaeologists, historians, and ceramics researchers presented cutting-edge studies of artifacts recovered from the Shinan shipwreck and of the Asian maritime trade of the 14th century at the National Maritime Museum of Korea in Mokpo, Korea. The discovery of the Shinan Shipwreck in 1976 greatly stimulated the growth of underwater archaeology in Korea, and after 30 years of research on this site Korean researchers felt it was time for an international discussion of the site and their work on it.

But the more interesting aspect of the Shinan ship is its contribution to China's emerging medieval maritime history:

...two early Chinese shipwrecks and their subsequent archaeological excavation cast new light on early Chinese shipbuilding technology. The two ships noted are a Song Dynasty ship found at Hou Zhu, near Quanzhou in Fujian Province dating from about 1277; and a Yuan Dynasty ship found at Shinan, near Mokpo in South Korea, dating from about 1323. Both ships depart significantly from generally accepted theories of ancient Chinese shipbuilding techniques and the finds raise fundamental questions.

Raising fundamental questions is always exciting but most of the background information about the ship is hidden behind register-required academic journals. Luckily I did find this lengthy snippet, posted on China History Board:

Quanzhou wreck

In 1975, workers dredging a canal on Quanzhou Bay (24?1N, 118?9E) in Fujian Province, China, uncovered the remains of what turned out to be a thirteenth-century ship dating from the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. Over the course of the summer, the remains of the vessel were completely excavated and taken to Quanzhou for conservation and study. The remains of the hull, which has a V-shaped bottom, includes the keel and the remains of thirty strakes, fourteen to port and sixteen to starboard. There were steps for two masts, the placement of which forward and amidships suggests the existence of a third mast in the stern. Although the remaining vessel members are only 24 meters in length by 9 meters wide, interpretation of the finds suggests that the ship originally measured 34.6 meters by 9.82 meters, with a loaded draft of 3 meters. The hull is solidly constructed, with two layers of planking below the waterline, the first eleven strakes from the keel and three above, using a combination of clinker and carvel joinery that Australian archaeologist Jeremy Green has described as "complex rabbeted carvel-clinker."

The first pair of strakes out from the keel is joined by a "rabbeted carvel joint" in which the edge between the strakes is rabbeted with simple lap joints. The second and third strakes are joined by a "rabbeted clinker joint" in which a rabbet is cut in the inside lower edge of the third plank, which is fitted against the uncut upper edge of the second. The third, fourth, and fifth strakes are joined by the rabbeted carvel joint, and the fifth and sixth by the rabbeted clinker joint, and so on. This innermost layer of planking is sheathed by a second layer of strakes that are edge-joined to one another. However, as these are laid directly on top of the inner layer, the third, sixth, ninth, and thirteenth strakes are clinker laid over the second, fifth, eighth, and twelfth, respectively. The third layer of planking is carvel laid from the thirteenth to the seventeenth strakes.

Twelve bulkheads divide the ship into thirteen compartments; there are waterways cut into the base of all but the aftermost and foremost bulkheads, which were watertight. The bulkheads were fastened to the inner layer of planking with iron braces and iron nails, the latter being set and covered with t'ung putty as a preservative. Another interesting find is the placement in the keel of seven coins in the pattern of the constellation of Ursa Minor, and a bronze mirror, both of which were thought to bring the vessel good luck. While the underbody of the hull tapered towards the bow, the upper decks fore and aft were probably trapezoidal.

The cargo reveals that the Quanzhou wreck was originally a "spices and pepper ship" or a "spice junk." The cargo included medicinals and 2,300 kilograms of spicewoods including laka-wood, sandalwood, and black pepper from Java, garu-wood from Cambodia, betel nuts from Indonesia, frankincense from central Arabia, ambergris from Somalia, and tortoiseshell. It is not clear from this manifest that the Quanzhou ship actually sailed as far afield as Africa, but it does attest to the importance of the port of Quanzhou (on mainland China opposite Taiwan), whose merchants began trading with Africa and the Middle East in the sixth century. Comparing Quanzhou with the great Mediterranean entrepot, Marco Polo wrote,

The quantity of pepper imported there is so considerable, that what is carried to Alexandria, to satisfy the demand of the western parts of the world, is trifling in comparison, perhaps no more than the hundredth part. It is indeed impossible to convey an idea of the number of merchants and the accumulation of goods in this place, which is held to be one of the largest ports in the world.

The ship has been dated based on evidence provided by the hoard of 504 coins, the latest of which were struck in 1273, about the time the ship is thought to have sunk. Today the reassembled hull is on display at the Quanzhou Museum of Overseas Communication History.

Green, "Song Dynasty Shipwreck at Quanzhou." Keith & Buys, "New Light on Medieval Chinese Seagoing Ship Construction." Li Guo-Qing, "Archaeological Evidence for the Use of `Chu-Nam'on the Thirteenth-Century Quanzhou Ship." Merwin, "Selections from Wen-wu on the Excavation of a Sung Dynasty Seagoing Vessel

Shinan wreck

In 1975, Ch'oe Hyong-gun recovered a number of encrusted ceramic containers from a ship lying in about 20 meters of water off the coast of Shinan, South Korea (in 35?1N, 126?5E). These containers were positively identified as antiquities, and divers began to loot the site before government authorities put it under the auspices of the Cultural Property Preservation Office. Proper archaeological excavation began in 1976 and continued through 1984, culminating with the salvage and conservation of the ship's hull in a special shoreside facility.

The remains of the hull include 445 ship's timbers and 223 planks of Chinese red fir and Chinese red pine, both of which are native to southern China. The ship is similar to the thirteenth-century Quanzhou wreck, though there are differences in the construction details. In both ships, the bottom of the hull is V-shaped, and the hull planking is joined in a variety of ways. The Shinan wreck yielded the keel, fourteen starboard strakes, and six port strakes. The strakes were laid over one another in a rabbeted clinker construction, with the rabbet being cut out of the inner lower part of the plank. Towards the bow, this changes to a rabbeted carvel construction to give the hull a smooth side. Parts of two mast steps survived (fore and a main) and the interior of the hull is divided by seven bulkheads.

Further study of the site revealed that the wreck was of a Chinese vessel en route from China, possibly Ningpo, towards Japan, when it sank in a storm. The cargo consisted of more than 12,000 pieces of Chinese ceramics, including celadon vases, plates and bowls, stoneware, incense burners, and ching p'ai (bluish white) porcelain pieces from the Yuan dynasty. Among other artifacts related to the cargo were numbered 729 metal objects, 45 stone objects, 20,000 individual Chinese copper coins, 1,017 pieces of red sandalwood measuring between 1 and 3 meters in length, and over 500 other objects, including the crew's personal possessions. Many of the finds were still packed in their shipping containers marked with the year, 1323, towards the end of the Yuan dynasty.

Green & Kim, "Shinan and Wando Sites." Kim & Keith, "Fourteenth-Century Cargo Makes Port at Last."

Now the previously mentioned "significant departure" of "generally accepted theories of ancient Chinese shipbuilding techniques" is a hot topic because of the 1421 Theory, a theory that China was the first country to:

...discovered Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Antarctica, the northern coast of Greenland, and the Northeast Passage and that the knowledge of these discoveries was subsequently lost because the Mandarin bureaucrats of the Imperial court feared the costs of further voyages would ruin the Chinese economy. According to Menzies, when Zhu Di died in 1424, the new Hongxi Emperor forbade further expeditions and to discourage further voyages the Mandarins hid or destroyed the records of previous exploration.

It's a controversial theory and many critics question the evidence and the manner in which it has been presented to the public. One of the main pillars of the theory, the massive Treasure Ships or Treasure Junks that made the intercontinental journeys, has yet to be verified with physical evidence. So, as a PBS Nova special describes, any vessel now connected to China's medieval Asian maritime trade, just like the Shinan, is worth more in information than its recovered cargo.

Cultural Context

2008-03-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

After my Translation Bot discovery I poked around the Google pages again and rediscovered the Dictionary. Google's dictionary has been out since last year but since then it has switched over its local translation engine from Systran to an in-house model (and gone through a facelift too) so it gave me pause for another examination. Would it sway me from Naver? After some mucking around I would say that I would like it to but it doesn't introduce anything new.

Another thing that I found was the blog translation widget, or the Google Translation Gadget. It's a neat toy to allow people to apply Google's translation magic on your page without the extra step of navigating back to Google. While this is nifty any translation that you get is going to be rather poor and render the functionality useless. Maybe not useless but at least substandard compared to a manual translation:

So why do online translations fail so humourously? One reason is that we can recognize the grammatical errors and understand how the algorithm made the incorrect choice. For an easy example we have the confusion over Renard and The Fox in the movie. In the translation process the two somehow become synonymous and, thanks to Alliance Francaise, Mokpo, I know that this happened because the algorithm failed to recognize Renard as a French proper name. The computer couldn't identify the cultural context in which the lexical item 'Renard' was being presented. So in this case (and many others) the cultural context is everything; maybe if the film was about the 1940's French Resistance, using 'Le Fox' could be passable as correct.

Looking at this problem in another situation, I would say that a failure to recognize cultural context belongs to the plethora of reasons behind Korea's EFL difficulties. I'm not the first to suggest this idea and the problem of how to use foreign culture when teaching a foreign language has been around since the 1960s. Dimitrios Thanasoulas, in his paper The Importance Of Teaching Culture In The Foreign Language Classroom, gives a good argument illustrating this problem and, funny enough, his examples on incorrectness seem to be lifted straight out of Korean education system:

One of the misconceptions that have permeated foreign language teaching is the conviction that language is merely a code and, once mastered—mainly by dint of steeping oneself into grammatical rules and some aspects of the social context in which it is embedded—‘one language is essentially (albeit not easily) translatable into another’ (Kramsch, 1993: 1). To a certain extent, this belief has been instrumental in promoting various approaches to foreign language teaching—pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and communicative—which have certainly endowed the study of language with a social “hue”; nevertheless, paying lip service to the social dynamics that undergird language without trying to identify and gain insights into the very fabric of society and culture that have come to charge language in many and varied ways can only cause misunderstanding and lead to cross-cultural miscommunication.

So would we fix both problems by the simple matter of plugging a 'culturalizer' into Google's dictionary and Korea's EFL curriculum? Well, yes, but unfortunately a culturalizer is one of those mythical devices that hasn't been developed past brainstorm scribbles on a whiteboard. I chose the example of Renard because it's an easily explainable and easily isolated part of French culture. But on a larger scale teaching culture with language isn't quite as simple; too little cultural instruction results in miscommunication and too much results in linguistic imperialism. As Sherene Ariffin points out, in Culture in EFL Teaching: Issues and Solutions,

For instance, in a reading passage about pets, Alptekin (1993) illustrated that Middle Eastern students, especially the Muslims, would feel utterly confused about the American ideology of “a dog as ‘man’s’ best friend” (p. 137). This is because Muslims are brought up to regard them as animals that should not be touched because they are considered “unclean.” Therefore, in reading the passage, the students not only have to overcome unfamiliar words, but they would also have to figure out the context of the culture that the passage is referring to. This could lead to a serious impediment in their understanding of the passage. Marckwardt (1978) also argued against the use of American literature in teaching EFL. This is because American literature presents predominantly America culture and values—positive and negative—and does not take into consideration learners’ backgrounds.

Now we could simply write off American textbooks as American propaganda but not every instance of linguistic imperialism is going to be as easily recognizable; a subtle linguistic imperialism can also be found in the absence of cultural education. Paul Stapleton notes effect in his Culture’s Role in TEFL: An Attitude Survey in Japan:

The perils of teaching culture or making broad cultural statements about language usage was brought home to me recently when a British colleague chastised me for telling students a common response to a compliment in English was ‘Thank you’. My colleague claimed that such a response in Britain would be regarded as arrogant. Whether or not his claim is accurate is not the point here. Such an exchange of views only underlines the difficulties language teachers face when approaching cultural issues.

While there is a general lack of research in teacher attitudes on culture learning, some studies have been carried out to better understand the extent to which teachers are familiar with the role of culture in language education and how it affects their pedagogy. Lessard-Clouston’s survey (1996) in which 16 Chinese EFL teachers were interviewed on their views about teaching culture found support among teachers for teaching culture, but cited a need for more understanding of how to bring culture into the classroom context. Adamowski’s survey of teachers’ views on teaching culture in the ESL context (cited in Lessard-Clouston, 1996) suggested that teachers feel culture has an important role to play, yet no systematic ways of approaching how to teach it were uncovered. Prodromou (1992), in a questionnaire study of 300 Greek students, found over half of the students believed that native speaker teachers should have some knowledge about the students’ native tongue and culture. Duff and Uchida’s study (1997) of four EFL teachers in Japan revealed considerable complexity in teachers’ sociocultural identities and a lack of awareness that they were implicitly transmitting cultural messages to their students. Despite the findings of these studies, there is still a general lack of information about how teachers view the teaching of culture and how these views are reflected in their teaching.

It seems like I'm revisiting the same point that I've made in previous rants. As a high school native speaker it looks like the government sees me as the culturalizer but (again) I would say that I'm not the solution (i.e trained teacher) that they're looking for. So I'm stuck with the same problem involving Renard, the Fox and automatic translations; I can easily point out what's wrong with the system but I'm about as useless as the Google Translation Gadget when it comes around to fixing it.

Extending the E-2 Visa in Mokpo

2008-03-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

I'm in a situation where my work visa will expire before my contract. This isn't anything new and is easily fixed by getting a short term visa extension. With the new E-2 regulations rumours were abound that I would have to jump through more hoops (i.e. HIV tests, etc.) for what amounts to an extra week of legal residency. But contrary to those rumours and the nice summary from What a Korea the E-2 extension process is easy and didn't I need:

...to apply for the Criminal Background Check Record in advance and have the document ready. The time required in receiving a Criminal Background Check Record varies from country to country. The Criminal Record notarized by either the Korean Consulate (Canadian citizens) or the Apostille (all other citizens) needs to have obtained within the past 90 days. Therefore, too early application will not work.

Of course I'm willing to bet Mokpo has that small town factor in full effect -- the same small town factor that lets five on-duty policemen learn ultimate frisbee from a bunch of waygooken on a sunny weekend. Seriously. True story.

Anyway, the process at 광주출입국관리사무소 (aka Gwangju Chulibgukgwanri Samuso), the Gwangju Immigration Office (Mokpo Branch Office) took no more than 15 minutes; I did it by myself and all I needed was my passport, my ARC, a form filled out on the spot, and a printout of my plane e-ticket. They gave me a new stamp in my passport so now I'm good to hang around for the Jeju Ultimate Frisbee Tournament:

Lesson 25 - Easter

2008-03-24T00:29:00.000-07:00

Lesson 25 - Easter is published over at waygook.org.

Lesson 24 - St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

Lesson 24 - St. Patrick's Day is published over at waygook.org.

Mokpo's Museum Road

2008-03-20T00:32:00.000-07:00

Exploring Mokpo can really be done over a couple of days and should be saved for the occasional visit from back home. One those days can be spent on Mokpo's Museum Road, my name for the Gatbawi Cultural District which is a strip of waterfront property between Yibam-san and Gatbawi that hosts most of Mokpo's museums.

The Mokpo Culture and Arts Center

문화예술회관 (aka MunHwa YeoSul HoeGwan) is the Culture and Arts Center and made famous on this blog for hosting the MCS's reunion concert. It's not really a museum but it's the largest building on the strip and is the main civic center in Mokpo, boasting 6 exhibition rooms and a 700 seat concert hall.

The Mokpo Natural History Museum

자연사박물관 (aka JaYeonSa BakMulGwan) is the Natural History Museum. The museum is typical of other natural history museums (i.e full of stuffed, taxidermied animals, pretty chunks of minerals, and giant dinosaurs skeletons posed in attack positions) but without the Victorian era dioramas. The ticket also gets you into the neighboring Local History Museum that specializes in the local history of Mokpo.

The National Maritime Museum

국립해양유물전시관 (aka GukRip HaeYang YuMul JeonSiGwan) is the National Maritime Museum, the only museum in Korea dedicated to nautical archeology. Its main exhibition is the display of over 3,000 recovered pieces of Koryo celadon, over 22,000 recovered pieces of pottery and of course the remains of the Shinan Ship, a 14th-century yuan ship discovered in 1975 just north of Mokpo in Shinan, and the primary source of the museum's artifacts.

The Korean Industrial Pottery Museum

한국산업도자전시관 (aka HanGuk SanEop DoJa JeonSiGwan) is the Korean Industrial Pottery Museum according the building or the Ceramic Livingware Museum according to the website and specializes in the Korean pottery. The museum also doubles as pottery school with numerous pottery classes and workshops that lean more towards groups of children than adults.

The Namnong Memorial Museum

남농기념관 (aka Namnong GiNyeomGwan) is the Namnong Memorial Museum is an art gallery dedicated to the life and work of the artist 남농 허건 (aka Namnong HoKon) and his contemporaries. Namnong spent most of his life and the 20th century in Mokpo, becoming famous for his contribution to the Namjonghwa school (translated as the "Southern Style") of Korean painting.

The Mokpo Literature Museum

문학관 (aka MunHak Gwan) is the Literature Museum and it doesn't have a Naver Local page or provide any kind of English translation. So I'm guessing that it's a fairly new addition the strip but the least likely to attract English speaking patrons.

Today's Yellow Dust in Mokpo

2008-03-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a unscientific sample of today's Yellow Dust hovering over Mokpo, taken from Yudal-san. You can compare it with a 'clear' day taken during May of last year.

The Gwangju station's reading for this day had an average of 100 micrograms which is the first benchmark and is considered relatively safe. To understand the notion of relatively safe you should compare the above to the The Military Monitoring Station Info Card's sample of the toxic level of +1000 micrograms:

Google's Translation Bot

2008-03-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

In another instalment of 'I love Google' I present Google's Translation Bot, an instant messenger translator. Currently only available for GTalk, the translation bot is another buddy that will instantly accept you as a friend and translate whatever you say to it. There's one bot per translation so for Korean to English and vice versa you can add:

ko2en@bot.talk.google.com
en2ko@bot.talk.google.com

GTalk translator bots are nifty but not that practical in my Korean situation since using them makes some assumptions that simply aren't valid. For one, none of my Korean friends use GMail or GTalk so the selling point of having a multi-lingual conversation is made redundant; this isn't even about the Great Anti-Google Conspiracy since even MSN Messenger is a minority here and all the cool Korean kids are using NateOn. For another, I've switched to Naver's English Dictionary since I'm usually at somebody else's computer when translation and arm gestures fail me; it is, however, in those case that the bots would be awesomely useful if I had GTalk hooked up to my mobile device. Sadly, I do not.

I've added the GTalk Badge to the blog so feel free try it out and chat me up in any language.

St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

Much to the surprise of my students (and myself) St. Patrick's Day does exist in Korea -- even Japan, Singapore and China had some green festivities this weekend. Sadly Mokpo did not have any Irish representation so instead we'll have to live vicariously through the Seoul bloggers who were in full blogging force; there's even this IAK promotional video (from the many) using images from last year's parade:

White Day

2008-03-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

I've already blogged about it so this'll be short: Happy White Day.

Lesson 23 - Valentine's Day

2008-03-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Lesson 23 - Valentine's Day is published over at waygook.org.

황사

2008-03-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

Known in Korea as 황사 (aka Hwangsa), the Yellow Sand phenomenon is a dust storm season that straddles March and April and blankets the country with end-of-the-world skies and end-of-your-life breathing conditions. Even though it has been translated into many English names like yellow sand, yellow dust, yellow wind, or even Asian Dust the phenomenon itself is when:

...a noxious brew of Gobi desert sand particles and assorted effluent from China's industrial development comes roaring out of the west and dumps down on Japan and Korea.

And with an industrial cloud of heavy metals floating over our heads we can expect to get some yellow rain or even the rare case of 2006's Yellow Snow; Asian dust season can start as early as February and run as late as May but I'm told that here in Mokpo, April is always the worse month.

There's an informational Yellow Sand site with some interesting facts and documentaries. But there's a slightly more useful monitoring site (via Jess) with the closest recording station to Mokpo being Gwangju:

Health Levels (micrograms of dust per cubed meter)
0-99	Acceptable level of Air Pollution.
100-199	Korean Acceptable level of Air Pollution.
200-399	Maybe you should stay home today level of Air Pollution.
400-799	Maybe you should not die today level of Air Pollution.
800+	Gas Masks for Everyone!

Star Golden Bell's Speed English

2008-03-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

While doing the research for Super Junior's Full House I came across another show that I had seen on the Mokpo airwaves. 스타골든벨 (aka Star Golden Bell) is one of the seemingly infinite variety shows involving a group of Korean playing mini-games. But here the contestants are guest celebrities and the goal is to win enough mini-games at first as a team and then as a individual to ring the Golden Bell.

Now since I still don't do Korean that well there are some aspects of the show I don't really get:

But there's the one part, Speed English, where the contestants play a word guessing game with the resident English Teacher (or attractive equivalent) that I think is genius:

Well genius in that I'm going to rip it off for a lesson. All I need is decent vocabulary and Eva:

Postage Stamps

2008-03-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

A subtle lesson that Korea (and Asia) will teach you is that it is not wise to make assumptions about the local post office. Show Time Judy makes an excellent comparison between North American Post Offices and their Korean counterparts and the one thing that struck me was use of self-adhesive technology in Korean stamps.

The U.S. currently uses self-adhesive stamps, the sticker kind that don't rely on licking the back. Sometime in my life this stamped replaced the water-activated stamp (the stamp stereotype) but here in Korea they have rejected all self-adhesive technology and instead rely on a glue stick within the post office (or home) for the postage gum. Funny enough, greeting card envelopes and other items that are self-adhesive in the U.S. are gum-free in Korea.

Now, let's side track into India. While the good folk in Korea may not have discovered self-adhesive technology, the even better folks in India have yet to discovered glue dispensing technology. Seriously. I went into one post office to get rid of my collection of postcards and I had the damnedest problem trying to get my stamps to stick. Thanks to my experience in Korea I suspected that I was dealing with gum-free paper.

I tried to ask where the glue was and was told 'glue is outside.' By outside the nice old aunty-ji meant the nice old courtyard in the back, with some benches, a fountain, and one sad looking wooden desk under a glue stick tied to a tree. And by glue stick I mean I mean a stick in a pot of glue. You literally had to dip the stick and spread the glue, mastering the art of just getting enough for a quick dry. Of course it wasn't until I gave the stick to the person next in line that I saw that the proper way to use the glue stick is to wipe the glue with your finger and then spread the glue on the stamps; fingers are rinsed in the courtesy fountain and you can sit on the benches while you wait for the glue to dry.

Anonymous HIV testing in Mokpo

2008-03-10T03:23:00.000-07:00

Via waygook.org the closest anonymous HIV testing in Mokpo is in Gwangju. An interesting note from that thread is that if you are identitifed as HIV positive you will be deported within 2 weeks. That idea is being challeneged as an assault on human right in one court case:

The commission last week submitted its opinion to the Seoul Administrative Court, which will rule on his petition against the order. "The HIV virus is not transmissible through normal contact. Living together with his family members here, the plaintiff can get active and voluntary treatment, meaning that the possibility of HIV infection by him is extremely low," the human rights watchdog said in a statement."Because of the situation in China - where such people are quarantined, and only rudimentary human rights protection exists for HIV patients - deporting him could adversely affect his health and life. By international human rights standards, such an order is excessive."

While the case is so specific to China it could set a precendent, one that may have a disastrous side side effects:

The Korea Federation for HIV/AID Prevention said the deportation could have side effects. "It could drive more foreign HIV positive people to hide their illness fearing deportation,'' its spokesman said

Of course cases like these, as unfortunate as they are, are common throughout the world. The issue of deportation (or at least refusal of entry) based on HIV screening is also common in most countries and Korea is not alone in automatic explusion:

United States of America
In principle, the USA refuses entry to foreign nationals known to be HIV positive. In exceptional cases, a stay of 30 days may be granted (for family visits, medical treatment, business travel or participation in a scientific, health-related conference).
HIV testing or a medical exam are not required. In the visa application form, the applicant has to say if he/she has a “communicable disease of public health significance”. The visa will be denied if this is the case. An applicant who answers “no” despite better knowledge commits an immigration fraud, which leads to immigration prohibition. HIV-positive foreign nationals lose their right to remain in the USA and are expelled if their status becomes known.

Lesson 22 - Review

2008-03-07T22:59:00.000-08:00

Lesson 22 - Review is published over at waygook.org.

Educational Nomads

2008-03-06T05:43:00.000-08:00

The previously mentioned Indian Wave is in Korea, although in a slightly different form from what's going on in Japan:

An increasing number of Korean children now study in India, where they can learn English more cheaply than in the U.S. or the U.K. Parents are also impressed by the reputed strengths of Indian education in math and science, making the country an affordable alternative to the traditional destinations for Korea’s “educational refugees.”

Of course somebody beat me to breaking (well, blogging about) the story; Seoul Buffoon has already weighed in with his experience and has noted this amusing side effect:

At half the cost, the kids can get a decent education conducted in the English language. But of course, there is a caveat. They will end up speaking with Indian accents!

In fact my partner was there for two years (thats where I met her and followed her to Korea) and she speaks English with an Indian accent! Infact if she speaks in English on the phone, the person at the other end may actually think that she is an Indian!! Joking ofcourse, but the point I am trying to make is that if Korean parents can “tolerate the Indian accent” it works to their advantage.

I find this interesting since I'm now forced to reconcile the contradiction between the parents who send the kids off to India and the parents who are blind to acknowledging anything other than American English. I spell colour with a U even though I'm told that it's wrong.

But there's something else about this article that caught my eye: Educational Refugees. It's the first time that I've heard that term but to me the word refugee is loaded with so much tragedy and suffering that to use it to describe children of affluent parents and their personal education choices is very questionable. I'll grant that there maybe some validity when used as a commentary on Korean education but this goes too far and turns the affair into a sad hyperbole. For one, I'm sure that the Chosun isn't being hipster ironic and for another these Korean children are not being left behind:

As a high school teacher and guidance counselor, I am currently dealing with the fallout of [The No Child Left Behind Act] as I try to find schools for students who are not doing well in our school. We are a "failing school" that is "in need of improvement" and heading toward "corrective action." Yes, our test scores are low. But they are low because we are a transfer high school, meaning that we take in students who are being pushed out of other schools that need to meet AYP and these "weak" students will prevent them from doing so by scoring abysmally on the tests. The mission of our school is to educate these second chance kids, NCLB be damned. However, on occasion we do have students that need to tranfer to another school. And this is what happens: nobody wants these students. There are hundreds, probably thousands of students that no school will take in because those students are a "liability." The schools that have been educating these second chance kids for decades and trying to open up other possibilities for them are now being punished for doing so. NCLB hangs over schools like ours menacingly. We have been educating students that no other school wants for 25 years. When schools like ours disappear or are "restructured," what alternatives will kids have?

In this comment the Educational Refugee label has some merit since these children have no other alternative in the mainstream education culture. In another example, I found this website that uses the same metaphor albeit entrenched in a Christian motif:

Quite often, they start their homeschooling because of some negative causes, such as their children getting bullied in public schools. They are always in need of various kinds of help and encouragement from outside. Sad to say, many Japanese churches are not cooperative to the homeschoolers in Japan Homeschoolers often do not receive cooperative or positive reactions from other church members, and this can be detrimental for their Christian life. Even some of them are "persecuted" by other church members.

Even though I don't agree with subject matter, this contemporary use of Educational Refugee seems appropriately well placed, reinforcing the notion that Educational Refugees are members of society targeted for exclusion. This then poses the question: Are the Korean Kids being alienated by the national educational policies? I would say no. It seems like they (or their parents) are instead opting out of the educational system to gain that extra educational edge:

The OECD recently released the results of its Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In the survey, Korean students finished first in reading skills, fourth in mathematics, and 11th in science. When the report was released, Koreans made a fuss about the science ranking plummeting to 11th from top place six years earlier. But the foreign press still regards Korea as a nation of excellent students. Despite the students' outstanding performance, Korean parents are uneasy about the country's education system. They covet an "advanced education," setting their eyes on overseas schools. They are aware that high scores don't necessarily reflect real abilities or skills. Nonetheless, they are so worried that they send their children to private crammers and continually push them for higher and higher scores.

So it looks like it's safe to say that the Chosun's usage of Educational Refugee is a good example of mediocre journalism that's thankfully outside of the current emotionally charge atmosphere. Except that I found Rieko Fry's PhD thesis Japanese children abroad: Politics of education for kaigaishijo and kikokushijo with this breif history in it's introduction:

Business expansion in the 1960s and its associated international strategies have meant that many Japanese company employees and their families were sent abroad on long-term assignments. The children who accompanied their parents on such assignments and then returned to Japan were first described as 'educational refugees' and were regarded as culturally ambiguous, socially marginalized and academically disadvantaged. The Japanese government considered that special measures were needed for these children, as they had missed out on the standard education that they would otherwise have received. Consequently, it introduced various educational options so that they could reintegrate smoothly into Japanese society and its educational system. Later, in the 1980s, when 'globalization' became vital to Japan, the attributes associated with such children were recast and they began to be regarded as 'valuable national assets' for their supposed rich cross-cultural awareness and bilingual abilities, the very qualities the government sought in the new generations of Japanese.

Interestingly enough the term was at first referencing an internal demographic, much like the left behind of No Child Left Behind, but soon became a fashionable (i.e marketable) quality. I can only guess that this is the same logic behind the Chosun's usage; the term has mutated within the Korean monoculture to a point of direct contradiction with it's dictionary definition. Simply put, Education Refugee is now Konglish.

But then I find this story and learn what it means to be a true Korean Educational Refugee:

The educational exodus from Korea has created not just success stories. The number of students who give up on their studies overseas and return to Korea is increasing, from 8,019 in 2001 to 13,586 in 2005. Some soon pack their bags again because they can no longer adapt to their home country either.

So it seems clear enough: the Konglish definition of Educational Refugees is an umbrella covering all Korean nationals who acquire education outside of Korea. This is a mislabeling since these students don't become Educational Refugees (by measure of the rest of the word) until they return home and experience the alienation brought upon by their foreign education -- much like Seoul Buffon's Partner but of course to a larger and less humorous degree -- and acquire a new designation in the Korean monoculture: The Educational Nomad.

Super Junior: Full House

2008-03-05T04:10:00.000-08:00

I know the folks back home who read my blog (both of them) are really diggin the Korean TV. So another good example of the stereotypical K-TV programming is Super Junior's one of many reality shows, Super Junior: Full House:

Two female international students - the Russian and partly Polish intern Anna (20 y.o), and the half-English and half-Japanese intern Eva (25 y.o) - arrive to Seoul, South Korea to do a homestay with Super Junior for a month. Living with Super Junior, the two foreign students experience the comedic adventures with the group and develop deep friendships.

Now given North American sensibilities it may be hard to believe that "comedic adventures" and "develop deep friendships" lacks any trace of irony. The members of Super Junior are bred and raised to be as safe and appealing as possible; it would be a mistake to simply call Super Junior an Asian Backstreet Boys clone since there's an industrial replaceable cog like quality that I've only seen in Menudo, the Latino boy band that has managed to survive for 20 years. The current generation also has its own reality show). Take this 2007 music video, wonderfully translated for karaoke by Cherry Blossom Heaven:

So without further ado I present Super Junior: Full House, online and with English subtitles:

Babo Shirts

2008-03-04T20:20:00.000-08:00

I love ironic shirts to a point where my wardrobe annoys everything else in my closet. Outfits like Cafe Press, Spreashirt and Zazzle make it easy for anybody to scribble something witty on a t-shirt (or mug, mouse-pad, towels, underwear, whatever) and get it made. The cool kids here in Korea have done it but I have to give props to the guys at Babo Shirts -- shirts so hip that only 2% of the population can understand them.

First Day of Korean High School

2008-03-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

The new term has started at my school and everywhere else in Mokpo's public education system. The first thing that I noticed was the subtle shuffle of my previous year; I've swapped one English teacher for another from a neighbouring high school, I've lost some of my memorable students, and I've gain a completely new crop of freshmen and women. And my first day didn't really involve any teaching since it was dominated by a welcoming ceremony and orientations but it was chock full of Koreanism that went unexplained:

The class schedule is not finished; the real timetable is TBA
The classroom lists (my crucial mug shot sheets) are not finished. Again, TBA.
New school equipment like class room computers have not been delivered. Unfortunately we had to ship the old computers out before we left. When will classroom get a computer? TBA.
My Internet connection has not be fixed since I reported it broken a couple of weeks ago and I cannot get a definite answer of when it will be working again.
My classroom average classroom temperature is 7C

On the positive note I get to start over with the confidence of a battle-hardened veteran. They know that this is my house now:

I have made the new freshmen stare at me in awe. They tell me I am handsome.
I have made the new freshwomen fall in love with me. They too tell me I am handsome.

And on some other notes:

Grade 1 classes are now sex-segregated; it keeps the hormones at bay (I guess) but my worst memories involve the same-sex cliques.
I can reuse all of my lessons on the Grade 1s.
Since I do my blogging at school, updates will be sporadic until I get my Internet fixed.

Korean High School Graduation

2008-02-15T17:33:00.000-08:00

The middle week in February (for Mokpo schools and I'm guessing everywhere else in Korea) is Graduation Week. And the pinnacle of that week is Graduation Day and the pinnacle of that day is the Graduation Ceremony, celebrating the 3 years that students have spent in high school. It's also the last requirement in my 4 days of work in February. I won't be back online until March 3rd.

I brought my little point and shoot video camera with me to document what turned out to be no more than an hour of high school pageantry. Here's what I learned:

Location
The ceremony took place during the day, around mid-morning in the gymnasium, a fairly recent building with no heating. The floor was covered in tarp and the Grade 3 students were given the seat of honors on the main floor while the school band played the equivalent to pomp and circumstance. Grade 1 and Grade 2 students sitting in the bleachers were forced to attend, although their numbers were suspiciously low. And in select areas portable heaters were trotted out, giving places for the standing parents (and teachers) to congregate in the back of the gym. Everybody was cold.

Flowers
Flowers are apparently mandatory gifts during graduation. Flowers are suitable for both boys and girls (and even teachers) but must be as Koreanly ornate as possible. Bouquets stylized along the lines of Disney Princess Prom are perfectly acceptable for all genders and ages. I couldn't figure if there's some timing involved with the presenting of flowers, some students seem to have them right from the start whereas other produced them after returning from the back of the gym and taking the snapshots of parents, students and smiling diplomas. By the end of the ceremony everybody seemed to had flowers and were proudly displaying them in the numerous camera friendship photos.

Hair
Hair is the big thing for the graduating student. Like flowers, hair is another area of great cross-gender investment. Some girls had gone the extra pretty distance, but for the guys, perm, waves, coloring, etc was all the norm and done according the current Korean trends, something I am utterly clueless about. One of my favorite students became the poster child for Korean Perm today. I'm going to make a English-Korean dictionary and put his photo under the word awesome. Okay?

The Ceremony
The ceremony itself is what you expect: classes come up on stage, get their piece of paper, and go back to their chairs. But the way that they did it is completely different from North American. I guess ceremoniously is an adjective that does not translate well from English to Korean:

And it's easy to see that same je ne sais quoi here, during the principal's speech:
This is during the principals address to the students but it's clear that the students are done. Done with school and done with him since they're all chatting about their upcoming two weeks of vacation before back to university.

Flour and Eggs
Unfortunately I missed the flour and eggs:

What was comical however was the Korean tradition (from what has been explained to me) of what the students do once they've graduated. Because theirs no offical ceremony of passing the certificate to the students, the students just show up in their uniforms....and at this point, they're "itching" to rip it off for good. So after all of the formalities are over, and the parents have gone back to the work, the students whip out......flour and eggs; Lots and LOTS of eggs. What happens next is hard to witness, as the flour somewhat blocks a clear view. However, when the "dust" settles, what you have are students covered head to toe in egg yolk, shells, and tonnes of flour everywhere - most importantly, all over their uniform.

It was only when I was in the car heading to the retiring teacher's farewell lunch that I saw the students walking along the streets with flour all over their uniform. I guess they're done with the uniforms too.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T14:23:00.000-08:00

Valentine's day in Korean kicks off a trilogy of consumer love holidays. Now given the recent tragedy, the national sense of mourning, and the hyperbole abuse in the national media I don't know how much attention Valentine will get this year so if you've haven't experienced it in Korea you can easily use Pepero Day as a basis. It's commercially driven but without the corporate monopoly.

February 14th has a Sadie Hawkins twist where it's the women who give chocolate and other presents to the men in their lives (co-workers included). The sequel, one month later on March 14th, is White Day. There, men buy expressions of love and affection for their women, in theory returning the chocolate favors with white chocolate. And then there's the reject day on April 14th, reserved for everybody who didn't hook up to commiserate their patheticness over a bowl of 짜장면 (aka Jjajangmyeon), long noodles in a soybean sauce. Despite oozing with irony the name Black Day actually refers to the black sauce in 짜장면 instead of a westerners perception of despair. Fortunately you don't have to be single to enjoy 짜장면; it's available year round.

Valentine chocolates on the other hand are apparently becoming an endangered commodity:

The stock market plunge and concern on inflation seems to be inducing lovers to cut expenditure on Valentine's Day gifts. Imports of expensive chocolates, an icon of Valentine's Day presents for loved ones here, have decreased, substituted for by cheap candies, the Korea Customs Service said Wednesday.

Working in a Mokpo Winter

2008-02-13T20:25:00.000-08:00

Galbijim gives Mokpo a winter temperature of -5℃ but to a foreigner who is living in Mokpo this simple statistic doesn't explain the whole story. North Americans and other westerners will probably bring an assumption to Mokpo that they will work within a heated (or aleast well insulated) work environment. That assumption is sorely misguided.

From a very unscientific survey of foreigners here it's clear that proper heat conservation is a concept foreign to Koreans. Windows are opened and promptly forgotten about. Taking off your coat is only done in the bathroom. And while your school does have heating it will only exists in certan locations, most notably not where they put you.

My office temperatures hovers around 3℃ and with my little space heater I can bump that temperature reading up to 7, maybe even 10 if I'm lucky and stand directly in front of it. But I am incapable of heating both feat on the ground and hands at the keyboard unless I curl up in a fetal position on the cold cement floor. Normally I would suck it up like I did during December, but these past couple of days have been brutal. For graduation week I was explicitly instructed to come to school despite having no classes to teach. I have nothing to do except 'prepare lessons' using facebook, gmail, and blogger.

Today my space heater was failing miserably. After a couple hours deciding which I value more, my toes or my fingers, I abandoned the space heater, my computer, and the general sad existence that is my office and headed to a known source of heat, the main staff room. There I found a little corner and started reading the book I normally save for the bus, subscribing to the illusion that I'm on call for any native speaker emergency that could rear its ugly head. Time passes and then I took it up a notch and broke out the Nintendo DS. This helped me get to lunch at which point I leave and don't come back.

End rant.

BombEnglish

2008-02-12T21:44:00.000-08:00

BombEnglish is another project by the Metropolitician that offers podcasts of English conversation accompanied by a complete transcript and glossary.

I caught it on its 3rd episode, Foreign Perspectives on Korea and just this episode alone makes me want to use it. Unfortunately my students' English is not quite prime time and I feel like they won't like it unless I've some how made it into a game or bribe them with candy. On the flip side I'm sure that this would work well for my mythical teacher workshops since (at least) the teachers can study the podcast and transcript as homework and come prepared to class for comprehension activities.

I should clarify mythical: My teacher workshops are often canceled by the head of the English department despite the interest expressed to me by other teachers. The results is sporadic conversations based on chance meetings in the main staff room. On one hand I like this arrangement since it's one less thing to plan, but on the other hand my conscious is telling me I'm shirking my responsibilities as a cultural ambassador. BombEnglish is a good start in a new year's resolution to try something more structured and introduce the teachers to Korean issues faced by ex-pat community.

But regardless of my efforts the podcasts serve as excellent primers for foreigners looking to live in Korea. Podcast #3 definitely puts together something that I've felt but couldn't articulate well enough:

Michael: Exactly. And the, it’s all from perspective because no one makes policies or plans, it seems, based on looking as foreigners as people living here as opposed to “Oh, you’re all tourists! We’ll smile for you, we’ll accept your money, but we don’t think of you as neighbors.”

Jennifer: It kinds of reminds me. I grew up in Oregon and for awhile Oregon had this sort of crazy motto for the tourists. Went something along the lines of “Welcome to Oregon, have a great visit and then go home!” I’m very loosely paraphrasing it but the gist was thanks for the visit, now go on your way.

Michael: Well I think that the Korean, the Korean unstated motto is “Thanks for coming to Korea, spend a lot of money, and please leave.”

Jennifer: I don’t know that it’s so much “please leave” as it is “Eh? You would want to stay?”

Indian Education: The New New Thing

2008-02-11T07:26:00.000-08:00

I just happen to be in India when I caught this headline over breakfast: Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy Indian Schools. The article describes the emerging Japanese opinion of India as an educational superpower to the point where Indian practices are favored over the current Japanese system.

Given that the story came out a month ago I'm surprised that I can't find any feedback about the move. There's another article from an Indian internet portal and a commentary from college newspaper site but that's about as much as Google gives me. The basic situation is something like this:

Japan, an Asian powerhouse, is losing its international engineering and math prestige to the likes of China and India. The Japanese can write off China as being that wacky idea communist military country across the sea, but India is a unknown maverick and harder to excuse. A former colony turned democratic power that has surpassed Japan in crucial (i.e. lucrative) knowledge industries is in sharp contrast with Japan's image of India being stuck on the short bus and it's only now that Japanese are recognizing the discrepancy. The solution is to use the ancient India teaching ways to help Japan regain it's edge in the Asian world.

There are some finer details in the article though that are worth examining. The education in questions is only engineering and math and the magical education systems seems to differ only slightly from previous systems that focused on memorization. In fact the ancient Indian secret is to just start the kids younger, faster, and harder--and Japan is doing it, albeit at a specific school in some suburb:

Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.

India’s more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.

Anther point is the erosion of Japan's nationalism, almost as if the international pressures are forcing it to acknowledge systems outside of the itself:

But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.

Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbors.

“Until now, Japanese saw China and India as backwards and poor,” said Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Asian cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo. “As Japan loses confidence in itself, its attitudes toward Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer.”

Notebook has an interesting take on the matter:

The up shot to this scare is the realization that maybe Japan was too arrogant, too full of national pride, to recognize that their close-mindedness shut out new ideas from other cultures. This could push Japan into opening its immigration program to include incentives for other ethnics to come in and contribute.

Now where have I heard of external pressures challenging a nation's (maybe) racist and xenophobic policies? But really, after re-examining this article it seems that Japan is just 'Riding the Indian Wave' or more precisely, some Japanese people who do like to ride waves are now riding an Indian one. I suspect that a Japanese take on Indian education will not find solid ground in mainstream Japanese education and won't be the magical cure-all for Japan's lagging test results.

My up shot to this article is that, like the circumstance behind Korean's influx of foreign brides, this article does describe another facet of a monocultural society dealing with an economically forced multiculturalism. So while importing Indian education techniques may be written off as a fad, the fad's simple existence creates an interesting footnote in some larger study on emerging multiculturalism in monocultural societies. Maybe I'll get around to writing that someday.

The Great Korean Bank Customer Service Questionnaire

2008-02-08T02:53:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned once or twice in the past about my frustration with Korean banks, but the JoongAng Daily has recently confirmed what I've largely suspected: Korea banks have separate and discriminatory policies when dealing with foreigners living in Korea:

According to Lee, each local bank has different policies on issuing cards. Some banks issue the debit card without any restriction on foreigners while others limit the amount of money a foreigner can withdraw with the card to 10,000 dollars on a given trip out of the country. Many banks simply won’t issue any debit card to foreigners.

While researching this article I came across a KEB survey via Korea4Expats. It's a real nice effort and explains why the bank was tied for first place in Teaching Kimchi's bank poll. However I'm still sold on CitiBank for it's almost scary global dominance.

설날

2008-02-07T16:23:00.000-08:00

설날 (aka Seollal) is on the 1st day of the 1st month of the lunar calendar and is may be more recognizable as Lunar New Year in Korea. Like Chuseok, the pre and post days are also included in the holiday and all are family intensive days that drives every Korean to return home in a country wide mass migration. The celebrated ghost towns phenomenon is in full effect and so it's a great time to wander the streets and see some sites, provided they're open.

But it's also the day where all Koreans age a year:

Several East Asian cultures, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, share a traditional way of counting a person's age. Newborns start at one year old, and each passing of a New Year, rather than the birthday, adds one year to the person's age; this results in people being between 1–2 years older in Asian reckoning than in the Western version. Today this system is commonly used in Koreans' daily life, with exceptions to the legal system and newspaper.

So happy birthday, Korean people.

Incheon Airport to Mokpo Bus

2008-02-06T17:24:00.000-08:00

If, after you're done escaping Mokpo, you actually want to get back here, the easiest way is to grab the same Korean Komfort Mokpo to Incheon Airport bus, except in the other direction. It's the same deal at ₩33,600 (plus ₩2,000 booking fee) per seat, except that now your two choices Mokpo choices leave Incheon Aiport at:

8:40 am
6:20 pm

And again, if you miss the Mokpo bus you can always catch the more frequent bus to Gwangju.

I thought that Kumho, the people responsible for the buses leaving Mokpo, would also be responsible for the buses leaving the airport. But there's no airport option on their website. Instead there's Airportbus where tickets can be bought in a pimp-like fashion that explains the extra ₩2,000 service charge.

The Airportbus site is only in Korean and the routes and fees table seems to only care about major routes, i.e. Mokpo is missing but the information for Gwangju (광주) is accurate. The color coded words at the top of the table (일반, 우등 and 심야 ) translate into general, superior, and late night services, and demand different prices. There is a schedule posted at the airport, photographed and included here for your planning pleasure:

Update: There is an English Schedule maintained by the Airport itself. It's simple to use and presents Mokpo is a nice little table & map combination.

Google Reader

2008-02-05T14:57:00.001-08:00

I've had some questions about my blog roll, that list of blogs in the side column of the page. Mine is different and some people like it and want to use the same style. Unfortunately I can't take credit for the style since the blog roll is generated by my Google Reader account.

Since I set this blog up I've come to fully embrace our Google overlords. I search with Google, I blog with Google, I translate with Google, I even schedule, map, mail, and chat with Google,
and thanks to $1.65Bn I now use Google to watch naughty videos. I'm starting to wonder if I have a problem -- I mean with Google, not with watching naughty videos. And of course, I use Google Reader as my news reader to keep track of other blog-sandboxes that deal with with Mokpo, Seoul, and other parts of Korean life.

As a news reader in itself Google Reader is okay and has some faults. But it works well for me since I'm a big fan of thin client computing; I use the same application over multiple computers during the course of the day and don't want the hassle of re-synching (or re-installing) every time I log on. Another feature (and the one that connects Google Reader to my side panel) is the '

Happy Together

2008-02-04T23:34:00.000-08:00

Ms Parker sums up all of the cliche elements of Korean TV perfectly. I've talked about some examples in the past but I good one is a show that I've been calling the The Five Stooges since it seems to always involve the same collection of wacky Korean men performing mild, jackass-light stunts. I finally watched enough of it today to catch a commercial break and learned its true name, Happy Together. Apparently it's gone through various incarnations over the years:

The hosts('MC's', called by Korean popular culture) of Season 1 were comedian Shin Dong-yeop (신동엽), once K-pop artist Yoo Sung-jun (유승준), who was quickly replaced by entertainer Lee Hyo-ri (이효리). Later in 2003, the two were replaced by comedian Kim Je-dong (김제동), and comedian Yu Jae-seok (유재석), who continued the run till the end.

In Season 2 (Happy Together Friends), it was hosted by Yoo Jae Suk, entertainer Tak Jae Hoon (탁재훈) and Kim Ah-joong (김아중). Tak Jae Hoon and Kim Ah Joong was replaced by Lee Hyo-ri, and comedian Lee Soo-geun (이수근, served as a joint panel) came along later. In 2007, Lee Hyo-ri was replaced by K-pop singer Eugene (유진), and Lee Soo-geun was replaced by comedian Shin Bong-seon (신봉선).

In Season 3 (Happy Together: Let's Go To School; which the name was changed to Happy Together Season 3), it was hosted by Yu Jae-seok, comedian Park Myeong-su (박명수, a long-time colleague of Yu Jae-seok since co-hosting the Muhan Dojeon), actor Park Joon-kyu (박준규), and Shin Bong-seon. Recently, Park Joon-kyu has left the show.

I actually found part of the episode that I was watching, where the five stooges and special guest friends play the game where they are trapped in a sauna and must karaoke their way to freedom:

Or this game where they all are forced to where school girl uniforms and karaoke their way to freedom:

Or this game where they are all forced to karaoke their way to freedom from the dreaded falling platters from the sky:

And of course there are fan sites.

BRB

2008-02-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

Wow. There are people reading this blog from outside my circle of, well, me.

The public education teachers in Jeollanam-do province are in the middle of their winter break, something that looks like two weeks paid vacation on paper but is really one or two months depending on the individual school's discretionary usage of their native speaker. Fortunately I'm one of the lucky ones; I've been away in India, backpacking since the end of Christmas, and I'm back to fulfill my February commitment of three working days. Then the new terms starts in March.

I was contemplating a quick hop over to China, but the weather may put a hold on those plans.

Escape Mokpo by Plane

2007-12-28T18:29:00.000-08:00

Usually escaping from Mokpo by plane involves an escape by bus to Incheon Airport. But Mokpo is large enough to warrant its own airport, aptly named Mokpo Airport (목포 공항 aka Mokpo Kong Hang). For the curious, Korea is small enough that airports are easily recognised by their name or host city so most Koreans (including taxi drivers) don't bother with 국제 (aka Guk Chay) and 국내 (aka Guk Neah), the respective international and domestic prefixes for 공항 (aka Kong Hang), the Korean word for airport. Mokpo's airport is a domestic one but unfortunately closed to the public.

From the official website we have this history:

Mokpo airport is located 22km far from Mokpo City Hall to the southeast. It was constructed in 1969 and opened Mokpo~Seoul line by korean Air on July 1992 and Asiana Airlines on December 1992. Korean Air placed Mokpo~Jeju line into service in 1993, and Mokpo~Busan line on October 1994. But it was stopped on October 15, 2001. Since April 2003, there has been only 2 flights in Mokpo~Seoul line of Asiana Airlines. Mokpo Airport has been operated in affection of local residents for the time being, but it would be faded away to history when Muan International Airport, which is being constructed as alternative airport considering of the increasing demands, starts the operation.

Yes, the closest way to escape by plane is now through Muan Airport (무안공항 aka Muan Kong Hang) that just opened November 8th of 2007. The airport itself is scheduled to be the 3rd largest in Korea once it starts to operate at full capacity:

The airport was apparently under construction for 8 years, and as I mentioned in an earlier post there are articles that say the airport was supposed to open as early as 2004 (I saw one that said 2003, but I can't find it now). So the current delays are face-slappingly mind-boggling. According to a Korea Times article from November 2, the highway between Gwangju and Muan isn't scheduled to open until June, 2008, and that the KTX may eventually pass through Muan. I don't understand why the transportation issue wasn't the first hammered out, instead of being among the last. All of the issues mentioned in the initial KT article I linked are pretty serious deficiencies, and I guess by "open" it is meant that airplanes are physically able to take off and land.

Brian may sound a bit harsh, but Muan is on par with South Korea's reputation for mismanaged airport projects:

The "zany airport" in the report is Uljin Airport in North Gyeongsang Province, which has not yet opened. Uljin Airport was originally scheduled to open in 2003 but operations have been delayed since no airlines want to fly there, as AFP correctly reported. The airlines know that very few passengers would want to fly there.

Uljin Airport isn't the only local airport in Korea that can't attract airlines. Daegu Airport has had no flights since November when airlines decided not to fly there. Yangyang Airport in Gangwon Province handled an average of just 66 passengers per day in July, the peak summer vacation season. That's fewer than the number of people employed to run the place -- 82. Muan International Airport in South Jeolla Province, which opened in November, averages just one domestic and one international flight per day.

As for the Mokpo airport some Mokponians around here are telling me that it has already faded away to history and that it is (or will be, depending on the eventuality of Muan) a private airport used by the military.

Accessing Restricted Websites at School

2007-12-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

I can't read this article from the Seattle Times on my school computer. I don't know why but it is blocked by something call Cleanpass that (after some researching) is operated by ITOP. Now, it's not the first time that I've worked at a place that has had some Internet restrictions, but it is the first place where I can't understand the logic.

There's already tons of information on the Internet for bypassing web filters, but the key words that you want to learn are Anonymous Proxies. Anonymous proxies are computer servers on the Internets that you can hide behind. And by hide behind I mean that instead of your computer directly asking for information from an Internet server, your computer now asks the proxy to ask for you. By doing this you can also ask the proxy to muck about with whatever information is involved in the transaction but for accessing restricted websites we just want the the proxy to re-write the URL so that the filter doesn't match it on its offensive site list. Other stuff, like cookie management, advertisement blocking, etc. are aspects for the truly paranoid.

So in the end, and just from a Google search, I can access that Seattle Times article via, Zend2 (article), YouHide (article), or Proxify (article).

Lesson 21 - Christmas

2007-12-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

Lesson 21 - Christmas is published over at waygook.org.

Christmas In Korea

2007-12-25T17:01:00.000-08:00

Christmas in Korea seems like another required post for ex-pat bloggers. But the important thing to note that Christmas in Korea is same same, but different. For example,

Christmas is consumerized as a Romantic Holiday.
The main food item is a Cake, not the Turkey.
Christmas carols are replaced with Christmas pop songs.
Boxing day (British or American) is a foreign concept.

The Internet (God bless it) provides more information:

In countries where Christianity is the main religion, people celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ by going to church, recreating Nativity scenes and spending time with their families. In Korea, Christmas is a little bit different. Since a large part of the Korean population has no religious affiliation (46 percent) or follows the Buddhist tradition (26 percent), Christmas in Korea is more secular. Few people regard it as a religious celebration and rather enjoy it as a day to celebrate the end of the year. Although during Christmas season you will find many Christmas trees and images of Santa Claus on the streets, you will not see many Nativity scenes, which are very common in Christian countries.

Unlike Western countries where Christmas is a family holiday, in Korea it is a day to celebrate with your girlfriend or boyfriend, as a couple. Therefore, while people in other countries grow stressed during Christmas season worrying about facing family members, Koreans on the other hand grow stressed looking for a date for Christmas Eve. Those who have a special person with whom to spend Christmas often enjoy romantic dinners and go to places in downtown Seoul like Gwanghwamun and Myeongdong, where they can enjoy the beautiful scenery of Christmas lights and decorations.

Those who fail to get a date for Christmas, however, spend it with their friends. Fortunately, during the last days of December there are many year-end parties, or mangnyeonhoe, where Koreans gather together to celebrate the end of the year. Mangnyeonhoe are usually held between old classmates, coworkers and other social groups. These parties are characterized by lots of eating and drinking, and an overall atmosphere of unrestrained celebration.

Meanwhile, Christmas shopping in Korea is not as frantic as in other Western countries. Although sales do increase at the end of the year, shopping for gifts is not a big problem since it is not customary to exchange presents with family members or friends for Christmas. Usually most Koreans just buy presents for their girlfriends or boyfriends, as it is not tradition to give presents to all your friends and family members.

Lesson 20 - Geography IV

2007-12-24T14:47:00.000-08:00

Lesson 20 - Geography IV is published over at waygook.org.

A Year In Mokpo's Readability Test

2007-12-21T00:30:00.000-08:00

Via a Geek in Korea (man, I love that guy) I now know that A Year In Mokpo's readability level is...

My awesomeness being validated by a automated process is cool enough, but apparently I am alone in looking down upon my fellow Mokponians:

Adventures from around the World mapleandbrownsugar Kyre Ms Parker in Korea! Neal's Space Rushings Abroad! shan_korea What's happening and what's crappening... Who knows where I'll be tomorrow...
Flight Korean Adventure The Scroll of Bifurcating Considerations
Bound for Korea Koozmac in Korea Korea Light Enough to Travel
Garrett Gone Korean
Mokpo, ROK City

The Traveler IQ Game

2007-12-20T00:24:00.000-08:00

From A Geek In Korea I found this (soon to be incorporated into my geography lessons) game.

Presidential Election Day

2007-12-19T15:17:00.000-08:00

South Korea is holding its presidential election today. Wikipedia, the web, and everybody with a blog in Korea has tons of information about it so here's my offer. It's a holiday:

Korea’s 17th Presidential Election Day is nearing. Held once every five years, the occasion marks a day off on December 19, 2007 as elections take place. However, shopping centers, department stores, shops, restaurants, and tourists locations will still be open during regular hours of operation. All banks, government offices, private businesses, and schools will remain closed.

Lesson 19 - Konglish

2007-12-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

Lesson 19 - Konglish is published over at waygook.org.

Stalking Koreans with Naver

2007-12-17T00:56:00.000-08:00

Brian, over at Brian in Jeollanam-do, has a found a fun way to stalk people. Using Naver People search you can search for people with the following criteria:

Name (이름)
School (출신학교)
Birthplace (출생지)
Job (직업)
Organization (소속기관)

The school option is an interesting one but I don't quite understand the results. The famous alumni at 전남제일고등학교 includes only 5 people while the list of famous alumni at 전라남도목포상업고등학교 omits its most honored son, Kim Dae Jung, class of 1943.

Mokpo Medicine

2007-12-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

A personal note: I have contradicted a virus. Or maybe a bacterial infection. Or maybe just a normal killer cold transmitted to me by one of my students. In either case something is making me fells sick enough to not go to school, skip out on the eco-gooken oil clean up this weekend, and (the scariest part) to go to the doctor.

Now, it's not that I'm scared of going to the doctor, I'm just not that confident with the language to ensure that I get proper medical attention. I mean let's transfer the hilarity that one has with trying to get a hair cut into trying to get medical care. In which situation can you walk away from "I didn't want that cut off" and well, actually walk away?

Galbijim has a nice post about what to do when sick and even a page for Hospitals with English speaking staff. Lucky enough Mokpo has at least one English speaking doctor: 김건형 (aka Kim Kan Hyan) at the 21세기하나내과 (aka 21 Century Hana Medical Clinic). He's not completely fluent but we managed to talk about me and my symptoms without the need of an interpreter, something that generates so much material for sitcoms:

No one here could speak much English (the doctor knew some words), so the process of getting me prepped for deeper observation was a challenge. They had to get at my hip, so I was told to undo my pants. Makes sense, but in my mind, that meant take them right off. So that's what I did, right there in front of the nurse, who gave a good loud scream and ran into the back room. I had underwear on, but it didn't seem to be enough to calm her down, so I wrapped a towel around myself, shouted some "I'm sorry"s over the curtain, and got back down on the table.

Even though my students tell me it is a hospital, the part where I went to, on the second floor, was really a walk-in clinic. I managed to get Kim Kan Hyan by asking "English Doctor?" to the receptionist and the subsequent service was relatively quick. I received the required shot in the bum, eye drops, and an individually wrapped cocktail of pills from the pharmacy on the first level. I have five pills in my cocktail to be taken three time a day and that looks to be on par with the national average:

The average number of pills prescribed to those with colds in Korea was 4.73, compared to 1.61 for the US, 2.58 for the UK, and 2.2 for Japan. People under 18 in Korea were given an average of 4.56 pills per prescription, compared to 1.64 for the US, 1.77 in Switzerland, and 1.85 in Germany.

전라남도 목포 상업 고등학교

2007-12-13T01:52:00.000-08:00

Jeollanam-Do Mokpo Commercial School or Mokpo School of Commerce (전라남도 목포 상업 고등학교) is the former name of Jeonnam Jeil High School but despite the name change it is still active, at least on the Internet, and through events like an alumni concert that included the current school band, guest alumni performers, and other, uniquely high school things.

The Korean Wave

2007-12-12T23:15:00.000-08:00

The Korean Wave is a buzz word describing the export of Korean culture; whenever another country does something connected to Korea, it's labeled by Korean as riding/catching/whatever the Korean Wave. Of course taking that logic further means that there's been a British Wave, an American Wave, and to an extent, a Canadian Wave.

While the popularity of the Made in Korea label grew quite quickly, it has yet to make it's way out of Asia. One explanation is that Korea was the first to glam-up existing Asian culture:

Experts offer several reasons for the Korea Wave phenomenon. Among them are the facts that most Asian countries share Confucian culture, that Korean culture professes nonviolence, and that the quality of Korean culture and communications have increased sharply in the past few years. In other words, fans embrace Korean cultural products because they convey similar Asian cultural sentiments in sophisticated packages.

Of course one unique aspect of the Korean Wave is how tightly integrated it is to Korean monocultural identity. For example, if you think that Nascar sucks, it doesn't mean that you hate the USA. Well maybe...

But seriously, a product of monoculture societies like Korea is that any criticism towards the culture wave is immediately interpreted against criticism against the country:

Thus the actor Zhang Guolin has said China is becoming “a giant in importing foreign culture” and watching Korean TV dramas was tantamount to “selling out the nation.” The film magazine Mingxing insisted in December that the Korean government tries to hinder not only agricultural and fishery imports from China but also cultural products, according to KITA’s Beijing office. China’s State Administration for Radio Film and Television (SARFT) also said last December that China had been too generous with the import of Korean TV dramas and called for a stricter screening process. It said China could limit airtime for Korean dramas to 50 percent

Then there's the Japanese criticism that seems to welcome and reject the products of the Korean wave based on a cultural supersaturation.

“I really want to say this,” the director said, clearly exasperated. “To me, Japanese women who flock to see Yonsama (Korean actor Bae Yong-joon) are repulsive. When I see something so repulsive, whoever they are carrying on about, it makes me feel profoundly sick.”

The director was accompanied by his wife who, as it happens, is an admired performer in Japan. Maho Toyota, too, would like a little less of the Korean fare. “As an actress, I feel like the presence of Korean actors on Japanese television is excessive,” she said. “It would be good if all stars could perform freely on the Asian scene regardless of their nationalities. It’s a pity that the current tide is leaning too much toward one particular phenomenon.”

She said she was concerned how long it will last. “I hope this leads to the development of a unified scene where Asian people can exchange their cultures and share them, I hope that Koreans will feel the same way.”

The words repulsive and sick are strong words here, but given this example I find myself somewhat sympathetic.

But of course nothing is simple with Korea and Japan. Kenkanryu (aka Hating the Korean Wave) is the controversial Japanese criticism in comic book form and 혐일류 (aka Hyeomillyu or Hate Japan Wave) is the respective Korean response. Both Gusts of Popular Feeling (who breaks out Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics) and Occidentalism do a good job analyzing the comics and I'll have to take their word for it until I get myself an English translation.

Korean Orphans

2007-12-11T04:19:00.000-08:00

Recently a Dutch diplomat and his wife made headlines when they returned their adoptive Korean daughter:

HONG KONG ― A high-ranking Dutch diplomat and his wife, who adopted a 4-month-old Korean girl in 2000 when he was posted in Korea, gave up the child last year, officials here said.

Now, officials here are looking for someone to take care of the school-age child.

The girl, Jade, is still a Korean citizen because the adoptive parents, whose names were not released, never applied to give her Dutch citizenship, according to an official at the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department.

She doesn’t speak any Korean. She speaks only English and Cantonese, according to people close to her.

And she doesn’t have Hong Kong residency status, either.

The Hong Kong Social Welfare Department, where the Dutch diplomat left Jade in September last year, has had responsibility for her ever since, the official said.

Jade has been in Hong Kong’s foster care system, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

The paper also reported that the diplomat, who has a senior management role at a European consulate in the city, said “the adoption had gone wrong,” without any further explanation.

“It’s just a very terrible trauma that everyone’s experiencing,” he told the paper. “I don’t have anything to say to the public. It is something we have to live with.”

The diplomat’s wife thought she was infertile when the couple adopted the Korean girl in 2000, the official said. After they moved to Hong Kong, the wife got pregnant. They now have two children of their own.

The story has fueled anger among the Korean immigrant community in Hong Kong, which criticized the diplomat couple for “irre-sponsibly renouncing their custody of a child who’d been with them more than six years after delaying the naturalization process in Netherlands for years.”

A couple of potential families in Hong Kong showed interest in the adoption, but are struggling to complete the adoption process because of the strict legal qualifications here, Koreans familiar with the incident said.

The Korean Consulate in Hong Kong said it is aware of the situation.

“We could send her back to a Korean orphanage, but she’s been away from Korea for so long, and it would be very difficult for her to re-adapt in Korea,” said Jeong Byeong-bae, a consul of the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong. “So it is for the best under the circumstances to find a Korean family in Hong Kong.”

I understand the anger coming from everybody, but since the various takes are giving me flashbacks of another child in limbo I'm more curious about the parent's decision rather than simplynjoining the bandwagon of eople calling for their heads. After some researching on why people return their adoptive chilren I found this story where the adoptive child turned out to be harmful to the younger children:

The agency didn't tell us about his mental health issues, and they knew he had them. It took us 4 years to figure out that he had Reactive Attachment Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, Fetal Alcohol Effects, and Mood Disorders. By the time we educated ourselves and recognized what was going on, it was too late. Our son was raging in our home everyday and had tried to kill his little sister twice in front of me. This started many trips to the ER and to psyche hospitals. Two in one month.

I found some other takes on the Dutch story but the additional information is minimal. One give the girl's age as 8, the outpouring of support from the Hong Kong Korean community and even this bit of trivia:

In Korea, parents cannot return adopted children, but no such law exists in Hong Kong.

At first read it seems like a laughable sentences. I mean, it poses the questions: Is this incident so crazy that the Hong Kong courts haven't had any history to create a precedent or did Korea experience a time where Korean children were being returned to the orphanages. The outpouring of support from the Korean community should be a good sign about how Koreans feel about adoption but then I find this in a post by the happy couple in Kimchi and Cornbread:

The wrong is this: single mothers in Korea are forced by societal norms to either give up their baby for adoption or have an abortion (Korea has one of the highest abortions in the world). This equates to 6 children per day being put up for adoption, despite the country's low birth rate (the 4th lowest in the world.)

But Koreans do not and will not (for the most part) adopt other Koreans. Bloodlines are important in Korea. So important that they would never adopt another child not related to their family. Especially if it were a boy, who would one day receive his parents' inheritance.

It doesn't shed light on the discrepency in law, ut it's interesting that the attitude of Korea Koreans kind of contradicts the offers of help from the Hong Kong Koreans. Then again, the cynical side of me see the Hong Kong incident as something more to do with uniting against the white devil motif rather than show of support for a girl who has been tainted in the eyes of Koreans.

In the same Google search I also I find that it is possibly illegal to volunteer at an orphanage thanks to an interpreation highlighted by last year's Babopalooza Incident. In fact volunteering for anything isn't as easy for a foreigner:

Han Heek-young, who works at the information desk at the Seoul Help Center for Foreigners, had also never heard of non-Koreans getting in trouble for volunteering.

"I’ve never even before thought that it could be illegal," she said.

When she called the Immigration Bureau on Friday, officials would not provide her information if she would not tell the nationality of the inquirer. She said officials said the question was important because foreigners for these purposes are divided into two groups: Chinese and everybody else.

Officials said foreigners were less likely to have problems if their volunteer work was unrelated to their paid work, Han said. For example, English teachers volunteering in kindergartens are likely to be suspected of taking money under the table for English instruction.

When Han spoke to immigration officials on Monday, they told her that foreigners should have no trouble volunteering, as long as no money is exchanged, even to recoup costs.

It's somewhat related (if only by the fact that it matches the key words of 'foreigner adoption korea') but it's good to know for the Mokpo foreigners who do help out at the local orphanages.

Update: The story has evolved the past week; Monsters & Critics has this account from the maid:

The woman, who has requested not to be named, worked for the Dutch vice-consul Raymond Poeteray and his wife Meta in Hong Kong and when the family was based in Jakarta in 2002.

She said she thought it strange that the girl, now eight, was so quiet.

'They did not treat her the same way as the son. There was not the love there,' the maid told The Post.

And this analysis:

However, the couple issued a declaration which was published in the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf Thursday that rejected the accusations published in the Hong Kong media.
The Poeterays said their eight-year-old daughter Jade, adopted in 2000 as a four-month-old, was suffering from what they called 'commitment anxiety' and that they were advised by the Chinese Social Services to 'place her in foster care temporarily.'

They wrote that 'contrary to what has been written in the media, we do not want to get rid of our daughter. We never even considered giving her up.'

SouthParkTV.Net

2007-12-10T23:29:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately the previously mentioned collection of South Park Korean translation subtitles stops at season 8. I don't know why but I don't care that much either since pandora.tv and other Korean YouTubes were somehow still showing new translated versions of South Park. So I went looking for more and found SouthParkTV.Net. It seem to outperform SPKor since (given this example) it provides subtitles, the script, and a video link to the video, hosted on a daum cafe blog account.

The Money in ESL/EFL

2007-12-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

Teaching Kimchi has another nice table comparing ESL salaries and whatnot from a collection of countries:

Country Monthly Salary (USD) Insurance Flight Housing Severance
Dubai $3,200-5,000 No Yearly Return Airfare Free and Furnished No
Taiwan $3,000-4,000 Depends on program No Free not furnished No
Korea $2,000-2,300 Depends on your salary Roundtrip Furnished Apt. One month salary after contract
Japan $2,000 Depends on program Roundtrip Depends on program Extended holidays
Thailand $800-1,000 Depends on program Roundtrip Depends on program Depends on school
Russia $900 No Roundtrip Free and furnished No
China $400-550 No Depends on length Free and furnished One month salary
Vietnam $370 Depends Depends on length Free local food No

One thing that is lacking is adjustments for the cost of living. For example, the cost of eating in Dubai is $450 US per month but in Taiwan it's around $140 US (NT$150 x 30 days) and in Korea it's around $270 per month.

Candy in the Classroom

2007-12-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

Given that we're glorified babysitters each English teacher is going to reach a point in their teaching career where they want to reward (or need to bribe) student participation in class. This method of classroom management is controversial in itself, but a Geek in Korea has noted how this can backfire in a Korean context:

My Canadian coworker has gotten himself in a bit of a pickle. Ever since he returned from Canada, he has been giving out candy to younger students before their classes start to earn their favor. This has, of course, blown up in his face, as the students walk into the room, demand candy, then call him a cheap man if he doesn’t have anything to give them. I get left alone as a surly curmudgeon that hates candy, gum, and all things sweet most of the time. Lucky me.

I enjoy being the surly curmudgeon too, especially when you realise how it could really backfire.

텍사스문

2007-12-05T18:14:00.000-08:00

텍사스문 (aka Texas Moon) is a themed bar in Mokpo's downtown. Normally I'd post the Naver Local entry but Naver only recognises the one in Seoul as the 올드뮤직 재즈카페 Texas Moon (aka old jazz music cafe Texas Moon).

There are some photos but I can't tell if it's the Seoul branch, the Mokpo branch or some other city. Regardless it's an officially sanctioned foreigner hangout thanks to the awe and wonder surrounding its famous Magic Sparkle Drink.

Foreigner's Town Hall

2007-12-04T16:35:00.000-08:00

By way of The Lost Nomad I came across the annual Foreigner's Forum. It's only a Seoul thing but the article notes many of the problems that fuel the ex-pat blogs. For example:

“I could not withdraw money from my Korean bank account with my ATM card when I was traveling abroad. But I saw my Korean companions withdraw money without any problem,” said Anne LaDouceur, the moderator of the meeting and a member of the city government’s Foreign Investment Advisory Council.

Some in the audience noted that they could not even use their ATM cards in Korea for several months after they opened new bank accounts here. “Nonghyup recently refused to open my account even though I have lived here for four years and have an alien registration number and a passport. I was ashamed,” said a Nepalese man.

Officials from Woori Bank had a hard time answering the questions, so city officials said they would figure the problems out and provide the information later on the Web site of the Seoul Help Center for Foreigners (http://shc.seoul.go.kr/).

Sound familiar? Unfortunately this is the 9th foreigner forum and having these issues raised here means either that these are surprisingly new challenges or that its a recycling of complaints from last years forum. From what I've experienced with Korean culture I suspect the latter. I tried researching for the minutes of past meetings to make the comparison, and even though the schedule has an item to take up the minutes from the 8th Seoul Town Meeting, the link for further information circularly sends you back to the home page:

13:30 ～ 13:35

13:35 ～ 13:40 Opening Remarks (Vice Mayor)

Welcoming Remarks (FIAC Representative)Brief Follow-up on 8th Seoul Town Meeting (document available on-line at http://shc.seoul.go.kr)

I did find this document, a pdf file that may be the correct link. Unfortunately it really doesn't tell me much; contrast latest foreigner police problem with the 8th forum's collection of policing problems:

1. What have SMG [Seoul Metropolitan Government] done in order to prevent spitting and littering?
⇒ Those people can be caught and be fined.
2. Emergency phone number available 24hours?
⇒ 112 for criminal cases.
3. Ways to report law breakers?
⇒ Dial 112.
4. Good driving habits nurturing law?
⇒ Driving law is applied
5. What do you think about smoking in public place?
⇒ They should be fined.
6. Is it possible to prevent riding motorcycle in sidewalks?
⇒ Clamp down on those riders starting from this coming May.
7. Bus no.3 in Iteawon is blocking the sidewalk at night
⇒ Inform the local officials of the fact.
8. Why policemen don't prohibit riding motorcycle on the side-walk? How to improve traffic conditions in Seoul?
⇒ Pan-National campaign is being scheduled.
9. Blinker light and siren of police patrol cars are bothering.
⇒ In case of emergency, public understanding is required.
10. Discrimination against diplomat cars and US army vehicles.
⇒ Law enforcement is unbiased for everyone
11. Road signs are confusing at times
⇒ Report it to the local government when you find error.

Apart from the minutes there are some other points to the foreigner's forums that make it feel like a half-hearted or even useless attempt at changing a basic element of Korean culture. Elements like the officials from Woori bank not being able to explain their own foreigner policy, the fact that foreigners had to pre-register for a Friday lunch-time meeting, or even logic of offering complimentary tickets to Ballerina who loves B-Boyz.

Mokpo's Novelty Plane

2007-12-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

It's been well documented that I'm a map nerd. When I first got to Mokpo I immediately set about using Google's Satelitte photos to compensate for the touristy map that I was given:

View Larger Map
Thanks to great Korean Internet Controversy I took the effort to learn some Korean (via my language tools) and I've managed to move away from my Google maps and fully embrace Naver maps. But Graham over The Scroll of Bifurcating Considerations has found what I thought was too nerdy to talk about: The Novelty Plane. While it's old news to me (Google maps tells me that I found it June 2nd), Graham goes for gold with his analysis:

These measurements put it WELL within the realm of a normal jet airliner. The length is consistent with the larger models of the Boeing 767, as is the fuselage. What I haven't been able to match to my liking is the wingspan; 134ft for a 201ft long plane is a bit short. That gives this a wing:length ratio of about 2/3 (.0667). Most jet airliners I looked at have a ratio closer to .8333. So, the mystery lives on. What jet has these specifications? and more importantly, why is it perched on top of a building?

Everest Restaurant

2007-11-30T17:55:00.000-08:00

When ever I'm in Seoul I like to dine at 에베레스트 (aka Everest Restaurant). I've talked about it before but I like enough that it deserves it's own blog entry, complete with links to maps, the Naver Local and even it's own business card information:

Naver Vs. Google

2007-11-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

Given Google's plan for world domination it's hard to imagine why it is having such a hard time getting a foothold in Korea. Then I found this article that explains it all:

A prevalent theory in Korean dotcom circles is that Google failed to impress demanding Korean customers with its lousy service. This is at least what Naver and other major local portals want Koreans to believe.

Choi Mi Jung, who leads Naver's "Knowledge Man" service, a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia built by the spontaneous participation of Netizens, scoffs at the sloppy interface and unfriendly way Google's Korean site presents its search results. "It is how meticulously their service was designed that made the difference," she says.

However, the real reason behind Google's difficult path in Korea is that its highly praised search technology was rendered practically useless in the Korean language sphere when major portals decided to block Google search robots from crawling around the content they hold, industry observers universally note.

It's a Walled Garden approach and it basically means that all information is basically owned by one company. This model works well in a monoculture environment, just like it did during the early North American dial-up days where your Internet provider was also your content provider.

Following the path of AOL that worked so well during the early days of dial-up connectivity, Korean websites decided to build their own "walled gardens" on the net, where users would create content themselves or copy and paste other content they found elsewhere.

But what worked well in the beginning will not scale well when Naver tried to grow:

Experts say Naver will not be successful on the global scene if it refuses to take the approach of sharing data with others.

They warned the dominance of Naver and its operator NHN could become diluted, even on the domestic market where the Web portal has prevailed over the past few years.

"In the 10-year history of the country's Internet business, the title of the leader has changed twice. Naver should not be complacent," said Peter Kim, CEO at UCC site Pandora TV.

"Naver is overly proud and sometimes it appears to be arrogant. That has been a signal that heralds the collapse of the top player. Naver should keep this in mind," he said.

Actually, history here has created an eccentric jinx that any Internet firm claiming the top spot stays there for no longer than three years.

Communist China & Democratic South Korea: Same Same, but Different.

2007-11-28T18:37:00.000-08:00

Around the Bloc is travel memoir by Stephanie Elizondo Griest relating "her experiences as a volunteer at a children's shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana."

There are plenty of book reviews to judge if it's a good read or not, but what I found fascinating was how Griest tales of interacting with Communist China are eerily similar to waygooken's tales of interacting with South Koreans. There are tons of examples, but here's two dealing with mianzi, the respect of "face" that has hindered so many foreigners. Take for example dealing with a superior:

Late that September, I heard word that Lao Chen wanted to meet with me. Widely rumoured to have been a People's Liberation Army officer in his youth, Lao Chen had the unenviable job of keeping tabs on the danwei's foreign experts. After politely inquiring about my well-being, he announced that nearly all of his experts had requested the following weekend, Chinese National Day, off.

"So we'd like to offer you the opportunity to work in China Daily for us that Sunday and Saturday," he said grandly.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I can't I've already made plans to go to Shanghai then."

"Why don't you think about it for a few days and let me know what you decide?" he countered.

Assuming he misunderstood, I repeated myself. "I'm sorry but I really can't. I'm going to Shanghai for the holiday."

"So think about it and let me know."

I stared at him. What was he trying to do, play some Jedi Knight mind game on me? "But...I know right now that I can't. My friend and I bought plane tickets and booked a hostel in Shanghai weeks ago.

"Think about it, and let me know if you can help us," he repeated, his face stony.

This continued for five excruciating minutes, neither of us giving and inch until someone else entered the room. Then I stalked of, furious at both of us: him for being so difficult to deal with and me for not knowing how. Time like that, I almost envied "ugly Americas" for being so blissfully unaware of their cultural faux pas. Far worse is being cognizant that you're blowing it but are unable to figure out how to stop.

If there was a textbook on native speaker and co-teacher interaction, this would be a textbook example. The key points here are plans made without consultation, illusion of foreigner's choice, and debate by refusal to acknowledge foreigner's statements and the repeating of the statement again. It's so common a pattern that's really expected in all aspects of Korean life and requires some preparation of effective strategies. The easiest example to illustrate this pattern is dealing with vacation.

Another great example of the same-same but different comparison is in the glaring cultural ignorance of African Americans. I already posted about the Korean views about African and the visibly similar and I hinted that what most foreigners experienced wasn't really limited to Korea. Greist confirms this in the same chapter:

I learned this the Saturday afternoon my paper held a free screening of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner for our readers. To give the event some authenticity, Lao Ye asked me (token American) to introduce the program's hostess, a Chinese professor of American culture. Some 250 colleges students showed up that day, and never having seen the movie I lingered beyond my duty. The screening took nearly three hours, as the professor kept on pushing the pause button to expound cultural insight. Her commentary made my blood run cold, though: Not only did she refere to African American as "Negroes," she pronounced it like "Nig-gar-o"--and the the students followed suit. Unease churned in my belly. Should I correct her, at the risk of her losing mianzi? Or let it slide?

After the film ended, the student asked more questions about the present-day status of "Nig-gar-oes," and the professor responded with the stats she probably researched in the 1960s. At last, one girl stumped her: "What's the difference between a drive-in and drive-through?" The professor thought a moment or two before her eyes lit up: "I know--let's ask our American friend!"

I had every intention of promptly sitting back down after my response, but once those 250 pairs of eyes focused on mine, my years of training as a race and diversity facilitator for the dean of students at UT [University of Texas] surged forth as an extemporaneous speech about people of color in my country. When I mentioned that the terms Negro and Colored had been obsolete for as least three decades, the professor--who had been beaming beside me sank into her seat. I quickly tried to return the floor to her, but a dozen hands shot up, each with a question for me. I spoke for nearly fifteen minutes, during witch time the professor left the premises.

My colleagues brought the program to a close, but a clump of students followed me outside for more discussion. Once their numbers dwindle to a manageable half dozen, I invited them over to drink tea. They stared back aghast, as if I'd suggested smoking crack instead. When one boldly agreed, however, the others trotted behind. As soon as we were locked inside my apartment, the real questions spilled forth. Did I have any black friends? Could I trust them? Why were they so violent? Did they really dress the way they did on TV? What made their hair stand so high?

Never actually having met a black person, they had formed their perceptions largely through Hollywood and news coverage of the race riots that erupted on several Chinese college campuses in the 1980s against African students accused of "stealing" their women." I tried to explain racial profiling and stereotyping by drawing a parallel between blacks and people a little closer to home: the highlight oppressed Muslim Uighurs of northwest China. They didn't buy that analogy ("But Uighurs really are that violent!"), but the message seemed to stick when I revealed a few stereotypes that many American had of Chinese. ("But I'm terrible in math!" on protested.)

The Auction Site

2007-11-27T15:56:00.000-08:00

eBay made an entrance in Korea around 2001 and stirred up the market. Unfortunately it is slightly confusing since unlike eBay England, eBay France, or even eBay China, eBay refused to impose the eBay brand on Korea. The result is auction.co.kr and it is simply known to Koreans as Auction. It is a great site for bargains in Korea, but you'll need a Korean credit card or a somebody with a Korean credit-card to make purchases. Alternatives auction sites are:

Lesson 18 - Thanksgiving

2007-11-26T17:25:00.000-08:00

Lesson 18 - Thanskgiving is published over at waygook.org.

Train Stations of Korea

2007-11-23T16:55:00.000-08:00

Flickr's jsj6169 has started collecting photos of various trains stations around Korea, including a slightly outdated snapshot of Mokpo's own yeok. Interestingly enough enough the photos gives the day of May 15, 1913. I'm guessing that's the initial founding date and not the date of the photograph.

Interestingly enough jsj6169 also gives the name and street address of the station in Hangul; this could be useful when using Naver's local or map sites.

Kwangju's Art Street

2007-11-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

광주예술의 거리 (aka Kwanju's Art Street) is located in the Dong-gu district. Mokpo expat artists usually visit the street during their on their grocery or coffee runs and pick up art supplies, crafts, paintings, ceramics, souvenirs, etc; compared to North American prices supplies like paper and canvas is fairly cheap but transporting large items back to Mokpo can be troublesome. If you plan the trip on the weekend you can also shop at the Saturday flea market.

Art Street is close enough to Shinae YMCA (and related Starbucks) that you can get there by giving the same taxi directions and simply walk across the main street to the K.E.B. Bank and keep walking down the alley until you reach the police station.

Korea Police

2007-11-21T01:07:00.000-08:00

There's an unfortunate stereotype that the police in Korea are corrupt, inefficient and just plain slow. The stereotype is apparently live and well; Micheal Williams (The Metropolitician) got arrested for reporting harassment to the police. His exchange (in Korean) was recorded and in the comments he warns:

And if you're a foreigner, document, record, grab witnesses, and make sure your ass is covered. Imagine last night WITHOUT conversational Korean skills?

I'm one of the foreigners who has no conversation skills and unfortunately would be utterly useless; I wouldn't even think to record the incident.

It's funny how this incident contradicts the official policy of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. Of course a little digging gives us this gem from the FAQ:

I want to report a foreigner for misconduct (sex trade and trafficking, or gambling).

If you witness an incident involving a foreigner or know an foreigner who was involved in misconduct(sex trade and trafficking, gambling) you can report that matter to cyber 112 center of Seoul metropolitan police agency, visit the nearest police station or call 112 on your phone.

Winter Heating

2007-11-20T18:55:00.000-08:00

For some reason Koreans seem proud of their four seasons. Maybe it's pride is too strong a word, but Koreans at my school take extra care to inform me of the special days when one season starts and the other season begins. It's a little bit eerie since the only other people that I know who do this are Wiccans.

Of course conflicts occurs when the foreigner perceives a season starting too late or (in my case) too soon. For example, no matter how cold it gets in November the school will not turn on the heating system until December.

Although the temperatures are approaching the freezing point, Koreans do not push the little button that magically warms the room. Whether the venue be school, work, a store, or a restaurant, Koreans are either completely indifferent to temperature preference or everyone is too cheap to warm up the air to be a little more comfortable. It kind of reminds me of my Dad and how he wouldn't turn on the furnace until December, but to the extreme! "Just put on a sweater." Sorry Dad. It is so cold inside that no one bothers taking off their winter jackets once they get inside.

For a little perspective this isn't a case of bring a sweater to work, my school is so poorly insulated that there are literally gaps in the windows where the wind whistles through.; my average English classroom temperature is 10C. I walk around the school to find that windows are left wide open. Given all of the other examples of Korean Komfort, I can't understand the mentality towards winter heating. I'm not alone questioning this logic:

First off, I can't feel my toes and am super cold because there is no real heating system in my school and I have to wear open toe slippers at work. There's only heating in the office and maybe the classroom, not sure if the heat is just from the number of students haha. The rest of the school is freezing and as everyone complains about the temperature, pretty much every window is wide open. Sigh...my friends and I have been saying that when in Korea, take anything that seems the most illogical and apply here because that's how it seems to work haha.

Lesson 17 - Advertising

2007-11-19T17:34:00.000-08:00

Lesson 17 - Advertising is published over at waygook.org.

Mondegreen

2007-11-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

Mondegreen "is the mishearing of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone in such a way that it acquires a new meaning." It's a pretty common occurence to experience it in ones own language. It even happens in a Korean context when some people hear I love only squid instead of I love only you. But as Ellison points out fun starts happening when the phenomenon crosses two different languages, courtesy of the genius of Buffalax:

The Korean SATs

2007-11-15T02:02:00.000-08:00

Today is the day all high school students take nation wide university entrance exams, the equivalent to the American SATs; Michael Hurt's Seoul Glow has a nice report of what this means for the students, the schools, and even the nation of Korea itself:

Running In Mokpo

2007-11-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

Fortuntely there's a small collective of waygooken runners in Mokpo. They organise themselves in Facebook and try to do at least one race every month using the main running calendar over at Marathon Online.

There's also a number of route planners on the net; my favourite one so far is WalkJogRun and it let's you mark your route on top of Google Satellite photos. Take, for instance, the Jello Mando's Yudalsan Endurance run. It's just a 7.5k run but it's as hilly as hell.

And yes, to a runner, hell is hilly.

Corporal Punishment

2007-11-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

Despite the legality of corporal punishment, it is still used in schools. A couple of weeks ago the Digital Chosunilbo ran a piece on one case that went too far and was captured on video:

The video and accompanying news article has made it's way around the Korean internet; waygook.org has a nice thread on the incident, but Gust of Popular Feeling (which also gave us the brilliant A brief history of scapegoating English teachers in Korea) has a nice history of Kamera Kaptured Korean Korporal Kunishment.

Lesson 16 - Comparatives & Superlatives

2007-11-12T23:17:00.000-08:00

Lesson 16 - Comparatives & Superlatives is published over at waygook.org.

Pepero Day

2007-11-09T02:22:00.000-08:00

Pepero Day is an non-official holiday here in Korea solely based on the stick cookie of the same name that is oddly familiar to arguably more famous Pocky. Pepero Day is one of those Korean specific novelties that is a staple in any living in korea blog. Take for instance Pepero Day 2004, 2005, 2006, and of course, 2007. At first it may seem like a cute equivalent to valentines day, but then you soon realize what a annoyingly monolithic corporate driven holiday Pepero Day actually is.

First, there the commercials:

and

And a sample of Pepero Day festivities:

Along with a view of the Pepero Day vendors:

KungZoo caps it all off with a decent history on Pepper and Pepero Day:

Korean Driver's License.

2007-11-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

In case you ever wanted to see one, Joseph Buchman has posted his online at It'll be like this forever:
I don't know how safe it is to post your driver's license online but take it for what you will.

School Festivals

2007-11-07T17:25:00.000-08:00

School festivals are a staple of Korean student life, premises for Korean romantic comedies and a usual topic for expat bloggers. (Jeonnam Jeil is no exception) The festivals are usually day long events, organised by the students for the glory of performing in front of the school principal. The other students and teachers are invited to attend as well, but really if you've seen one festival you've kind of seen them all. There's the recognizable elements, like the school band or even the taekwando team demonstrations, but then there's the uniquely Korean elements, like the cross-dressing dance off set to the music of the latest girl band:

In fact it seems like it's a crucial part of Korean identity to (publicly) dance to sugar pop songs, as seen by this:

And this:

And even this:

It's easy to start up your own Wonder Girl tribute dance group thanks to the Internet and the original, karaoked version:

Wikia

2007-11-06T15:56:00.000-08:00

Wikia is a like wikipedia, but not. I don't quite understand how it's different, but it's another place on the internet where you can find informaiton about Mokpo, like:

Mokpo is located on the southwestern tip of Korea in the province of Jeollanam-do.
Area: 47.24 km²
Population: 245,482(2001)
Pop. density: 5,196.5 people/km²

In fact that's all the information that you can find, making it as useful as...well nothing. It has less information than Wikipedia's Side Bar on Mokpo. It does have a list of foreigners with cyworld blogs and foreigners with non-cyworld blogs but nothing that's not being done already at Galbijim, The Korean Blog List, and everywhere else on the Internet.

Lesson 15 - Geography III

2007-11-05T03:56:00.000-08:00

Lesson 15 - Geography III is published over at waygook.org.

Country	Monthly Salary (USD)	Insurance	Flight	Housing	Severance
Dubai	$3,200-5,000	No	Yearly Return Airfare	Free and Furnished	No
Taiwan	$3,000-4,000	Depends on program	No	Free not furnished	No
Korea	$2,000-2,300	Depends on your salary	Roundtrip	Furnished Apt.	One month salary after contract
Japan	$2,000	Depends on program	Roundtrip	Depends on program	Extended holidays
Thailand	$800-1,000	Depends on program	Roundtrip	Depends on program	Depends on school
Russia	$900	No	Roundtrip	Free and furnished	No
China	$400-550	No	Depends on length	Free and furnished	One month salary
Vietnam	$370	Depends	Depends on length	Free local food	No