English Spectrum-Gate continues!
UPDATE: VIII:
Gord gives us his opinion on this whole mess. Sang-Kil over at LikeJAzz was also kind enough to link to some of the foreign blogger posts on the matter. Mike Weisbart also wrote a column on English Spectrum-Gate over at the Korea Times. Also of interest – if you read Korean – is a rather long interview in the Segye Ilbo with the Hongik club manager and two of the girls who were in the photographs taken at “The Party.” It’s good, but I’m in no mood to translate it. Some talk of filing lawsuits against media sites Dailian and MyDaily and the, ahem, individual who runs Anti-English Spectrum. Good on them.
Thankfully, this story seems to be running out of steam. In fact, the Segye Ilbo piece was the only piece on it listed on the most-looked-at stories at the portal site Naver.com. Saturday night passed without reported incident, so it would appear everything up till now has been a lot of Netizen hot air, fanned on by two smaller media outlets whoring for high hit totals.
UPDATE VII:
The Party Pooper offers his own appraisal of English Spectrum-Gate.
UPDATE VI:
CBS is now reporting that there is considerable concern that the online fury may lead to offline violence directed at [primarily male] foreign teachers. Personally, I wouldn’t worry that much, as a lot of this seems like Netizens blowing off steam, but you never know with things like this, especially if there are confrontations and stupid things get said. Anyway, foreign males would be cautioned to be on their best behavior – especially if they are with an Asian women – for the time being, especially because some of the online forums are calling for people to gather in places frequented by barbarians in order to give “insolent foreigners” a hard time. I doubt many will actually do so, but still, CBS warns me, and now I warn you. Personally, I think this is a non-story (although, as the Oranckay pointed out, a fine example of Internet psychology), but I’d prefer it to be a non-story that passes without incident.
BTW, just so I can make my feeling clear on this, I would really hate for people reading this to come away with the impression that Koreans are jackasses. They are not. Just as the outrageous posts that ignited this issue are hardly representative of foreigners in Korea, one should not judge this country by the reckless behavior of certain segments of the Korean Netizen community.
UPDATE V:
CBS is now on the story. In particular, it focuses on the shock and outrage directed at the “how to molest your students” post (which now has been taken down) over at Korean ESL . Being a relatively responsible news agency, however, CBS did say that some Netizens are pointing out that well-meaning foreign teachers shouldn’t suffer because of this. I don’t believe many of the people posting on this are actually saying that, but it was nice of CBS to think so.
BTW, wasn’t Korean ESL formed basically by a bunch of guys who got kicked off the forums of Dave’s ESL Cafe? Please correct me if I am mistaken. If so, you’d hope that one of the news agencies covering this story might make a mention of it, as it would be a real shame for such a post on such a site to be taken in some quarters as representative of foreign English teachers in Korea. Much of the criticism being leveled at the industry is justified, of course, but there is a huge difference in saying that many (if not most) English teachers are unqualified (which is probably true) and saying that many English teachers like to screw their underaged students, which I think some of the reports might unintentionally (I’d hope) lead some readers to believe.
UPDATE IV:
Hey, even Dog Stew is talking about this!
UPDATE III:
The aftershocks of English Spectrum-Gate may now be moving offline, according to the whores at Dailian (then again, as a blogger, I guess I don’t have the right to call anyone a whore). Korean Netizens are now demanding that the “foreign English teachers who degraded Korean women” be punished, and are planning to hold demonstrations and take legal measures to ensure that justice is done.
The Korean portal site Daum has also started a petition signing campaign to expel “low-quality foreign teachers.” They’re looking for 10,000 signatures, and they’ve got about 3,931. The campaign is also recruiting a “[Counter-] Yankee Strike Force.” They say the use of violence is prohibited, but they’d like to get together and hold a protest demonstration. There targets are 1) the “Yankee bastards” who put up the instructions on how to molest female students, and their accomplices; 2) the “Yankee bastards” who threw the wild party in Hongik; 3) the club owner; 4) institute owners who hire ex-cons or under-qualified teachers; 5) as a “bonus,” drunk GIs who might be in the Shinchon area starting fights with local citizens. Membership is open to all Korean nationals (no kyopos allowed, apparently – perhaps the organizers read this) with “wholesome thoughts (more like worldview).” They’ll meet at 6:00 p.m. Saturday near the front gate of Hongik. Be there… or be square.
The BBS of the signature campaign is full of condemnation for under-qualified foreign teachers, with things (selected by Dailian) like “The issue of low-quality foreign teachers has been a problem for a long time,” and, “It’s now the time to worry about the problem of substandard ‘foreign’ teachers in terms of society.”
Another angry Netizen called for strengthened immigration inspections, with under-qualified teachers being booked and fined and legal measures taken against their employers.
The (mostly) boys over at Anti-English Spectrum are trying to take legal action against the foreigners who wrote the offensive post over at English Spectrum and the Hongdae club where the infamous party took place. They already tried to hand a complaint to Ilsan Police Station (which was returned for lack of evidence), and are now in the process of collecting additional materials. They are also planning signature campaigns and street-side demonstrations to expel unqualified foreign teachers and – get a load of this – making plans to turn this into a social issue to “set straight our twisted club culture and correct foreigners’ biases about Korean women.” The funny part about that is that if you actually read what they have to say about Korean women in their forum, well, let’s just say much of it is less than flattering or empowering. Definitely not the kind of stuff that will correct any biases or stereotypes.
Anyway, the Hongik club where this all took place isn’t taking things laying down. The owner of the establishment is considering legal action against Anti-English Forum, presumably for defamation, and claims that the party in question wasn’t as depraved as the Internet photos would suggest. And besides, he said, those kinds of things happen in the Hongik clubs all the time.
You know, if I were a GI, I might be enjoying this all. God knows I’ve heard and read enough bitching from English teachers about how the military types make them look bad. Well, 8th Army personnel, here’s your chance for a little payback. Next time you see an English teacher, tell him you were thinking of growing your hair long, but you didn’t want Koreans to confuse you for being a hagwon instructor.
UPDATE II:
My Daily is now reporting that two of the girls involved in the “Ask the Playboy” party are pissed. They complained:
“The pictures don’t make up the whole party. Some media and Netizens are looking at the photos and making us out to be prostitutes. It’s unfair that people are criticizing us without knowing what happened before and after during the party.”
“After those photos went around the Internet, I couldn’t go to work. I haven’t show up for work for the last two days because I was afraid my coworkers may have seen them. I’m afraid my parents may have seen them.”
The girls claim that the party they attended was not a “sex party,” as many on the Internet are suggesting, and are complaining that they’ve been unable to live their lives since the photos were released without having their faces blotted out, despite the fact that the girls are ordinary citizens. On Friday, they asked the police’s cyber crimes division to investigate some of the media and websites that distributed the photos.
One of the girls complained:
“Shouldn’t the media at least ask those in the photos about the circumstances in which the photos were taken? Netizens are just looking at the photos and the critical posts and using them as grounds to condemn us.”
She added:
The essence of this incident was the controversy over the abusive things said by the foreign teachers, but the criticism has now turned to the girls who were in the photos, and about this, we are planning to respond by getting a lawyer.”
The girls said that rashly distributing photos of ordinary people on the Internet can be quite harmful to those involved in terms of defamation of character and violation of the right to their own likeness. They also expressed hope that no more people involved would suffer as a result of the distribution of the photos.
Oh, and the Hankyoreh’s BBS has some of the problematic material up for those who want to know why everyone’s so pissed. Enjoy.
UPDATE I:
Man, and you wonder why we have the reputation we have sometimes.
Original post here. Sick, but I gather from the header that it was meant to test the limits of the BBS’s moderators rather than a serious post on how to molest little children. But then again, I don’t read these sites, so how the hell should I know.
Now on to our regularly scheduled program…
ORIGINAL POST:
English Spectrum-Gate still smolders, with Netizens expressing shock and anger at photos taken from a forum party that featured big-nosed, hairy Western barbarians and young Korean women engaging in serious nonsense.
An anti-English Spectrum website over at Naver revealed the name of the Hongik club (and its website) where English Spectrum’s “Ask the Playboy” forum held a party that featured wet T-shirt contents (see photo gallery). Or to put it the way “Ask the Playboy” did (which got posted on DC Inside):
Party humpers,
Just so there’s no confusion…English Spectrum and I will be hosting two parties at Mary Jane’s in Hongdae on BOTH the 14th (Friday night) and the 15th (Saturday night).
Each party will be slightly different. On the 14th, it will be much the same as the last two; meaning some sex in the female bathroom, some late night dance floor grinding and partial nudity, mixed in with the addition of some clothes-allergic professionals who should be making a guest appearance that night.
On the 15th, we will be holding an MC’ed Sexy Game Night. We will be selling drinks at an exceptionally low price from 9-12 to get everyone hammered prior to the games. From 12 to about 4 am, we’ll play a bunch of team-oriented, guy-girl-guy-girl games, each for small prizes. This will be mixed in with a fair amount of dancing (hip hop and otherwise) intermissions.
Both nights will be fun, but a little bit different. If you can make one or the other or both, please come and join the fun. The 15th will be a good time to meet new people and develop some interesting relationships.
The Playboy
The administrators of English forum have put up an explanation that says (the Korean version, anyway), “We regret that several indiscreet users made bad posts that had nothing to do with our intention… We’ve erased the relevant bulletin boards.” Of course, when you make an “Ask the Playboy” forum and have your own T-shirts printed, this explanation is less than convincing.
The Mary Jane Bar, however, was slightly less than apologetic. “Are women all foreigners’ whores if they dance with Westerners? This is a nonsensical affair born of cultural ignorance and extreme nationalism.” This just got the Netizen community even more pissed.
About the photos, one Netizen said he was “Rightly shocked.” He angrily condemned “Korean college girls who sell their bodies to learn English.”
Nice set on the one in the middle. Anyway, a commenter over at the Anti-English Spectrum cafe wrote, “The photos seemed like some sort of sex party… Not all Korean women are like that, but since women who will become the mothers of Korea are like that, things are bleak.” He also said, “I’m frustrated because Korea doesn’t have a future without good wives and wise mothers (Korean: hyeonmu yangcheo).
Another commenter said, “I don’t know if they are college girls, office girls or some other sort, but the English you learn from selling your body is body language, not real English… Looking at the pictures, it seems like they were on drugs.” He added, “I think we should find and reveal the identities of the site’s administrators and shame them.”
Now, if I might be permitted to make a comment or two, as I think I’ve earned that right having just spent the last hour or so going through all the mindless shit that’s being posted on this incredibly lame story (which is, nonetheless, the No. 3 most looked at story over at Naver), I find it extremely ironic that the Joongang Ilbo (and it ran another piece on it today) should get itself so bent out of shape about someone degrading Korean women. The Joongang Ilbo-owned Ilgan Sports, after all, runs its own adult-content section. Heck, most of the risque pics that often grace this blog – such as this one over at Yahoo! Korea (currently No. 5) – come straight from Korea’s tabloid press via major Internet portal sites. If you think the buttheads over at English Spectrum degrade Korean women, they are nothing compared to the Korean media, which regularly depicts women as sexual playthings. I’m not going to get myself tied up in a knot over this, as like any heterosexual male, I enjoy seeing attractive women in advanced states of undress, and I find posting tabloid crap much more rewarding than posting about North Korea. But if the Joongang Ilbo – currently the largest online newspaper in Korea (Chosun still leads in hardcopy, though 
) – wants to defend the honor of Korean womanhood against the degradations of barbarian men, it first needs to ask itself what role it has played in fetishizing its own women. And the same goes for many of the Netizens so full of rage about photos and commentary that differ little from similar material you can read in Korean elsewhere. Heck, read through some of the online comments being made. If the original forum and photos represent white male neocolonialism at its ugliest, some of the male Netizen responses represent little more than tribal patriarchy. Like I said, having suffered the indignity of surfing through some of this shit, I’ll allow myself that comment. Anyway, I’m curious as to what women’s groups would have to say about this fiasco, because so far, the online dialogue (if you could call it that) seems primarily male.
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you seem more indignant at the reaction of koreans than you are with the actions of your fellow high class expats. tsk, tsk, tsk….
Dang man, if only it was OhmyNews or Hankyoreh that was so hot in pursuit of this non-story. Then it could be anti-Americanism.
These expressions of outrage must be from the same men who supported the recent crackdown on prostitution.
People should be able to do whatever they want, but being so brazen as to put the photos on the site is just stupid. The same reaction would happen here in the states, in japan, anywhere in europe, or back home in my native australia. Though much of the reaction may have to do with the men being foreigners, you can’t really expect people to be ok with them faulting it so bloody obviously.
slim, i tried to respond in the other section but something is wrong with the posting section:
‘i didn’t include race because there may have some black expats in the crowd…’ slim
intellectual dishonesty? you must have thought you were writing to someone in their twenties.
‘you’re bluejives and have been posting here for two years..’
nope. mr marmot would know the truth on that one with the isps and all. i’ve posted here for about a year. has bluejives been banned? if so, not fair since marmot doesn’t ban expats who write similar filth(word to bluejives) about koreans.
’some hidden psych problem…’
well, no, not hidden, i despise you expats even if you are black. i think the vast majority are low class guys from the gutters of western civilization. (would you like fries with that?) i have no problem admitting that. do you have a problem admitting you despise koreans en mass? i think you do. now, you know about the ‘chip on my shoulder’.
To quote the late great Deng Xiaoping, Nulji, “seek truth through facts".
Marmot: “If the original forum and photos represent white male neocolonialism at its ugliest, some of the male Netizen responses represent little more than tribal patriarchy.”
Nulji “you seem more indignant at the reaction of koreans than you are with the actions of your fellow high class expats. tsk, tsk, tsk…”
>>>>The same reaction would happen here in the states, in japan, anywhere in europe, or back home in my native australia.
Yes Andrew, how correct you are. The New York Times would be all over a story of foreigners in America who posted nude pictures on a random website and bragged about how easy American girls are. In fact, we all know they would have to compete with the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, and USA Today for the front-page exclusive. This is obvious because leading American newspapers consider foreigner/American nudie pics on the web to be worthy of major coverage. I mean, just look at all the examples in the past few years.
No seriously, is your post some sort of experiment in trying to convince others that you’re functionally retahhhded?
Do you honestly believe that the press in any Western country would do anything but laugh at the prospect of giving coverage to such bullshit?
>>>Though much of the reaction may have to do with the men being foreigners, you can’t really expect people to be ok with them faulting it so bloody obviously.
“Much” of the reaction, eh? It’s the entire reaction. Korean men doing the exact same thing is not a story. In fact, it happens all the time, and it’s called Korean porn.
This entire “story” stems from the ownership mentality of Korean men over “their” god-given property.
Justifying it by claiming similar reactions in other countries (the only one you got right was Japan) shows that you know absolutely nothing about the countries you mentioned (including your own), and apparently are hardwired to make excuses for nationalistic Korean horseshit.
Nice work.
Christ hanminjoke, you are confused!
you said “Do you honestly believe that the press in any Western country would do anything but laugh at the prospect of giving coverage to such bullshit?”
I have seen even more ludicrous things with my own eyes! I have on several occassions during my time in the States seen on various news programmes on “freaky dancing” (kids dancing really close to eachother in clubs, the horror!), “porn filmed on the roads” (where some porn actors pretend to pick women up off the street, the moral outrage of it!), and many, many local stories about Russian and Japanese men taking advantage of American women by throwing money around and then leaving. Imagine if these men had taken pictures! And I live in Seattle, the blue-state capital of the US.
If anything, Americans are more uptight. Much more uptight. The biggest news story a month ago was that they showed Nicole Sheridan’s bare back during half time of football game.
Insulting people, calling them retarded, saying they don’t know anything about the places they live and have lived, doesn’t make your argument more correct. Saying that Korean men think Korean women are their property doesn’t make it so.
it just makes you a jackass.
All I know is this – I have to get out more. I have missed what appears to be some damn good wet t-shirt contests.
My bike club goes over there often for fun after club rides. I’ve never gone, but I’m in now.
“In fact, we all know they would have to compete with the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, and USA Today for the front-page exclusive.” - hanminjoke
“Hanminjoke” is confused. There were couple of short blobs in the Joongang Ilbo about that, which caused an internet sensation. It wasn’t all over the South Korean news headlines in the front pages, as he inacurately portrays and exaggerates.
Someone alluded to a teacher bedding 300 girls last year….
300 in a year is roughly 25 per month which is 6 girls a week.
bullshit
Well, steve, unless you’re wilt chamberlain, which I’m guess that fellow wasn’t…
I’d have to agree with Marmot. So far, the comments here at least, and the comments from Netizens, have been from hotheaded Korean or defensive foreign men. From the netizens: Some Korean women are being disgraced bc they’ll be our future mothers? And the postings here have been just as absurd, where a few have generalized that Korean women are just as at fault bc they’re easy and wear mini-skirts and deserve it for putting themselves out there for a quickie English lesson. We’re back to the old Madonna/whore paradigm.
I would like to know where I could find sites where Korean women’s opinions are heard. Actually, I’d like to really hear from a Korean woman who’s dating one of these Western English teacher, ah, studmuffins. What is it about them that gets you hot and bothered? Is it really for the English? Do you see yourself as the future mother of Korea? Do you realize that by wearing a miniskirt, you’re putting yourself out there?
I think the idiot was counting each sexual encounter as “a girl.” LOL
>>>many, many local stories about Russian and Japanese men taking advantage of American women by throwing money around and then leaving.
Who cares? These Korean women were not being “taken advantage of.” They were full, willing participants. How is the private behavior of consenting adults news? Who cares if it’s posted on a website, it’s not news. There are hundreds of thousands of assholes with websites that post their opinions and/or dirty pictures. That’s not news, dumbass!
The only reason this is a story is because it’s white guys and Korean women. That’s the entire story, and if you can’t see the difference, you’re an idiot.
>>>If anything, Americans are more uptight. Much more uptight.
You think this story has anything to do with Koreans or Americans being uptight? Mix in a clue.
Once again, if these men were Korean, this WOULD NOT BE A STORY. In fact, much worse goes on in dalanjujoms and rooms salons all over the country every day, and it’s not a story. Reason? Korean men ogling Korean women is business as usual. Foreign men ogling Korean women is.
>>>The biggest news story a month ago was that they showed Nicole Sheridan’s bare back during half time of football game.
Who cares? Irrelevant.
>>>Insulting people, calling them retarded, saying they don’t know anything about the places they live and have lived, doesn’t make your argument more correct.
No, but it does convey my opinion of someone that makes an asinine statement. Mission accomplished.
>>Saying that Korean men think Korean women are their property doesn’t make it so.
No, but observing the attitude for 8 years does. You’re obviously clueless about Korea and America, as well as their respective media.
Me saying it doesn’t make that true. Your ridiculous statements do.
“In fact, much worse goes on in dalanjujoms and rooms salons all over the country every day, and it’s not a story.” - hanminjoke
Uh… where did you hear that “much worse goes on in dalanjujoms and room salons?” Let me guess, you read it in the Korean news? Hmm.. let’s take your word for it and analyze your firm belief that Koreans don’t report on naughty houses. For instance, let’s take the example of the paper in question the Joogang Ilbo and gather all its headlines about Koreans involved in naughty behavior:
‘One-sided’ sex trade news - 2004.11.14
“Ah, for sex as it was in the old days!” - 2004.11.10
“Outcry greets fines for sex purchasers” - 2004.11.04
” After escaping sex trade, prostitutes seek new start” - 2004.11.04
“Lawyer accused of bribes to judges, other officials”
- 2004.10.29
on and on and on…
What about Sexual abuses in Korea? Let’s look at the headlines.
“Severed finger protests man’s bail on appeal” - 2004.06.23
“Outrage sparked by serial rape case” - 2004.12.12
“Sensitivity for abuse victims” - 2004.09.17
Yeap, it looks like they never report on Koreans sexually misbehaving. Not.
hanminjoke,
If you’re living in the U.S., you’re probably living in your own dreamland, maybe disneyland. Hey bud, wake up and smell the coffee.
When Terrell Owens (Black) appeared with seminude Nicole Sheridan (White chicky) on the Monday Night Football, the ESPN, LA Times, and other major, mainstream media outlets were all over this piece.
Actually you’re sounding like a White, trash version of a typical Korean Netizen that you criticize so much about.
William
I think it’s all a matter of perspectives. Of course you’ll find idiots in every country. But there’s one thing different that make us in a clash of civilization competing for women.
Korean male pigs will enjoy their filthy slobberings all over women, as they discreetly degrade women in darkened private rooms and motels. The key word here is “discreet".
Western male pigs on the other hand, put up websites and pictures of themselves degrading women, and call Koreans “kimchi land, easy money and easy pussy” and brag hey look we conquered your women, Korea.
Not too discreet, and not too smart, in a fiercely xenophobic and proud land where they are even severely hung up on restricting internet porn sites through jail times and fines.
You should try thinking, hanminjoke, instead of just running your mouth and insulting people.
You flatter me! I regret to say that I don’t get out to the room salons and dalanjujoms every day but thanks for thinking of me.
And I prefer to think of what goes on in there as much better than English Spectrum, not “much worse.”
the anti-english spectrum cafe? for real? great, let me get over there now and start diverting blame for all of korea’s social ills!
>>>where did you hear that “much worse goes on in dalanjujoms and room salons?” Let me guess, you read it in the Korean news?
Nope. Saw it first hand. More times than I can count.
>>>What about Sexual abuses in Korea?
This is not abuse, Leslie. These are consenting adults. If this were abuse or rape, fine, no problem. It’s not. Your other examples are just as ridiculous, as they have nothing to do with the topic. This is not reporting on ‘naughty’ behavior, it’s reporting on foreigners, when in fact Koreans doing the exact same thing would not be a story. How many times do I have to repeat this before you comprendo?
>>>When Terrell Owens (Black) appeared with seminude Nicole Sheridan (White chicky) on the Monday Night Football, the ESPN, LA Times, and other major, mainstream media outlets were all over this piece.
They would’ve reported it the exact same way if it were Brett Favre with a semi-nude actress. No one but a couple jackasses even commented on the racial aspect of it, and they’re the same jackasses that see racial issues everywhere like the goddamn boogeyman. It became a story because of the nudity on network TV. Show me a similar story with the same level of coverage concerning nudity on the WEB and you may have a point. But there are none so you don’t have a point. Next.
>>>The key word here is “discreet".
The key word is “porn.” Are you saying that Korean porn sites are discreet?
>>in a fiercely xenophobic and proud land…
Exactly my point.
Xenophobia produced this story. Not journalism. Pretty obvious to anyone with knowledge of the Korean media.
I love how Korean men assume these women date Western men just to learn English. I know a very small % probably do it just to learn English but the other 90+% are doing it for their own reasons be it fun, curious about other guys, fed up with Korean guys or maybe just maybe they just like the guy for whatever reason and love/interest comes in all forms. These full grown women know exactly what they are doing and there is nothing wrong with it.
Amazing that if this stuff happened in a Korean night club with only Korean girls and Korean guys nothing bad would be thought about it.
Honestly, I don’t see what all the commotion is over thousands of girls who just recently lost their jobs and are just looking for ways to spend their new free time.
hanminjoke,
“They would’ve reported it the exact same way if it were Brett Favre with a semi-nude actress. No one but a couple jackasses even commented on the racial aspect of it, and they’re the same jackasses that see racial issues everywhere like the goddamn boogeyman. It became a story because of the nudity on network TV. Show me a similar story with the same level of coverage concerning nudity on the WEB and you may have a point. But there are none so you don’t have a point. Next.”
You’re an idiot! You’re calling all these reputable reporters, commentators, coaches “jackasses.” Jackass. You’re calling Tony Dungy, a Black head coach of the Indianopolis Colts, a “jackass.”
This had very little to do with “nudity.” Rather it had to do with a Black man skipping a major football game to be seduced by a White woman, and all the racial implications which went along with it. Why don’t you do some reseach and read what Tony Dungy and a few others had to say about this episode.
You know what, you’re pointless. Go back into your trailer park, idiot.
Quote(Leslie) “Not too discreet, and not too smart, in a fiercely xenophobic and proud land where they are even severely hung up on restricting internet porn sites through jail times and fines”
Umm … well what about the soft porn they show every night on the Catch On chanel on Skylife from 11pm ? (which is the old HBO - no wonder they changed the name) Much more revealing than anything that went on in this club I think.
For those of you who are not Americans, here is a short exerpt of an article about the Terrell Owens & Sheridan incident:
“Two days after the network aired the segment featuring Eagles star receiver Terrell Owens and actress Nicollette Sheridan, coaches and players were still talking about it.
Reaction ranged from amusement to anger. Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy found it racially offensive.
“To me that’s the first thing I thought of as an African-American,” Dungy said Wednesday. “I think it’s stereotypical in looking at the players and, on the heels of the Kobe Bryant incident, I think it’s very insensitive.
“I don’t think that they would have had Bill Parcells or Andy Reid or one of the owners involved in that,” he added, a reference to the coaches in the game.
ABC’s intro showed Sheridan wearing only a towel and provocatively asking Owens to skip the game for her as the two stood alone in a locker room. She drops the towel and jumps into Owens’ arms. Owens is black and Sheridan is white.
“If that’s what we have to do to get ratings, I’d rather not get them,” Dungy said. “I realize that ratings pays us in this league but, if that’s what we have to do, I’m willing to take a pay cut.”
The point is that, in every nationality, there are idiots like hanminjoke who are closet xenophobic racist, and aren’t willing to accept the reality; there are bad people everywhere.
Well rosscoe, do they have guests coming on line and trumpet how many K-girls they scored in the last year and all the disparaging remarks about the locals with it, because I don’t know and I’ve never seen HBO. I think what makes the Koreans get more angrier when they read some of those god awful stereotype and racist posts against the locals that went on in that forum (which frankly am glad they decided to clean up). The fact that the website keepers were the ones inciting it by making the “playboy” the columnist, also made this into a broo ha ha. It’s simply bad business to insult your customers when they’re the ones paying for you ads.
I’ve been here about 4 years, working as a U.S. Patent Agent drafting claims for a Korean I.P. firm currently. The changes since this came out are noticeable. On the subway, twice, younger males have come up and started talking about the story. One I ignored, but another I confronted in Korean, correcting him when he started saying some particularly nasty things about me, including that I was an uneducated idiot-teacher. When I corrected him he was marginally apologetic and seemed a bit embarassed for being racist/stereotyping. Although the waving, then “Hi~~", then tittering thing happens on the street with minimal frequency (maybe once a week), it has happened every day since this story came out. I’m just trying to keep my head down and be a good guest in this country. Why is this happening? I’m not the guy on the website, I don’t want to be treated like it. I’m so ashamed now, and angry at the same time. Sure the website was stupid junk, but it’s just a website, there’s no telling who was posting there, and you can’t use websites like that as “evidence” of anything. How can they put that in the newspaper? There are probably hundreds of “black on blonde” DVDs and porn sites in the U.S. and no one pays it a second thought (except maybe some zealot, bible-belt nutbag)…
I know Kromozone. It sucks to be unfairly stereotyped because of some losers (posters at ES, ES, “Anti-ES", and Joongang Ilbo which printed the story when it shouldn’t have). I feel for you, hang in there buddy.
Unsentimental as Hanminjoke comes across to all 185 of us at this critical international emotional juncture, he maintains the right perspective. This kind of thing might be news in Iran or NORTH Korea.
For all their lapses in taste, the Playboys over at English Spectrum must be chuffed. Anyone can wittingly or unwittingly offend the K-Netizen-people and feminists. But the spectrum has got (flag-flying, thanks to Marmot’s new toy) American residents likening an obscure website to ABC Monday Night Football.
Such things will be non-stories in five or ten years. In fact, it may be due to the comparative openness of the Korean media these days that the story was reported at all. As for the “tribal patriarchy” on display by Netizens, well, people post all sorts of things in anonymous forums, don’t they?
Considering the story itself, I sort of doubt that the perceived double-standard really exists in this case. I think the reason this incident was so notable (for some) was mainly because it fell outside the normal contexts for this sort of activity. There are all sorts of means and venues for prostitution, as well as phone clubs and Web cafes for those seeking so-called amateurs. However, Large-scale nightclub debauches involving “regular” women aren’t too common. Having whities as instigators just makes in more exotic.
It may be that many Korean men regard Korean women as “playthings,” as one poster suggested, but they tend to act this out more in the standard venues, and mostly with paid service. If the issue is really centered entirely on the foreigners involved, why haven’t the gangs of Japanese businessmen on their brothel trowls gotten any press? Moreover, I remember the big blather about the “swapping” club a while back. That even got TV coverage, and the foreigners involved were few or none, as far as I recall.
To each his or her own, but if my sister or daughter came up to me and said “I’m dating this new guy. He teaches English at Pagoda.” I might not do anything, but I know I’d feel pretty grubby, and it wouldn’t be because of the guy’s race (likely the same as mine). And if I then saw video of a bunch of young women being groped by guys that look like Pagoda teachers, well…
Tony Dungy = one of the jackasses I mentioned. All the reputable commentators, reporters, and other coaches DISAGREED with Dungy and had no idea why he thought it was racist to show a black man and white woman together.
Why? He interjected race into the issue when there was absolutely no reason to. The reason Terrell Owens was in the skit and not a white player is because Terrell Owens is the best and most popular player on the Eagles. It had absolutely nothing to do with him being black, nor did the skit.
Idiots like Dungy that see the racist boogeyman everywhere are causing more damage than they realize, because crying wolf all the time degrades instances of actual racism (like European soccer fans routinely direct at black players), which this was clearly not.
Dungy was the exceptional reaction to that controversy, not the norm, and in fact other blacks criticized Dungy for making a racial issue where there was none.
Run home little willie, you haven’t a leg to stand on.
Regarding the whole “discrete” thing… I would imagine for many of the people posting to English Spectrum, they assumed it was one small, insignificant Web site in the great ether of the Internet, so they be as stupid as they wanted without consequence. One of the quirks of the Internet is how everything is private as long as no one notices, then its public as hell.
Leslie - I understand where you are coming from, and agree that the posts on that web site were pretty stupid/lame. I mean I am not sure what these guys are trying to prove posting stuff like that. You wanna bonk whoever, whenever, whatever - fine, but whats the deal with showing how much of a man you are by bragging about it on some web board ? And as you know it doesn’t take much for the actions of a few to get blown out of proportion, get exagerated and (sometimes) totaly out of hand - then become embedded in Korean fokelore to be used to judge the rest of us living here But that pretty much goes for any minority group in any country I suppose.
However, my question was it seems strange that the netzeins get upset about some Korean women doing wet t-shirt competitions etc in a private club, when they can switch on the TV, and see lots of bonking, wobbly bits and other assorted (Korean) porn on a standard cable channel every night - and not even very late night at that.
Kromozone : As you know the subway is always an ‘interesting’ place for people watching. I found that the type of thing you experienced comes in waves - sometimes never any problems, then sometimes many times in a single week. I remember when I got to the stage in learning Korean when I started to understand all the conversation and (sometimes) insults flying about from people on the subway - then I bought an MP3 player and now remain blissfully unaware. If people start talking about this kind of stuff in your presence, pull out your daily copy of the Chosun (of course!) and watch their reactions - the silence will usually be instant. A few times I used to study my Hanja book on the long subway rides. It had a bright yellow cover, and used to make for some pretty strange looks and funny reactions.
>>>If the issue is really centered entirely on the foreigners involved, why haven’t the gangs of Japanese businessmen on their brothel trowls gotten any press?
You’re obviously not a regular Marmot reader. He had an article last month on this exact topic. They do get press, and it falls in the exact same category of “foreign devils fucking OUR women” that this does.
http://blog.marmot.cc/archives/2004/12/20/korean-wave-meets-japanese-porn/#comments
Ok, have you actually read the posts from playboy? After reading this, I think the Koreans might have reason to pissed off. here’s a tasteful sampling–
jhol$$ View 474
Title A million things I hate about K-girls
1. Ugly Korean chicks trying to score on the internet.
2. Bitches that look at me like I like them or something…usually I walk away laughing.
3. Every bitch here has the same style. ie. black stockings, plaid or black skirts, with those annoying suede boots
4. That stupid face they make..like their blowing up a ballon or something.
5. That stupid wide-eyed look they make when their taking a picture.
6. Schoolgirls that try to impress me with their shitty english on the train.
7. Rot breath on the hottest chick.
8. My date telling me, “Oh many foreigners like kimchi.”
9. Dramatic conversation…especially when they are asking for something.
10. Ajuma’s that think they look good.
11. Fat bitches that look at me.
12. Fat bitches that look at me and think that I am looking back.
13. Fat bitches that think I’m looking at them, and they joke and giggle with their fat friends.
14. Fat bitches.
15. Big bushes…someone need to teach these chicks how to shave.
16. Bitches dating dorky college fags because his dad has an Equuis and works for Hankook tires.
17. Any bitch in Kangnam….truley gold-digging whores out looking to marry the first rich adeshi they can find.
18. The chick I met at Slimelight that claims it was her first time…
19. Bitches that think they are black…wearing dreds and all that other ghetto shit.
20. Fuck all these ho"s!
for more–the url is really long. translated page–some gibberish in the beginning but then just scroll down.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ko&u=http://bbs3.hani.co.kr/board/ns_hantoma200404/Contents.asp%3FSTable%3Dns_hantoma200404%26RNo%3D19152%26Search%3D%26Text%3D%26GoToPage%3D1%26Idx%3D23152%26Sorting%3D1&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522English%2BSpectrum%2522%2BKorea%2Bplayboy%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
CH – Yes, I have read through some of them. Nobody is defending what they wrote. But I’m sure you read through some of the Netizen responses on any number of sites, and I’m sure you’ll agree that a good number of them are just as stupid and offensive.
I’m calling pure bullshit on the update with the supposed teacher giving molestation instructions. Looks like the work of a Korean or kyopo with obvious intentions. Not only did “Lucky Guy” spell molest wrong (mollest), but why in hell would he provide a Korean translation (his post further down) of his own post?
The fact that the Korean media are reporting ANONYMOUS internet posts as fact and making tens of thousands of foreign teachers guilty by association says more about their agenda and complete lack of standards than it does anything else.
I’m surprised Marmot, that you’re giving that story even a shred of credibility with your update comment. Didn’t peg you for the gullible type.
Rosscoe:
“…it seems strange that the netzeins get upset about some Korean women doing wet t-shirt competitions etc in a private club, when they can switch on the TV, and see lots of bonking, wobbly bits and other assorted (Korean) porn on a standard cable channel every night - and not even very late night at that.”
—————————————-
The women on TV are actresses doing a particular kind of work. The women at the club were (presumably) ordinary people who were participating because they thought it was fun. There’s a big difference in the way each case is perceived. Why do you think so-called reality, voyeur, and “amateur” porn is so popular? (I hear Marmot really likes Bangbus - just kidding)
Hanminjoke:
“[Robert] had an article last month on this exact topic. They do get press, and it falls in the exact same category of “foreign devils fucking OUR women” that this does.”
—————————-
That post wasn’t about the same thing. It wasn’t about the platoons of Japanese salary men descending on places like Miari Texas and its ilk (thought they’re probably not doing it so much anymore). It also wasn’t about the Korean prostitutes wearing hanbok for the occasion and role-playing as ravished Choson wives and daughters. That post was about a single Japanese fake reality-porn video of the kind that are popular over there these days. There is, I think, a difference.
An interesting point is that the video probably got press for similar reasons as the current idiocy - the women in it seemed to be ordinary (though unlike those at the club, they clearly weren’t). There’s certainly a tribal (as Robert put it) element to much of the concern over these things, but I think you’re playing up the foreign devil angle a bit too much.
In the end, I think the real issue is simply the fact that the these things were brought out in the open. The video was marketed, and sweaty club scenes were posted for anyone to see on the Internet.
Hanminjoke:
“I’m calling pure bullshit on the update with the supposed teacher giving molestation instructions…”
———————
I agree with you on this. It’s a common smear tactic with the Netizens.
I always thought “ask the playboy", “ask the cougar", ask the..” were just comedy and it was our choice to read them or not. If others would like to complain about the comedy that’s fine, but why is “ask the playboy” no longer available? Has englishspectrum shut down their site?
The girls portrayed are not unwilling victims as some on this post seem to have concluded. They were active participants (you’ll notice the t-shirts they’re all sporting with Ask the Playboy printed on the back) and the whole incident has been blown out of context by a Korean press that understands from years of experience that “Foreigners Do Bad in Korea” stories are a perennial hit among readers. In fact, according to a piece on Daum (My Daily), the girls are planning a lawsuit against the Joong Ang for defamation. The girls claim they have been too frightened to go to work for the last two days. They also claim that none of them, not one, has been interviewed by the media agency in question. As someone pointed out on another site, in the UK this sort of reporting would likely be deemed illegal as it is obviously designed to stir racial animosity and could prompt racial violence.
As well, does anyone remember the Korean-American who worked for the Carlyle Group in Seoul and wrote an e-mail to his buddies in NY about how easy the women are and how he was scoring with a different young lady every day of the week? He was fired as the idiot sent the letter from his company e-mail and his exploits became quite a hit among the Wall Street crowd – not the sort of PR Carlyle was looking for. I don’t recall the same righteous indignation in response to that episode though.
Was about to put an update on the Medium Daum piece, which was the #1 looked at piece there last time I checked.
Does anyone have any other links to this story by Korean press? All I can find is the two Joongang articles. Judging by the expat reactions, you’d think that this story of “foreigners going wild in debauchery” will be plastered all over the Korean newspapers, and TV. I’ve checked KH, KT, and Chosun, so far almost nothing.
[…] chers. So I decided to get a job at a hakwon somewhere where they expect nothing. And with all the crap hakwon teachers have been up to lately a non-motivated Am […]
Rhesus – your comments are well taken, and certainly – as you point out – much of the shock has to do with these bring “ordinary” girls engaged in some wild behavior. That being said, the stories themselves and the a goodly portion of the Netizen discussion (I’ll let you read through it) makes it quite, quite clear that much of the outrage is due not so much to what was done but rather who it was done with. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that somehow the comments being made about this piece on the BBSs and websites I’ve had the honor of checking out are indicative of Korea, or even its Netizen community, as a whole. As you point out, people can say the damnest things in anonymous forums, and I’d prefer to avoid drawing generalizations about a whole cyber community from one story. However, much (but not all) of the discourse on THIS particular story is of a rather xenophobic and at time sexist nature. Perhaps given the nature of the material that started it, this is understandable to some degree, and one could argue that pictures of good, wholesome, corn-fed white American chicks getting their freak on with visiting Japanese or Korean businessmen might encourage a similar response from a certain segment of U.S. Internet users. That being said, a lot of what is being said is just downright ugly.
Just my 2 cents…
Nesbitt – I linked to a number of Korean-language articles on this, both in this post and the previous one on the story. The JoongAng started the fun, and much of what I linked to are smaller online publications that are having a field day with this on Korean portal sites. As for English stuff, the Korea Times ran a small piece on it, but I think that’s it. Strangely enough, I don’t think the JoongAng actually did a translation of any of their Korean-language pieces (I believe there were only two) on it. I could be wrong, though, because I didn’t go through the English-language press that carefully looking for this story.
David:
here is the story, I remember getting this years. BTW Kyopos around the world wanted to go to korea do what Mr Chung did. Who knows how many women were abused or r*p*d by a drunk kyopo who felt that his power justified his action. He was rich afer all.
http://www.snopes.com/risque/tattled/chung.htm
So I’ve been in Korea for about a week and a half now and what can I say, LIFE IS GOOD….
I’ve got a spanking brand new 2000 sq. foot 3 bedroom apt. with a 200 sq. foot terrace running the entire length of my apartment with a view overlooking Korea’s main river and nightline……Why do I need 3 bedrooms? Good question,…. the main bedroom is for my queen size bed,…where CHUNG is going to fuck every hot chick in Korea over the next 2 years (5 down, 1,000,000,000 left to go)…. the second bedroom is for my harem of chickies, and the third bedroom is for all of you fuckers when you come out to visit my ass in Korea. I go out to Korea’s finest clubs, bars and lounges pretty much every other night on the weekdays and everyday on the weekends to (I think in about 2 months, after I learn a little bit of the buyside business I’ll probably go out every night on the weekdays). I know I was a stud in NYC but I pretty much get about, on average, 5-8 phone numbers a night and at least 3 hot chicks that say that they want to go home with me every night I go out. I love the buyside,…. I have bankers calling me everyday with opportunties and they pretty much cater to my every whim - you know (golfing events, lavish dinners, a night out clubbing). The guys I work with are also all chilll - I live in the same apt building as my VP and he drives me around in his Porsche (1 of 3 in all of Korea) to work and when we go out. What can I say,…. live is good,… CHUNG is KING of his domain here in Seoul…..
So,…. all of you fuckers better keep in touch and start making plans to come out and visit my ass ASAP, I’ll show you guys an unbelievable time….My contact info is below…. Oh, by the way,… someone’s gotta start fedexing me boxes of domes,…I brought out about 40 but I think I’ll run out of them by Saturday…..
Laters,
CHUNG
Peter Chung
The Carlyle Group
Suite 1009, CCMM Bldg.
12, Yoido-dong, Youngdeungpo-ku
Seoul 150-010, Korea
Tel: (822) 2004-8412
Fax: (822) 2004-8440
email: pchung@thecarlylegroup.co.kr
Origins: Apparently
the lesson of the Claire Swire incident hasn’t quite yet reached Korea: Don’t send messages describing your sexual exploits from your employer’s e-mail system (especially if you work for a staid professional firm), no matter how much you trust the recipients. One invocation of the ‘forward’ command by any of the recipients is all it takes to start a chain reaction that will send your e-mail on its way to thousands of e-voyeurs, land your name (accompanied by an embarrassingly graphic story) in the newspapers, and possibly get you fired from your job. The most recent victim is Peter Chung, an associate with the Seoul office of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm.
In May 2001, Mr. Chung, a 24-year-old Princeton graduate who had started his job with Carlyle in South Korea only a few days earlier, sent the bit of braggadocio quoted above to eleven friends at the New York office of Merrill Lynch where he previously worked. At least one of them passed it outside the circle of recipients to acquaintances on Wall Street, and it didn’t take long before Mr. Chung’s private message was making the rounds of the financial world, eventually reaching his bosses at Carlyle. Chung soon found himself an ex-employee.
A few bits of sage advice from news accounts of the Chung affair:
“Never send an e-mail when a bathroom wall will do.”
“If you don’t want it published in The New York Times, don’t write it.”
Last updated: 24 May 2001
william (from the states)-
you seem to be confusing issues on this terrell owens mnf business. first you say this:
“this had very little to do with ‘nudity.’ rather, it had to do with a black man skipping a major football game to be seduced by a white woman, and all the racial implications which went along with it. why don’t you do some reserach and read what tony dungy and a few others had to say about this episode.”
correct me if i’m wrong, but by mentioning this incident, in the context of this korean website stuff, you seem be comparing the media responses of the states and south korea to issues regarding interracial relations/sex. ie: that they’re the same, demonstrated by the public reaction to mnf segment.
however, the tony dungy comments demonstrate nothing of the sort. dungy was not outraged by the representation of a black man and a white woman in a sexual situation, nor was he claiming others were. his point was that he felt owen was chosen for the segment because he was black, playing on established stereotypes of the black man as an overtyly sexual being. read what he said again. from dungy himself:
“"To me that’s the first thing I thought of as an African-American,…I think it’s stereotypical in looking at the players and, on the heels of the Kobe Bryant incident, I think it’s very insensitive…I don’t think that they would have had Bill Parcells or Andy Reid or one of the owners involved in that.’”
dungy was not commenting on the media response or expressing dismay at others’ outrage, but simply describing what his own outrage was - ie: that the mnf spot played on racial stereotypes of black men. nowhere does he even imply that other people were outraged because a white woman was shown in a sexual situation with a black man.
sorry, but bring up this mnf example is really a poor attempt to equate relative korean and american feelings toward interracial relationships.
PORN SITE SPARKS THE RAGE OF ZULU ROYALTY
http://www.yesportal.com/news.cfm/1706
[some quotes…..]
A racialy-charged but little-known adult paysite called www.savagesonblondes.com has suddenly found itself an integral part of a story that has spread to news services on the other side of the planet.
“Fed up with the white man cutting down their jungles, the Zuludong’s tribal witch doctor, Jumungusdong, gives his tribal warriors foot long cocks and sends them to America to wreak havoc on helpless girls!”
“This stupid farmer girl mocks the traditional tribal dress of these proud warriors. With a howling fury, they proceed to plant their own crops in her mouth”
“Ohhh, great Shaka would be proud if he could see how these warriors ravage white pussy!”
you’re all missing the point… the outrage is not about white men and korean women… the outrage is about the term “kimchi-land"…
Now I freely admit that in my younger days I would foolishly have sought out such places had I been sent to Korea…
Older, fatter, and a little wiser now, I realize that anything I could catch at a place like that today would either be sick, wounded, or hunting me!
Every town with either a university or an army base has such places. It’s just that – to Americans – the relatively low threshold of resistance before the girl “gives in” is a novel experience. America still has a sort of anti-fornication barrier wisely installed by monotheists and reinforced by the Victorians… Korea has a different set of rules which makes some things easier and some things more difficult than Americans typically expect.
Raised voices and feigned indignation don’t do either side well, so I hope the people not directly involved can put away their hubris and get back to living peaceably with their neighbors… Those involved ought to know that Korean women really don’t like having their photos published on the internet without their approving the individual photos and adjusting their makeup…
I’ll go back to lurking now…
The parallel universe over at Dog Stew offers its own unique idelogical take on the English Spectrum affair. http://mansei.typepad.com/dogstew/.
It meets Dog Stew standards of laughability and left-wing purity, but raises a question that I haven’t seen addressed: Were these teachers and wet tee-shirt organizers Americans mainly or exclusively? It’s my experience that Canada for example is well represented in the hagwons of Korea.
Hey, whats wrong with a good time in Korea. The Korean men treat their women like 5th class citizens anyway. Why do their women hang with us, because we treat them better!!!
You see slim, the Hanchongryon will use this golden opportunity to get out the axe for the Americans. Perfect chance form them and the young NK sympathizers to hype up the let’s drive out the yankees from out Dear Leader’s land.
RE update content: “They’ll meet at 6:00 p.m. Saturday near the front gate of Hongik. Be there… or be square.”
That gathering by angry netizens from the “anti-English Spectrum cafe” has at least for the time being been called off.
Bring on the Chosun Taliban – that’ll teach ‘em!
I haven’t read most of the posts on this story, because I’m not that interested in that type of thing. But, I’ve paid attention enough…
I’m torn on my opinion about the reaction from the Koreans.
I find what these members of the expat community have done disgusting. But, I also disapprove of the sex industry in Korea (and elsewhere). And that sex industry is huge. I disapprove of the habit of Korean husbands to spend time with prostitutes. Not too infreqnetly, when teaching mostly female adult classes, this topic would come up (usually in relation to the high rate of divorce in the US), and the majority opinion was that some 80% or more of married men go to prostitutes in Korea.
So…..where does that leave us?
Again, I find what these expats were doing on the internet and in their parties revolting to me. And I can understand the Koreans getting pissed off. But, can I really condone strong counter measures including hunting these people down or moving against the expat community of teachers as a whole? Not really…
If I were the Korean government, I’d have put some major regulations on English teacher recruits and on the hagwons too. The hagwon owners are a big problem with English education.
And lastly, from what I have read, it sounds to me like the females participating in these parties and whatnot were doing so of their own free will. I don’t like womanizing and debasing human beings, but everybody doesn’t have the same sense of morality I do. If somebody doesn’t find it debasing to themselves….???….what can I do?
USinkorea’s sentiments are my exact sentiments.
Why was the ralley called off?
When in Rome …. Haven’t any of these outraged Korean Netizens visited or heard about the room salons in Mugyodong (behind the Seoul Finance Center) or in the entertainment zone behind the Seoul Plaza Hotel. These are pretty much Korean only, unless you’re taken along by Korean friends, and the goings on in these places would make the Marjane Club shenhanigans look tame. So people in glass houses ….
Does the shoe fit?
I haven’t read in detail each of the 35 or so comments posted since my last one, but has anyone taken the time to look for websites in Korean written by Korean women looking to hook-up with foreigners? My wife tells me that such “secret” cafes exist on daum.net (even though she refuses to show me). Furthermore, often she overhears a conversation by Korean female employees on Yongsan, and one of their favorite topics is having their way sexually with Americans and using them to improve their English and hopefully as a ticket to the States.
Just wondering.
Mark – I think the Korean women who hang out in the foreign areas of Yongsan are a fairly odd and increasingly archaic subspecies, and their opinions are far from typical of the average Korean woman. There is no shortage of Koreans these days with the money and means to leave Korea all on their own, without any foreign person needed to foot the bill.
More amusing in the world of Daum are the cafes where Korean women talk about guys who really sleep around (Korean and foreign). I know someone who was juggling a couple of girlfriends who found each other on one of those cafes. For a city of 11 million (20 including suburbs), this really is a small place.
Sperwer,
Koreans do not care what debauchery goes on in Korea, as long as it is not interracial.
Land of the Morning Come.
Very ugly all around. Racism at its finest.
But there might be something good that can come out of this. The ESL/EFL industry in Korea is in need of a major shake up and reform. Raising the quality of the industry is the goal. Having unqualified teachers out is one part of the reform. But will the owners respond in kind by giving better pay and treatment to qualified English language teachers? This is the bigger of the problems.
Craig has a good point. Koreans often complain that the quality of teachers should be raised but are not willing to pay to get qualified teachers. Just get a western looking face in the classroom and who cares about how they teach is the general attitude of many institutes. Well if you want quality you have to pay for it and I highly doubt Korea is willing to do this.
The woman in the post has a good question. If what the foreign English teachers are doing and saying is the problem, why are the Korean women being treated like criminals? Simply some Korean men feel Korean women are the exclusive domain of Korean men. Those women that do not adhere to this should be shamed. By shaming women that break this rule, it will act as a punishment to those women and a deterrent for other Korean women to even think about being with a foreigner.
Let me apologise in advance for the following rant. It is not particularly well organised, but is more of a purge of thoughts that I have decided to put down. I cannot believe that all of us are actually commenting on what is the biggest bogus non-story of the year, by idiots about idiots.
Has it occured to anyone that the post “How to Mollest Your students” [sic] was written in 2003 and if you read down, he claims that he wrote it as a practical joke? I guess such little details are lost on ‘Netizens’ who are naturally blaming the US, despite the fact that the idiot who posted that is of undetermined nationality. I do not think that a reactionary Netizen put that up, but it is either a lame attempt at humor (as the OP claimed) or there is, in fact, a sick bastard out there.
This is all a pathetic attempt by the Kwality Korean Media to find a new group to rally the masses to hate.
A year ago at this time, it was Japan.
Not too long ago, it was China.
Two years ago at two different times, it was the US (Ohno and 2 Girls who didn’t bother getting out of the way of a tank).
It is just that time of year again– the mid-winter 2 weeks of hate. The attempts to get the masses to hate Britain a couple of weeks ago have failed, and so a new target was acquired; one that is defenceless.
After all, US companies withdrew 37% (as I remember) of their investment capital from Korea following the hate-fest of 2002.
Japan certainly can’t be pissed off or else there will be even less tourism to Korea than there is now, seeing that 75% of foreign tourists last year were Japanese (Joongang Ilbo– or was it Chosun). [Have to have something to show for all of those stories about the MASSIVE Korean Wave going across Asia, beyond the handful of dramas and shitty boybands (aren’t they mostly Kyopos?) that get exported]
Certain factions want to expand ties with China, and so they do their best to avoid any friction with China.
Koreans just didn’t care about a British program taking the piss out of their cars.
My question is, which group gets targetted next after the hate fest (or attempted hate fest) against English teachers subsides?
I believe you are correct and that basically it is only the Freaky Waygooks how go to Korean ESL or English Spectrum.
Yeah, Blinger’s right. Not to say that Dave’s ESL doesn’t have its own contingent of freaky waygooks, but the super-freakiest among them were shown the door early on. They quickly formed their own penal colony on KoreanESL. From that crew came the offending post, which is now almost two years old.
anonymous wrote:
I don’t see how it would matter if the poster claimed it to be a joke. It was illegal to make that post - joke or not.
Let’s get this clear before we meld two issues into one. There’s a huge difference between the englishspectrum.com “ask the playboy” comedy of how to sleep with consenting Korean adults, and an illegal post on koreanesl.com about molesting students. They are completly unrelated websites and incidents.
It is not uncommon for foreigners in Korea to use forums hosted by various ESL websites, but that does not link those sites in a common community. One site does not make a community and one post does not make website.
Good points hardy…. I take them well. And yes, there are two very different issues here, but it is becoming obvious that some are searching with a fine tooth-comb (according to the book ‘Eats, Shoots, and Leaves’ the correct spelling, but I digress) to find any evidence that will demonise all English teachers.
This whole stupidity is just that– stupidity. There is no reason that consenting women getting together with consenting men in an manner on which they chose, should be such a big story. The fact that the guys were scumbags and made disparaging remarks should not elevate it to a major story. It is another event that makes me roll my eyes when anyone around me mentions the words ‘Korean’ and ‘media’ together.
We can all agree that Korean netizens are overreacting. But it’s almost just as bad to overreact to an overreaction.
The supposed Hongdae demonstration where millions upon millions of Koreans who were supposed to come out with candlelights to protest the “barbarians".. didn’t exactly materialise. It turned out Korean netizens are just like anyone, they talk shit when they’re anonymous, just like the participants of the Seoul Spectrum and other Gerry Springer talk forums.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=32399
I’d say the party pooper (who definitely deserves more traffic) has a hilarious yet sensible take on all of this.
HIGHLIGHTS:
“These “teachers” are lame. You want to be playboys? Fine, do it until your dicks fall off, but just keep it to yourself. To celebrate your conquests publically is just asking for it. You know how most Korean men feel about this and you had to know that sooner or later it would become known. It was dumb, and now you’ve jeopardized the safety of the girls in the pictures. Feeling good about yourself?”
“For the record, I would like to add my support to his lofty cause to drive out the foreigners who degrade Korean women. I hope he doesn’t stop there, but broadens the campaign to drive out ALL men, not just foreigners, who degrade Korean women. It would do wonders for the overcrowding problem in Korea and it would sure make my morning commute a lot more peaceful.”
Huh. My girlfriend, I think, mainly saw the Netizens’ outcry. I’ve been working a camp with little kids and she wanted me to be careful with the kids. I guess, watch out not to bump them accidentally in some way that some kid might construe as weird to parents or something? I dunno. Anyway, what’s weird was the version of the story she told me about the pedophile explaining how to score with little kids was reported as if it were not a sick, mentally ill joke, but as a real guide. Needless to say, I was disturbed by the idea, as well as the idea that it might be touted as representative of foreigners in general by a major newspaper. I wonder if the “joke” part was left out of the articles published in the Joongang.
And I think Marmot’s about right in terms of the hypocrisy of the paper; some comments about the hypocrisy of the Netizens are also about right in terms of the way that it’s just as thuggish and dehumanizing towards women as the wet-t-shirt contests.
And yeah, I think wet-tee-shit contests are kind of dehumanizing and pitiful, even when it’s with willing participants all around. As a man who regards women as equals, as intellectually endowed beings like myself, I think festivals where they’re treated like toys for men are just… I don’t know, maybe I’m taking after my granddad but I find the idea distasteful and primitive.
And yeah, the women are willing participants in it. Plenty of women are willing participants in other things that dehumanize them, with Korean men. To protest one and not the other is hypocritical. And to celebrate them all is just a poor show.
I’m sure some will think me uptight, but it’s not as if I get some fundamentalist queasy anxiety about anything sexual; far from it. I just think humans can do much better than to once again reenact such neolithic pastimes.
(And in case you’re wondering, the party, the shite posting, the tribal warfare over women enacted by both male Korean netizens and dumbass foreign “dudes", and, heh, a certain amount of the bitter fighting in this thread of comments—in lieu of intelligent, reasoned discussion of Marmot’s offering, sans ad hominem attacks—all qualify as “neolithic pastimes” in my book.)
Firstly: The Playboy (who I know personally) is neither an English teacher or military, so with this, people may want to reassess their opinions and condemnation of the English teaching community in Korea and their association with this issue.
So much of this anti- English spectrum stuff is being completely taken out of context and blown out of proportion.
The Playbys writings are quite obviously taking the micky a lot of the time, and are actually complementary to Korean women. other than saying that they may be “easy", most comments towards them talk about their relative innocence, beauty and how fantastic they are.
While Korea isn’t very openly sexually liberated, these comments of KOrean women having sexual relationships with non-korean men may seem shocking. However I think it is in a way a form of racism on the Koreans’ behalf- saying that it is unacceptable for KOrean women to have sex with “foreign” men. The idea being that “foreigners” are dirty, unworthy of korean women or that they bring shame apon Korea.
As a Korean friend of mine said “This is quite normal for Korea; when people get something they are already quite aware of, and are trying to sweep under the rug or ignore thrust into their face and their attention drawn to it nation-wide, the reaction is to overreact. Overreacting, and giving the impression of outrage in this culture is a way of protecting their “honour". If they admitted to knowing about this and didn’t take action, it would be like condoning it, so public outrage is the only reaction they know to give.”
Furhtermore- the pictures of the wet t-shirt competitors were western women, not Korean women. Their were also pictures of western men removing their shirt, but in none of the pictures of the parties were their Korena women engaging in “degrading” activity, or sex acts.
I am not saying I agree with the Playboy’s atttitudes, words or ideaology, but I do ask people to see things in context and not condemn without knowing any real facts.
To Slim:
I do not think that it was the “english teachers” who endangered the girls in the pictures is rather a naive view.
It is the korean public who wish to react violently towards these western women, who are consenting adults to competing in the competition and posing for the photos.
The pictures were initially posted as an appreciation of their courage and beauty- brave for competing, and they won because their beauty was judged by those present to be the utmost at the time.
I say more power to them for being proud of their fabulous figures, and leave them alone, for they have done nothing to deserve slander and endangerment by the Korean public.
To The Blond:
Good stuff Blond. Hey are you a friend of old Jeffrey. You know the jeffy I am talking about. I thought Old jeffy and I were buddies. But he told me to FO. It breaks my heart.
” most comments towards them talk about their relative innocence, beauty and how fantastic they are.”
Me thinks you haven’t read that ugly site often enough.
I have read the website almost daily since its induction.
By relative innocence- I mean the naivety and lack of sexual experience Korean girls supposedly have in comparison to their western female counterparts. The PB forum posters often talk about how they think it is refreshing to find these women, as opposed to the “bitchy, skanky, in your face” western women.
Their beauty- sexa appeal, wonderful slim bodies, stunning faces etc- their were MULTITUDES of posts by men- Korean and western, abut how beautiful they think KOrean women are. In fact- that seemed to be half the topic of conversation from what I gathered!
Fantastic: well… their refreshing innocence, beauty, pleasant friendly manner etc- I guess that doesn’t sound really bad- and hence “fantastic".
Realising the bastardisation of the English language, slang and swear-words that are used on websites in particular, such as in these posts from the public on the PB forum:
eg:
“The K-girls I love are diamonds in the rough…like ripe juicey apples begging to picked off a tree and bit into” translation- new, invigorating, beautiful yet naive, somehing I would like to experience, intriguing
“that fine asian pussy” - translation? attracitve Korean woman (pussy can refer to a person as a whole, not jsut sexual organs)
and by the PB:
“I’ll stick with the skinny Korean girls” in repsonse to being asked if he’d like to date a white woman who posted a picture on the website.
and other comments about western women…
“the general tone of the white horse population isn’t flattering”
So this leads me to think that the portrayal of Korean women isn’t so bad, in comparison to the portrayal of western women.
I know it isn’t fantastic- in fact if I ever heard a guy talking about me like that, I’d be inclined to walk away and never speak to him again. BUT this is the internet, where the faceless masses come to vent their issues or be someone they coulsn’t be in real life. Possibly even someone they’d be ashamed of in real life. It is, as mentioned in the introduction to this discussion- internet psychology.
What’s more is that the PB forum was obviously more liekly to appeal to the horny young man than other people, and like men when they get together in bars or locker-rooms and talk dirty about girls, they also do this on the website. I totally agree with what some people said before about exaggerating numbers, eg the exchange student who claimed to have slept with 300 Korean women.
Think about it as, in vulgar terms, a pissing contest- who can claim they’ve had the most sex; akin to the good-old small-penis syndrome.
So while we could all say “isn’t this despicable” and become outraged, the other choice is to say- “that was stupid of them to say that, I disagree with it, but they aren’t actually hurting anyone, so who cares".
I’m opting for the latter approach, and while I don’t like a lot of the stuff said in the forums I know they were just people getting hyped up on the internet saying stuff they have probably never really thought about.
The last thing the community of foreigners needs now is to turn on itself. Those who have said and done stuff are undoubtably red-faced right now, especially the PB who has recieved death threats to his personal email accounts.
While he has a big mouth and needs to learn to calm down a bit, he definately does not deserve death threats, and foreigners in general do not deserve outright alienation and hate directed towards them for this!
The Blonde – if you think the PB has it rough, imagine what the girls in the photos have to deal with. Their real names were posted in a couple of places apparently, and some of the stuff that is being written about them is simply appalling. And they don’t have the option of “living in Korea, but not being part of Korea” that many foreigners seem to have (that’s not meant to belittle the crap foreigners may or may have to deal with because of this incident). Actually, one of the more ironic things about this whole mess was that what started out as anger at “degrading Korean women” soon degraded on some sites into an Internet bashing of Korean women. Thankfully, the Segye Ilbo – doing its best to imitate a responsible news agency – ran an interview with two of the girls today, so at least they got to publicly explain the situation and vent their frustrations (still no interviews with any English teachers, however, which is unfortunate).
Luckily, this story might be dying a natural death, so I don’t think we’ll have to worry about any Boxer Rebellion-like uprisings anytime soon.
Shaming the “victims"…it seems to be a proven technique here.
Wow…I don’t think it’s just hooplah over nothing. At the same time, people are getting angry over the rantings and fantasies of relative losers. I mean come on, Korean women may be easy because they’ve barely seen white people or have extreme white fetishes but….have you ever lived in America as a normal male? Have you ever been to college or lived in a big city…how freakin easy is it there!!!! Come on guys!!! And there ARE plenty of fat, ugly American women but if you go to somewhere like LA or Chicago..there are TONS of hot, young, willing women. I just think that this hatred of white women, korean men, and fetishization of Korean women reveals extreme insecurity and an inabitility to get beyond a teenager’s mentality of being in a perpetual pissing contest of who has the hottest or most women. GET OVER IT…it’s good in Korea but it’s good anywhere in the world if you’re a good looking, charming guy. Ever heard of France or the Czech Republic or Miami or LA. People are getting angry over losers who couldn’t find a freakin job and had very modest success with women in America or Canada and know try to validate themselves through adolescent sexual fantasies.
Marmot- I couldn’t agree more.
I see nothing wrong in what any of the women have done- in fact I’m kinda jealous that I don’t have the self confidence to get my groove on or enter wet t-shirt contests etc.
Although even if I did have the courage I’m not sure I would enter, but that’s a matter of personal choice rather than bravery.
I think if it was their choice to enter, then so be it- they attended the events with knowledge of what was happeneing and consented to taking part.
The torture the Korean public is inflicting apon them judging their actions and humilitating them for it is what disgusts me. I don’t doubt for a second that they are having a horrible time!
Actually I noticed a lovely piece of Wi Son Ja or hypocrisy in the Korean press today. The Korea Herald ran an article about Gisaeng- korean concubines of old.
The articel focused on the skills other than sexual that the wmen possessed and there is a big campaign going on to desexualise these women, and give them respect and status despite their sedual role.
Now what i’d like to see is this type of respect being applied to MODERN KOREAN WOMEN! I think there are so many wonderful, intelligent, attractive girls who make the educated choice to use their sexuality, be sexually confident, be comfortable with their self image and perhaps also be sexually active.
Why can’t these modern girls be respected for their skills, personality and looks and be considered ‘"Haeeuhwaa"… “Flowers that could understand words"‘ as well. Although this likening does suggest that women are inanimate objects like flowers, it avoids describing, shaming or degrading Korean women for sexual acts as is happeneing to the girls in the photos being plastered across the web.
To the blond:
So Blond, you don’t know Jeffery? OK Really? I think you do. Jefferey, he is kinda a jellyfish.
Anyway, its interesting to me that they nobody brings up that a lot/most/maybe all of those Gisaeng were about 10-15. If we are going to judge them in a modern contex why not judge the men that were banging them. I guess that makes the yangban a bunch of pedofiles.
I read the article http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200501/13/200501132237244239900092009201.html and one big dope smoker named Lee Don-su suggests that they are actually modern women. What is he smoking, in Koryo the Giseong were “lowborn” which was a heredity birth right. This was true into the Yi dynasty. So I guess in the new revised history of Korea the giseang were artists and free to choose their profession. They were modern women who picked and chose who they wanted to bang. Interesting when real Korean modern women choose to bang foreigners then the lynch mob comes out. I guess Lee Don-su should describe what he means by modern women.
The article also says that the gisaeng slowly disappeared because of the Japanese. Because of the Japanese women began selling themselves at bars and whore houses. And the gisaneg could not keep up. In my opinion it’s all about core competencies. If for example the gisaeng were talented artists then they would stop selling their bodies as the competition increased. They, or at least some, or even one would sell their other talents. The fact is that in general they weren’t really artists but more like the bar girls who keep you occupied before you throw it in.
The really interesting thing is when you look at the gisaeng as a more marketable version of the Hwrang. You can also use the Hwrang history as a example of history being rewrote and invented out of thin air. The Hwrang “flower of youth” as you know are young boys that were skilled at singing dancing and art. It wasn’t until 1945 Yi Syngman rewrote history to make the Hwrang as a “warrior” class. In fact only about 3 or 4 Hwrang ever mentioned in any military context. That is to say only 3-4 ever became any kind of warrior, which is a surprising low number because the Hwrang were supposed to be made of a noble class. Anyway those 3-4 (actually only 3 but its possible that I am missing one person) people are all that can be found in anything written before 1945. Lots of modern Korean books now claim, without any evidence whatsoever that the Hwrang were some kind of warrior youth.
There is lots and lots of evidence that the hwrang were singers and dancers however. The Samguk Sagi talks about the creation of the Hwrang and talks again and again how handsome the lads were. In fact whenever the hwrang are mentioned their handsomeness is also mentioned. Its pretty easy to see that the term “flower” of youth is actually a sexual term.
Well the didn’t last into the Yi dynasty. At least not as singing and dancing entertainers. Maybe the yangban like girls more then boys.
I do know Jeffrey, or rather, knew.
He is still alive- back in his native land where he was exiled to.
He is reportedly trying to make a comeback to the land of the morning smog, but has been as of yet unsuccessful in raising enough funds for a bottle of whiskey, let alone a plane ticket.
Nope this Jeffery dont drink and is too busy raising his inner she-wolf to leave korea.
Asian Women: Are We Just Good For Sex?
Last night (or should I say early in the morning at exactly 3:24 a.m.), I got a call from my drunk-ass friend in Seoul…
“I just think that this hatred of white women, korean men, and fetishization of Korean women reveals extreme insecurity and an inabitility to get beyond a teenager’s mentality of being in a perpetual pissing contest of who has the hottest or most women.”
- Jim Van Booven
You are the smartest person in the whole world.
Hi everybody,
Koreans should all be ashamed of their behavior towards foreigners…look how disrespectful you are with foreigners (this is how you call us)…
You are so naive, you have never opened your eyes, change your view of the world, open yourself to the world and your country surely will be greater…
If K girls go with foreigners it is because they like foreigners, this is the only reason…
ALso K girls belong to nobody, stop your racist and xenophobic judgements.
In my country France we all have mixed blood and this is how all the racism will disapear…so Koreans please change your attitude…open yourself, do not be so narrow minded…
And for your information, K girls have long been sleeping with foreigners, this is not new…it is so easy for foreigners to get K Girls, maybe because we respect korean girls more than you korean men do…we do not beat our women, we take care of girls conversely to you Koreans…
This is just the beggining, all your fears are coming true…stop closing your eyes…nobody belongs to anyone, we are all the same, so there is NO way korean girls only belong to korean men, anyway you cannot decide that and I think they have already decided, ah ah ah…too bad for you…you are just fucking Racist korean with too much pride and xenophobia…did you know that some clubs are denied for foreigners? no? how come nobody talks about it in the news? How come we cannot get cell phones? how come you all call us americans (we are coming from all over the world), how come you all think we look the same?
Anyway, just think about that…see you all…
Peace and Love for everybody…
Okay. I am a Korean girl dating a white man. I don’t think that my dating life should be anyone’s business, but I’d like to explain why I am in a relationship with a white man. My boyfriend is not just a white man; he is intelligent, educated, and (definitely) cute and good-looking. It doesn’t really matter to me what his skin color is. What matters to me is that I am very attracted to him, because he and I are so compatible in many levels. Honestly, I am not interested in what other Korean girls are doing with white men. However, it is annoying that (a few) Korean girls love all white men (regardless of their stupidity). Give me a break! I have seen so many good-looking (just another pretty face kind of) white men in my neighbor (I live in L.A.). Many of them, who aspire to be actors and models, are idiots! They drove fancy p**** cars (or big and environmentally unfriendly SUVs), which they couldn’t afford. Personally, I don’t recommend the Korean girls to go out with some English teachers (esp. unqualified ones) in Korea. But it’s their choice. By the way, I respect most of the English teachers in Korea; teaching is a hard work (I learned this from my own experience). Wish you the best!
Korea is a sick, sick place that fosters this penci-neck, pepper-bellied jinogism and xenophobia. It’s like Georgia of the 50s. Korea likes to brag that it’s a “developed nation,” well DEVELOP I say! I’m all for taking on someone who behaves like a moron - holding them in contempt for being a moron- like E. S., but the four-eyed geeks who are Korean cyber Taliban - er “Netizens” - need some serious schooling in the 5 - knuckles: ooo, ouch, ow, thud, and wack.
Kim Il-sung was ‘human” but the foriengers they showed beheaded were not??? Korean women are not to be eroticized by foreingers but they can eroticize women who are Korean and foreing women??? They can talk shit baout us but we can’t hold koreans responsible for it?
Nothin’but pencil-neck geeks I tell ya!
You tell “em Fred! You played the heel for Samartino but you ain’t tappin’-out for some pencil-neck geeks!
:)
Woohoo!
To the girl dating the white guy
Who says you have to be “qualified” to teach. Teaching in Korea is a business like any other. Do you bitch and moan that the apple pickers, or burger flippers in canada or usa are not “qualified". The only qualification in korea is a BA/BA and being a citizen from a English speaking country. Having those things.. you are qualified.
Now about your white BF. What is wrong with only dating white boys? White is a physical characteristic. Its no different then dating only redheads, dummies, rich people, tall people. You may point out that “race” cannot be changed but hair color can be. Yep, but many phisical characteristics cant be changed. The point is.. is that people have an internal method of choosing mates and race is a factor, but so is age, money personality.. etc. A person has a right to choose according to their internal value system.
The funny thing to me is that for every asian woman who chooses a white or black guy there are 30 that are pressured into dating only their own race.
Western women are eroticised and degraded in Korea by Koreans.
I can’t count the number of times a Korean man has given me the once over, and asked, “you Russian? How Much?”
At first I didn’t unsderstand- was it because Russia is nearby that they think Blondes are Russian?
I later learned that they thought of not only all Russians as whores, but all Western women in general.
I have been grabbed, touched in inappropriate places, propositioned and harrassed so many times by Korean men it’s sickening.
I am not Russian, or even from the Northern hemisphere for that matter, but even if I were- not all Russian women in Korea are prosititutes!
So this criticism of Korean women dating Western men is really hypocritical.
People in glass houses…
The best defense for those going out in Hongdae this weekend: have your cameras and cellphone cams at the ready to record any anti-foreigner conflicts and post any results!
I officially challenge all of Korea’s cultural gate keepers to a steel cage match: one ass kicking at a time.
There are some good Kore’eens out there. Hell, I had a ball with Rikidozan. Still, it’s time for the king of men to set the record straight on these cyber-terrorist,pencil-neck, kimchi blenders!
Time to file the fangs….
What the hell happened to the human race?
I totally understand what the blonde is saying. When I managed Nikolai Volkoff, some of the marks thought the Iron Sheik was Russian too, just ‘cause Nikolai would break out into the Soviet anthem and I. S. paid respect.
What a bunch of rotten, stinking, no-good-, grit eating pencil neck geeks I tell you!
Something to think about: take race out of this. Imagine everybody is anglo, and this is in the States. Make the men and women the same race, any race you like. Black, Asiatic, Mexican, Samoan, Basque; it doesn’t matter.
They would be fired. Instantly. The Unions wouldn’t even waste their favors defending them. Should these guys be fired? If they are teachers, then absolutely, they should get mailed home.
If they are teachers, are they alone in these kinds of exploits? No they aren’t. I know of English instructors who show up to work drunk. I know of English teachers who don’t keep files, can’t plan their classes, couldn’t design their own curriculum, and have no meaningful goals for their testing and assessment methods. I know people who claim to teach language, who have been here for years, and won’t/can’t learn Korean. They would get fired at home if they were teachers. But, not surprisingly, at home, they weren’t teachers at all.
If the guys on the site aren’t professional educators, it should embarrass you all the more that people are putting this at the feet of ESL instructors. They probably know of teachers just like those guys.
There are a couple of reasons it went to such ready acceptance by the public, especially with the younger college students. The folks getting the most upset are guys who went to hogwans when they were kids. It isn’t simply nascent xenophobia, although that’s probably a part of it.
The greater part is that the things detailed on the Spectrum site happen all the time. They probably saw some of it as kids, and now it’s in their bones. They may not have the rational idea that English speakers are drunken louts, but it’s insinuated into their intuition. It’s just under the surface, and with a gentle nudge, the resultant contempt comes bubbling up.
So watching a bunch of drunks get nailed for stepping on their own cranks is somehow very satisfying to me. If there is a petition to get other folks out of here who are in Korea as teachers to get a “life experience", I’d like to sign it.
In this case, I don’t care about Korean mores. I don’t care about this being a non-issue for news coverage. I don’t care about consenting adults. You couldn’t pay me money to care about any of that.
I do care that the intellectual prowess of the English speaking world is being represented by folks whose behavior changes with the knowledge that no word of what happens here will get home to anyone they know. This isn’t necessarily for the guys on the Spectrum site, since there is a doubt as to whether or not they are teachers. But there are plenty more folks who do stuff that is just as asinine without a website because it all washes off on the plane ride home.
I really mind that enough untrained folks have come over here so as to actually skew the business model of the schools to offer only white monkey positions (jobs any white monkey can do; how many positions actually BRAG about no prep time? Why would a teacher even want that?)
How many times have you seen teachers getting tanked on a work night? Would you send your kids to a school that hired some yahoo straight out of college, who is interested in getting hammered and laid in no particular order? How would you like it if your kids got to smell sweat, stale sex and cheap vodka rolling off of their math teacher back home? How about teachers that hold wet T-Shirt contests and then put them on the web along with a list of how to get the easiest pussy in the world, and how badly fat chicks piss them off? Tell me that wouldn’t bother you, and say it with a straight face.
So why in the hell is it okay for folks calling themselves teachers to do that crap here? Why defend them? Get them on a plane. Get them out of here. Folks who act like that leave a bigger footprint than some half assed website. Get them out of here before they break anything else.
I agree with qbe9585, those ESLers need to have MA at least!! And there needs to be a vetting process, as well as drug screeing etc. They also better not be touching the women! They alos get paid too much so cut their pay and make them workmore. Yes!
Thank you Dude. You have put me in my place. Obviously asking you to quit showing up drunk to work with children would be as difficult and unreasonable as asking you to take a pay cut, take random drug tests, work more and get a Masters’s degree. You’ve changed my mind.
YES!! QBE! You, Prince Nulji and me agree and so do at least 10,320 other Korean.
http://agora.media.daum.net/petition/view.do?no=212&kind=petition&cateNo=243&boardNo=212
My take on English Spectrum and Korean women, if anyone is (still) interested in: http://junecho.blogspot.com/2005/01/english-spectrum-and-korean-women.html
Junecho: nice blog, and a good interview.
qbe9584, you get what you pay for. Simple market economics works the world over, if you specifically wish to be instructed by an MBA graduate from a respected University, you had better be prepared to pay $90 per hour. That is not an exageration, I know of private institutes where this is true. It’s simple supply and demand. If the Korean government did institute sweeping changes, access to English instruction from native speakers would sky rocket in price, not that that’s a bad thing, I would have to seriously considering leaving the IP arena if I could make $80,000 a year teaching business people how to explain themselves to foreign investors!
The fact of the matter is that High School teachers in the U.S. are not bastions of moral fortitude either. There are countless tales of debauchery in the media about illegal activities perpetrated by teachers. But no one is willing to pay to enhance the quality of the teachers, and few are so foolish as to generalize localized incidents to an entire mass of hundreds of thousands of educators!
Kromzone: Fair enough. Looking back at my post, I have to admit I was venting. But still, it’s frustrating to me to try and talk shop with somebody who is here to Paaar-Tay! Whoo Hoo!
I dropped some serious money on educational training. I came here to learn from folks in the field because I want to be a better teacher. I want to share what I know because it can make a difference in a schools program and in how other instructors teach. I have a career path in mind for teaching abroad.
But, I want to jerk somebody bald headed when I run into a person who’s here to relive a second freshman year at Radford.
I’m not asking for everybody to be some Uber Instruktor, who can teach English through direct mental transmission, and who has 90 degrees and 120 certifications. There are plenty of solid, rigorous intructors who weren’t formally trained. I listen to them and take their advice. I share what I know. Hell, I have a standing offer of gimbap and coffee for anyone willing to talk shop.
But it really elevates my blood pressure when I run into so many instructors who can list the foreigner bars by heart, but can’t write a decent test for their kids. Or when guys are coming into class trashed from the night before, three days out of five, or four days out of six.
And I don’t think I’m all that off the target to say that the kids pick up on this, too. The general consensus is that the English teachers are lightweight dilletantes who have nothing to add to a program. It’s taken for such gospel truth, that the schools have geared themselves up to use English teachers as window dressing. We’re basically the colorful back up singers in the teaching departments. To me, I can blame the schools and the teachers about evenly for that. We should be better as a group. The schools should be more dedicated to actual instruction. And if frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their ass when they hopped. All in all, I suppose I’m being unrealistic.
But if this happened in America, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. there would be a huge uproar. Imagine if this happened in New York. A bunch of college profs at a state school who only had bachelors or had faked credentials were caught trading tips on how to sleep with students. It happened to be on the same site that had pictures of them holding a wet T-Shirt contest.
Not only would the teachers be fired, the other teachers would be kicking them in their skulls. People in the college administration would be getting sacked, and no one would be leaping in to defend these guys.
Now, website aside, imagine that these guys were simply a more publicised version of, say, 10% of the total teaching population. In other words, one in ten of the college profs were doing the same thing, just not putting it up on a web site. The major reason these guys came to teach in New York was to get trashed and hook up.
There would be a major review in the New York State educational hiring policies. It would be an issue during election time. It might not be a huge thing in the long run, but you have to admit, some kind of outcry would be justified, and some kind of reaction would be happen. It would be as natural as the rain.
Folks giving out static on the subway wouldn’t be justified. People issuing blanket statements of culpability to all college teachers in New York would be wrong. Because even a well publicised 10% still doesn’t reflect anything about the other solid 90%.
But, teacher for teacher, you have to admit that the number of folks showing up in Korea who aren’t here to teach seriously is a lot higher than 10%. I’m not saying they should be perfect, but maybe they could just try a little harder and use some comportment. You’ve probably seen about as many stupid teacher tricks as I have, maybe more. What they do makes life and job hunting harder for you and me. I would be having a much better time if they weren’t here.
Por exemplo: hogwons wouldn’t be able to jerk a good teacher around as readily if there weren’t a dozen other folks who look like him/her waiting in the wings. Plus, if they knew they could rely on the teacher to intelligently make contributions to the English programs and carry out the duties of a teacher, the stuff that teachers do back home, then the business model of the schools would be entirely different, and Native teachers would be able to improve their craft. The overall level of instruction would improve across the board.
Instead we have a situation where a chunk of the teachers are unmotivated, unprofessional, untalented and unskilled in terms of teaching. But, man, can they drink and get massages.
And look at it this way: these guys make it harder for all of the real teachers with all kinds of practical experience but who are shy of paper certificates. These guys were so obnoxious, that national law could change. It wouldn’t be an issue if people could say, “What a bunch of freaks. My English teachers were all pretty locked on. I never saw any of that. It’s just a random incident.” Instead there are enough people who are saying, “Yeah. You know, this happens enough that there ought to be a law.”
Drives me nuts is all.
Like I said qbe9548, I agree with you. Hey where do you get massages? I like you qbe9845! Its people like you who really make a difference. Just think of all the kids at your hogwon who will go home each and every day thankful of learning from you.
The good think about Korea is that people like you are appricated. The kids love to learn all your wisdom and the hogwons will really like it if the students learn. And if you are not appriciated then its the fault of bad american teachers.
I alos agree that if a bad american teacher doesnt meet your expectation then they should just go home. Also if they are getting massages or getting drunk after work then those americans should be sent home. Also no mixing with the women right qbe4585
Face it qbe4649 all those unmotivated teachers make it hard on everyone. I wish I could help you be in charge of your hogwon. I bet you would have the best hogwon ever! You would be the best hogwon master! The othe hogwons would all watch you and how you do things.
I don’t teach kids. I teach adults. They get jobs with what I teach them. Therefore, yes I make a difference.
And Dude, when a teacher teaches children badly, they make a difference, too. That’s my point.
I’ve never had any personal experience with SE Netizens,
but I like to think up jokes:
How do you catch an SE Netizen?
Hide behind a bush and say, “?Π? ??LJŰ ??۸??æquot; in a falsetto voice.
How do you hide from an SE Netizen?
In a library.
How many Event dancers does it take to change a lightbulb?
As many as The Playboy can get on his stepladder.
Have you heard about the SE Netizen doll?
You wind it up and it falls into a coma.
Have you heard about the compact dictionary for SE Netizens?
The only words listed are ?ҁ֠and ?Ɓ֮
Why did the SE Netizen turn down a job offer?
The apartment had only a single bed.
What do you call a group of Korean girls who like SE Netizens?
Masochists Anonymous.
Why did the average IQ at the Mary Jane Bar go up 10 points?
The SE Netizens went on a vacation trip.
What do you call an SE Netizen who seeks mature and selfless relationships?
An outcast.
qbe9584: I came here fresh out of as your put it, seeking work and life experience of a different kind I’d had at home.
That does not mean I am not a dedicated teacher who cares about their job, students and the Korean culture.
I turned up to work drunk once- when I was called at 8am on a Saturday morning and asked to arrive in half an hour to cover for another guy who’d done a runner.
That guy, by the way, was a very experienced teacher- had an MA in education, had been teaching for about 25 years- yet it was him, not myself, who did the runner and behaved irresposibly.
What’s more ‘DUDE’- NOT ALL TEACHERS ARE FROM AMERICA!
You say several times, it is because of “bad american teachers…” but nationality has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of teaching either.
So I agree with you that people should be responsible, work hard and do their best- not mess around.
HOWEVER, teachers are human. To expect teachers to all be conservative, celibate, sober individuals is completely unrealistic. As humans we all make mistakes- maybe a wet t-shirt contest is one of them for some people. AS humans we are not infallible and should not be condemned for a mistake that is irrelevant to our work, and really none of anyone else’s business!
You should have an MA to teach? I agree wiht the other responders- fine, if the companies are willing to pay off my $30,000 college loan!
Education is something that all people should have a right to, but, while embracing capitalism, it’s a vicious circle that sometimes you DO get what you pay for.
So then the schools, realising that they can’t afford these teachers, hire the next best thing- a pretty face.
Not the next most qualified.
An attractive photo will get anyone a job in Korea, sadly enough.
Why are many of these teachers from USA and Canada? Because of how many schools want only “North American native speakers". It’s amazing how many places I called after my first year looking for a better job, having teaching qualifications, experience, some command of the KOrean language and an enthusiasm to teach, and was told they wouldn’t even take my application because, although I AM a native English speaker, I am not from Nothern America.
So why accuse the teachers of coming here unjustly when someone invited them to, provided their air tickets, signed their visa documents and rolled out the red carpet.
Supply and Demand.
That’s my rant for the day.
Hey the blond, I think Dude was making fun of that guy qbe9584 and koreans in general who think all foreigners in Korea are American.
I hope so- because after years here I am sooooo sick of being called American! It’s not insulting to me, but the fact that a whole nation can be that closed minded, and that THERE ARE OTHER NATIONALITIES HERE other than American and Russian, drives me up the wall!
Dude was talkin’ smack. Good for him. It’s
refreshing to see someone defend folks who shouldn’t
be in the job they have.
Blonde: I read your messages and it sounds like
you’ve had quite a time here. I’m a sleepy person at
the moment, so forgive me if I ramble. For review, I
quote myself thusly: “I’m not asking for everybody
to be some Uber Instruktor, who can teach English
through direct mental transmission, and who has 90
degrees and 120 certifications. There are plenty of
solid, rigorous intructors who weren’t formally
trained. I listen to them and take their advice. I
share what I know. Hell, I have a standing offer of
gimbap and coffee for anyone willing to talk shop.”
In terms of you showing up to work impaired, that was
surprise call. Couldn’t be helped. But it sounds like
it was an exception, not a practice. It wasn’t a
power lunch, or a late night/early morning on a night
when you were expecting to work.
Runners are a paradox for me. They’re guys who
probably should be leaving. I just wish that the
career drunks would go, too.
We teach a court skill. There is no reason on God’s
green Earth that everybody in Korea has to know
English. It may as well be Swahili for all the use
it’s going to do the average student.
Yes, English-is-an-International-Language etc. But
most won’t leave here. Most won’t use this past
their college entrance exams.
So, the whole thing really boils down to a matter of
taste and culture. The bigger set of screw ups in the
cohort of teachers, the bigger the backlash against
future English instruction, even when it is warranted,
like in government or corporate sectors. I see a
reasonable possibility of a culture arising in the
distant future where there is resistance to English
intruction of any kind. When the English Spectrum deal
went off, it went to the teachers, even though Playboy
wasn’t specifically noted as being a teacher, and
nobody in the pictures was ID’d as being a student.
Foreigners only got bothered if they were mistaken for
a teacher. Within our cohort are some serious
screwups. I can’t make them leave, but I don’t have
to like ‘em either.
Blonde, I’m not asking for perfect. I’m asking for
consciencious. We’ve got folks who aren’t interested
in giving it a good shot as an instructor here. And
something I go back to a lot is that there are so many
of them, that the schools have come to depend on the
lack of ability of the native English speaking
teachers. The Korean teachers have Educational or
related degrees. I also believe they have to be
certified. At most schools I’ve seen, the Korean
teachers do all the real instructional work. .
Basically, the position held by the native speaker is
a dead-end, cake job.
Hypothetically, if Dude went back he would find
another job, but I’m going to put money that it
probably wouldn’t be as a teacher. If I went back, I
would go back to teaching ESL. It’s what I did before
I came here. Bad instruction is the reason my classes
were full in the US. The folks got off the plane, and
found out that they didn’t have enough English to get
anything but a manual labor job. It hurt to watch.
What I learn here I’m taking back home so I can do my
job better, and help folks get decent jobs.
And I put the people who come here as teachers for
reasons other than teaching in the same light as the
folks who faked credentials to get a nursing job back
in the States. Somebody took advantage of a situation
to do a job for which they weren’t qualified, and
somebody got screwed. It was the shared fault of the
applicant and the hospital hiring staff, but it was
the patients who were injured. So, Blonde, if I
offered you $60,000 a year to be a nurse, I’m betting
that you would have the scruples either to turn the
job down, or honestly present yourself, and make a
good effort to get better while you’re there. I would
also expect you would get pretty pissed off with a guy
who put up a medical fetish site that smeared your
hospital, or other nurses who show up to work drunk
and hit on the patients.
Also as a closer, I had actually been told by a Canadian to refer to Canadians as Americans too as US citizens aren’t the only Americans. No offense was meant. I figured it was like calling a German or Spainiard a European.
Where do you work qbe9584?
Hi kromxone, qbe9584 works at a hogwon. He teaches english to children.
Just changed jobs.
First, taught in the States with a Vocational Ed Program, then for the State Goverment in ESL. Taught in the Community Education ESL and Correctional ESL programs. While doing this I was working on my Masters in Education. Came here to work the Adult Ed side of a Hogwan, as the folks I talked with said it would be a good practicum.
Had adult classes for my brief tenure at my Hogwon, but was mainly with children. Last straw was kindergarten. I don’t know squat plus one about child development or kindergarten instruction. Researched kinder curricula and talked with Kinder specialists, and found I would need to speak Korean for any worthwhile instruction to occur. If you don’t do kindergarten right, you can do some serious damage.
To be fair, the school is run very well. But, as I was placed well outside of my expertise, and what methods I did have were more or less ignored, I quickly came to the realization that the school was depending on me to be white and worthless. I looked around at other schools, and found the same set up. Then I talked with the Native teachers themselves, and found out why.
About 60% were a mix in varying ratios of good heart, good training and good experience. The remaining 40% sound like Dude.
So, for a variety of reasons, I bought out my contract, and I’m currently working in a small University. Places will be kept vague as I have put up some pretty strong opinions here, and our community is small and bitter. Right, Dude?
Kromozone: What’s your background?
And how about you Dude? What’s yours?
강미 wrote:
>These expressions of outrage must be from the same men who supported the recent crackdown on prostitution.
Thanks for that post; I had a really good laugh about that one.
An interesting sociological experiment would be to put a hidden camera in a room salon featuring Russian women, and then post the pictures of the drunken ajossi’s getting busy on the net. See how many of the same people feel driven to express outrage on that one.