Resurrection | 다시 쓸거예요
2010/02/02
Before I left school, I asked some friends to pressure me to communicate regularly. I’m ressurrecting this blog as an attempt to do so, as in addition to staying in contact I want to work at overcoming my fear of imperfection in projects, improve my writing, and improve my ability to explain myself.
Anyway, the principle danger in blogging is that, since I’m writing alone, on my own medium, I may wander from the interests of my readership. If this gets boring, crucify me in the comments.
For my first post in this resurrected blog of a (wannabe) peregrine scholar, I test this single-post, two-column format. Or … I subject you to my untested CSS…
Believe it or not, getting this nice two-column bilingual format in WordPress was a bit of a hack — you’re not supposed to be able to do styling in the free version of wordpress
대학교 졸업하기 전엔 친구한테 부탁 드렸다: “내가 연락 하고 싶은데 블로그 하지 않아면 좀 귀찮아주세요.” 친구가 날 귀찮지 않아도 블로그를 다시 쓰고 있다!
그렇지만 아마도 혼자 쓰니까 심심하게 독자들의 생각에서 심심하게 됄 건다. 이 건 안 됀다! 심심하게 돼면 열심히 날 귀찮아줘요!
참, 이 2-column format으로 쓸 수 있는지 알아요. 이제 이러게 쓸 거예요.
한국말이 틀리면 보내주세요. 내가 맞추고 싶은데요..
Response to an English teachers’ video
2009/07/08
I’m feeling kind of bad about this, because I’ve only posted comments on two expatriate blogs, and I fear that every time I do it I interrupt the thread. Well — the first time my post was off-topic, but the responses kept me alive (thanks, Linkd)! The second time was really too long for a comment, but I’ve already submitted it. Here I present the important bit of my blog-post-length comment, slightly edited as I read it for the fifth time.
The way to get rid of the “Foreign English teacher” stereotypes is not to complain about how you are mistreated, but to point out cases in which you are mistreated. Likewise, the target audience of this video should not be expats, but Koreans who _have not_ studied abroad. You need to convince the Korean public that the Korean media lies(1), that you are being treated unfairly, and that you’re not a monolingual, drug-dealing, over-confident a**h*le from Podunksville(2).
Do you understand Korea’s culture, biases and language(3)? Does it scare you, as a non-asian living in Korea? Then help work toward improving it. Translate your story into Korean. Make a manhwa about an English teacher which is funny, but respectful and culturally literate. Show your Korean friends a good time — without whores and drugs. Ostracize and deal with those individuals who make all foreigners look bad (I’m not sure how… although the English teacher turning another English teacher in might make a good story for the various Korean-language newspapers, it could also backfire.)
Meanwhile, fight for representation in the Korean press/government beaurocracy, for the enforcement of contracts and enforcement of teaching credentials, for the cleanup of Hongdae. If you haven’t already, learn Korean. Go further — Learn how to express political thoughts in Korean (but do be careful!) (4)
And then, remember not to lose view of the forest. If you want to sway a Korean mind, it’s probably not a good idea to talk about Dokdo, to point out sexual hypocricy, or to visit Hongdae with the intent of getting smashed. Better to agree on these small points, build friendships, and fix the major worldview so that you can walk the streets without fear.
Yes, it’s hard… probably too much for any one man. Which is why it needs to be a collective effort; why we need a reputable organization and a foundation to represent the interests of all law-abiding English-speaking foreigners. [I don't know if this is ATEK or not. Certainly, they are trying... but if you don't think they're doing a good job, start another organization yourself. It can't hurt to have more than one such effort, unless the lack of funding is inhibiting all progress.]
To change a cultural stereotype will be a long task, requiring the contribution of hundreds, and maybe this video is a start. But the linked video gets so much wrong : it isn’t in Korean (not even bilingual), it is mostly incoherent (what’s with the punching stick figures?), it tries to fight the unnecessary(5) battles (why is Dokdo relevant?), and it might even strengthen the Korean belief in the stereotype(6)!
It’s a long battle, but if many sensible people will agree to it, and put in a small bit of their time, it should be doable.
힘 내!
Footnotes
1) To actually upset the legitimacy of the Korean media is probably an insanely hard task, and may not be worth pursuing. My (bilingual) friends so far seem to trust the Korean media and believe the stories they see, without remembering the details. (According to them, the soldiers in 2002 were driving a car, and it was a “hit and run”; likewise, the poker party wasn’t really.
2) This actually seems to be the stereotype of my (bilingual) friends — including that of a Korean-American fluent in Korean(!).
3) I understand that Korea doesn’t have biases, and it may even be a stretch to affort “culture” to a country. Here I mean the dominant bias of individuals in the dominant Korean subculture.
4) I’m not there yet, so I’m being a bit of a hypocrite. However, I’m working my way through a Korean history book, so it can’t be long now. Actually, it might, depending on my command of grammar.
5) I almost called Dokdo a “small battle” — see! You’ve got to be careful!
6) It has been shown, however, that stright-up facts contradicting a predjudice are ignored, and later used to support the bias. So any work to reverse biases must be slow, insipid, and cultural. Ref: Err… I can’t find it. I’ll edit this post with a citation later.
