Impressions

OK, well the first 1/3 of my year is almost done, and I figured it's about time to give you some of my serious impressions about Korea. But first, take a look at this letter a student wrote to a college admissions officer after his interview (all of the spacing is actually how it looked). I guess I shouldn't make fun of my kids so much, but sometimes they just leave themselves vulnerable to attack:

Dear Mr. ----

Hellow?

My name is Lee(Roy)Kim, the smile man.

I am a student that is passionate to go to your school, -------.

I am really sorry that my reply is late.

anyway,

Because I knew that this school was one of the hardest and the best school to attend, I was very nervous before the interview was held. Like it's reputaitions the interview questions were stunning, "How do you learn?"

At first I did not know where to start my response, I would like to thank you for explaining me how to find a way to answer this question.

After the interview, I knew that I would be thrilled to attend this school if I get a chance.

I hope to see you again when I go to the school tour this winter.

Sincerely, Lee (Roy) Kim the smile man

Leroy, as I call him, is certainly a deep thinker. How DO you learn, smile man? The smile man's letter was perhaps only surpassed by another student's response to the SAT Essay question, "Is it important to be able to 'unlearn' what we have grown up thinking?" His thesis: "No, because unlearning can be dangerous. For example, if I unlearned that all black people have guns, i would be in much more dangerous situation. Because they do." Indeed.



So, down to my impressions of this cool/lame/traditional/modern/dirty/clean/strange country I am in. This post is not for the "attention span-impaired," as I have a lot to describe. You can't say I didn't warn ya...


Before I get to the culture critique, I'd like to start by saying that Korean students are not exactly the most vivacious kids I've ever laid eyes on. I liken them to downtrodden peasants in 14th century England, just hoping to survive one more day. Except they are solving math problems, not hoeing potatoes. The one energetic girl in my class brings me oranges every day and has asked her mother if she can marry me (the answer was yes, by the way). She also bought me three pairs of socks for Christmas. I don't know what to read into that. Anyways, the bad thing about this job is that my classes are taught to those students who sign up each day. So, I have new students every day, every class. It never affords me the opportunity to get to know them, and it makes it so that I never really know how many students I will have in class (ranges from 3-20). I don't even know what/when I'll be teaching on any given day because of this system. Getting to know groups of students would make this job much more enjoyable and allow me to really get my students interested and involved. Instead, I have to spend a lot of time repeating myself, and making sure everyone is caught-up with the material.

Now, for the social science textbook stuff. There are a few things that are very specific about Korean culture that I can describe: 1) the introversion and stress caused by education, 2) obsession with looking Western, and 3) the role of women. Takes notes, this will be on the final.

1) Because the culture is one in which, traditionally, the young take care of their elders later in life, the young are expected to work their butts off at school in order to get the best jobs. In this sort of atmosphere, naturally the competition to do well becomes fierce and after-school institutes like mine, called hakwons, come into existence to give students an edge over other students. But then all the other students, to keep up, need to go to hakwons too, and so on. I believe there was a Dr. Seuss book about this, where Sylvester McMonkey McBean offers the Sneetches without stars on their bellies a chance to have them by going through his Star-On machine, for three dollars. The old star-bellied Sneetches are furious until McBean tells them about his Star-Off machine, costing ten dollars. This continues until the Sneetches are penniless and McBean leaves a rich man. Old man McBean, in this case, is Mr. Park, and the hakwon is his English-On machine. He charges a fair bit more than $3, however. But just like in Dr. Seuss's book, these Sneetches will wise up soon and realize that they never needed that star on their belly in the first place. I'm pretty sure I have mangled this Dr. Seuss story that is usually used in analyzes of peace negotiations between waring countries, but I do like a good Sneetches reference.

The hakwon system is cut-throat, much more so than anything in America, and one which leaves little to no room to focus on an extracurricular like sports or music. Students obsess over their class rank because it is based on just four tests throughout the year. Furthermore, admission to Korean Universities is solely based on the results of one examination in the middle of senior year, sa-neung. Every single student I've ever talked with about the Korean education system dislikes it and wishes to go to an American school.

One of the reasons for disliking the Korean public school system is the way things are taught. It is ALL about memorization. A teacher lectures, the students take notes. There is NO discussion at all. Public schools do not really assign homework; they expect the kids to memorize and work things out on their own (at hakwons). There are no analytical essays or reports or projects to be graded; the majority of a student's education is expected to be done at hakwons.

I don't teach at a public school, obviously, but I hear this same description from all my students at hakwon. They spend most of their time sleeping at school (really) because they learn everything from their paid after-school hakwon sessions. Did you know there are over 100,000 English-speaking foreign teachers at hakwons in Korea? And here I thought I was special. Kids go to hakwons for English, History, SAT study, college application, Math, Physics, etc. On average, they attend from 5 to 9 hours of additional schooling at hakwons after regular school gets out. Some of my SAT students, after taking the test and reviewing it from 5:30-10:00 pm, have to go to a science hakwon until 1 am! Many students don't EVER have dinner at home and return from hakwons after midnight. And remember, this is a schedule that includes Saturday! The Korean education system looks inefficient as a result of this hakwon system that is detracting from the accountability of regular schools, yet is so widely accepted in this society. The newly elected Korean president, Lee Myung Bak (or, "horse face", as I know him), has vowed to change the education system, but I'm not yet sure how he plans to do it. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence to learn that his two children are attending American schools...

Interestingly, I asked my students if they supported the idea of hakwons and they all generally agreed that they were necessary for various reasons, especially because they think that they would not learn anything on their own if not for hakwons. Essentially, they feel they need someone constantly hovering over them, pounding material into their heads. They are not used to doing work on their own, like research projects.

When I ask my students, "Do you hate hakwons?" they say yes; however, when I ask them, "Would you send your kids to hakwons?" they also say yes. Almost all Korean public school students attend these after-school hakwons, just to give you an idea. Their parents ascribe such importance to the name value of colleges like Yale that they push their kids to the absolute limit to achieve their Ivy League goal. I think it's safe to assume that most Americans are under no illusion that because a person went to a big-name school that he/she will be successful. I think most of us more reasonably think that it is the motivation of the person that determines success. But Korean businesses put a lot of stock in a name like Yale on the diploma, and parents know this. How do you think I got this $50,000+, apartment provided, first-year, no experience, teaching job? I literally sent in a single e-mail asking to know more about this opportunity (from my Yale e-mail address), and received a call from the Korean recruiter within two hours, telling me I was just PERFECT for the job, but not telling me any actual info about the school or teaching. No, I had not sent a resume, or a cover letter, or anything at all. My school plasters the Harvard and Yale banners of its teachers anywhere it can, because that's what parents want to see.In fact , simply speaking native English is good enough for many hakwon teaching jobs here (less reputable than my school's jobs); I actually read on another Korean teacher's blog that his school's kindergarten teacher down the hall used to be a bounty-hunter in Mexico.

Hakwons, when it comes to college admission work, are somewhat corrupt. If a mother comes in, dragging her son behind her, and tells my boss that her son must get into New York University, and he needs help with his college applications, my boss finds me and says I need to "help" this student with his applications. Some of these kids cannot speak or write English! Thus, my boss does not so much want me to "help" as he wants me to rewrite the translated version of the essays and get this kid into the school (the funniest things about Korean students' essays is their love of metaphors; everything is a "tiger eager to pounce", or an "eagle spreading its wings"). I have not been so amenable to this, and have been simply making suggestions and comments, rather than changes to the sentences and ideas themselves. Sometimes, if the student is closely connected to the school in some way, my boss will call me into his office and say, "James, we need a final draft of this by tonight...understand?" I nod my head, go back to work, make a few changes to terrible ideas/sentences and e-mail the paper back. I have become pretty cynical about this, as you can see. I would hate to think that I'm unfairly helping kids get into schools that most definitely do not deserve to get in. The kids themselves don't even understand what's going on. It's their parents who drag them through this process kicking and screaming, making deals with hakwons to get their kid into good American schools.

Also concerning education: physical punishment by teachers shows that Koreans are serious about their education. I understand that public school students, if they are late to class, are slapped or told to go outside and run around the field ten times before coming inside. In my own classes, I try to keep an energetic atmosphere in the class, and, just when things are starting to go well and I've got the students talking, the headmaster comes in to every class to check homework, and, if a student doesn't do homework, he uses a ruler to whack their open palms (the lightest punishment), firmly smack them in the head a few times, and even head butt them (no kidding)! There is usually no need for more than the ruler, and it never becomes outrageously violent, don't get me wrong, but it is disconcerting to sit there in silence and watch him take their heads into his hands, and head butt them. I mean, really! This is nothing out of the ordinary for either him or the students though, and he always smiles at me and asks about my day before leaving. He is a very nice man and I like him a lot, but the students sit up straight and buckle their lips when he comes into the room. All teachers in public schools have their own personal canes/sticks in their desks or hanging on the wall, I am told. None of my students has ever responded "yes" when I asked if physical punishment is good for discipline in schools.

2) The obsession with the West, as I will term it, is interesting. Obviously American culture is everywhere in the world these days. You can't go anywhere without finding American movies and music being played. But what I mean is how so many Koreans want to not only dress like us, but to literally change their bodies to look more Western. I have heard that plastic surgery is a booming business in Seoul for young people because of the desire to have "bigger eyes". Every girl I have asked about this has said that the MAJORITY of girls in Korea have had plastic surgery on either their eyes (to make them wider), their noses (to make them less flat), or their jaws (to make them narrower). In my TOEFL classes, which I mentioned above about creative thinking, sometimes there is a question that asks about the qualities of a good person. Almost all the girls respond with something along the lines of "tall, blonde, big eyes". Clearly these girls are deep-thinkers. Well, Korean men are not tall, not blonde, and don't have big eyes. I know this is a very simplistic example to use, from teenage girls in my class, but the men of any culture want to impress the women, and if the women want Western looks, it kinda puts the men in a tight spot. Not that there is any surgery that makes you taller and not many Korean men dye their hair blonde, but I think there is some tension between Korean men and Western men because of the Korean womens' desire for Western looks. I guess I shouldn't be complaining, right?

3) Lastly, the ladies! This is a major economic power, South Korea, but it is still in the 1920's of American thinking about women. Women work in the home or help run the family restaurant or maybe have a clerical job, and that is it (foreign women teachers are obviously a different category). You have to be a pretty woman to get a job as a secretary in a nice office. Ugly women, unfortunately, you do not see employed anywhere but convenience stores and the like. Blunt, but true. This does not mean that girls are given less education than boys (nowadays, at least); I think the girls in my classes are actually brighter than the boys! I think by the time this young generation grows up, the role of the sexes will be on more even footing. It is so difficult to judge how fast Korean society is maturing because it has only been 60 years since they were freed from a truly horrific Japanese colonial occupation and began a democratic society where women could live in a modern society. Well, the democratic part didn't start until the late 1980's, but you get my meaning. The women's movement in America was going for a lot longer than that to expand the female sphere to where it is today. Also, you may have heard of Korean Karaoke Rooms. At these places, which are everywhere, you can actually pay for pretty women to come sing with you. In many of these singing rooms, you can wink-wink nudge-nudge with the manager to purchase "special services" from the women. They are essentially karaoke-brothel houses. I have been told that over one million Korean women work in these places, selling their "services", not because they are sinful depraved souls but because those are the highest paying jobs for women in Korea.

So, those are my observations of Korea. There lots of other little stuff, but you might fall asleep while reading if I listed it all.

Final thoughts. I wrote in my last blog that I don't really know what to think right now about the future. I vowed when I left the US that I would not get to the end of my year in Korea and realize that I have nothing planned for the (immediate) future. I know I still have a long time, but it worries me a little that I still don't even have a clue. I don't especially want to apply for a finance job via online apps and all that jazz, but on the other hand maybe I should. Or, I've always envisioned myself running a business, but I've never thought of what I would do. I've even pondered writing something, seeing as I spend a lot of time doing that anyway. This business of teaching how to write essays, speaking well, and reviewing the SAT is just a job, nothing I can get excited about. I consider myself good at my job and try my best to teach well, but I know I need to do some serious thinking about what I'll be doing 10 months hence.

For that matter, I don't even know where I want to be. There's always New England, around friends. But then there's the rest of the world, too! Not that I'm crazy about gallivanting off to the far corners of the map. It's just a possibility. But possibilities are nice. Friends would be nice to be around, but I need something to want in life, first. I know that sounds forlorn, but don't worry, I'm just anxious for something to look forward to. Whether it's a job I like, or something else.

I'll keep you up to date if any of these opinions of mine change. And now, I'm gonna make like a tree and get outta here.

(if you didn't get that reference, shame on you)

Spotless Mind

(unfortunately my camera is busted, so no pictures)

One of my students asked me today if I was Canadian. I said, "No, why would you think that?" He replied, "Because all Americans are fat, and you are not fat." Take that for what you will...

A coworker who lives below me just got a cat this weekend. She got the cat from an animal adoption agency that looks for a permanent owner while she takes care of it. I've never been a cat person, and cats have never shown me much love. But, I have to say, I do like this cat. It's still very small, and it has some sort of disease that has stunted the growth of the hair on the tip of it's tail, and it has cataracts in one eye. I've seen it run into unseen walls other conspicuous objects more than once. As I said, I like this cat.

You might have heard that Korean kids play lots of video games. Whatever you heard, you didn't hear enough. Now, the government has recognized they actually have a serious health/economic/social issue on their hands because of the amount of time their kids spend online. Check out the cyberspace addiction boot camps the government has set up. The picture of the addicts itself is pretty funny, if you're into the whole brevity thing.

So. Thanksgiving in Korea. The day before, my boss told all of us American teachers that he would take us out for dinner. I was expecting it because Korean bosses are almost supposed to take their employees out on a somewhat regular basis. He pulled me aside and showed me a picture on his cell phone of what we would be eating. It was the decapitated and seemingly deep-fried head of a quail. "We will have bird for Thanksgiving," he assured me. Luckily, quail heads are tough to come by in Korea, so we ended up stuffing ourselves on the "turkey of the sea" for Thanksgiving instead--squid. And instead of cranberry crumb-cake, we had fried kimchi. In place of wine, we had soju. All in all, a pretty good Thanksgiving.

There are still a lot of superstitions in Korea. This is a modernized country, but underlying the big business and metropolis of Seoul is a very traditional culture (you'll probably read that exact same thing on any online blurb about Korea). I've graded multiple college essays that discuss fortune tellers and their role in the shaping of the authors' lives, and other essays concerning "objects" that people keep with them for a supernatural purpose. One particularly ridiculous belief is "fan death". This is the idea that, if you leave a fan blowing in your room when you go to sleep, it will create a vortex that sucks the air from the room and suffocates you. Well, I don't keep a fan blowing when I go to sleep. But that might have something to do with winter, and not impending doom.

Believe it or not, I got an opportunity to practice my French recently. I tagged along with a friend to a "French dinner" she had set up with someone via the internet. On my way to the dinner, I got nervous because I couldn't think of even the most basic words like "when" and "how"; I just kept mixing in Korean words. This was a problem I was having when first trying to speak Korea, I just kept mixing in French words. It's like there's only room for one extra language in my head, and when I try to think of one, I inevitably use some of both. Well, as long as you can speak some Frenglean we should get along just fine (that was the best way I could think to combine those three languages, and I have been thinking for a good while). At the French dinner, I was pleasantly surprised at how much French came back to me while talking. It was broken French to a certain extent, but it was always constant, and fluent at times.

As for Korean speaking, I'm getting better. I'm still taking classes and spending a good amount of time studying on my own, and have been able to have a few halting conversations over the past week. Unfortunately the "busy season" for work, meaning the 12-hour days, begins in mid-December and I won't be able to continue classes. Studying has been one of my hobbies thus far, however, so I think I will continue with it and, if all works out, have a language partner to talk with regularly.

And, just in case you forgot about the rest of the world while deciding whether Hill-dog or Obama will be the next ruler of the free world (is that an accurate breakdown yet?), the Korean Presidential election is next month. I've begun to see street-corner stump speeches lately, and, although I don't know what they're saying, I've read a bit online about the candidates. Most of the presidential policies are focused on domestic issues, mainly closing the opening wealth-gap and unemployment. If you think about, Korea has crammed about 200 years worth of economic development into about 50 (and it shows in both the physical infrastructure of the city and greedy business philosophy of the young people). What has happened is that the Korean economy is one step ahead of its society. In 50 years, it has voluntarily adopted Western business ideas to create huge corporations to get rich quick. These adopted business philosophies are in quite contradiction with the Confucian lifestyle Korea has lived with for a long time. 50 years is not enough time for social ideals to change, because, literally, those same Koreans that were around BEFORE 1950 and remember the older values are still alive! As my boss described to me when I was talking with him, "Korean youths are immoral and only concerned with money. They no longer respect anything." My boss is 45, by the way, in case you were imagining an 80 year-old miser with a penchant for hating on young'ins. Yes, he was born after 1950, but Korea didn't completely give itself to the economic Dark Side until the 80's, when a military dictator took firm grasp of Korea and forced development down its throat. Naturally, some groups of people (meaning, the majority) have fallen behind in the "economic count" during this rapid growth. Hmmmm. I just realized I've been getting carried away from the presidential election topic. But, to be fair to myself, so often these days I sometimes find myself generalizing about an aspect of Korean society or city or business, only to stop and have to rethink the whole thing because Korea (Seoul especially) has undergone crazy change in such a quick amount of time. The old and young generations here are very much at odds because of the rapidness of change. Anyway, I'll devote my next entry to discussing my impressions of Korea after three months, but, for now, suffice it to say that it is difficult to discuss any shortcomings of Korean life without putting it into a historical context. Yes, that is an obvious remark for any country. But also, Yes, many people forget it.

Another tidbit of Korean foreign policy lost on international ears is relations with North Korea. Though foreign policy is an ancillary concern in the Korean election because the candidates agree on most of it, the changes taking place in the North seem to be significant. I guess I always imagined that this would be a sudden change, and that, one day, Kim Jung-Il would die, the borders would open up, and people would cheer in celebration. But realistically it's happening as I write this. The idea of North-South reunification is becoming somewhat of a reality. Pyongyang has hosted more foreign diplomats in the past few months than ever to discuss the opening of North Korea, literally and economically. There will be a train running between Pyongyang and Seoul for the first time in 60 years next month, for the purpose of reuniting families whose oldest members are close to death.

I had dinner after a Salsa class with my classmates, one of whom was a Master Sergeant in the Army (a pretty good dancer, to boot). He told me he'd been there when the Berlin Wall was taken down (on duty), he'd been there when the Saddam statue was torn to the ground (on duty), and he thinks this North-South reunification will be the next big page in his lifelong history lesson. He was an interesting guy, so I'll describe him briefly. He is from the former British colony of Guinea in South America, where he designed airplane engines. Now, he is Master Sergeant of the Biological Weapons team (WMD team) of the US Army in Korea. He also is a semi-professional soccer player for Seoul United. And he dances Salsa. He insisted to me over and over that I had the right mindset and had made the right choice to come out to Korea and explore the world. He thought Korea especially was the right place to be because of the impending economic boom, though he did not mention when/why/where/how this boom would occur. He was just very sure of it. Regardless, he obviously is a traveled person and has seen some things in his day that I never will. I did appreciate his comment, because he seemed very sure that I was doing the right thing. More and more, though, I'm starting to feel that way too. More on that in a different entry, when I feel the urge to discuss such things. I'm going to go see this guy's soccer match next Sunday, apparently it's a championship game for his league.

Lastly (concerning the elections), I think it's safe to assume the US-Korean joint control of military operations here will continue. Plus, there was just the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries, giving all the more reason to maintain a strong relationship. Although, this does not mean people here in Seoul lose any love to the American soldiers in town on the weekends. Korean men especially don't like the idea of big, drunk, tough looking foreigners hitting on their women.

I'll try to get a new camera for my next entry, cuz I'm sure to lose some of your attention without visual enticement.

A dieu.