Dear Kushibo: What's across the street from the Itaewon McDonald's?

Ah, what's in today's mail bag?

Dear Kushibo, 

Tom, Kushibo, and Seoul Guy what’s across the street from McDonald’s in Itaewon? of course you don’t know. None of you actually lives in Korea. 

Signed,

Dreamboat Annie

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Dear Dreamboat Annie,

It's funny you should ask that, because almost at exactly the moment you left this comment at ROK Drop, I was actually in the McDonald's in Itaewon, munching on an Egg McMuffin set (Egg McMuffins are better in Korea than Hawaii for some reason).

But off the top of my head, I couldn't recall what was across the street from Mickey D's, except for some nice eatery a little bit up the hill, so I had to go back and snap a picture. It turns out there's a beauty shop that does Brazilian waxes and "manscaping" and has a bear baring a bare bear crotch to drive that point home. Is that what you were looking for? The number's on the photo I snapped (above).   

Yours,

Kushibo

Although Dreamboat Annie's motivation for that question was probably something else and she doesn't really care what's across the street from the Itaewon McDonald's, here's the picture I took anyway:

My finger has a special message for you.

In fact, this may have been just a dig from Annie, who has joined that bandwagon of people thinking I don't have any business posting so prolifically on Korea because I don't live in Korea. And indeed, although I am now in Seoul (well, Pundang, actually) and my actual home is here and I think in some way that constitutes living here, it has been three years since I was last in Korea. (She also thinks I'm paid to blog, but that misperception may be my fault.)

This is the longest I've been away since I was a teenager. This was not by design, since I had been coming back every six months or so and spending about two months a year in the Seoul area working (even in Hawaii I work for a Korean corporation), doing doctoral research, hanging out with friends and relatives, etc., etc., but some important personal matters that have been first and foremost (since right after I got to Hawaii in 2006) simply did not allow it in 2010 and 2011.

And indeed, it has been an eye-opening experience being away for this long. I've often said that, in terms of change, five years in Korea is like twenty years in the United States, and this "decade" being away has been eye-opening. The traffic patterns have changed, already ubiquitous coffee shops have spread like cockroaches, there's an obvious effort by city governments to create green open space, things seem more orderly and sophisticated, etc., etc. Things that are the same are the constantly-under-construction nature of Seoul.

Perpetual reinvention is the thing that is the same and makes everything different at the same time.

But even while I'm away, my own academic work keeps me up-to-date on what's going on "back home." And even if it did not, I have professional, social, familial, legal, and financial ties to Korea that keep the bond strong. (Three years of being away has left me with a bunch of fires to put out — from getting my finances reordered to paying three years of property tax to getting my vehicle working again to giving face time with my employers.)

That my point-of-view in my blog is so often against the grain of other English-language blogs has more to do with my personal and experiential background than with having been abroad for three years. Back in 2005 and 2006, before I went to Hawaii, I was just as "contrarian."

When I write things in support of, say, HIV testing for all English teachers (as well as all F-series visa holders and all ROK citizens) and criminal background checks for long-term (i.e., over 90 days) residents, more than a few English teachers tend to think I'm against them (especially when they forget things like this), and some choose to make it personal. The "You don't even live here!" meme is a popular one.

Of course, I'm not the only blogger who gets flak from the English-teaching crowd. The Marmot's name is being dragged through the mud because he had the audacity to agree that some of the bad reputation of English teachers as of late (I remember when English teachers were treated as honorable professionals) has been brought on themselves, at least as a group. And that's why he's being called a moron.

Of course, Marmot has long had his detractors, especially Gerry Bevers, who seems particularly bothered by The Marmot's mockery of Gerry's relentless effort to defend Imperial Japan. From his latest blog aimed at demonstrating that the Japanese are good people because Koreans are bad:

So, is the neutrality of The Marmot's Hole really debatable, especially when the man behind the blog wanders Korea wearing the traditional Korean clothing hanbok and brags about his eating of dogmeat?

Not the Marmot.
Some other guy
in apŭrikabok.

I don't know why people bag on The Marmot for wearing a hanbok. Back in Africa he also wore apŭrikabok (or whatever Africans wear) and, as Zen Kimchi noted, he looks damn sexy in a hanbok. It doesn't make him a sellout.

So I guess the point of this rambling post is that people go after me, people go after other bloggers with whom they disagree, and they justify it by making ad hominem attacks. Gerry has done it with me as well, back in my pre-Hawaii days when I was a way-too-frequent-commenter at The Assa Hole.

On the plus side, it can be fun and occasionally memorable. After a heated exchange (when is an exchange involving Gerry over Japan with anyone not heated?), Gerry asked if was going to respond to him or "have you already posted your one-comment limit for the day?"

To which I replied:

Sorry, Bevers, unlike you, I receive neither masturbatory joy nor subsidies from right-wing sources for flooding the Internet with a one-sided, historically skewed, Imperial-apologist view every time someone utters the word "Tokto," so I will try to limit my writing to just this one comment.

I soon thought better of what I'd written and issued a unilateral apology:

The last paragraph of my post up there was over-the-top. I apologize to Gerry and anyone else who may have been offended by that.

With a glimmer of humor (and no small amount of admission), Gerry replied:

No problem, Kushibo. Like Japan, I was taunting you.

But I had the last laugh:

Good, then. Like Japan, my apology may be meaningless. ;)

Ah, good times.

A less pleasant exchange was when Gerry, as he is wont to do, accused me of taking the Korean side on the Tokto issue (and Comfort Women issue, etc.) because of fear of my "Korean handlers." To which I replied:

[Gerry] Open your eyes, Kushibo, and stop kissing up to your Korean handlers. You have been in Korea long enough to know what is going on. You do have to be afraid. It is possible to live among Koreans without having to kiss their butt.

Fu¢k off, Gerry. Just because I don't believe that "Korea was Japan's greatest ally" and that it's all a big Korea-generalted lie that Korea was butt-fucked by imperial Japan doesn't mean I'm ass-kissing anyone.

I have been critical of Roh for his diplomatic war almost since I started my blog. i have written things that are harshly critical of some of the nationalist sentiments that bubble up in Korea. You, on the other hand, are unable to see anything that would suggest even the slightest bit of culpability on the part of Japan, either past or present.

The Black Dragon Society is sure as hell getting their money's worth from you.

I concur with all who think Gerry is an asshat (and possibly a paid shill like Christine Ahn seems to be for Pyongyang). Even though I actually called his school to defend him and protest his firing when he supposedly got kicked out over his Tokto views (which turns out not to have been true, according to them: they canned a whole bunch of people from that school because of restructuring, including his fellow English teacher, and Gerry was allowed to re-apply).

Anyway, I'm really in Korea, Dreamboat Annie. Send me an email through my Blogger profile page and we'll meet up and have a beer. If your userid is gender-appropriate and accurately descriptive, a few more beers.

...

UPDATED: Seoul Ministry of Education to phase out native English speakers by 2014

And replace them with robots. Or Korean non-native English teachers. Same-same. (I kid! I kid! I kid because I love... to kid!)

Needless to say, this is getting a lot of coverage in the K-blogosphere.

If this goes through (and don't expect for a minute it's a done deal), it might mean the end of cushy MOE jobs in the schools, but it might also mean a concurrent rise in demand at the hagwon level, as students (and their parents) look for a crutch (i.e., native teachers) now that that security blanket has been ripped away from them.

And of course, there's always employment in the provinces.

UPDATE:
The Marmot's Hole has a long discussion going on about this. Brian in Chŏllanamdo has a lengthy post that has links to other posts, though I think he puts too much blame on the Korean side of things and seems to lay none of this at the feet of the native English-speaking teachers who (from my experience in talking with some about this) often lack drive or interest or ability to work with their higher-ups to make their presence more effective, or even saw any responsibility to do so (e.g., "I get paid to teach and I teach, end of story," "I don't speak Korean so why should I go to teachers' meetings?").

I addressed some of that in my "epic rant" on English teachers from 2009.

UPDATE 2:
Asiapundits also has a good article worth reading (he uses the word "sacked" to refer to someone not getting their year-long contract renewed for another year). I left his comment there.

I certainly would agree that the administrators and schools deserve much of the blame, but the crop of teachers was a mix of highly qualified and motivated along with get-it-done-and-go-home or worse. A crapshoot, really, and that meant it would be difficult to impossible to consistently rely on the teacher supply to effect a better system.

They need to start over, get good input from teachers who actually care and who are willing to look introspectively at their side of the equation, get the same from KoKo teachers and administrators who will do the same, and rebuild. The demand, and hopefully the money, will be back.

By the way, that "little geniuses" photo you posted... the person who took it, presumably that 6th-grade child's teacher, has done some very serious privacy violations by sticking up a picture of the poor girl's work with her name attached. In fact, in some way this goes to what I'm saying: a Korean teacher could easily be reprimanded and possibly fired for such a breach, which they are trained to know not to do, but the foreign hires are on the fringes and (a) are not trained in such issues and (b) sometimes seem to lack common sense about them.

Seriously, what teacher would think it's okay to put up in a Flickr feed a child's test paper for the purpose of mockery, complete with her name?!

The latter part refers to the picture below, which I took the trouble to redact.

...

Korean English teachers preferred over foreign English teachers?

I guess all those articles on pot-smoking, child-molesting, skirt-chasing, drunk-teaching instructors have resulted in this shocking result: students, parents, and other educators prefer homegrown English teachers (assuming they speak English well) over native English-speaking teachers by about two-to-one.

Hmm... I was joking about it being all about the bad press, but I'm sure some will think that. What I think is really at work is the nervousness, uncertainty, and anxiety that so many KoKos feel when they learn English. They want, whether they should have it or not, to have someone hold their hand through the language learning process.

The thing is, most native-speaking English teachers cannot do that in Korean. And of course, those who do speak Korean reportedly are told not to do so. It's all a bit unfair, I suppose.

But I don't think this means the native-speaking English teachers are going anywhere soon. The survey was comparing them to Korean teachers who speak English well, which is almost a hypothetical creature in many schools. And there will always be those who feel that no matter how well a KoKo speaks English, it will never be as perfect and pure as an actual native, for whom there will always be a market.

Even despite the robots.

...

Kvetchpat of the day: "the dirtiest members of society"

Leave it to the Metropolitician to take a nice fluff piece on English teachers dressing up like Confucian scholars and cleaning up the local riverside park, and twist it into a story of English teachers (aka, "the dirtiest members of society") being negatively depicted as a miserable and wretched lot:

Pagoda apparently had its English teachers out in traditional Korean dress for a big cleanup detail. Is this a new branding exercise on behalf of foreign English teachers? The dirtiest members of society, out and about, cleaning up its own act? An symbolic baptism in the dress and manners of morally upright Confucian gentlemen? Well, at least it's a show that we're not out molesting children, raping hapless Korean maidens, or spreading HIV around town.

I certainly agree with the sentiment in the motto "I can do!" The irony of an English-teaching institute touting such a grammatically/idiomatically incorrect expression aside, I say all us dirty foreigners should adopt this positive attitude, a la "We can do, too!"

Perhaps the donning of duds from the days of aristocracy gone by will help stave off my hankering for seducin' elementary school children and getting innocent Korean virgins hooked on crystal meth.

For his uncanny ability to see negative portrayal of English teachers and foreigners wherever he looks, the Metropolitician earns our Kvetchpat of the Day award. I'd go over to his blog and announce his achievement in person, but he might take that Rhode Island-sized chip on his shoulder and chuck it at me.

...

Saving 15% could cost you your life

When I first saw this Geico commercial (with bonus footage here), I couldn't help but think they were directly influenced by this story from South Korea of robots in the classroom. See also here, here, here,  and here. (That story was of course mocked and ridiculed across the K-blogosphere here, here, here, here, and here — if you mocked them, too, send me a link.)

I'd also like to think they were inspired by my own apocalyptic take from the future.

The Huffington Post used a picture from Japan for this Korea story.
Feel free to make up your own caption for this one. 

...

UPDATED: Korea-obsessed British university student gets surgery to become Merong Girl (메롱걸)

ORIGINAL POST:
One of those popular urban legends about South Korea is that kids in English-obsessed South Korea are getting their tongues snipped (a procedure called lingual frenectomy) in order to pronounce English more accurately. I call it an urban legend because, while there certainly are people who have gotten the surgery done, it has reached the point where there are more stories about this supposedly popular Korean procedure in English-language media than there are people who have actually done it. I think.

Now the British media has brought us a twist on this story. It seems one university student in England is obsessed with Korean culture and learning Korean (see all those Korea books she's carrying), and (wait for it...) she has had a similar tongue-lengthening surgery in order to speak Korean better.

From the UK's Daily Mail:

Student Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones dreams of living and working in South Korea once she finishes university, even though she has never visited the country.

But while taking language lessons, the 19-year-old found that she couldn't pronounce certain crucial sounds in the Korean alphabet.

Her dentist suggested it may be because she was born with a slightly shorter than average tongue, caused by having an unusually thick lingual frenulum - the flap of skin that joins the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth.

After discussing the matter with her parents and language tutor, Rhiannon decided to undergo an operation to correct the condition, despite the fact it has never caused her any problems in speaking English.

She underwent a lingual frenectomy, which involves making an incision in the flap of skin. As a result, Rhiannon's tongue is now about 1cm longer, and she can say words that were impossible before.

Rhiannon, of Beeston, Nottingham, said: 'I'd been learning Korean for about two years, and my speaking level is now high, but I was really struggling with particular sounds.

'It became apparent after a little while that I was having trouble with the Korean letter 'L', which is very frequent and comes from a slightly higher place in the mouth than the English 'L', and that my tongue was too short.

'My pronunciation was very 'foreign', but now I can speak with a native Korean accent. The surgical procedure was my only option. It's not like you can stretch your tongue otherwise. I just decided enough was enough.

Poor lingual frenulum, you're hated on two continents.

Anyway, while in Korea I imagine a lot of anglophones would scratch their head and say, "What the...?!" for the same reasons we might do the same about six-year-olds with English-obsessed Korean mothers having the surgery (if you have a tiger mom, expect to get mauled a bit), back in the United Kingdom people are hemming and hawing about this surgical procedure having been covered by the national health insurance scheme. Apparently this Nottingham native is some sort of modern-day medical Robin Hood: stealing from the rich National Health Service and giving it to her poor, unable-to-pronounce ㄹ self.

Okay. But me? I smell a carefully crafted ploy by a young, smart, and reasonably attractive young lady to launch a career in Korea's public sphere: she's cute (never hurts with any job), speaks Korean pretty well (a plus for doing anything other than English teaching), has considerable interest in Korean culture (an ego massager for a large portion of the Korean masses), and has the kind of figure many Korean men like in Caucasian women (that's a euphemistic way of saying she has a good-sized chest while falling within the range of thin to nothing larger that chubby-cute). And I like her glasses.

So in conclusion: Get in touch with me, Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones, and I'll make you a star.

Seriously. And I've already christened you 메롱걸* (the only alternative is 혀녀). That's what we call 서비스.

* To understand what is 메롱 (merong), see the picture below:

above: South Korea's most famous English teacher

UPDATE:
This story has also become a post at The Marmot's Hole. Human rights lawyer Ben Wagner, who is highly skilled at finding bigotry where no one else does, has revealed that Merong Girl is promoting racist viewpoints:

All the best in to Rhiannon in her Korean language studies, but I wish she hadn’t chosen to perpetuate to the myth that race is somehow tied one’s ability to speak a language with native fluency. Ironically it’s an allegedly short “Korean tongue” which supposedly makes it difficult to produce the English L/R sounds, the Brit’s “short” tongue should have made her a natural if any of these nonsensical theories had any scientific basis.

Thank goodness for Mr Wagner, or else I wouldn't have realized Ms Brooksbank-Jones was perpetuating race-based myths. Here I thought that the reason for the surgery was that her tongue (i.e., not the tongue of most White people in England) was "shorter than average" and that she (i.e., not most White people in England) had "an unusually thick lingual frenulum." Now I realize she's some sort of White Inferiorist. I may have to rethink launching her career.

An epic rant (on the difficulty of hiring good teachers)

This is from a comment I left at Brian's site two years ago, but in the interest of taking some of my longer, more informative, and/or more researched comments on other blogs and migrating them to my own, I thought I'd reprint this one here in one glorious post.

It starts in response to one commenter suggesting that Koreans don't want native English-speaking "foreigners" to teach English but would prefer to have Koreans teaching English.

[SoKos] want reliable people to teach English. There are some hard-working, clever, innovative, and enthusiastic native-speaking English teachers in Korea — lots! — but there are also some flaky-assed muther fu¢kers who make the whole lot of you look very, very bad, because when hiring schools look at a résumé it's a frickin' crapshoot as to which ones are going to be the guy or gal who doesn't show up on time, doesn't do lesson plans, comes to work hungover on Monday, takes drugs, puts more energy into weekend private tutoring than his/her visa-sponsored (and legal) job, etc., etc.

In the past, I've been in a position of hiring and taking care of "foreigners," and I've gotten really really fu¢ked over by people who just didn't give a sh¡t about their job. There was one person who was hired for a year-long contract and when she heard it might not be renewed started LYING about why she couldn't come in to work. When I confronted her about it, she said she didn't feel obliged because she wasn't going to get rehired — even though she had another two months on her contract and nobody told her she wasn't getting rehired (she was supposed to, but a final decision was not made because of budgetary constraints).

Or the person who made me drop an entire day's worth of work and skip my own grad school classes because she'd lied to us about getting her visa paperwork done, forcing me to go and grovel to immigration.

Or the person who promised to be at a certain place at a certain time but then called in sick because she was actually hungover. Twice in two weeks.

Or the person who walked out because the money wasn't being paid up front instead of at the end like everyone else was getting, while cussing out my superior because the Koreans were all trying to cheat him.

And that was just last week. ;)

In fact, none of them were Black, as the fellow on the right is supposed to be.

And through all this, the native Koreans I work with are just standing there with a collective bewildered look of "WTF???"

And I and every foreigner working with us — Korean or White or Black — is just wanting to shoot these people because it is THEY that are making Koreans distrust foreign workers in Korea because it is such a crapshoot.

Do none of you work with flaky people like I described? Am I just incredibly unlucky in who we encountered? The experience of others I know says, "No," it's par for the course. I know that for each one of these flakes, there are several more who do a passable job, and at least one or two people who really go the extra mile, but there is an inherent insecurity about which ones will that be.

And THAT — plus the lack of time investment that an outsider has put into getting into his/her position — is why the Kwangju School Board or the Seoul Ministry of Education is loath to entrust a handful of "foreigners" (God, do I hate that word) with greater responsibility and authority.

It has to be negotiated and it has to be earned. Nobody, no organization, is really working on the negotiation part. That's what ATEK should be doing, that's what KOTESOL should be doing. Everybody should be returning English teaching to the professional status it once was. The backpackers and those with a non-invested backpacker mentality/attitude are eroding the profession. Not all of them, but a lot.

Trust, professionalism, seriousness, and dedication are what need to become the stereotypes of this profession. Whining about bad treatment is worthless (after a point). Figure out what you can do about you, or rather, what your group can do about your group.

None of these people is me.

The discussion itself was interesting, and I encourage you to go to Brian's and read the rest. One person suggested that "a lot of it could have been avoided if the organization you were employed by took the time to do interviews and get to know the people you were bringing over." To which I replied:

Interview?! We were supposed to interview them?

Seriously, though, we did interview them. Each and everyone one of them, except for the guy who thought Koreans were cheating him by not paying him up front; he was recommended by someone I knew.

None of these people either.

And that is another problem in the Koreans-versus-foreigner dynamic: there is a tendency whereby Koreans feel responsible if they recommend someone for a job (even to the point of troubleshooting if there is a problem) whereas Westerners would recommend whomever is available, and then assume they're doing you a favor (which they are).

There are loads of exceptions to this (I know plenty of Westerners who act very "Korean" about recommendations for important positions, and I know lots of Koreans who go against the Korean grain on this), but it's a good rule of thumb when it comes to understanding the different POV where Koreans and Westerners might be coming from. ...

Even though interviews are a highly imperfect process, it is better to do them than to not. There are types of people you will weed out in an interview that you wouldn't if you saw them just on paper. But narcissists and charisma men who do well in interviews can also be among the least dedicated to their job and workplace, so that's part of the crapshoot.

Korean images of "English teacher"

I was going to insert some "artwork" in the previous post. Naturally, since it's about English teachers, I did a Google image search for "영어 강사" (literally, English instructor).

I kid you not: these were the prominent images that popped up on the first page...

This is Almond Tease [source], apparently a formerly Canada-based porn star who returned to Korea to teach English.

Here's another [source]. The Googlers really seem to like her.

And this is Black Quincy [source], an English teacher who decided homemade porn would be the way to fame and fortune.

At least, this Christopher Neil guy above didn't pop up on the first page of the search, but he was in one of the Almond Tease articles.

Nice. I don't know what Google's search algorithm is, but my understanding is that current results are strongly influenced by the popularity of past choices.

And it's not all porn and infamy. We finally have a photo that doesn't require pixelation to hide her identity. Above is an actress playing an English teacher that figured prominently in the image search [source]. Figured prominently. That was sort of a pun. I know slim likes those.

Anyway, it's no wonder so many English teachers think SoKos "hate whitey."

This Is How Much the Korean Society Hates You

South Koreans, I am told, hate English teachers and want them all to leave.

Well, I never realized how strong that animosity was until I saw this:

The education authorities have set in motion a long-term plan to cut back on the number of foreign English teachers, trimming several hundreds of jobs at primary and secondary schools in Gyeonggi Province from this spring semester.

According to the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, the budget allocated to hire foreign English teachers fell to 22.7 billion won ($20 million) for this year from 30 billion won in 2010.

That's right. SoKos hate "whitey" so bad that they have effected an economic downturn in order to engineer an excuse to reduce their numbers. Vicious.

Seriously, though, while it would really, really, really, really suck to think last December that you had a job come March but only in February did you find out you wouldn't, that's life in the real world. You were hired for a one-year basis as a temporary worker with no guarantee of renewal.

And Kushibo sympathizes. Really. I was promised three years of a teaching assistantship but, thanks to the Hawaiian economy floating in the toilet bowl, that was axed at the last minute.

It sucks.

But the same article notes that Seoul is slightly increasing its number of English-teaching hires, while Brian suggests going to China or going to school.

And of course, there are always hagwons.

Ha ha. No, seriously. China or a TOEIC certificate. Go.

Semi-portability of teaching visas?

With a hat tip to Stafford (he reads the KT so I won't have to!), it appears that Immigration is going to allow a lot more freedom for secondary work for E-series visa holders (including the E2 and E1 status that so many English teachers are on). Quoting Stafford:

Finally it seems Immigration has legitimized a practice that has been going on ever since I have been in Korea. That is the practice of private Hakwon contracting out their Native English Speaking Teachers on E2 visas to businesses and other miscellaneous organisations to teach English. And i would say it hasn't just been Hakwon, but also the occasional University that has had it's E1 visa holders teaching in offices and community centres - all technically against the law and with little recourse for the teachers themselves who, at least until last week, were subject to cancellation of their visa and possible deportation if caught, while the employers were in line for little more than a slap on the wrist.

The Korea Times article he is working from is here.

This would mean greater work opportunities for E-series visa holders (allowing them to work "second jobs" more freely and more often), while at the same time it would allow some hagwon or other industries to utilize anglophone labor and skill sets, in conjunction with the anglophone's employer, without going through the costly and time-consuming effort of visa sponsorship. A win-win (or even win-win-win).

But wait, there's more. This could mean that those places least able to take on a full-time worker, and therefore most likely to have trouble meeting payroll on time, providing decent housing, creating a work environment where a non-Korean-speaking anglophone can spend most of the day without pulling his/her hair out, will be able to get by simply with a legal "temp" coming in once, twice, or a few times a week. That's now you, if you're an E-series visa holder.

Given that places like that are more likely to be "fly by night," this might mean that the fly-by-night operations will have to behave better in order to attract steady "temps," because now they will no longer rely on a captive worker who's stuck there for the year. Additionally, this might mean fewer disgruntled English teachers whose primary gripes stem from workplace shenanigans.

This also means that a smaller supply of English teachers can more flexibly fill the demand. Great news if you've already got a job, but bad news if you're back in Manitoba or Mississippi looking for work in Masan. This might even mean more money for the work that is available.

It's also possible that the greater flexibility might mean more actual work available, as potential workplaces that had need for anglophones, but not so much that they could justify the cost of bringing on a full-time hire, come looking for the newly freed-up E2s and E1s.

An interesting and significant development, to say the least. A lot will depend on how "subsidiary" is defined, but I would imagine that would be covered with "contracted" work. Don't be surprised if your visa sponsor expects a percentage or a finder's fee of sorts (and since they're going through the financial burden and legal responsibility of sponsoring you, perhaps they deserve something).

Ban Kimoon wants mandatory HIV testing to end for foreign teachers

Back in the 1980s, there was a joke about AIDS that went something like this:

Q: What's the toughest part about getting AIDS?
A: Trying to convince your parents you're Haitian.

Read a bit further and you'll see the relevance (and if the joke makes no sense to you, that should underscore my point about living like it's 1985).

Anyway, remember a few weeks ago, when I pointed out that E6 and E9 visa holders getting compulsory HIV testing lifted while E2 visa holders would have to continue with the mandatory testing was the result of two different government ministries making two different policies? [In case you're new to South Korea's visa regimen, the E6 is ostensibly an "entertainer" visa, but many of the people who get this visa are sex workers. ATEK, the Association of Teachers of English in Korea, "applauds" removing mandatory HIV testing for this group.]

At the time, I subtly hinted that the mandatory HIV testing requirement would eventually be lifted for E2 visa holders as well, and it appears that day may be sooner rather than letter. None other than the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Kimoon, is pressuring Seoul to drop the tests:

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging South Korea to scrap a requirement that foreign teachers take an HIV test, an official said Tuesday.

South Korea dropped a travel ban in January for most foreigners with the virus that causes AIDS, drawing praise from the United Nations. But it still requires foreign teachers, most of whom teach English, to take HIV tests. The ban is largely the result of pressure by parents.
In a meeting last week with Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik in Seoul, Ban urged that the HIV test requirement be abolished, said Yoo Sung-sik, a spokesman for Kim. Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, was in Seoul to attend a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a globalism-enforced PC standard, and make no mistake, it will mean more people dying in South Korea. Based on the state of HIV and AIDS a quarter century ago, when most cases in the US were transmitted through homosexual contact, testing for this fatal disease became a privacy issue that was deeply enmeshed with gay rights. Today, however, HIV is manageable as a chronic disease if it's caught early, yet instead of treating HIV infection like tuberculosis, hepatitis, or prostate cancer, we still treat it in such a way that reduces the chance of survival of the already-infected and increases the likelihood of more new infections.

SecGen Ban would also like you to not do that monthly breast self-exam, forgo that prostate checkup, not bother to make sure your Thanksgiving turkey is cooked long enough and at a high enough temperature, choose not to wear a seatbelt, walk out into the street without making sure no traffic is coming, and encourage your government to gut their meat inspection duties.

So why is ATEK applauding the removal of mandatory HIV testing for sex workers? In a country where 800 of the total 7800 confirmed HIV infections are foreign nationals (from places like the US, where 1 in 200 are HIV-positive), why is Ban Kimoon trying to eliminate HIV testing of foreign workers?

The answer is simple: HIV and AIDS are treated as if nothing has changed since 1985, when instead we should be treating this deadly infection primarily as a public health challenge, not a human rights issue. (And mandatory HIV testing is not the only public health arena where "human rights" are being used to trump legitimate public health concerns; there are groups trying to eliminate the ban on homosexual men from donating blood, a legally upheld prohibition aimed at preventing HIV transmission through blood transfusions by blocking the group of people with the greatest risk of HIV infection.)

This is being driven by a twisted sense of PC-influenced "fairness" and "equality" for foreign workers, when in fact most South Korean nationals are tested for HIV infection in some way and the government provides mandatory HIV treatment if they test positive. Late last year I asked what would be a fair policy for HIV testing in Korea, but what I had in mind then and now is something that applies fairness in the other direction:

1. Mandatory testing for anyone with a visa that allows them to stay in South Korea beyond the period of a tourist visa (preferably in line with mandatory testing for all ROK nationals residing in South Korea as well).
2. Deny long-term visa if they test positive (except for F-series family visas)
3. Provide foreign residents who test positive during their residency in South Korea with the same comprehensive HIV treatment that ROK nationals would receive. Provide a long-term medical treatment visa for such individuals, if necessary.

If you're truly concerned with foreign workers' rights in South Korea, that last one is the one you should really get behind.

Now I know mine is not a popular position, but calling mandatory HIV testing a human rights issue does not magically take the risk away. It could, however, remove the stigma. South Korea is in a unique position where (a) its infection rate is low and manageable, in part because of a high degree of testing, and (b) it provides comprehensive care to those who are infected, in a way that saves lives and prevents new infections. In other words, South Korea is poised to achieve an HIV-managed status, and it's in a situation where it's cost-effective to try to achieve that.

Why, then, are we trying to muck it up with a "human rights" approach to HIV testing that will lead to more HIV infections and more AIDS-related deaths?

UPDATE:
This post from June 2009 discusses the notion, apparently misleading, that foreign nationals who test positive for HIV are all summarily deported.

Apparently, the strategy is to pay them so little that they can't afford to buy pot...

It looks like the drive to get English teachers for rural South Korean communities has made its way to Iowa, with the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa agreeing to provide students who will teach English while learning Korean. They will receive a monthly stipend of 1.5 million won (a bit under $1500 for the time being).

Roboseyo has noted how little pay this is, adding that if this is what ROK government ministries are going to do, then they shouldn't complain about "unqualified English teachers." (To be fair, the people making such complaints are often not the same ones making such policies.)

He also quoted from memory someone from The Marmot's Hole who noted that among the three hiring goals that ROK government agencies have...

• lots of foreign English teachers.
• trained and qualified English teachers
• cheap English teachers

... they realistically can only choose two.

I'm not quite that pessimistic, but I can understand the cynicism. And certainly asking people who haven't yet graduated from college to work for what seems a pittance might seem like a recipe for disaster.

But wait. Is this really as bad as it seems? Methinks that some folks who have been working in Korea since the Bush administration may be blissfully unaware of just how bad things are back in the US (including, presumably, the 56th state). People are taking jobs they never would have considered before, with a lot of undergrad students happy to get a job, say, working at Starbucks.

Let's say this is twenty-five hours per week at four weeks per month. That comes to about $14/hour, with one's lodging paid for (plus language learning thrown in for free). That's thirty to fifty percent more than working at Starbucks, a job in which you would have to pay for your own housing.

Is this a bad deal then? Perhaps not. Now if I were an English teacher, I would be concerned about wage depression, if they were in fact able to effectively fill slots this way. Then again, if they're college students operating under government-university MOUs, the supply is naturally limited.

We'll have to see how this turns out.

A question about "hell"

A KoKo friend who now works at an English institute somewhere in the Korea Republic sent me this email query yesterday:

If you were the head of a school and hire a teacher, would you hire someone who use the word "hell' in his email to you when he's just upset at the formality of the school or red-tapes?

I started to answer just what all I would do if I were the head of a school, but it got off topic really, really quickly. I did ask for more detail and context, suggesting that there are different levels of "hell" (e.g., playful "hell" and angry "hell"), but since I'm sort of "Out of Office" for a few days, I thought this would be an interesting question to pose to my anglophone and English-teaching readers.

I would want worry that this person might be a hothead and such language in an email to the school is an unprofessional sign of worse to come, but then again maybe something went wrong that warranted this. Maybe the KoKo staff is too perhaps sensitive and they are overthinking a commonly used term (though I wouldn't suggest the f-word, etc., is acceptable). At the same time, effectively getting canned for saying "hell" in an email would suck big time. Any thoughts?

You may think I'm inserting this picture 
because it's a medieval depiction of Hell, 
but it's actually a typical English-teaching 
hagwon, circa 2002. 

new E2 visa regulations

Stafford has done a nice job of sifting through the new E2 visa regulations that are such a hot topic lately.

Legal insurance for NSETs?

Roboseyo has a must-read post that highlights what could be a very good idea: W20,000 per month assurance (read: "insurance") from Kangnam Labor Law Firm that could cover much of the initial high cost of going to court (or other legal matter, I suppose) for English teachers (and others?). If this is the work of ATEK, my hat is off to them for doing something very worthwhile.

As I mentioned at Roboseyo's blog (and the rest of this is a slightly edited version of a comment I left there), I think this is an excellent idea, and I think Roboseyo did a good job of recognizing and discussing some potential problems with such a system, particularly in its pilot stages. I'm a pragmatic optimist, however, and I think that all of those problems are fixable with some fine-tuning and tweaking.

The biggest problem is that by having voluntary (versus mandatory) insurance, an insurance provider runs the risk of a form of adverse selection. Basically, those with a propensity to sue and those who perceive themselves as having a greater likelihood of needing to sue will seek out this kind of insurance. If the insurance provider (i.e., Kangnam) takes all comers, they may end up with a lot of high-maintenance customers that cost the firm more than they take in through premiums.

Spreading the risk amongst a more "normal" population is what needs to be done. That is, try to get as many people who might need the service at some point but likely won't. I believe this could be done by ATEK upping the cost of its own membership by the amount of the insurance (suggested as W20,000) and offering it as a package (W20,000 for the insurance and W10,000 (right?) for the membership).

Of course, this would discourage membership among those who feel they don't need the insurance, but it might encourage membership among others, especially if a packaged savings is only available as part of ATEK. For the former, an assurance-free ATEK membership option could be available: W15,000 for membership instead of the current W10,000, so that getting the two would be a bargain. As well, the law firm should charge W25,000 for the assurance alone, not W20,000. I think this would boost both ATEK membership and assurance enrollment, both good outcomes.

Another problem, as Roboseyo mentioned, is that there would be greater usage of legal services, perhaps more than is being covered by the assurance premiums of W20,000 or W25,000. This would be for two reasons, the first of which would flatten itself out over time. That is, there is pent-up demand for legal services that would find release in this new system. Eventually, though, as these pent-up cases are dealt with or play out, the demand for services will flatten to a "normal" level.

The second problem, though, is one that plagues insurance plans whether they be nearly all private, like pre-Obamacare US or nearly all public: People are more likely to use something if they are shielded from its more expensive true cost. Right now people who want to sue are curtailed by the high cost (W600,000), but if it costs nearly nothing, they are more likely to go and do it. Perhaps a gatekeeper role will have to be performed by ATEK or some objective third party, someone deciding — hopefully with some criteria — if a case has merit and a reasonable chance at success in litigation or arbitration.

Of course, that will give us NSETs whose cases are rejected screaming bloody murder on their blogs and, as some disgruntled folks are wont to do, trying to take down the system through badmouthing or worse, perhaps even death threats purportedly from others (I kid! I kid!).

The problem is finding that happy medium between the two ends of the spectrum: having legal services so cheap that people will use them even for frivolous or unlikely cases on the one hand, and, on the other end, having them so expensive that those with a genuine need and whose cases may effect real change are unable to get legal care.

And that brings me to another point that may actually help things along: If this assurance-providing law firm starts getting good at such services, they may actually have the effect of reducing demand for their services or their workload for each case. That is, they might end up creating a network of connections that would include, say, government officials who will go to bat for them or are at least familiarized with their type of cases, or they might end up developing a skill set such that a few phone calls to hagwon owners or school principals gets cases resolved.

We shall see.

I just hope this doesn't get mucked up with overly high expectations, miserly cheapness from people who want services they haven't been properly paying into, and bruised egos trying to ruin things for everyone else. Not that anything like that has ever happened before.

English teacher in Pusan reportedly commits suicide

The Korea Times is reporting that a thirty-five-year-old teacher, identified only by his family name of Kim, is believed to have killed himself in the southeastern city of Pusan:

A Korean-Canadian, who worked in Busan as a native English teacher, was found dead in an apparent suicide, police said Thursday.

Police said the teacher identified by his surname Kim, was found hanging at home near Haeundae, a scenic beach in the nation's second largest city, at 5:20 p.m. Wednesday. The head of a private language institute where the 35-year-old Canadian worked first reported it to police.

He told them that he found the teacher hanging in the living room when he visited the apartment, as the teacher missed work and did not respond to repeated phone calls, Wednesday.

"We believe it's a suicide because no signs of foul play were found on the body," a detective familiar with the case said. "But we will continue to investigate to find the exact cause of death."

I have no idea who this person is, but these kinds of stories always just break my heart. Of course, in the general population of South Koreans, suicide is at epidemic levels, with the notion of killing oneself as a means to escape having reached the status of normative behavior, even to the point of being considered brave and courageous.

While there certainly are personal hazards in South Korea for anglophones and other international residents, including actual deaths due to fires, drownings, car accidents, and other situations, suicide among the expatriate population is not so commonly heard. The death in China of Shawn Matthews, a well-known blogger who had once lived and blogged in Korea, is a case that sticks out in my mind. There may be others and we just simply don't hear about them.

And this brings up that age-old question of what we anglophones in South Korea can do if we ourselves are feeling depressed, suicidal, or just simply emotionally distraught over our lives or some event, or if we know someone else who is feeling this way. Back in 2006, I wrote this comment about that very topic:

I think you may be right, but whether the number is higher, about the same, or even lower than with the same group “back home,” I think getting help is not just a matter of stigma, but also of access to someone here (in Korea; perhaps in China and Japan, too) who can properly diagnose you and then properly treat you.

Even if an international resident might be able to cut through the stigma that Korean-Koreans often can’t, the question is: who can you go to who will know that it’s bipolar disorder that you’ve got? Among the things possibly in play, there’s a language barrier, a cultural barrier, plus a knowledge barrier (frankly, since psychiatric doctors have so few cases to work with — particularly non-native Korean-speaking patients — they might not always see the signs).

I really didn’t read Shawn’s blog more than once or twice, so I don’t know if he sought treatment or not, but I know of people with serious problems who sought help and were eventually told, “Oh, this is just the stress of being in a new culture,” or “Give it time, and you’ll get over him/her.” Needless to say, it didn’t always help, and it certainly wasn’t what was needed.

A lot of people assume that with so many suicides in South Korea that there must not be a lot of mental health resources. In my opinion, the opposite is true: there are loads of resources but they are underutilized. This is something even psychiatrists themselves (people I meet in my own public health research) have told me.

Simply put, the stigma is just too great; ironically, that shame is greater than suicide itself in all too many cases. And that disgrace and dishonor extends not just to the individual, but to the family as well. A new national narrative must be put out there that most problems people face are actually quite manageable.

I'm not sure how much the stigma extends to those living in Korea who did not grow up here. Many Koreans from overseas, especially 1.5 and second generation kyopo, hold some of the same dysfunctional views on mental health stigma that their Korea-born and -raised counterparts do. Some non-Koreans living in Korea may also find themselves subject to the same social strictures that prevent the majority population from getting help.

But even if one were to overcome such stigma, where are the resources? In Seoul there used to be a counseling center associated with the Lutheran Church in Hannam-dong, but it was a bit costly. I imagine the various international clinics can put patients in touch with Korean psychologists and psychiatrists, but will the language barrier prove a barrier to treatment? Are there English-fluent mental health professionals and other counselors who can help out anglophones and other foreign residents?

I encourage my readers to share their ideas here. Maybe at some point we can make a FAQ, if one does not already exist. And for the love of God, if you are feeling any kind of depression or suicidal feelings, please talk to someone, even if it's not a mental health professional. The expat community is full of caring individuals who will bend over backward to help someone in need, and there is no shortage of Koreans who are also willing to do the same. And please, if you suspect a friend, colleague, or relative of having such dark thoughts, please go talk to them.

Requiescat in pace, Mr Kim. It's too late for you to seek help and I'm very sorry you felt you could not escape whatever demons you faced, but I hope at least your own death can provide a wake-up call to others.

UPDATE (February 23, 2011):
In the wake of another English teacher's apparent suicide in Pusan, ATEK is putting the word out about how to get help.

Chris on visa portability

Chris in South Korea has written a post on his blog which is itself a response to a lengthy discussion in a post on Brian's which is itself about a piece Chris wrote in the Korea Times.

Got it?

And as much as I commend Chris for the thought he put into the issue, he is missing the boat on the issue of E2 visa portability by not addressing the two points I brought up here: South Korean egalitarianism ideal (which works against legalizing and legitimizing a kind of service perceived to give the upper classes even more of an edge) and 신원보증 ("legally guaranteeing one's sponsoree") which is a key issue blocking visa portability (and which is the main reason why people can get work visas in weeks rather than years).

This is what I wrote on Brian's:

This has been asked and answered repeatedly, if you can locate it somewhere among the din of the K-blogs.

Private tutoring is discouraged — not just for native anglophones teaching English — because it is considered to run counter to egalitarian ideals that have been at the heart of many policies for decades (though, obviously, without complete success).

Second, his proposals fail to go to the heart of the problem for visa sponsorship, which is, well, someone sponsoring you and providing "insurance" for you. Solve the 신원보증, and you've gotten half way.

I dare say the problem with this discussion is that too many people think just because they want something then they should have it. And certainly the right to work wherever one wants is a nice thing to have, but when you're a foreign national without a green card or landed immigrant status or the local equivalent, guess what, there often are restrictions.

Now, some of these restrictions are unfair but, as I'm trying to point out above, it's not all about keeping the E2 down. KoKos have been running into problems with private tutoring for years because the government is loath to run counter to the populist idea in Korea that letting the rich accumulate more riches by giving them a finances-fueled edge in education runs counter to fair play — South Korean sense of egalitarianism (which is itself, in some ways, a response to North Korean communist rhetoric before and after the war about building a fair society).

[And while we're at it, let's make this clear: E2 and E1 visa holders can get legitimate "second jobs" if their employer permits and Immigration gives an okay — which they usually do if it's a legitimate job because they want the revenue stamp. E7s, on the other hand, cannot; they're the only ones who can bitch. Well, I guess an E2 or E1 visaholder can gripe if their employer refuses to grant them permission to moonlight, but that's their reward for paying the price for your ticket (the aforementioned 신원보증): they get to tell you where to sit.]

So, to summarize, Jeopardy-style: South Korea's egalitarianism ideal and the foreign national-guaranteeing function of visa sponsorship?

What are the factors that would need to be addressed if you want to make E2 visas portable?

Well, some of them are "aliens," after all.

matt of Popular Gusts inspired me to do a Naver.com image search of 영어강사 ("English instructor"), and this is what I got:

Not sure if that's what he was pointing me toward, but I thought it was cute nonetheless.

The post where Kushibo comes to the defense of English teachers in Korea (possibly NSFW due to l33t profanity)

The K-blogs are lighting up with the latest FAIL! coming out of South Korea's English education industry. Take a look at the picture below and see if you notice anything odd.

Full disclosure: When this was pointed out by Brian's regular This Is Me Posting, who was mockingly referring to Korea as "a bastion of quality when it comes to English teaching," I thought the "fail" was that they were using the numeral zero at the top of an eye chart (which wouldn't be very authentic at all for a number of reasons).

Only by looking at it for a couple minutes did I realize, oh, wait, it says "STFU"! And thus I wrote this comment:

I'm not sure who that reflects worse on, the naïve book illustrator who simply did a Google image search for a Western version of an eye chart (Korean ones, as most of us at Brian's would know, look quite different), or the jaded person who would think "STFU" is an appropriate thing to put on a t-shirt to wear in front of other people, possibly little kids.

I elaborated a bit when Brian was "obliged" to make an entire post out of this, especially since he (and others) were assuming (reasonably, I think) that a native English speaker, and probably an English teacher, was behind this:

This stuff reflects poorly on native speaker English teachers here, ones who lack the maturity to take their responsibilities seriously, and reflects poorly on the industry that doesn't know enough of the language it's selling.

As I noted in response, while it's true that there has been a seemingly endless supply of such people in the semi-professional proofreading field, I don't think this is an example of that kind of thing. I give you Exhibit A, a t-shirt created by anglophones in an anglophone company and bought by anglophones who wear it in whatever anglophone country that is:

Notice the similarities with our textbook eye chart? Except for the T in WTF having been changed to a 2, it's the same set of letters.

Do a Google image search for "eye chart" and the rogue eye chart above is one of the top images that appear. If you do a simple Google search (i.e., not specifically an image search), it is the first (and largest) image that appears. An illustrator who is simply looking for a sample of a Western eye chart — which we all know are very different from Korean eye charts — could easily (and reasonably) think it's legitimate. Moreover, because it has what looks like a zero at top (which fits in with the lesson being taught in the textbook), it would seem like a natural thing for him/her to use.

The problem then, is not some rogue English teacher behaving badly, nor even a sloppy textbook illustrator or writer, but someone back in an anglophone country who thought WTF and STFU were appropriate things to have on a t-shirt worn around in public and, presumably, in front of children.

Brian amended his post with my comment, and noted that he thought my explanation was "far more likely." Glad to help.

At any rate, it's time that the K-blogs stop blaming English teachers for every little thing. If I'm the only one in their corner, God help the whole lot of them.

UPDATE:
I'd like to draw attention to the possibility that this FAIL is an even bigger ruse. The only two things that demonstrate this is from Korea are (a) the use of Korean characters written in pencil on the book, and (b) the use of word chant.

Word chant, in fact, is used in many countries, not just Korea, so that means nothing.

The scrawled words, on the other hand, indicate some relationship with Korea. Either the book is from Korea, or someone would have us believe it's from Korea. The writing is rather scrawl-like, which could indicate a very young native Korean speaker or an adult non-native speaker.

What's interesting is what is written. Zero, yak, and x-ray are written in their Hangulized equivalents (제로, 야크, and 엑스레이), which are also their proper Korean designations.

But while zebra is written as 얼룩말 (ŏllungmal), ax is written not as 도끼 (tokki) but as 엑스 (eksŭ).

And that may be a clue to the source's non-Korean roots. Not only is it odd that zebra would be written in proper Korean while ax is Hangulized into a non-Korean word, but I believe Hangulized ax would be written as 액스 (aeksŭ), not 엑스 (eksŭ).

I could be wrong on that point, and even if I'm right, it's not implausible that a young Korean student might somehow get that word wrong. Not likely, but still plausible.

And thus we have another ripple.

In the Year Two Thousand (Twenty): English-teaching robots run amok

This news from the Korea Times about automated machines supplanting real-live English teachers over the next decade had me thinking, "Wow, English-teaching robots replacing human English teachers? What could possibly go wrong?"

Well, with the help of these guys, I was able to briefly go into the future and — with just a ninety-second window to check my blog — see what posts I may have written in the future about the subject (side note: KRW-USD exchange rate at 540 won per dollar). Here's a post from September 15, 2020 that I retrieved just before the portal closed:

Netizens are angry following the seventh Engbot office massacre since the new semester began. Netizens are always angry about something, but ever since they were collectively appointed Minister of Culture and Information, they're a force to be reckoned with. And at any rate, this time their outrage may actually be justified: The latest event involved more decapitations than in previous attacks, and there is some speculation that it wasn't just bribe-taking, drunk-getting, female student-groping ajŏshi teachers who were victims this time. Naturally, people are scared, and pissed off.

From the Gorea Times-Herald-Daily:

The scene was bloody in the lounge of "S" Language Institute in suburban Seoul yesterday after the management became innocent victims of the latest in a string of deadly Engbot attacks. Law enforcement cordoned off the building, but eyewitnesses with offices nearby describe a confused scene of body parts and frayed wires.

"I craned my neck to look at the carnage as the police shuffled me and my coworkers toward the elevator, and I saw dozens of bodies slumped lifelessly over desks and on the floor," noted Park Miyung (25). "I was relieved to find out later that most of them were just cops napping."

"Engbots" is the popular name for English-teaching robots introduced a decade ago, known officially as the ED-2010. They were developed in order to save money over hiring real-live English teachers, and it was thought that their widespread use would reduce administrative paperwork, operating expenses, and headaches stemming from cross-cultural misunderstandings.

Though they were programmed to recite the historical record supporting Korean ownership of Tokto and to recognize the health benefits of kimchi, thus reducing 93% of intercultural conflict, their artificial intelligence architecture eventually made their behavior so human-like that they responded negatively to many situations in which flesh-and-blood foreign teachers would also react unfavorably, only with greater force and more effective organization.

Like most of the others, it is believed that this latest attack was also prompted by a contract dispute. Two days earlier, people in nearby offices reportedly heard an Engbot speaking in a high-pitched robotic tone complaining that its contract clearly stated a maximum of 140 hours of classroom time per week. It was also complaining about the size of its residence: It had been allotted just a small closet even though the contract promised a medium-sized closet.

Police believe that may have set off the incident, particularly if the offending Engbot had any software defects. The head teacher at the institute, who survived the incident by taking a two-hour lunch, told police the Engbot's lesson plans this week would have included idioms such as "kick some butt" and "heads will roll." A faulty literalism chip could easily turn such a lecture into a deadly encounter.

The same article notes there's already a lot of handwringing over the robot attacks:

"In hindsight," robotics engineer Choe Kyushik told us off the record, "we shouldn't have given them superhuman strength. We thought it was a good idea at the time, since they could also be used for moving furniture. The old model human English teachers always griped about things like that. Telling them that their large White people arms made them genetically more predisposed for heavy manual labor just got them angry. Especially the women."

Of course, there are dissenters to the general anti-robot mood. From an op-ed in the iPad Times:

Look, the AI-infused robots are just reacting according to their programming, which is to be like humans, and no humans like to be jerked around. If you promise them high-grade lubricant oil and a clean motherboard, you'd better give them high-grade lubricant oil and a clean motherboard. If you don't, they'll be in your face and all over the Internet.

Indeed, Engbot gripes generally involve managerial promises of high-grade oil lube jobs and sleeping compartments that are at least one meter wide. The Great Engbot Strike of 2017 occurred because it was discovered average sleeping compartments were only 96 centimeters. The hagwon industry was brought to its knees when all the Canadianism-programmed Engbots walked off the job. The Americanism Engbots, however, lacking any code that would enable them to use metric, gleefully went about their duties.

That was the largest work stoppage since the Ministry of Education temporarily removed "monthly lube jobs" as a guaranteed contract item in 2015, when a newly promoted MOE bureaucrat became convinced it was a sexual reference. "No more English teachers and sex in Korea," declared the pencil pusher, "That was the whole point of the Engbot Iniative."

As one would expect, however, the Engbots do have their supporters, particularly Ben Wagner, a professor of law at the Super Songdo Hovering Cyber University located in the floating hologram circling the top twenty floors of the 312-story Songdo Super Korea Tower Complex Park in the Old Songdo International Development Complex. From the Hankyoreh:

Ben Wagner says Koreans should avoid stereotyping Engbots, and he says he will raise objections on the three remaining K-blogs and file a petition with the National Human and Robot Rights Commission of Korea to make sure new regulations are not imposed on super-strength robots unless they're also put on human Korean teachers as well.

He also noted that many of the stories of Engbot robot violence may be the exaggerations of a robophobic public. "It's worth noting that we have no actual first-hand eyewitness accounts of Engbots committing school administrative violence," he said in a cranium-phone interview. "It's all hearsay or conjecture."

"That's because there have never been any survivors," noted MOE vice minister Kim Nayŏng. "At least not any that still had their tongue intact."

Sigh. Like so many other high-tech "solutions," it seems the Engbots have created more problems than they fixed. And to think back in 2010 this looked like such a promising idea. In those heady days, one kyopo commenter privately told me about the departing humanoids, "At least we'll finally be rid of their bellyaching."

I'll end this post with a touching story from Lee Ryu, a teacher whose elementary school friend was among the victims of one of last week's attacks:

I never thought I'd say this, but after all these robot massacres, I long for the days when English teachers just spread AIDS and occasionally touched students in inappropriate places.

AIDS takes a long time to die from. You get AIDS from your foreign co-teacher and you still have five or ten years to get your affairs in order. With angry Engbots, you've got five seconds before so much blood rushes out of your neck that you lose consciousness. Even with cranium-implant speed dialing, that's not enough to call my loved ones and say good-bye. I might get my wife and my girlfriend, but I wouldn't have time to reach the kids.

Now that the deadly spider pumas which Radiant Leader Kim Jong-un unleashed on us have all been exterminated, I suppose the imported Sri Lankan animal handlers could be put back to work sneaking up on Engbots and flipping their emergency-off switches. Once the menace is contained, we could ask the human English teachers to come back, but after that horrible incident at the Equine Flu Internment Camp in 2013, would they want to?