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.

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Kvetchpat of the day: Do you know South Korea?

KoreaBeat, among other places, highlighted this video by one David Dutton.



A well-done piece of work, one which tough-guy KoreaBeat himself said made him feel "a little misty-eyed with nostalgia."

But wait, to just let this blatant propaganda slide would be disingenuous, nothing more than promoting false advertising.

See, some people think I only write shiny, happy stories about people in Korea holding hands, that I ignore all that bad stuff because I'm trying so hard to protect Korea's image, whatever that means.

Well, on the off chance they're right — and they might be, if you ignore all the critical stuff I write — I thought I would print, without editorial input, the following comment from one of KoreaBeat's commenters, giving it "equal time" as today's Kvetchpat of the Day:

This video is a great example of how camera + editing = lies. South Korea is a depressing country which thinks that e-sports are better sports than real sports. It has a fast increasing gap between rich and poor. Pollution problems that are as the soundtrack sings 'poisoning your body'. The longest ongoing war in modern history with more than a million casualties. South Korea is losing it's soul as its culture is eaten from the inside out by the gaudy golden arches of Americanization. But don't take my word for it that Korea is to anyone but the most shallow tourist a depressing place, just check the suicide rate statistics...the highest in the OECD. Funny though, the video didn't show anyone throwing themselves in front of a Seoul subway train; an event that happens at least once a day here.

Hmm... perhaps I should fisk this, talk about how anyone who has been in Korea for a significant length of time knows pollution is considerably better than before, not worse, and although South Korea has a serious problem with suicide, the Gini coefficient (a measure of the gap between rich and poor) is fairly manageable, but right now my real-world responsibilities aren't giving me the time to do so.

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Kvetchpat of the day

Actually, this is more of an anti-kvetchpat rant, as you'll see, but it addresses kvetchpats.

Okay. I'm still in the midst of a major set of work deadlines, but I've found a way to produce posts on the cheap: take notable comments on other blogs and highlight them for their value (or infamy).

So, on one of the posts on The Black Guy on the Bus™, a frequent Marmot's Holeian named milton, fresh off his success with Paradise Lost, wrote the following in response to another commenter, cm (a kushibo favorite), who asked how so many people can have two completely different sets of experiences:

I think theres a number of factors involved.

Pre-departure, people read all kinds of sensationalistic blog posts, articles, forum threads, travelogues, etc. about how “racist” Koreans are. When they arrive in-country, they expect to be treated badly and confirmation bias ensures that they dwell on the burly ajumma who shoved her way out of the bus and the unscrupulous hagwon director who fires people in the 11th month of their contracts, while conveniently forgetting about the friendly ajeoshi who helped repair a burnt out light bulb or the neighbor who helped carry in that load of groceries. People come here expecting Koreans to be racist and so they make sure they find (and imagine and exaggerate) plenty of incidents of racism to fulfill their expectations. People who are looking for trouble are going to find it. That’s human nature. I’ve met more than my fair share of paranoid expats who manage to find racist overtones in every Korean twitch and glance and are convinced that a Korean version of the KKK is lurking behind every shadow.

There’s also the nature of the people who tend to come here. A lot of people (Westerners in particular) tend to go to Japan because they grew up watching Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball, love sushi, and obsess over learning kanji. They go to China because they’re fascinated by Chinese history and hope learning Chinese will give them an edge in the business world. They go to Thailand because they love beaches, ladyboys, and great deals on fake gems. In other words, these people want to be in their host countries and tend to be more forgiving of local imperfections. On the other hand, people tend to come to Korea because they’re looking for adventure and high-paying, easy teaching jobs to pay off their student loans, or in the case of other Asians, because they did poorly on their college entrance exams. They don’t really have anything “invested” in focusing on the positive side of Korea, and don’t appreciate or understand their host culture. For some Westerners in particular, I think there’s some latent disappointment at not being treated like King Whitey, and these folks, with a sense of entitlement, are shocked to be greeted at Incheon by a haggard customs agent instead of Lee Myung-bak and the other tribal chieftains and a harem of Korean virigins for His Majesty’s pleasure. They face further disappointment when they learn that the backwards locals treat them with indifference instead of ooing-and-aahing and mistaking them for Tom Hanks, and that their white skin and English abilities don’t magically open every door in the country.

That said, there is definitely racism here. There are more than enough examples of racism in the media, in the education system, in the national ideology and policy, and other venues to fill several volumes. I don’t doubt (all) of those stories about cab drivers ignoring foreign fares to pick up a Korean fare 5 meters up the road, about foreigners being denied entry into night clubs, about police and bystanders always siding with the Korean, about young nationalistic hotheads deamanding that Yankee go home, or about curmugeoned drunk seniors dressing down Korean women for being near their foreign boyfriends, but I feel that most of the racism is on the “systemic” level as opposed to the person-to-person level. I think a lot of it boils down to how you carry yourself in public and how you behave: if you act like a barbarian and treat Korea like your personel frat house, you’ll be treated accordingly. If you make the effort to adapt, act in professional manner, smile, and be discreet, people will leave you alone.

Frankly, the first part is something I agree strongly with (I pretty much agree with the whole thing, including his earlier discussion of the Expat Echo Chamber and perceived racism), and I've made many of the same points here and there. Many of these themes are covered in my (in)famous memes post, including the notion some folks work from where they think anything bad that happens to them in Korea happened because they're a foreigner (#81).

"They keep staring at me!"

His part about who goes to China or Japan (something with which I'm less familiar) sounds plausible based on what I've heard. And it really does explain this galling situation where some "foreigners" gripe that every little thing is a sign that Korea is "Raaaaaacist!" when in Japan things like "No Gaijin!" housing issues are rampant but so few complain. Were something that big going on in Korea as a common thing, there would be a collective aneurysm among the waaaaagugin. But I digress. (And I'm still trying to fit this into the discussion.)

I would add that the going-to-Korea-as-a-business-decision issue also runs headlong into such Whites having their racial transparency stripped away from them.

So in conclusion, short milton: "Paradise never found."

"We're sending you to Korea."

Any thoughts? Is milton right? Am I too hard on newbies? Should prospective future residents be steered away from some, most, or all blogs on Korea? Are there good blogs for newbies and prospectives?

Is being a kvetchpat communicable? Manageable? Curable? Commendable?

Not mine. See link.

What can be done on the Korean end to make Korea more attractive to people who won't just see it as, ahem, "like a retarded prostitute's pußßy" (apologies for that)?

Will the soft power generated by K-pop help resolve this problem on its own by attracting people who already have a fascination for all things Korea? Will some of them be disappointed that Korea isn't full of middle-aged men wielding hammers against gangsters?

"The mud festival is over. You have to put some clothes on!"

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Kvetchpat of the day: Hagwons and "human trafficking"

Okay, ignore for a moment that saying things like, “If you don’t pass training, you are thrown out onto the street and left for dead” (1:45) simply begs the question how many other claims are hyperbole, exaggeration, or just plain falsehood.

Instead, what is really galling is that these teachers who may actually have been defrauded by an unscrupulous hagwon (English-teaching academy, for those of you in Rio Linda), are declaring that this treatment is "human trafficking" (5:10).

The United Nations says, “Human Trafficking is a crime against humanity. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transfering, harbouring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them.”

Where is the use of force or coercion to make people come to Korea? Even if everything in the Chungdahm Survivors' “video” is 100% true, I think it’s hard to make the case that this is human trafficking. Fraud yes (if it’s all true), but no use of force or coercion to either get them to come or prevent them from leaving.

There really is human trafficking in South Korea. The sex industry is indeed a major culprit, and considering the suffering those women go through, it's disgusting that precious little lotus blossoms who can't get their white-collar act together with their employer are making out that they are even remotely similar to such victims.

Who are these people? Where are they filing the “class action lawsuit”? What action through regular channels have they taken that have failed? How many people are involved in the pending “class action lawsuit”? Is it one guy alone in his basement with voice-altering software? Are the people who have positive things to say about the same place simply lying?

Kvetchpat of the day

This one comes to us courtesy of a comment on a post about background checks for English teachers on E-series visas:

If you're going to have FBI checks then the least the Korean Immigration could do is tell people what is/what's NOT acceptable. Problem is, they're too lazy or too stupid to read and understand the difference between an arrest, case dropped, or whatever else such as Class A, B, and C misdemeanors. Guilty felons aren't allowed to leave America anyway(they can't vote or buy a gun either).

I would've NEVER gone to Korea if I had to provide my own FBI check and I've passed a FBI checks conducted by my employers, worked airport security after 9/11 and have been a state employee. However, my criminal record is not clean. I was arrested one time but wasn't found guilty, for some reason I think Korea will disallow me from teaching because me CRC is not "clean." After all, foreigners are guilty until proven innocent ... in Korea and by Koreans. Many Americans who would've considered coming to S. Korea simply aren't going to take the do-it-yourself-FBI-check-step without knowing what is/isn't acceptable, there WILL be a decrease in American English teachers going to S. Korea to teach. It's all about Anti-Americanism - Congratulations Korea, keep on hating!

I'm not going to fisk this one. I wouldn't know where to begin, and I wouldn't be able to stop.

But I will agree that it's incredibly stupid and lazy of Immigration in the Republic of Korea to not know all the intricacies of arrests, misdemeanors, and what-not of dozens of state, provincial, and national governments in the Anglophone world. When they simply throw up their hands and say, "We just want people with a clean record," that's the ultimate anti-Americanism. But the joke's on you, hateful Korea: You'll miss out on great teachers like this one.

Now where's the "rolls eyes" icon on Blogger?

(Seriously, though, I read lots of complaints about people thinking and speculating that certain "innocent" things on a background check — and by innocent, I mean not guilty — will get a person barred from teaching in Korea, but I haven't yet read of actual cases. Anybody got some examples?)

Stay classy, Joey.

A few days ago I saw in the Los Angeles Times the story of an eighteen-year-old Korean-American student at USC who had died after suddenly passing out in her dorm room. It caught my eye in part because the woman's name is similar to that of a friend's younger sibling.

While it was not her, the tragedy of the story gripped me nonetheless, and in my head I played out possible scenarios of causation, including alcohol poisoning and the object lessons this. (For the record, the article lists no cause for the death nor any reason to speculate drugs, alcohol, or any other self-inflicted cause; I only thought of that possibility because of empirical knowledge with such outcomes.)

With binge drinking an unfortunately prominent activity in South Korea and among some Koreans outside of South Korea, the K-blogosphere is always ripe for a fresh warning of the signs of alcohol poisoning (see the latter half of this post), so I went back a few days later to check on updates on the story. Still no updates, but in the comments section I found something entirely different that compelled me to write about it anyway.

From commenter "Joey":

this is horrible. I didn't know fan death existed in America too! My heart goes out to her family.

Well, Joey, your heart apparently doesn't go out to her family enough for you to forgo taking a wholly gratuitous dig at South Koreans in an article about their loved one's tragic death. I mean, really, Joey? You're just adding impishly imbecilic insult to unfathomable injury by your glib comment. ("Joey's" comment was only one of eight, so it wouldn't be hard to notice.)

It really makes me wonder what makes some people tick. What kind of people possess such antagonism toward Koreans that they ignore the humanity of their target group? I was all set to write a post on Internet anonymity in light of this New York Times article, with a requisite nod to this Marmot's Hole post from 2006 that suggests a concomitant problem among South Korean netizens, when along came this object lesson.

In the pantheon of insensitive anonymous drive-bys on the Internet, "Joey's" isn't all that outrageous. It wasn't nearly as egregious as what happened in this post about the brutal rape and murder of a Korean-American woman in Los Angeles, which quickly deteriorated into a maelstrom of bigotry and lewdness which saw long-time troll Mizar outed in the worst of ways (I explain this in more detail here).

But just imagine what these people's families or friends might feel when one of them inevitably runs across this crude response to their cherished one's death. Imagine how you might feel?

Kvetchpat of the day

Although Prestige Korea had an unexpectedly interesting fauxnterview with "ajeossi" — ajŏshi! — about the sex trade in South Korea, I have to slap a "Kvetchpat of the Day" (of the Week? of the Month? I forgot what it's supposed to be) label on one of the other posts at his site:

I’m going to a nearby Familymart to pick up a few canned coffees. Outside the Familymart there are three big White girls sitting at a plastic table and smoking. I don’t have any big White girl acquaintances, and I’ve never had any big White girlfriends, but I live around here, and so do they. We are all foreigners, so I say “hello”, to which they respond by just staring at me, and sucking hard on their cancer sticks.

It’s funny because in my own country, if I said “hi” to a neighbor, they’d greet me in return. Some foreigners I greet in Korea look at me like I just absolutely ruined their otherwise excellent day by bothering to acknowledge them. I’ve pissed all over their parade.

The only time I’ve ever gotten a “hello” in return is when I’ve greeted other White males. I guess the prison mentality applies in Korea as well. Stick with your own kind, don’t talk to others. Sad place, miserable people.

I'm not really sure if this is meant to be parody (I've visited the site just a few times), so on the off chance it is, the award goes to anyone who actually thinks like this (and takes the time to grouse about it... since that's the kvetching part).

From Erie to Iri

Well, not quite, since she ended up in Seoul, but it would have made for a great blog title if this enthusiastic teacher ended up in Iri, Chŏllabuk-to (not Iksan), instead of the capital.

An excerpt:

Four years in Canada and one linguistics degree later, I found myself living in Seoul, South Korea as an ESL kindergarten teacher, far from the shores of that provincial hometown. I had, at some point in my undergraduate linguistics career, heard the drumbeat of the overseas ESL market, and registered for a one-year intensive Korean language class. When Koreans ask me how I got here, that’s what I tell them. I say, “Yeah…I studied the language in undergrad, so I got interested in Korea, and I just ended up here…”

But what I really want to say is: “Well, I come from a pretty economically depressed region of the US, and when I finished my undergrad, I had no viable options for a job in my hometown, and few personal connections for jobs anywhere else. I was able to get a job in Seoul that paid about $23,000 a year, included free housing and round-trip airfare, provided health insurance, and only required a bachelor’s degree,” –which is more along the lines of the truth. My Korean studies did help me move to Seoul, and my linguistics background did nudge me toward language teaching, but the main draw of the Korean labor market was stable, decently remunerated employment for my 22-year old self.

There is nothing wrong with taking a job — even one a third of the way around the world — because the economy is bad where you're from. That is, after all, a major motivator for working and migrating. But if financial factors are the primary reason (or just a major one) for doing so, that doesn't provide a license for griping about the work or how difficult things are in a foreign country, looking at everything with a sense of entitlement or privilege, or doing a half-arsed job. [Conversely, it shouldn't give anyone from the country you're now living in a justification for treating you badly, either.]

So, Kristi Gandrud, you are my Anti-Kvetchpat of the Week. Keep spreading the sunshine.

Kvetchpat of the day

I wonder how common it is to want to take a baseball bat to a parent.

One of The Grand Narrative's fans makes a video

Far from seeing this video as a Korea-bashing exercise in exorcising its maker's own demons, I recognize this production as performing a public service: By distilling all bad stuff — real and imagined — from Korea during this decade and presenting it as a rock video, it becomes like a superdose of all that plagues the foreign malcontent in Korea.

If you can handle what you see, you'll do fine in Korea. If not, stay away. Stay very far away. Because even if you never see in person a Korean performer or Russian model in black face while you're in Korea, you'll read about it every couple years, and your whole existence will come crashing down. 

(If I get some time, I might provide a list of explanations and links to the various images along with their location on this instructional and educational Michael Moore-esque montage.) 

HT to juicyhumdinger, who I wouldn't be surprised has something to do with the video or the people who made it.

UPDATE:

This is what Metropolitician wrote when he hijacked The Marmot's Hole and posted this vile crap up there:

I like the way the movie makes its final point, punctuated with an all-too-familiar shooter from Virginia Tech. Speaks in a direct way to the hypocrisy of vilifying “us,” since, on the cold-blooded murder front, Korea 32, USA 0. Not that I’d argue that the Koreans should be responsible for the shooter — in fact, I like the fact that the State Department turned down an official apology from the Korean government — but that doesn’t mean it’s still not an emotionally effective bomb to throw back in the other direction.

Tit-for-tat will get you gat. What the fuck is wrong with Metropolitician? With this and his utterly unhelpful and completely biased "Korean Media Watch," he's lost all credibility in my book (and I probably in his): He's now officially all about stirring up shit for the sake of shit-stirring, not about anybody finding common ground and mutual understanding and even respect, reaching out to compromise and move ahead, etc. 

Korea 32, USA 0? What the fu¢k? An emotionally effective bomb to throw back in the other direction? Are you mental? 

I am so sick of K-blogs right now, if it weren't for all the people who resoundingly booed Metropolitician, I'd be seriously tempted to rip Safari and Firefox off my MacBook Pro right this effing minute.