Animosity against English teachers in Seoul

[pampango]

Source: Global Post

An upswing in animosity toward foreign English teachers ensued, during which the group, "Citizens of Right Education" was formed. Citizens of Right Education has taken it upon itself to rid the country of foreign, unqualified English teachers. The group now has more than 17,000 members. Many of the more than 22,000 English teachers in South Korea find the movement disturbing, and say they are coming up against racism in their adopted home.

Racism hasn’t been a huge issue for South Korea in the past. But as the country continues to climb the economic ladder, the presence of foreigners is growing — as is the multitude of cultural problems that come along with them. The number of migrant workers, English teachers and bi-racial marriages is on the rise, with the total number of registered foreigners in South Korea at more than 854,000 in 2008 — nearly double the roughly 437,000 from five years ago, according to the Korean Statistical Information Service.

The Association for Teachers of English in Korea (ATEK), founded in 2009 to be an advocate for foreign English teachers in the country, believes the Citizens of Right Education is distorting the image of foreign teachers. “It is a vocal group of Koreans who are very xenophobic and really focused on English teachers,” ATEK’s Vice President Darren Bean said.

Last year, the country saw its first citizen convicted for making racist comments to a professor from India, while using public transportation. The offender was slapped with a fine for hurling slurs such as “Arabs are dirty,” at the scholar. Lawmakers have since drafted legislation related to racial discrimination but have yet to pass the bill.

Read more: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/south-korea/100122/english-teachers-seoul-racism

[msedano]

1. I taught English in Korea...

as a soldier to other soldiers. http://readraza.com/foto/pages/khwdeng_JPG.html

The Goblalpost article reminds me that India is an English-speaking nation but suggests a nightmare of accents. Korean English-speakers tended to difficult accents, lots of phoneme distribution and misplaced stress. Now I imagine overlaying that with the vowels and syllabification of some Indian English-speakers. Even pidgin-speakee brought a Korean an income. I figure today as in 1970, good English will help a Korean get a job and maybe emigrate to what we used to call "the big PX in the sky" when a woman snagged a GI.



BTW, readers: You'll get a revealing look at Korea from the novels of Martin Limon. Here's a review of his most recent, http://labloga.blogspot.com/2009/12/review-martin-limon-gi-bones.html

mvs

[Lasher]

4. KATUSAs, eh?

I was at Camp Nabors near Seoul in 1970. South Koreans are rightfully proud of the progress they have made since then.

[FarrenH]

5. Indian English

I flew to India to take an Oracle course with the understanding that it was in English. None of the Indian students seemed to have a problem but I simply could not understand every second word our instructor used. It took two weeks to figure out what I'd been dutifully transcribing as "rardivarse" was in fact a "raw device".

To add to the confusion, English has taken on new words in India that the Indians I encountered seemed to think were standard, global English. A group of people got confused when I asked what "lakhs" meant, referring to a headline in the English version of The Hindu that said "Bandit Veerapan wants 10 lakhs for actor" . "Lahks?" said one, "Lahks is, uh, lahks" apparently surprised that I did not know this common English word.

[Igel]

9. I find lakhs and crores sort of neat.

I mean, just the notation: 1,00,000 for a lakh, 1,00,00,000 for a crore.

Not my system, I find them aggravating when I encounter them. Not just in the Indian press, either.

[izquierdista]

2. Xenophobes are everywhere

The only way to wear down the xenophobes is with a constant flux of foreigners traipsing through, showing that there is nothing wrong with them. Unfortunately, South Korea is an island, its only land border being with the Ted Kaczynski of modern nations. One would hope that the availability of foreign language TV stations would add some cultural diversity.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. "The Ted Kaczynski of modern nations"

:rofl:

(By the way, yeah, it's xenophobia and yeah, the solution is indeed along those lines.)

[Javaman]

3. Odd...

I have two friends that just got back from teaching in Korea. English to be exact.

They never had a problem, no racism to speak of and felt extremely welcome by their peers.

In fact, they were offered bonus's to stay on for another year.

Maybe this is something that is localized? :shrug:

[abq e streeter]

6. This is disturbing--I have friends that went to Korea to teach English last fall....

and are themselves an interracial couple ( black and white)... I need to get on her blog and see how they're doing. I sent them a little facebook note a few weeks ago but really haven't kept up as much as I should

[Rapier09]

8. Koreans have a long history of Hospitality

However they seem to have adopted some of the worst stereotypes from the West.

They don't seem to dislike blacks or whites for that matter with the same intensity as their "cousins" in Japan.