Here's an interesting articles that I read recently. It's available at http://blog.educationusa.or.kr/category/history-and-background/, it's part of a series of essays that can be downloaded at http://blog.educationusa.or.kr/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/korean-culture-essays-hhunderwood.pdf

____________________________________________________________________________

In and out

Dr. Horace. H. Underwood.

The problem of "in and out" is only a small part of a larger pattern: Korea is fundamentally not an egalitarian culture, not one that values equality of treatment, but one that makes distinctions between people, one that is hierarchical.

Well, you knew that Korean culture was hierarchical. But do you know what that really implies? I mean, it's arranged vertically!

Just as one clue, there is no word in Korean for "brother." There is no such word. There is a Korean word for "elder brother" ("hyong") and a Korean word for "younger brother" ("tongsaeng") but no word for brother. American brothers are generally equal to each other, but Korean brothers are not equal; the elder brother has what we would call the responsibility of a father toward his younger brothers. The relationship is different, so the word is different. My Korean friends always consider me slightly immoral in that I do not tell my younger brother what to do.

Koreans have separate words for elder sister and younger sister, too. In fact, they have different words for a man to use for his elder sister and for a woman to use for her elder sister. The words are different because the roles are different and the relationships are different and the responsibilities are different and not equal.

Korea is a Confucian society. Everyone is Confucian, including the Christians. Confucianism is primarily a system of ethics, not religion, and within ethics, even more a system of social relationships. The very center of Confucianism is the "Five Relationships" of "king to subject, father to son, elder brother to younger brother, husband to wife, and friend to friend." Note that four out of five of these are hierarchical. That's about right; Korea is at least 80% hierarchical. (And even "friends" only applies if the two were born the same year, and are thus the same age and capable of being roughly equal. And even then not quite, because the one born a month or a day or an hour ahead is senior. Even twins: like Esau and Jacob, the twin born first is the elder brother. Koreans are very confused when Americans claim that someone clearly not their own age is their "friend.")

Language reinforces inequality not only in things like the words for "brother" but in every sentence. The "levels" of spoken Korean are controlled by and also define the relationship of the two speakers. Even if you know no Korean you will notice that younger people use a lot of long sentences ending with "-imnida," while older people talking to younger people end their sentences with short cutoff endings. Two people can't even talk to each other until they have defined their mutual relationship, hierarchically, by position or age.

Teachers, particularly senior teachers, maintain a certain dignity. Americans may think such teachers are putting it on, but in their minds they are simply being senior, acting as a teacher ought to act. Granted that Koreans treat Americans as somewhat outside the Korean hierarchical system (my "honorary" age for a long time has been about 10 years greater than my real age, though the gap has now disappeared), and granted that Koreans take things from foreigners that they would never take from other Koreans, still, hierarchy is the whole world, and being aware of one's relative place in the world is a way of making life easier in dealing with Koreans anywhere.

About the author:

Horace H. Underwood is the fourth generation of his family to live in Korea. His great-grandfather was one of the first Protestant missionaries to arrive in Korea in 1885, and later founded Yonsei University, where his family has continued to teach. Dr. Underwood first went to Korea in 1946 at the age of three; after earning a doctorate at SUNY Buffalo he served for 30 years as a professor in Yonsei's English Department. During that time he also had various other posts in international education, including Director of the Division of International Education and Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies, and Executive Director of the Korean American Educational Commission (the Fulbright Commission.) In 2004 he retired and moved to a home in South Carolina near his granddaughter, but still returns to Korea regularly as a member of the Board of Directors of Yonsei University and as a friend of Korea. Dr. Underwood can be contacted at: hhund@fulbright.or.kr

Hierarchy at school

Earlier this week one of my classes did not pitch to my lesson. There was no fore warning, they just didn’t arrive. Not being informed of things is a pet hate of mine. I expect my coteachers to inform me when a group of students are not going to attend my lesson. I have often spoken to the coteacher, whose students did not arrive to class, about the need for communication but he continues to fail to inform me. I’ve pleaded and reasoned with the teacher in question, I’ve even refused to attend a school event once when I received notice of it extremely late; all too little effect.

Not being informed of things irritates me, but I try to bear in mind that I am not at home – I am in Korea and the two cultures are markedly different.

At home if important information is withheld, it’s acceptable to be peeved off. Unfortunately for me, Korea is a strictly ordered society. I don’t fit into the ordering well since I have only a very rudimentary understanding of the culture and I am not Korean, but this is not to say that aspects of Korean culture aren’t applied to me. In Korea it is acceptable for more senior people to not pass on information to junior people, and so I am not informed about changes in class schedule.

Similarly junior people are not involved in discussions about decisions which affect them. For example I submitted my request for my winter vacation yesterday, and I was told by my coteacher that the other teachers had discussed my request and that it is likely to be approved. I thanked my coteacher, but I must admit my immediate instinctual feeling was irritation since I couldn’t help but feel that my leave request concerns the schools senior administrator and myself; and nobody else. Unfortunately my feelings don’t match reality – instead of my leave request being a simple matter between two people it has to go through several people; which is why my coteacher could not give me an immediate answer event though my requested dates are in the middle of the vacation. My leave request is likely to land on the desks of - the senior English teachers, the head of English, the 3^rd in charge at school, a senior administrator, the teacher in charge of leave, the vice-principal and finally the principal.

Hierarchical relations are all pervasive in Korea, and are strictly applied; even to the layout of the teacher’s office. The vice principal’s desk is against the windows at the back. The most senior teacher’s desks form a line with the vice-principals, with the second most and third most important men in the room seated on the left and right side of the vice-principal. These senior teacher’s desks are arranged in relation to the importance of their subject. The more important the desk, the closer it is to the vice-principal. Sport is the least important of the subjects, so although the head of sport sits with the most senior teachers his desk is the furthest from the vice-principal. Oh, and the most senior teachers are all men.

The rest of the desks are organized in perpendicular rows to the vice principal’s desk. Desks are assigned according to the teacher’s age and the subject’s importance. So for example, sport is not a very important subject; but one of the sports teachers is an older man so he sits closer to the vice-principal than a younger sports teacher would. My coteacher is a woman and in her mid thirties, but she has a relatively well positioned desk. This is probably because she plays a pivotal role in English education at school; as English is an important subject this warrants her current desk. I’m young and I am one the most junior teachers so I sit at the furthest end of my row from the vice-principal. Although my current desk is situated marginally closer to the vice-principal than when I first arrived, it is next to a basin which makes it an unpopular spot.

Generally the more senior teachers sit closer to the vice principal, the only exception being a group of senior teachers that get to sit with their backs towards cupboards which affords them a bit more privacy.

Finally the least important person – the office assistant, who is a young woman, sits the furthest away from the vice-principal.

At the beginning of the year just about everyone move desks. This was a huge task, both books and desks were pushed around the teachers office. At the time I did not understand why the teachers were prepared to come into school during the vacation to undertake the massive move; but now I understand that the move was important and must take place every year. As the teaching staff changes slightly, the teacher’s office has to be rearranged in order to maintain the hierarchy.

Teaching

Hello Everybody

Hello anybody - does anybody read my blog? (Jess as always you don’t count - oh and Eebee you rock.) Everythings instant these days - where’s the gratification in wading through my half baked blog posts, when you can watch truly random crap on youtube? Well I’ll keep writing, if only to keep a record of my years in South Korea.

So Jess and I have been extremely busy over the last while. I’ve been at the coal face preparing lessons, but I am enjoying teaching and I feel that my effort to become a good teacher is really paying off. I finally feel that I can give the students instructions without resorting to translations if I choose my language, class activities and visual cues carefully. It is so immensely satisfying to walk out of a classroom and feel that the lesson was a 100% success. I only dreamed of such feelings in my early days, and now I experience satisfaction on a regular basis.

This is not to suggest that I don’t deliver crap lessons once in a while. They still happen, but their frequency is on the wane. At least the responsibility for the success of lessons does not lie solely with me, ‘class dynamics’ play a huge role in the success of a lesson. Some groups of students will respond to just about any lesson, while others remain uninterested and unruly in lessons that the majority of other classes have responded favorably to.

I’m enjoying tapping into my creative side. It’s awesome to think of novel ideas for class, and sometimes one has to. There are very few ‘ready made stick in the microwave for five minutes’ lessons that are geared towards large classes of easily disinterested students. Stuff like ‘pair work’ is by and large a joke, it hardly ever works, within minutes it’s a jam session for the majority of the class. This said I had an awesome lesson that involved extensive pair work at my rural school today, fortunately the class that I gave the lesson to are fairly enthusiastic. My only regret is that it took to long to get the activity started, but then again I am well versed in the catastrophic results that come with turning students loose on an activity to soon.

I can’t believe some of the lessons that one finds in text books - I mean do, the authors really believe that teenage boys give a flying continental about introducing oneself at a party, or discussing one’s weekend at work? I realise they teach accurate language, and provide realistic situations - but teenagers aren’t interested in that stuff, they want excitement - they want to use their imaginations. Many of my successful lessons have been based on ‘escapism’, or ‘role-playing’ -- being different, escaping from everyday situations. Who gives a toss if the ‘coffee cup is on the table’? No ways, ‘the gold bar’, which is part of the evidence that you are trying to collect, ‘is on the table’ is soooo much more interesting.

Yesterday I started teaching ‘Africa v2’, that’s right I’ve incorporated some general knowledge into my classes, ‘Africa v1’ was overly ambitious and flopped so I scrapped it after the first lesson. The second lesson is a quiz and is proving successful. The students have time to go through cards that I have prepared before the quiz starts - the only thing is I really didn’t think the cards through very well before diving into preparing them. Each card consists of 3 pieces of paper, each group has 17 cards and there are 6 groups. So 3 X pieces of paper X 17 cards X 6 groups = 306 pieces of paper that need to be cut and glued together = the weekend totally wasted. So now I am laminating the cards as I can just see some little shit scribbling on the cards, drawing phallic symbols, writing stuff, adding horns etc.

If I only I had spent a little more time in the planning stage, I would not have spent nearly as long preparing the materials. Oh well, lesson relearned.

Au revoir great vacuum of the internet.

Comment folk, comment!

Gender Equality in South Korea

Here’s an article that appeared in last weekend’s Korea Times.

It was placed within the editorial on page six.

I don’t know much about laying out a newspaper, but given the exceptional importance of the topic to a large percentage of the population I would have thought that news of South Korea's slide in terms of gender equality would have warranted space on the front page.

I guess it’s a little ironic that the piece was buried deep within the paper, albeit in the editorial.

Gender Equality: Korea's Global Ranking Slides Due to Widening Gap

The nation has a long way to go to narrow the widening gender gap. On Tuesday, the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum ranked South Korea 115th in its gender equality list of 134 countries. The forum gave Korea 0.615 in the gender equality index, which is far lower than that of most Asian nations, not to mention top-ranking Western states.

Iceland won 0.827 points, taking the world's top place. Among the leading groups were Finland, Norway, Sweden, South Africa and Lesotho. The Philippines was listed 9th, emerging as the Asian leader. The United States took 31st place, while China ranked 60th and Japan 75th.

It is really disappointing that Korea's ranking has continued to fall over the past years. The country was listed 92nd in 2006, 97th in 2007 and 108th in 2008. As far as gender equality is concerned, Korea has reached the global bottom. We have to humbly accept the ranking and go all-out to bridge the gap between the sexes.

In fact, the nation has neglected its efforts to promote gender equality, while boasting of only its economic power and technological breakthroughs. Korea gained only 0.0714 in the forum's political empowerment index, the lowest level in the world. The reason is because only a small number of women take elected positions such as those of lawmakers, governors and majors.

Currently, the proportion of female legislators only stands at 13.7 percent in the 299-member National Assembly. Only two women serve as ministers, with no female governors. And a mere 3.68 percent of ranking government officials were women in 2008, a plunge from the 6.23 percent in 2006.

South Korean women also have to tolerate less economic opportunities than their male counterparts. Women's economic participation is less than half that of men and their wages are still lower than those of their male competitors.

The nation is required to make concerted efforts to improve gender equality so that it can cement its social cohesion and raise its national competitiveness. It should implement various programs to offer more and better opportunities to women in every field. The role of women is pivotal to national development in the 21st century.

Recent news

Hi Everyone

I feel like I am falling out of the habit of communicating with all of you. I don’t write to anyone as regularly anymore, and I don’t hear much from anyone either. I don’t want to lose contact with my mates, so this email / post is me reaching out to all of you.

It’s not laziness that has kept me from contacting you, I have been extremely busy. Keeping up with classes, and trying to keep a constant flow of creative ideas going is both time consuming and tiring. At the end of the day I am buggered. At least my effort at school has really been paying off. I feel that my students respect me, and that they enjoy my classes. The students’ participation in my classes has been through the roof of late. Sure I have one or two dud groups of students, who doesn’t, but even some of these students have warmed slightly to my classes.

My poetry competition was a huge success, so much so that I have not been able to keep up with the submissions. So my teaching life is going well, but I must admit I don’t have as much energy as I did several weeks ago. Even with my recent trip to the DMZ I feel worn out. I need a break, but I only have the odd day off through until February. Don’t feel sorry for me though. Feel sorry for my students, they are working doubly hard. Their attention hasn’t begun to slip in class yet, but I think this largely thanks a lucky streak I have had with my lesson planning. All I need is one bum lesson and I am going to have heads on desks.

Jess and I visited the DMZ last weekend. I’m haven’t fully got my head around the experience yet - it was bizarre. Within half an hour of leaving Seoul one begins to see barb wire along the Han river, which runs through Seoul, and soon after that guard posts begin appearing at regular intervals. The closer one gets to the DMZ the more regular the guard posts become. Seeing the guard posts begin so soon after Seoul really brought home how close it is to the border, and the substantial threat that it is under. There can be little doubt that North Korea has selected numerous targets in and around Seoul, and some of the outlying areas are probably within reach of North Koreas artillery. Taking such measures no doubt serves as a valuable dissuasive measure against any rash military action on the part of South Korea.

Once one reaches the DMZ a bored soldier enters the tour bus and checks everyone’s IDs. Touring the DMZ is big business and the soldiers that man the entry points have to check several hundred IDs a day.

The DMZ is a bizarre mixture of tourist attractions, military installations, monuments, viewing points, and ‘education centers’. The weather was miserable on the day that we visited, so I didn’t take any pictures, but I doubt there would have been much worth photographing anyway. On this occasion I left the picture taking to some of the less serious members in our group who took every opportunity to have their pictures taken next to imposing, and unflinching, border guards; as well as next to the really kitch theme park style statues of the same soldiers at other points. After photographing themselves next to the kitch statues the same people would rush to be photographed next to the more appropriately serious statues. Once again they would grin and pose, or lean, all over the statues flashing grins and peace signs with little going on behind their eyes.

With hindsight the DMZ was not worth seeing. I didn’t gain much from the experience. It wasn’t informative, and the whole experience was geared more towards voyeurism than meaningful reflection.

When feeling cynical I can’t help but feel that South Korea has been so corrupted by its unabashed pursuit of wealth that it has turned a sad reminder of the Korean war and continued division of thousands of families, into just another money making racket.

Once back in Seoul among the hoardes of fashion clad people, massive billboards, and screaming advertising Jess and I got chatting about the likelihood of the two countries uniting again one day. The sad thing is that even though most south Koreans view South and North Korea as one divided country, I doubt very many would be prepared to substantially fund the extend the high standard of public services to the north Korean public. South Koreas cities simply don’t seem to be producing socially minded individuals, and with each successive generation the horrors of the Korean War and continued tension may well attract less interest.

Kim Jung Il and the north Korean military are an obvious major stumbling block to reunification, but beneath the surface the huge development gap between the countries may well push back the possibility of reunification back by decades after the final demise of the Kim regime.

I wonder how many South Koreans wonder about the development gap, and the problems it poses to reunification. Everyone sees Kim and his acolytes as stymieing meaningful discussion, but what if all Kim Jung Il et al disappeared overnight? After the euphoria resided would south Koreans be prepared to pick up the massive bill that would surely be entailed in reunifying the country?

We spent Saturday evening with Clint in Dongducheon. Dongducheon is north of Seoul and home to the US military base Camp Casey. As a result it is not uncommon to see groups of heavily built western men. A number of clubs catering to the soldiers have sprung up in a suburb near to Clint. The clubs, all with dodgy names and exteriors - and most likely still dodgier interiors, didn’t interest us; but we took the opportunity to visit Chong’s American Breakfast House on Sunday. Chong’s American Breakfast House is staffed by Phillipinos, and we really got a multicultural experience with our large American style $12 breakfasts that we ate while sitting among hulking, tattooed and crew cut men.

The breakfast wrapped up our weekend up north. Five minutes after it ended Jess and I sat down in a train station to begin the wait for the train that would take us into Seoul. There we caught the comfortable KTX express train which we swapped in Gimcheon for a forty minute ride on the substantially less comfortable train to Sangju.

Last night Jess and I attended a small farewell for one of the foreigners who has come to the end of her contract. Everyone in our small community of just less than twenty people was invited, but only five, excluding Shirley who is the person that is about to leave, attended. I felt a little sorry for Shirley. She wasn’t great friends with anyone and a number of faces in our community have changed recently, but I had expected more people to attend. The five people that attended were all South African. Was it simply a coincidence that the five of us were all South African? Do South Africans place greater value on a sense of community, are we less individualistic? Who knows, perhaps there is something to gleaned from last night; but then again five people is simply to small a number to extrapolate from with any confidence.