Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Bloody Christmas

I'm soooo there. Aliens, predators, lotsa extras and cheap digital effects.

Gooooood.

This looks like it'll be delivering everything the first one didn't. And maybe this'll give the franchise legs again (you know, this has been going on for quite some time, already).

S'posed to open Christmas Day. Think it'll make it to Korea, like the first one?

"No End In Sight"

Anyone out there seen this? I think I'd like to.

Whew. I hope those who voted for a Bush second term are happy. We should have never gone into Iraq, and now, we can't get out. "Quagmire." I learned that word in middle school, and applied it to history in high school. Too bad the bigwigs in charge of the country didn't think about that before getting us into a war we didn't have to wage.

Burn Fertility Clinics, Too!

I originally wrote this back in April of this year, but didn't want to post, since the idea was to try to lighten up the blog a bit. (Ha!) But after watching Michael J Fox make this exact point – far more convincingly than I ever could – I thought it time to post this, since it was a pretty well-fleshed out post.

Here's the post:

--------------

From The Boston Globe:

For all those interested in the moral implications of stem cell research and why equating a human with a multi-cell blastocyst not even the size of the period at the end of this sentence, you should take a read here.

Forget stem banning stem cell research, which could save countless actual human lives – if destroying a blastocyst is "murder," then why isn't the religious right shutting down fertility clinics, which destroy them (the unused fertilized eggs made for couples trying to conceive) every day, at the tune of 400,000 per year?

Basically, because people are too stupid and dogmatic to even be consistent in what they fight for. Basically, these things are flushed down the toilet (well, as biowaste, I'm sure they are not actually flushed down toilets, but...) every day, but there are people who think the Hammer of God will fall upon our nation if one actually uses these cells to help people.

Also, the article makes a really good analogy: all oak trees were acorns, but all acorns are not oak trees. One does not think the same about a squirrel with its mouth full of these little seeds as a fire that rips through a forest, or big corporation stripping a hill of good, strong trees.

Because they are totally different things. Yes, one can debate about the point at which point an embryo or a fetus becomes human being, when the cells differentiate and become organs and becomes undeniably a person; but a blastocyst is not much more than sperm and ovum meeting, and the fact that this happens all the time in a test tube and we keep them on ice as a rule and destroy most of the ones created as a rule means that they are essentially not people in reality.

And what God thinks? Well, I think I shouldn't have to remind anyone that for a human to profess to know the will of God is pretty damned arrogant (and I do mean "damned!") and is at least open for interpretation, because even that very idea itself is a human interpretation.

Does life begin at contraception? If it does, then there are hundreds of thousands of frozen souls on ice right now, thousand of which will be thrown away today. Now is someone going to start bombing fertility clinics now, places that are actually trying to make babies?

Lord have mercy – sometimes it's really obvious that America was indeed founded by political extremists; they were called "Puritans" (a derogatory term at the time, by the way, for those on the fringe of the Anglican Church who didn't think that the church had gone far enough Protestant, hence not being "pure" of Catholic corruption and evil) for a reason.

Well, it's been a long time since then. Even if one wants to deny the evolutionary model (I don't tend to use the term "theory of evolution" because that word is unfortunately misunderstood as "it's just a theory" and don't get that a "theory" is actually a complex hypothesis that has been proven through empirical observation, ahem – proof), I hope no one is actually out there arguing that cells don't exist, or that we don't come from, ahem, come and an egg.

I don't understand the need to take a strict interpretation of Genesis; even the Catholic Church doesn't. Do hardcore Scripturalists deny that cells exist? They weren't mentioned in the Bible. Nor were dinosaurs. Or the planet Pluto – wait, it's not a planet anymore.

Here's the problem – the lack of basic science education and the idiots who think that learning a scientific model actually means one has to accept it. Even if one were to accept the ridiculous assertion that Darwinian evolutionary theory is a "religion," its teachings do not have to be followed.

Funny thing was that I always thought that even the broadest interpretation of "religion" usually had involved some sort of deity. Well, I guess that would disqualify "intelligent design" from being science then, huh?

People don't have to agree, nor believe in each others' religions; but I wish that the Christian Right would at least be honest in admitting that they have no interest in respecting even the lines that separate science from religion, or infringing on the rights of others to either not believe in the Christian God, or to believe in others.

Hence, the Christian Right is as fanatic in using politics to proselytize and disrespect other religions and ways of life as any other groups we call "fanatic." These are people who have advocated violence to stop the "murder" in abortion clinics; well, if they applied the flawed logic of "blastocyst=embryo=fetus=human", then they would be murdering fertility doctors, who are busy helping create life.

So the good Christian soldiers who spit on women going into Planned Parenthood should be spitting on couples coming out of fertility clinics, no? I mean, the "abortion doctors" only take one human life per woman, whereas multiple human lives destroyed by even attempting to make one baby.

Doesn't this define the ultimate irony? A new form of Holocaust? And how do we save these children-to-be? Since we can't destroy them, that means we'd have to implant them all. So we mustn't we make a policy to somehow bring all these blastocysts to term? And for the couples who make them, shouldn't we pass a Blastocyst Responsibility Act, requiring couples to carry all their cell clusters to full term?

Perhaps the time has come, and to avoid all the messy questions and keep things a convenient black-and-white, let's just close our eyes and destroy all the fertility clinics now. It's for a good cause. Like the death camps in the Holocaust, we have a moral responsibility to destroy the factories of death while we have the chance, to stop the machinery of systematic slaughter!

Right?

That's if we're going to stick to that "logic." Come on. We have people supported by a government who say that using stem cells is "murder." Yet we throw blastocysts, where the stem cells come from, in the figurative trash bin every single day, to the tune of thousands at a time, all in the effort to CREATE babies – not destroy them. More "lives" are destroyed every year at fertility clinics than at one that perform abortions, according to this "life begins at conception" argument.

And we could be saving people from horrible disease by using cells that are far closer to the sperm that hundreds of millions of men jizz away daily than anything even closely resembling a human being, even if you define that in the embryonic stage.

I'm not trying to stomp on anyone's religious beliefs. I'm just saying that we live in a universe that involves separating between Augustine's City of God from the City of Man; Thomas Aquinas solved that problem at the end of the Middle frickin' Ages. Whether you believe in God or not, people living in Judeo-Christian societies separate the activities of Man and God according to an Augustinian/Aquinian logic; I'm just asking that the so-called "Religious Right" just apply that separation consistently. And regardless of belief/disbelief in God, we should at least be able to navigate that separation better than people who still believed in magic, or that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Haven't we progressed a little since then?

Even Thomas Aquinas argued that the realms of Man and God did not lie in apparent contradiction to one another. So what's with the sudden Know-Nothing attitude of a certain stripe of American Christians and other fringe people who simply want to reject the entire the actual existence of the entire city of Man because it superficially appears to contradict with the literal text of one of the books of the Bible? Even the Catholic Church dealt with these questions better in the Middle Ages – it at least tried to reconcile them. And even the Church gets a bad rep; it was never in fact hostile to "science" itself, but rather to overt and public challenges to Church authority (which is what got old Galileo in trouble, for example, not his theory itself).

Basic. Logic. Applied. 21st-century. Hello?

"Mike the Mad Biologist" has a use for all those blastocysts, one that is right up my alley:

Now, that's a blastocyst!

Hell Hath Frozen Over

I am very verklempt right now.

Things must be a-changing, for real. I'd heard that there was work on a Mac version of NateOn, the chatting program that everyone seems to be using in Korea, but that Mac rumor was something we Korea Mac users had gotten used to, sort of like Roswell aliens or tales of unicorns. It would show up on hardcore Mac users' blogs – "it's really just about finished!" – but then again, look at who you were asking: hardcore Mac users.

There was/is a Java-based version of the program, but by then, I was already running Windoze in Parallels. In fact, besides checking web sites in Evil Explorer™, the only reason I would fire up Windoze was to run NateOn, which has replaced MSN as the messenger of choice in Korea for most people under the age of 30.

But today, I got a barrage of messages from my besieged Korean Mac friends – which, in Korea, is really like belonging to the People Who Like to Ride Unicorns Club – that the Mac version of NateOn was finally, finally out. It really is quite...bizarre. And the wait has indeed been long. When I searched on Naver, the first blog hit I got had an entry that lead with the headline: "Finally!"

So I found the most official source I could – the Chosun Ilbo online – and indeed, there was the story. It was true, and they had all the links. Including the link to the beta version of NateOn – for reals! And not just for Mac, but Linux as well! The devil must be reaching for his ski parka right now.

I'm running it now, and it was weird to hear the NateOn startup chime without my Windoze going; and it's going to be majorly useful. See, I have one little snag hit me when running Windoze in Parallels: when I stick in USB devices, the system fights for control over them, even if I've specified in Parallels to let the Mac OS have, say, my CF card from my digital camera. Parallels shares most everything with the Mac OS well – the mouse and keyboard (obviously) as well as a common folder, the Internet, even dragging and dropping, cutting and pasting between the systems. But when I stick in a memory card and I've forgotten to close Windoze, it hiccups. And since I am generally only using Windoze for NateOn...you see the point.

So, it's running, man! I'm sure there'll be some hiccups to this program as well since this is a beta, but so far, so good – and I can save much computer resources by not running an entire operating system just for the sake of a little chat program.

Bless you, SK! Great job!

A Little Inspiration

Don't want to say much about this, 'cause not much needs to be said.

A professor dying of pancreatic cancer gives his final lecture. He plans to be dead in just a few weeks or perhaps a couple months. Yet, he manages to inspire instead of depress in his delivery. Truly remarkable and uplifting.

It's truly inspiring to see someone able to look back with satisfaction at their life, even at such a relatively young age. Makes one think, don't it?

Welcome to the United Police State of America

Title too alarmist?

Well, you probably all heard about the tasering of a student being a bit too pointed in his questions to Kerry, who said he'd answer the questions just before the campus police went all LAPD RAMPART Division on his ass.

Over at the Marmot's Hole, I express disbelief at anyone who could even think someone "deserves" treatment like this, even if you think the guy to be a pompous dick. Last I checked, being a pompous dick wasn't a crime, and when I was in college, there were ALWAYS one or two people like that at a campus forum. But back then, we didn't taser students for grandstanding on our sophomore-year, idealistic view of the world. What kind of message does that send?

Now, this video of a city council member who calmly packed up his stuff after being shouted down and bullied out of the room and as soon as he has left the room (and the cops think, the view of the camera), he is pushed hard and beaten.

Some say he "fought back." How did he do that when if you look at the reflection in the glass case as he's pushed CLEARLY shows his face going through the door as he goes to the ground, at which point, we immediately see him face down and the officer going to town on his face. Watch the video. He was pushed, went face-first through the glass, and was headed for the ground. Seconds later, he's face-down and getting wailed on.

Yeah, he said something on the way out the door that the pig probably didn't like, and it looked like there was some personal stuff going on there, but cops aren't given a badge and a gun to settle personal grudges.

Oh, and you don't remember the guy – an Air Force officer and Iraq war vet, from the descriptions coming in so far – just got shot (3 times!) for complying with an officer's orders. Watch the video. Even the news station warns you that it's shocking – and it is. Just before he got shot, she said "I'm on your side" and when the cop told him to stand up, which he did without making any hint of threatening motions, BAM, BAM, BAM! Guess he "deserved" that too. Does it even matter what he said? Well, what's even better is the verdict that came out late last July:

Carrion said he is mystified by the verdict. "I don’t know how the jury found that it was justified. Clear as day, he said twice, ‘Get up, get up.’ And then I repeated, ‘I’m going to get up now.’ I did not even get up fully. I pushed my upper body up and then I got shot three times and fell back."

And finally, there's the great-grandmother just arrested for not watering her lawn and taken down to the station bloodied:

Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors.

She was arrested July 6 after failing to give her name to a police officer who visited her home.

During a struggle, Perry fell and injured her nose. She spent more than an hour in a holding cell before police released her.

To all the fair-weather "conservatives" who are like "they deserved it" whenever some whiny liberal gets beat over the head, how about separating one's personal feelings of cruelty towards those you dislike on a personal level from the rational ability to see that police seem to be going overboard in a culture that is condoning a "by any means necessary" way of thinking about state control, our rights our being eroded daily for the sake of "national security" and cops have even more instruments in their arsenal – of both the legal and physical kinds – to restrain us, arrest us, and take us down to the station with, for far smaller offenses than were considered warranted in the past.

The problem is that we're becoming inured to it.

Now, Rodney King couldn't really shock us. Police brutality? What would it take to actually convince a good majority of the populace that something was unequivocally wrong? Videotape isn't enough anymore, and if you want to make accusations without it, forget it. People are all of a sudden crack media critics and masters of digital video forensics when it comes to cops beating down people. The burden of proof should be on them, not the civvies they're supposed to be protecting – us.

Here's another one from my hometown, of all places. (HT to Seouldout)

Or how about THIS guy – a 60-year-old man who was lucky enough to be filmed by both an Associated Press camera and a photojournalist looking out his hotel window who happened to be at just the right angle to film the scene?

May we all be so "lucky."

Does it actually require something ridiculous as police showing up in white sci-fi battle armor before the majority of people start becoming alarmed?

A Modest Proposal

I was just over on Facebook when I came across a discussion about "saving" the "children of Korea." Some well-meaning foreign folks having a discussion about all the weirdo foreign teachers one occasionally comes across, as well as the stories that swirl around.

On the subject of English teachers, hiring policies, and overall quality, I've written extensively on this subject already, as many of you already know,

One of the problems with this conversation, as well as with the English teaching community in general, is that the population is such a transient, temporary one. We have to see things big picture. Not only could Korean employers have been doing whatever "checks" were possible but didn't, some hagwon owners actually don't care, or even don't actually want legal teachers. That way they can be paid less and have no legal recourse. It's a part of a bigger structural problem related to the dirty, interested business of English education in Korea.

The real way to solve the problem is to create the ability for real, qualified foreign professionals of every stripe to more easily be in Korea – offering an extended visa status similar to the ones kyopos have with the F-4 (on which one can live in Korea freely, and change or have multiple employment as one wishes), or even creating a permanent visa status would allow professional and good English teachers, say (the qualifications to get this visa might be having lived in Korea for at least 2-3 years, have no criminal record, confirmations of all certificates and degrees double-checked by the government instead of letting the foxes guarding the chicken coop).

Now, you'd be allowing the formation of a professional, experienced class of English teaching professionals, who, although wouldn't be perfect or without certain weirdos, would generally be a more guarantee-able group of people, who are, by their actions and choice to stay here longer, demonstrating a different level of commitment to their teaching, the culture, and the country.

On the market level, you'd be rewarding the ones who do good jobs, allow them more mobility in the ability to choose good jobs over the bad ones (imagine if a foreigner with this visa could stay in Korea without being linked to a specific, possibly bad employer, or wouldn't have to worry about a previous employer making future employment prospects difficult), and the market would be more stratified.

Teachers with the "good visa" would be preferred, and the good jobs in the English teaching market would adjust to attracting the "good teachers" who would have the option to reject bad jobs. Disreputable hagwons would never get the "good teachers", and the market would work itself out quite nicely, I think. Reputable hagwons would succeed in getting the "good" teachers, and for the sake of self-interest, the formerly "bad" hagwons would have to either shape up, or watch enrollment fall.

And a possible side-effect is that larger numbers of foreigners would stay to get that better visa, which would be renewable say, every two years, like the F-4. The market might even attract more people into its pool. In any case, losers and bail jumpers, criminals and people with fake degrees wouldn't be in the "good visa" pool, which itself would steadily expand.

Now, there'd be a built-in preference for and recognition of experience as a foreign professional. In the Korean way of thinking, I guarantee that you'll see a preference for this status ("Our school only employs Z-1 visa holding foreign professionals") and the supply side of this equation being able to flex its power in a healthy way, which this market sorely needs.

The main problem is that you'll never improve quality in the supply if they're temporary and the standards are set by the lowest common denominator of what disreputable hagwon teachers will pay, as well as what the market (and the 22-year-old kid fresh out of college) will bear.

I observe this positive change already happening with F-4 visa holders in my own group of friends, acquaintances, and professional connections. Many of these people are professionals, perpetual grad students, artists, activist, and other people doing random things here in Korea. But we're all pretty smart, do interesting stuff, contribute a lot to the country, actually, and (most importantly to creating this small group of people) we can take or leave a job anytime we choose, and employers don't have to be burdened with any additional paperwork in hiring us.

We've got alien registration numbers, permanent addresses, and pay taxes. So we're hired just like any other Korean is. And that gives us great, great power. Not in society, per se, but we can't be fucked with easily, since we'll quit. And then go to their rival (as I did).

We aren't a large enough group for any of our former employers to learn any lessons, but imagine if a large group of foreigners had this visa status? Employer fucks with you – bye! Doesn't pay you – bye, bye! And you can stick around in the country to sue them and win, preferably from the distance and safety of your next job. That would be nice.

Anyway, this will never happen.

There will continue to be "crackdowns" that never work, in the same way that "diets" are inherently doomed to fail, a few people will be made scapegoats, and the Korean media will have a few egregious cases to exaggerate into representation as normal "foreigner behavior."

And there will continue to be no incentive for a hagwon owner to hire a conscientious, hard-working foreign teacher with exacting professional standards over a warm body who might be illegal but costs half as much and has no legal recourse in the event they are screwed. And if they don't show up for class, the owner will just find another warm body to replace them with.

After all, this is standard that the English education industry in Korea has created.

iPhone Follower, Not Killer

Thanks, Marmot.

Here's the reason the new Samsung phone won't be an "iPhone killer" – it's the very fact that they're trying to make one that guarantees they will fail.

Same thing for the several "iPod killers" that have come and gone – ho hum – the main problem is that, no matter what you do, your moves are dictated by the person who made the first one. It's like a game of Tic Tac Toe in reverse: little kids figure out pretty fast that the outcome is dictated from the beginning. Hence, the game gets boring fast.

For as much as iRiver tried to make their little players white, then different colors, and in the end, as much like the iPod as possible without violating patents, the point is, they have lost the game from go.

Same with this Samsung phone. Apple's released a revolutionary new product that has changed the terms of the game. No matter what anti-Apple folks are out there, you can't deny that Apple changed the game for the personal computer (Apple II), changed the game for way we use computers and operate them (Macintosh), changed the face of the music industry and pioneered the way to make $$$ selling music (iPod + iTunes), even as the traditional record industry is trying to take as many people with them as their Titanic sinks (geez, you'd think these guys would go down like the dudes playing violin to the last, rather than crying like beeches).

And let's face it – if you've really looked at the iPhone interface, it's years ahead of anything a Motorola or Samsung or Nokia or anybody else had even bothered to have a wet dream about – seriously, it is. Making a few cute icons on a touch screen does not a revolutionary interface make: you're just Windoze copying, and badly.

And that's as far as the Windoze analagy can go. Apple made its mistakes with the Mac and hence, it never became the industry standard. But the iPod dominates. The iPhone has already sold a MILLION units in these few months (I heard it took the iPod two years to reach a similar level).

And as soon as the iPod Touch gets to market next month, it's going to sweep. And that's laying the groundword for whenever the iPhone gets out here.

In the end, Apple is setting the terms of the game, and is winning handily. And it has done it with talent, design, creativity, and panache – not with the bone-crushing, competitor-digesting, anti-market practices of Microsoft.

Let's review.

People laughed at the Mac. OK, and as it fumbled, they got some good chuckles.

They laughed and laughed at the Ipod. "Apple's gone off the deep end and losing focus!" Ahem.

They laughed at iTunes: "Who's gonna pay for music? They'll just rip it!"

They laughed at iTunes television: "Who's gonna pay for content that's already free?"

No one laughed at the iPhone.

Now, I'm not saying Apple's God or anything – I just respect them as a company, since they make shit that's just better. On top of that, their shit has earned a "cool" factor as well.

Samsung thinks it's gonna win a game that's dictated – nay, been created by the guy who has a stellar track record, crazy smarts, as well as killer good looks? And by trying to be a lesser version of that very guy?

Keep dreamin', Samsung.

Racist Sports Chosun

Blasted this stupid and simply racist piece on the Sports Chosun, written by Kim Yun-hee. Are we still trying to dredge up "English Spectrum-gate"? And even that journalistically flimsy "AIDS scandal" that is little more than rumor and hearsay?

My point in the email to her – in which I call her paper, her person, and her piece "racist" and ask her if writing garbage like this was her goal in life when studying for the university entrance exam and graduating from college – emphasized the fact that totally warped and wacky coverage of foreigners is skyrocketing, even as, compared to a decade or any time before, the quality of English teachers is not only not that bad, but better than ever.

The way I see it, the overall numbers have risen, which brings about a rise in regrettable and sometimes just plain stoopid incidents, but trust me: you should have seen the quality of a hagwon instructor in 1994, or an EPIK English teacher in the first year of that program in 1995, or any teacher hired directly by provincial school boards in the late 1990's.

As I've said in previous posts, I actually wrote a letter to the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), which was making policy and running programs for the Ministry of Education at the time, illustrating how dire I thought the situation was in the hagwons, but especially the schools. Of course, ignored, and silly policies went forward, many of which have led us to some of the problems in the system today.

In any case, another thing I told Ms. Kim was that words have an effect, and that it would have been not only unethical and racist to have talked about "Beware Yellow Killer Koreans Who Tote Guns " after say, the LA Riots or the Cho Seung-hee incident, but dangerous as well.

And considering all the shit many guys, including myself, have to put up with these days (which I never, ever felt back in 1994, when I was far more culturally, linguistically, and historically ignorant about Korea), words do have an effect. They do result in changing patterns of behavior, especially when the pattern of negative representation is so vicious and uniform.

I wish I could be that clear in my Korean, but I did my best. And I said some other choice things in there, such as being very melodramatic about what a bad name stuff like this makes for Korea, how words like this do far more harm than any "Korea, Sparkling" or World Cup campaign ever did for Korea, and how I hoped she knew that words like this lead to the behavior that keeps me from riding the subway. Guilt. Love it. And she should feel guilty, I think.

More than anything, I want her to know we waeguks are watching the media, reading it, and translating it for others. More accountability can only lead to more responsibility, I say.

I should have proofread more before hitting the "send" button (as is always my weakness), but I'm locked in to putting up the actual words I sent over to her desk.

인종차별주의자적인 한국.

인종차별주의자 김윤희.

이런 식으로 일부러 자기 독자들의 주의만 받으려고하는 행동은 정말 나쁜 비도덕적인 짓이다.

물론 이상한 사람들이 있겠지만 도대체 왜 메세지보드의 이상한 글, 아니면 바보같은 어떤 외국인의 올린 유투브 비디오가 전국 뉴스입니까? 그리고 잉글리쉬스페크트럼은 오래 된 뉴스이고 그리고 그 글은 - 이상한 글이지만 - 대표적인 글도아니고 그렇게 바보처럼 글을 올린 건 불법도아닙니다.

꼭 '백인'이나 '흑인'이란 단어를 강조해야 됩니까? 뭐 미국에서는 LA 폭동할 때도, 초승희의 사건 일어날 때도 그런 '노랑이 한국인들 조심해라' 그런 말을 쓰면 좋았을까요?

그리고 그런 말은 파워가 있습니다. 이런 예외 케이스만 보도하고, 인종차별주의적인 표현만 쓰고 요즘에 외국이으로써 길에서 다니면 위험해졌습니다. 전 미국의 플브라이트이란 장학기급을 타고 한국에 1994년도에 처음에 왔는데 사실 그때 외국인 강사들이 진짜 무서울정도로 이상한 사람들이 쾌 많았습니다. 대학원 갔가오고 다시 2002년도에 한국에와서, 오노, 여중생, 홍대의 클럽 사진 '사건'들이 일어난 후에 정말 정말로 변해졌습니다.

하도 욕을 먹어서 더이상 지하철 안탑니다. 타자마자 술취한 아저씨나 이런바 '애국자' 대학생이 바로 모욕을 시작하기 때문입니다. 그리고 한국여자랑 - 와이프이라도 - 1호선 타면은 싸움이 이러날가봐 (자기 여친 아니면 그냥 친구가 '똥갈보'나 '미국년'이나 '백마 타는 년'이란 욕을 듣고 내가 그 사람을 때리고 다음 날에 '흑인 외국인 강사 지하철 폭행'이란 스트리 나올가봐) 아예 서울에서는 지하철 안탑니다.

김윤희씨는 아주 좋은 일하고 있다고 생각하십니까? 자랑스럽습니다? 이런 일을 하는 건 열심히 수능시험보고 대학교 졸업하고 본인의 목적이었습니까?

아미리 해도 김윤희같은 기자들 때문에 많은 외국인들이 많은 안좋은 경험을 당하고 계속 이런 이상한 기사들을 읽고 자기 일을 끝나고 한국한테 욕을 하면서 자기 나라로 갑니다. 그리고 저도 한국말, 한국학, 한국역사를 깊은 관심이 있었는데 너무 지겹습니다. 저같은 '외국놈'들이 많이 참을 수 있는데 한국에서 열심히 좋은 짓을 해도 소용옶다고 생각을 들 수 밖에 없습니다.

한국은 "Korea, Sparkling"하고 월드컵할 때 나라를 위한 홍보가 나라한테 더 큰 효과일까? 아니면 대부분 욕을 먹고 한국을 미워하게 된 외국인들이 자기 나라에 가서 하는 말이 더 큰 효과인가요?

일단 이런 기사를 읽고 저도 생각하는데: '진짜 난 바보다. 한국에 왜 왔을까? 내 시간을 다 낭비한 거다.'

전 그런 생각을 처음 든 사람도 아닙니다. 요새는 2,3년이상 참을 수 있는 외국인들이 옛날처럼 많지 않습니다. 개인적으로도 핸국을 사랑했지만 제 친한 친구한테는 솔직히 한국을 추천할 수 없겠습니다. 찰리 일본이나 중국에 가라고 할 수 밖에 없습니다. 그리고 전 한국을 사랑하는 케이스입니다. 한국을 100% 싫어하게 된 경우는 자기 친구한테 뭐라고 할까요?

이 편지를 읽고 본인이 아마도 '싫다면, 자기 나라로 가라, 새끼야!' 생각하겠습니다. 걱정마세요. 빨리 가려고 합니다.

I hope she has a very nice day. Drop her a line (and be respectful and don't be the very stereotype that we are trying to counter) and make it clear that words have consequences, and that we're reading them, too.

God Bless America

Dude. Like this video is totally like HWAPACK! And like BARRRRHHHHH!

Awesome. Thanks, Elaine, for that one.