Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Wow.

Just came across this surfing the news.

Wow – good thing people have video cameras against the pigs these days.

"I don't need a reason to pull you over."

Umm, yes...you do.

Pigs.

I'm Gonna Web Surf Like It's 1999

What a wonderful little time capsule from 1967.

And how far-fetched that must have looked. A home computer. Shopping through a screen. Online bill transactions. "Father checking the bills" for what Mother buys. Home printer. Taxes at home. Even multiple "windows" for different purposes, baby monitors, etc.

Now that's crazy!

Fuck You, KBS

CORRECTION: In all fairness to KBS, it looks like the line in question in this post was mistranslated, and I didn't check the original (linked below) directly, since I was blogging in a mad heat from work. So, the line in question was actually different in Korean, as Robert noted in his comment to this post. But since I don't erase posts, and one of the points of this blog is to keep an ongoing record of my thoughts on a lot of things, I print this correction and point you to the relevant correct translation here for your convenience. You can also just read it in the comments section below.

Take note, however, that my overall stance on this show, as well as my little line of invective in response to KBS's obvious agenda in undertaking this kind of yellow journalism – stands. You can read my other opinions about this subject from my last few posts here and here.

Thanks, Korea Beat, for covering this. You are one part of helping foreigners defend themselves here by at least allowing a lot of the stereotyping that goes on behind the safe lines of the language barrier to at least get to the ears of the people in question.

And all my the schools I worked at wondered why I never allowed any Korean news crew into my classroom. Well, here's what KBS is saying:

Police claim that S would even smoke marijuana into the early morning and then go to school and teach the students. Police explained that not only S but most foreign English teachers teach English by day and smoke marijuana by night.

A source at the foreign affairs division of the Seoul Police Department said, “American and Canadian English teachers think Korea is a ‘land of opportunity.’

OK. I've known some foreign losers here. I've also come across some people whom I personally don't like. But "most foreign English teachers teach English by day and smoke marijuana by night?" I say again: "FUCK YOU, KBS."

Now, foreign English teachers aren't all saints, and yeah, a lot of us/them do enjoy the easy access to Korean women, which is a part of the draw to teaching in Asia for many young men fresh out of college and looking for adventure. But trust me – you don't need any drugs with which to "seduce" Korean women, since white skin is more than enough in many normal bars and dance clubs in Korea. Maybe that fact doesn't sit well with you, me, or some conservative, insecure Korean men – but it's a fact that there's a joking quip that white men are "issued their Korean girlfriend right off the plane at the airport."

No drugs required. All you need is decades of American movie, television, and other forms of pop culture immersion, along with an ample helping of the cultural colonial attitude best summed up as what Koreans know very well as 사대주의.

And as for the allegation itself – WHAT THE FUCK? I must apologize to my delicately-tempered readers, since my use of colorful language is rife today, but WHAT THE SAM FUCK? On what basis is that statement made, on what foundation do the incompetent Korean Keystone Kops have to make the allegation that "most foreign English teachers teach English by day and smoke marijuana by night"?!

Where does that come from? On the basis that the majority of the English teachers they arrest perhaps do so? Well, that's some pretty faulty fucking logic, if I may again engage in colorful turns of phrase. I won't even comment on how idiotic that statement is.

I will comment on how extremely far-flung from reality that statement it. Even I, after nearly 8 years in and out of Korea, after going through the idiotic Ohno-inspired "Fucking USA", the anti-American bullshit of late 2002-2003, the abominable niggeration of the Bubble Sisters, and even other stupid news coverage – even I am flabbergasted at such an irresponsible, unfounded, and so socially dangerous a statement as that.

"Most foreign English teachers teach English by day and smoke marijuana by night." Jumpin' JE-hosaphat, that is seriously wack.

That's just soooooo far from any reality I've observed here in Korea, even when the quality of foreigners was far, far, far worse than it is now, which is a VAST improvement over when *I MYSELF* found foriegners to be scary, back in the early 90's in Korea. That's when the media should have been concerned – not now.

But we all know why this is happening – AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN.

Fucking Korean media – pure, Hearst-level, 1890's yellow journalism. At best, something to put at the bottom of my kitty litter box. Why I am surprised?

Next-after-next SeoulGlow episode: interviews with fellow foreigners about their reaction. And a friend or two to help with the subtitling in Korean, if you got it. We, as this constructed "community" of "foreigners", need to at least make a statement.

Fuck, I'm pissed.

If you be down, I'm considering taking this Saturday night to go to Hongdae – the spawning grounds of us evil, drug-peddling, Korean-women-corrupting foreigners – and doing interviews in the various nooks and crannies there.

Who's game?

Podcast #31 - Academic Fakery and the New Jack Hustle

OK - it's on.

Apparently, some Korean reporters are calling around certain foreign professors now, looking for a story. Even if there is none. Apparently, some official literature listed some foreign professor who had studied at Trinity College and who had also attended the officially academically linked Georgetown as having gotten his Ph.D. from Georgetown instead of the other way around. Not his fault, who cares, right? Not when there's a witch hunt on, and now the media's returning to its old stomping grounds of "look at how bad the foreigners are!"

I myself have been listed as having gone to all kinds of school I haven't, and have been listed as "professor" and "Dr. Michael Hurt" and with a "Ph.D." behind my name, when none of these things are true. One web site for a school I was teaching at had, unbeknownst to me, listed me in the course description (which I don't check) as a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University.

That was news to me.

So I informed them of the error, and even had to remind the department to remind the other department who talks to the guys who update the web site once a week who...

You get the picture.

And on top of that, there was some incentive on the school's part to fudge with profiles, since that leads to more students enrolling in the summer session I was teaching in. But short of that, I think it was actually just a clerical error, and they had gotten me mixed up with someone else. I've also had my undergraduate alma mater listed as my non-existent Ph.D. (I'm a doctoral candidate, but not yet finished with the dissertation), and all kinds of secretaries who don't speak much English have put my name next to the wrong others names countless times.

And that ain't my fault. I correct any error I see, and must be one of the most academically honest fools out there. Yet, it's a shame to see someone like me, who made no mistake of his own and has an Oxford undergraduate degree (meaning, why would this guy feel the need to "pump up" his stats when he already commands respect in his field, not to mention having gone to a power hitter school?), yet the best this idiotic reporter in question can do is come up with some web site that had mislisted his background.

So when Regina called me up, I brought out a friend to do a podcast on the subject and nip this shit in the bud - that reporter works for a major English-language daily here in Korea. I hope he gets to hear this podcast and take a nice big sip of shut-the-fuck-up.

And if anyone wants to question my credentials, feel free to go up my ass with a microscope if you'd like. My shit is clean and fresh as a freshly-talcumed baby's bottom. I've got official transcripts, raised seals, and even pictures of me at graduation in the black gown, bitches.

Look for your story elsewhere.

Listen to the podcast in the menu to the left, or click here.

Running Time: 1:22:25
File Size: 56.6 MB
File Info: 96 kbps (48 kpbs mono) at 44.1 kHz, MPEG-2, layer 3 (MP3)

Show Links:

Where the Hell Am I? (ExpatJane's Blog)
http://expatjane.blogspot.com/

The Vulgar Nature of the Korean News Media

Wow – it's really, really on, now.

60 whole minutes of bad journalism – a key informant is the "ex-girlfriends of English teacher" confirming all the media stereotypes about foreigners that they've been perpetrating for years.

No matter what the distorted media picture says, here's what I observed from my own experience, and believe is echoed by most of the people I know:

– Almost all foreign teachers I know in Korea are all qualified and have real degrees. It's the old streetlight-and-the-key idea; if you just look for your key where you can easily find it – under the streetlight – or expect to see it, then that's the only place it will be. So when the Korean media's busy salivating for any scandal involving fake degrees, it will find them. Funny thing is, as most foreigners working in Korean organizations have suspected for years, there are a lot of Koreans working with some seriously fake resumes.

– Almost all foreign teachers I know in Korea, as well as any I've heard of, spend their time teaching their classes, doing some tutoring on the side, and generally spending their time just like Koreans do: going to get a bit to eat, having a few drinks, watching movies, shopping, seeing some shows or exhibits, touring around the country – whatever. Yet, the Korean media would have you think that all we do is sit around smoking out, waiting in alleyways for unsuspecting Korean women, and sit around on computers making fake degrees for our friends. And there's any problem with fake degrees, the real problem is with lax hiring practices and hagwon owners (many of whom themselves have fake degrees, ahem) who actually don't care, or even know that their walking dictionary is a faker. In the end, all one has to do is pick up the fucking phone to confirm resume information. Who's really being stupid here? The schools and hagwons who get faked out by a non-graduate, or the faker?

– Yeah, many foreign men enjoy a lot of attention from Korean women (which is really the crux of a lot of this media bullshit), but that's not illegal, and pretty inevitable. Perhaps the Korean government should ban Hollywood movies, television shows, and pop music – and activate re-education programs to eliminate decades of American influence. Then "easy" Korean women will stop showing up in Itaewon and Hongdae bars, and the men can go back to being celibate scholars, sitting at home and studying hangul and Korean history, waiting with bated breath for their next conversation class to start.

The Korean media is always looking for a scandal, and race-baiting stories of foreigners as "sexual predators" are the favorites. Too bad there hasn't been, to date, a story actually involving foreigners committing sexual crimes. It's mostly been limited to the Korean media skimming message boards, blogs, and even YouTube looking for something juicy. Too bad the "scandals" have all been legal and consensual acts, even if some of the stuff they've scraped up is in bad taste.

And taking things out of cultural context – fact is, in America, I'd say nearly everyone I know has smoked pot or at least experimented with other stuff in college. Even the Presidents of the United States admitted to doing drugs (Clinton "didn't inhale" his pot supposedly, and Bush was a heavy drinker and did coke). This is not to say that it's OK to do it in Korea, but then again, when the only people being targeted and watched closely are foreigners, is it any wonder foreigners keep getting busted?

And if we wanted to talk about cultural context, then by American standards, half the Koreans I know are simple high-functioning alcoholics. And ask anyone who'd lived in Korea – even on my heaviest drinking day of my life, I could never go toe-to-toe with the average Korean salaryman. So who is more "depraved," again? As long as we're making judgments.

In the end, this really reminds me of the conventional wisdom that would sometimes pass as "journalism" in the pre-Civil Rights American South. The vast, vast majority of black men weren't going around raping white women, but many white people knew it as a "fact" that they were, and were ready to act to prevent it. And the racial/gender dynamics are the same, as much of this anti-foreigner discourse (well, much of modern Korean nationalist discourse itself) is centered around notions of protecting an innocent, infantilized, and highly feminized notion of national "pride" and "culture."

This is an old fucking trope. As old as kijichon fiction and film, which consistently relied on the stock racist image of the ultimate degradation of the nation, which always involves an innocent Korean girl forced to prostitute herself to the (invariably black) American GI.

One may think this an alarmist analysis, but when you break it down, and you look at the consistent pattern of the crap that gets reported as "news" regarding foreigners in this country – that bottom-scraping YTN Hongdae report, the "HIV foreigner" story and the YTN YouTube non-scandal are the best recent examples – it's all rooted in the racist, sexist symbology of fear and anger of foreign cock entering Korean pussy.

And I'll leave it at that, without spin or any more fancy academic ideas to break it down. Because it's a vulgar thought, it is best left expressed as a vulgarity. And as far as the Korean media goes – relying on emails from Hotmail accounts, YouTube videos, and the ubiquitous "Korean ex-girlfriend" who of course, never engaged in any of the pot-smoking herself – such race-baiting in reporting, lack of professionalism in confirming hearsay without talking to the party in question, or even double-confirming legitimate sources – this is the ultimate in vulgar news.

They Chose the Icky Boy

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggh!!!!!!!!!!

Well, obviously, we can't say we weren't totally biased and partial to Soyeon getting to picked as the final candidate, but those who know her were also definitely pulling for her smarts, pluckiness, and personableness in front of the camera. And she even looks better than the boy in a suit.

Damn!

For those of you reading the news, you'll know that Soyeon didn't get picked as the final candidate, although she'll be completing the same full training as the backup in case something happens to the main man.

Now, this is a case where I can wish slight ill upon another seemingly very nice person, since I'm not wanting him to be hit by a meteorite or attacked by starved wildebeasts or anything. All he has to do is come down with a cold or something right before the mission.

That's not so bad, is it?

Anyways, I think Soyeon took it with aplomb.

[The Korean caption reported Soyeong said, "I'm OK!"]

Still, she's gotta be disappointed a bit, although I'm sure it'll be a relief now that all this waiting is over. She was saying that the last week of waiting was killing her. Now, I think at least the butterflies can be released from her stomach and she can get on with life.

Oh, and by the way – she's done with her doctoral preparation, so it's Dr. Lee to us all now!

So, there be some congratulations to be given here, in addition to our consolations. In the end, she's made it to where 35,000 others did not, and is helping make her country make really positive history.

But that doesn't mean I'll won't be hoping the other guy gets the sniffles just before launch day.

Keep your head up, Soyeon!

"Nam saaaaan" (Full)

Thanks to reader Max for finding this for us.

Definitely interesting stuff – Latino in da 집. I do fail to understand, however, why these super-innocent-looking, vanilla girls are like the be-all and end-all in pop culture. That heavily plastic, generic-looking girl just doesn't work at all in this video, its style, or at all look right next to a guy named "Tyfoon."

I know she gets all "Tyfoonized" in the end, but she still looks funny. Hehe. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, I don't know much about this group, but from the looks of their production quality, they're still breaking out. So it looks like their use of UCC to get this video out there (I was passed that intro link left and right by Korean friends) is pretty successful. And that song made me want to get up off my sofa.

Nice!

The Ring of Academic Power

For whatever that's worth from this English-language blogger, I'm glad this is happening. From The New York Times:

South Korea has been shaken as one prominent person after another has been exposed as having exaggerated, or fabricated, academic accomplishments.

The exposés have prompted prosecutors, the police, the Education Ministry and regional education authorities to announce plans to combat academic record fraud. Legislators have introduced a bill calling for a verification system.

“Before, we struggled more with fake luxury goods,” said Moon Moo-il, a public prosecutor who is leading a nationwide crackdown on document forgery and misrepresentation at the prosecutor general’s office. “Now that we have entered the knowledge-based society, we have to deal with an overflow of fake knowledge.”

Finally! Now that this scandal has broken wide open, I can say what only got me in trouble for speculating about, something anyone with a sense of professionalism and in possession of a work ethic in Korea has known about for a long time: there's a lot of frauds in places of authority, but including people who aren't "fake" but fatally crippled by some combination of being completely fucking incompetent, arrogant to the point of dysfunction, and who, more likely than not, is more concerned about surface appearance than performance and efficiency.

We all know this shit, like a bad smell in the air – but we couldn't quite prove it, or even point to it in a concrete way. I knew something was up when that venerable old Spy Magazine published a list, back in 1989 or 1990, of the world's top ten buyers of fake degrees. Guess which country was #1? If you don't know, you haven't been paying atTENshun...

In my experience, especially in certain elite foreign language high schools that I cannot name but successively quit, there are nearly as many fakers as there are people who actually contribute to making their school, organization, and their country a better place.

In my time at these places, I've always found that the more prestigious the position, the more suspicious I am. It's not just fake degrees, but the complete lack of talent, most specifically the very talent that is implied by the degrees they flaunt. To wit, here are the very typical things I have observed, and always wonder, if these people are truly the "best" people in their fields, whether I should be afraid because it bodes poorly for all their colleagues, or whether many, truly more talented people get edged out. I tend to think it's the latter, but here's what I've seen:

--- "Clearing" of contract teachers who are well-liked and well-rated in the classroom for teachers with "better" degrees, e.g. my physics teacher friend who was fired from her job with an Ewha degree for a chabeol company man with a degree from Seoul National, albeit with no teaching experience. My students still complain about the fact that he has absolutely no ability to convey understanding of the material, but the school gets to put down that it has an SNU person teaching physics. Kudos!

--- Head English teachers from prestigious Korean schools who – wait for it – apparently can't speak English! I worked with one head English teacher for more than a year, and she never spoke English with any of the foreign teachers. Stellar!

--- Experienced professors in their fields – at certain prominent universities I've been at – who are still teaching theories that were discredited when Cro-Magnon man was busy discovering fire, or are just plain stoopid. OK – it's not that bad, but close. How about picking up a journal in one's field once a decade, instead of resting on one's academic laurels for the rest of one's natural life?

--- People being excused egregious mistakes because of their degree or status. A person from SNU may be as blessed as manna from heaven, but if said someone from SNU does something stupid, it's no less fucking stupid than some guy who went to Kangwon National University or a correspondence school. HEL-lo?!

--- People getting jobs because of their status. I include myself in this. I've proved through my performance, both to myself and others, that I'm a pretty damn good US History teacher, but that's not why I continue finding good jobs after I quit one school after another in a huff and tell it to go fuck itself – it's my degrees that let me do that. "Andover, Brown, Berkeley, Fulbright." It's like a magical mantra, a magical ring of power, in Korean society. Seriously – it's irritating, since I get respect not so much for what I do, but what degrees I can put on the table. God knows what I could be teaching these students – no one checks my curriculum, sits in on my classes, nor even goes through the textbooks I choose – they just say, "Oh, he went to X school." And for as hard as I try to do a good job, I know I actually don't have to. What kind of effect do you think that has on performance? A lovely one! I can pull out the Ring of Academic Power, put my ass on cruise control, and teach from a Kaplan test prep book to teach my class without busting my ass, and keep getting pizzaid! Brown! Berkeley! Don't question my AUTHORITAY!

No wonder people are lying, cheating, and stabbing each other in the back over academic degrees in Korea – because brand names are all people really care about still, when it comes right down to it. Sure, there are few exceptions, but they're tiny and related to certain specific skills or genes – things that even degrees can't buy.

And if just a little shaking of the societal tree is rousting up so MUCH plagiarism, degree faking, and other kinds of just plain lying through one's teeth – how much more do you think there REALLY is, beyond the superficial extent to which the media is focusing on a few famous stars and other prominent figures.

My read of things, from having worked in these "prestigious" high schools, universities, and organizations, is a whole FUCKING lot.

One thing I really wonder – are Korean doctoral degrees from foreign universities digitally stored now? Because I know for a fact that there are peeps who go over to chill and get master's and doctoral degrees in American grad schools, and pay someone else to write it; but that's so NOW. Back in the day, they would have probably just copied it wholesale. Easy access to the dissertations of prominent government and academic figures – the ones filed back in the 60's through to the 90's – now THAT would be a blogging project worth picking up. I'm talking whole sections and chapters copied wholesale, not problematic citations. Man – people thinking plagiarism is bad now? Try 1975. I wonder how many cabinet ministers and professors could even remember the English titles of the dissertations they filed.

Too bad we can't make a "verification system" for all the incompetent and seriously stoopid people who studied hard back in 1975 to get into a "good" school but haven't cracked a book, attended a conference (intellectually, as well as physically), or really opened their minds since.

That's harder than finding the outright fakers. Because there's a lot more fakers who actually did receive their degrees from where they said they did, but are doing worse jobs than the lying snakes who didn't.

The media should stick that in its craw and take a toke. But that'd be hitting a bit too close to home, because we all know who that guy in our office or organization is.