Comments on: New Elements in Old Protest Culture

By: USinKorea

USinKorea — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:10:33 +0000

After about my 2nd month in country, I figured out it was best if I did not offer an opinion on any topic.

I only gave my thoughts if students asked and only in the last 5 minutes of class.

Because I found they would not only agree with almost anything I said - they would parrot my English.

I also always made it a habit of asking each and every student to comment on whatever topic was at hand - usually taking whatever topic they brought into class and boiling it down to a simple question I’d write on a board.

They liked this because many were too shy to speak up.

But, doing it this way, I think I got more of an unfiltered view of what they thought.

And it would usually be the same class after class - talking about the same things - the same way.

My favorite classes were the women only ones. Without males in the room, I really got to hear what these adults had to say about stuff.

By: EngTeacher

EngTeacher — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:29:03 +0000

to #17
That could be the tendency for students, especially of that age, to not ‘make waves’ in class. I’ve sometimes felt when discussing certain issues, that students will all fall in line, just for the sake of not having a disagreement. If the mood of the day is anti-Americanism, then one might just pay lip service to it in the classroom and then buy some cheap American beef for their restaurant business. It’s actually frustrating when conducting a conversation class to encounter this.

By: USinKorea

USinKorea — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:01:58 +0000

On teaching and learning of Korean society’s thoughts, my first conclusions about it came from teaching adults almost exclusively my first two years in Korea from about 1996 to 1998.

I could get a good feel for how issues, mostly reported int he news, played out in the society by how much (or little) class after class would want to talk about it.

And even though this was before the events of 2002 — what I found was that the vast majority of my adult students — almost all of them past-college age — shared the same common negative views of the US in Korea that the anti-US civic groups put out.

The difference was in degree of feeling - not differences of opinion on the facts or merits of anti-US items.

By: Benicio974

Benicio974 — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:33:42 +0000

Video of kids cursing Lee sparks police probe

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2893362

Using kids to promote hate- nice!

By: In Seoul

In Seoul — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:15:48 +0000

“Now, I believe in the freedom of speech, but there are times and places where caution should be exercised. Filling kids heads with hatred for another country is not patriotic. It’s just damaging and dangerous. That is why we continue to be concerned with the anti-American movement in Korea.”

I’ll second this.

By: Benicio974

Benicio974 — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:04:51 +0000

PS- we take that whole “the majority of Koreans are not anti-American” and “70% of Koreans rate the U.S. favorably” with a big dose of skepticism as many of us deal with the younger generations- the students.
We generally get a great majority of negative comments and views from our students- some of which are pretty venomous in their level of hatred for Uncle Sam.
They are kids, so why is this such a matter of concern?
-Where do they learn such hatred? At home, but mostly from their teachers. We have seen the very active anti-American hatred coming from the Korean Teacher’s Union and the anti-FTA/APEC video they produced is the peak of the “U.S. is the ultimate evil” propaganda. Also, we know well about teachers allowing and even encouraging students to sing the “F*cking USA” song back in 2002. This is very, very disturbing that teachers would promote such hatred.
-This is the youth, the next generations, and they are growing up in the midst of a huge amount of anti-U.S. propaganda. Now, I believe in the freedom of speech, but there are times and places where caution should be exercised. Filling kids heads with hatred for another country is not patriotic. It’s just damaging and dangerous.
That is why we continue to be concerned with the anti-American movement in Korea.

By: Benicio974

Benicio974 — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:54:13 +0000

#2 Shunyata,
you are just writing more of the same 2 things we see from the other apologists:
1) “it happens in U.S./other places, too”- does that make it okay in Korea, then? It is ILLEGAL harrassment on the basis of having differing opinions and it is not right anywhere!
-I have lived and worked in Korea a long time, so my focus is on this place. I hate it when apologists pull out the “it happens in (insert country here)” as if to say we are so ignorant as to not know what goes on in the rest of the world. These blogs are about Korea and we focus on Korean issues. Just because it may happen elsewhere does not make it right here.
-The major difference being that if this witch hunt harrassment happened in the U.S., one could turn to the authorities for help. If those authorities refused to help, there are higher ups or other agencies to turn to- there is accountability. We can see that there is no such accountability in Korea and that is a big issue of concern.
2) You pulled out the old faithful of “foriegners just post anti-Korean rants/photos without learning context or properly learning the culture- it’s the old “you don’t understand Korean culture”. We expats hate this bullsh*t dismissal because it’s totally arrogant, condescending, and dissmissive of the idea that non-Koreans couls have anything constructive to say.
There you go- you have cheapened your argument to the same old crap we hear everywhere else.
Good day!

By: Shunyata

Shunyata — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:30:30 +0000

#10,I realize I am more doomerish than most. Hopefully you will be proven right in a couple of years. On the other hand, Korea was extremely lucky in that it survived the Asian financial crisis relatively unscathed (compared to Argentina that is).

#11, good point on polling (un)reliability.

By: USinKorea

USinKorea — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:11:19 +0000

I forgot, on that Marmot’s thread, not much to the post or the discussion.

And I can give a good educated guess how many of those frequent commenters at Marmot’s would respond to your use of the poll and thread:

they would/could point you to a wide range of polls over the years that have shown the opposite to be true - and would add their own personal experiences. And then they’d also add the disclaimer about how unreliable polling in Korea has proven to be over the years.

By: USinKorea

USinKorea — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:09:30 +0000

I’ll stop the running comments here.

There is no point getting into it.

For example, there was a recent report out showing the number of homeless in America had dropped over the last 8 years.

When you start going on about American society on the verge of becoming a full-fledge police state - you have so far discredited yourself - it isn’t worth continuing a discussion on any topic.

It takes away greatly from legitimate issues like the morgage crisis and the closing of banks.

All I’ll say in parting on that is — I can remember back to the huge bail out of the banking industry in the 1980s. I can remember the massive crisis during the oil embargos of the 1970s. I can remember being in Korea during the failure of the Asian Tiger Economies when Korea seemed on the verge of utter economic chaos….

….but in none of those cases did your type of exaggerate doom-n-gloom situations happen. Even in the Korean case, in a much small/weaker economy than that of the US, the bailouts and passing phases of economic cycles - led to knew days.