If you want to rile Americans, talk about North Korea.
Well, this is a perspective of a foreigner’s life in the other Korea. South Korea (hereafter referred to as simply Korea), gets little ink in the U.S. media, although to be fair, dozens of other countries receive the same treatment, much to our detriment. I have been here about a month and a half, and have just started to settle and understand life in a country that is sometimes known as the Land of the Morning Calm, and is unknown by most Americans.
I’ve lived in Boulder for over 25 years, and never traveled outside the American continent. Asian culture is almost as different as one can imagine – and yet much of the human experience is the same.
I live in the a somewhat rural area in the southwestern province of Jeollonamdo, which is almost as far south as you can go in Korea, in the of city of Goheung (Goheung-eup, pronounced Ko hoong ep). Goheung county (Goheung-gun) is a peninsula that could almost pass as an island on the map, with many small islands surrounding it.
After a varied working life, and a small spate of unemployment, I decided to undertake the adventure of a lifetime, and teach English in Korea. Before I started the job, I had no experience teaching English, nor have I ever taught in schools, other than an occasional violence prevention workshop. I didn’t know anyone in Korea, and the only Korean words I knew were the name of the martial art, tae kwon do.
So the combination of teaching a subject I’ve never taught, plus adapting to a very foreign culture, has been very… interesting. In future columns I hope to talk about my experiences thus far, and write about current events (mostly mine) and thoughts. I don’t intend for this to be a travel blog, although that may slip in from time to time – rather I want to look at politics (both Korean and U.S.), international relations, culture, language, teaching, and who knows what else. This blog will be as time permits, given my full time job, but I hope it to be semi-regular. I hope you’ll join me and become a voyeur of this expedition, and I welcome your comments and questions, which I will try to answer in the column (if appropriate).
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Mark,
Your S. Korea experience sounds wonderful. I wonder, do your students speak english already or are they learning from the NETs? Also, how is your lack of the native language keeping you from communicating? Are you learning the native language as much as your students are learning to speak english?
thanks,
Susan
Thanks for commenting. Those are all good questions that I will address in upcoming posts!
Mark
I love reading your blog. Good stories posted here. So teaching in Korea… hmm sounds like the Koreans prefer to hire Native Americans rather than korean-americans/australians etc.. I'm a bit worried because I'm from NZ but Korean born. I can speak korean fluently, but I speak english like a native. Is it true that koreans discriminate? Is it harder to get into elementary schools than hagwons if you're not ethnically european?
Hi Cindy,
I've only just saw your post, so sorry for the delay. To answer your questions:
Visa requirements stipulate you MUST be a native English speaker, and you can come from only one of six countries – and Kiwis are amongst the invited guests! However, I've noticed a strong bias towards Americans and Canadians, in their hiring practices, especially in the public schools. However, there are folks from other countries here, including NZ. In fact, many Koreans send their children to NZ to learn English. But I've heard from Koreans that they have a more difficult time with Australian and NZ "accents" than us N. Americans, mostly because of cultural bias and many of their training materials are someone with an American accent.
There IS discrimination here on a number of different levels, as there are in most countries. And I've heard that while kypos (Asian-Americans) are hired (I personally know of one) they prefer young, attractive Americans of European descent as their top choice (I'm lucky that I'm one out of three). Feel free to email me for more info: surmonk@gmail.com.