While it was Cinco de Mayo in the greater Boulder metropolitan area yesterday, here in South Korea (and Japan*) it is Children’s Day, which is seen through a child’s eye as their Christmas. Traditionally, children receive gifts (often cash), although unlike Christmas, go special places with their parents, such as zoos or museums.
The elementary school I teach at, along with all schools are closed, as are a number of businesses. But there is a tradition of the teacher’s union hosting a festival for the children throughout Korea in the morning, and I went to see what a Children’s Day looked like.
The event took place at the Goheung Cultural Center, a large complex of buildings and a stadium almost the size of Folsom stadium (although there isn’t nearly as much seating). There were at least a couple of hundred of people there, with many booths that gave kids a chance at arts, crafts, science projects, facepainting, food, etc. It was like the children’s section of the Boulder Creek Festival. Although I didn’t plan on helping, I was talked into being a rope handler for rope skipping. To my surprise, I found that boys are just as talented and enthusiastic about rope skipping as girls.
Overall, a fun time was had by all, and many parents seemed grateful for such an event.
*Actually, at least 50 countries celebrate Children’s Day, including the U.S., much to my surprise. I didn’t know we had one, since I’ve been telling my classes that there is no such thing in the U.S. – until I did a little research. I think it would be fair to say it’s an obscure observance, like National Pickle Day, (which falls on May 23, along with National Taffy Day and National Sea Turtle Day – I’m not making this up).
But it’ s taken much more seriously elsewhere, and is tied strongly to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, a U.N. declaration that has been ratified by every country except – you guessed it, the U.S. and Somalia.
I’ll spare you the many of the details of my research, except to say that a Children’s Day has been celebrated since at least 1860 in the U.S., primarily by churches, but it was given presidential proclamations starting in at least 2000, and observed primarily on various days in June. It is variously known as Children’s Day, International Children’s Day and Universal Children’s Day, and has many roots. Oh, and by the way, it’s celebrated in June in North Korea.
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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.