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Bureaucracy and Authority: How to Anger the Innocent for Absolutely Nothing

Many an intellectual out there tend to argue how the ability to form complex yet efficient organizations gave human beings the ability to efficiently execute complex projects. The ability to divide up work to different specialized tasks shared among many people is the pinnacle of human institutional achievement; it is the one thing, perhaps alongside the ability to communicate complex ideas linguistically, that set human beings apart from mere animals out there. And modern society, with new technologies and new demands propping out everyday, has taken that gift of organization to a whole new level. Every few people one meet in life would form an organization, whether it is non-profit or a small business, carrying out incomprehensibly small projects with extremely vague and dubious purposes. And every few people that one meets in an organization would have some sort of rank, denoting the place within the command structure just as complex as the web of organizations out there. Certainl

Struggles of Communicating with “Real” Koreans in the “Real” Korea

Another weekend and another train trip back to Seoul. Sitting at the bench on the platform of Chuncheon Station, waiting for the next train to the metropolis, I am becoming more and more anxious to whether these trips are becoming some sort of emotional escapist behaviors out of the real Korea that I was so excited to see and live within . Chuncheon, for me and as well as all students and teachers, has become a place we are forced to be during the weekends. To be perfectly honest, I, among all people, have been struggling to find my social place within the enclosed environment that is our camp . As Korean continues to entrench its position as the official language of the camp , those who are struggling with understanding of the language, whether it be the foreign teachers or some students who grew up outside Korea, have been feeling the continued spiral toward social isolation. And what the most irritating in the situation is just how little effort the Korean staff, who, supposedl

Witnessing Social Interactions in a Closed Microcosm

With this week drawing to a close, the isolated boot camp at Chuncheon has officially passed its "1/4 completed" mark. As the students began to get accustomed to the study environment, schedule, and the routines of daily life here in the camp, we all have began to shift attention to things that are much more conventional in any social environment. As the same group of people interact everyday, they are bound of get to know each other deeply, and with the knowledge, a whole new level of communication beyond "Lets play" and "Lets study" sprout among the populace. And with the increased communication comes increased drama. The stories of who likes who, who hates who abound, and precisely because no one has anything else going on in their lives besides studying/preparing for the SATs, such "exciting" rumors spread like wildfire, often leading to intricate subtleties in relationship among individuals and social subgroups. Well on the surface ever

Balancing the Two Sides of Korea: Elitist Internationalization and Her Populist Sense of Traditional Self

Being an English teacher to an isolated group of English-speaking, foreign-raised Korean kids can easily deceive a person into believing the optimistic international nature of Korean society. While it is tempting to consider a country as mono-ethnic and mono-cultural as South Korea into a single block (or worse, as part of the greater Oriental "cultural group" ), the fact is, with greater exposure of the country to the outside world, those who are directly experienced in associating with foreigners in general have developed a unique sense of identity away from the general population. Admittedly, in terms of overall demographics of the country, the foreign-experienced ones has to be a tiny minority, often defined by high-end white collar jobs and privileged lifestyles. Unfortunately, for most foreigners living in Korea, these so-called "elitists," who are the only ones the foreigners really interact with, have inadvertently, in the eyes of the foreigners, the "

Being the Old Guy among the Bunch...

"But, see, you are old and you don't understand what we are talking about..." the eager female student inadvertently blurts out as we hold up a random conversation during a short break from class. To be honest, over the last two weeks, I have been getting way too many of these sorts of comments that I should really feel absolutely indifferent to them...but unfortunately, even now, each time I hear them, I cannot help but twitch a little bit on the inside from the slight, painful emotional shock... "You get older, but the kids stay the same age..." I always respond to people who ask me why I just do not be a full-time teacher in the lucrative private education industry. I am currently in it not primarily for the career, or the money (although that is also important for my next step at grad school ), but because I can actually meet people (students and other staff members alike) and be friends with them. It becomes much harder as I age and the generation gap w

"실례지만...저...영어 못해요..."

...so the self-introduction of our male Korean staff went as we went for a handshake on the first day of my arrival in Chuncheon...fortunately or unfortunately, that phrase (meaning, "Sorry, but I don't speak English") has been the defining "tone" of our now 3-day-old SAT camp here in Chuncheon. Somehow feeling confident in my Korean ability more than in their own English abilities, the Korean staff has somehow now became completely alright with speaking in Korean to me 24-7, going so far as to admitting that they wish to learn to speak English...in Korean. Ambiguous comprehensions and struggling in even the simplest conversations, as much as seemingly endless preparations for classes, has become the norm. Sandwiched by a Korean-Canadian colleague with fluent Korean and an African-American colleague who no one will expect to know any Korean, I am bearing the blunt of this inherent "only Korean spoken outside of class" policy. Perhaps I was wrong to