Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sakamuras]

Just an observation. Is it me, or do you also notice that when English teachers socialize with native Koreans, they are polite and non-confrontational, praising the culture and the people. Yet, what I consistently read on this discussion board are endless rants and complaints that border on downright racism.

Why not be true to thyself in public as well? I mean, you need to be vocal about what you really think. Otherwise, you'll never make progress on improving the low-level status of teachers here. By just posting here, you're simply preaching to the choir.

[Goku]

I remember reading on dave's about one guy who insisted that Korean food was spawned from lucifer himself and kept flying around the phrase "Real humans eat hamburgers".

I think these people exist. Because that makes me think the world is a lot funnier than it is.

[ekul]

[blackjack]

[phoneboothface]

I haven't met anyone in person anything like most of the regulars on here.

Not two faced, the people on this board represent a small portion of the FTs here...

[Whitey Otez]

Welcome to the Internet forums. With anonymity comes great blunt honesty or boldfaced lies.

As a grizzled old veteran, I can tell you that it's not necessarily a two-face thing, it's a personae thing. Just like you wouldn't talk about certain subjects in front of grandma or your boss, you don't talk about certain things to certain people in Korea.

At an adult academy, more than a few students told me that every time I said something unflattering about Korea, they perceived it as a direct and more than personal insult. Yes, it is true that the neighborhood had a lot of massage parlors, drunks, and litter, but from a guest, the hosts didn't want to hear it.

Alternatively, a great number of times, especially around Hongdae, a lot of university guys would be doing their extracurricular English assignment involving getting a foreigner to say something good and something bad about Korea. Many times, they'd be horribly offended by the things that they heard and they'd stop sharing their liquor with us. So we learned to be critical of the heavy traffic, not that their girlfriends had bruised arms and legs.

And yet, we have to get our feelings and observations out there and no one who hasn't been here could possibly understand what we're saying.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[Julius]

[wylies99]

[Young FRANKenstein]

[The Gipkik]

I don't know, I think a lot of people find this board both cathartic and a harmless place to test out ideas, put on coats of another color, and exercise their creative faculties in an inconsequential way. Teachers, whether they are serious or not, tend to be actors, turning on the teacher role and turning it off. I think it would be a mistake to take the opinions of many posters here too seriously or try to discern hypocrisy in their actions.

Walt Whitman said it best: I am large, I contain multitudes.

[Captain Corea]

[VanIslander]

[VanIslander]

put another way...

i openly talk about everything and don't at all lie, but use TACT as to what to mention where and with whom; I really like Korea in many ways and they never go fishing for criticisms, never ask me what I don't like, and with the level of their nationalistic jingoism and self identity tied up with their culture, language and society it's not hard to see why

i really like Korean food, Korean beaches and islands and mountains, Korean historical sites, the characteristics of my Korean students, my job in Korea, and I enjoy my time here for the most part or by and large or mostly, often qualifying it these ways

i even like some aspects of Korean culture like the family and friendship bonds and the lack of vandalism

i don't like how the children are typically raised in this culture: spoiled and without boundaries at early ages supposedly they say because their lives are going to be so hard that they are allowed to be little kings and monsters, running around doing all kinds of things that 4 or 5 year olds would never get away with back home, doingt he kids a disservice i think

should i tell koreans how to raise their kids????????????????? i disagree with the cultural practice, which means I wouldn't want it for my children and am thankful it's not typical where i'm from, that rules and good behaviour is dsiciplined into kids at an early age........ i am a sort of a cultural relativist in terms of the morality of this, feeling it's up to them to decide how to raise their kids, however not a thoughtless thoroughgoing relativist who refuses to compare and simply states 'it's different, neither right or wrong'

koreans want to believe in fan death, what good is it to laugh in their face and tell them how absurd that is??????, argue against it, say how silly the world thinks that idea is

look, Dave's is a place for foreign ESL teachers to discuss issues of living in Korea, ISSUES, as defined in the general Forum subtitle... that means we come here to discuss problems, frustations, things that bother us that we may have no other sympathetic ear to turn to

[VanIslander]

a background factor:

Dave's is changing these days: more gyopos, more other Asians, even some Koreans, certainly more foreigners who are married to Koreans, more lifers, even more honeymooning newbies...... so the pool of 'let's just be positive minded' is growing and growing

hopefully Dave's can be a place for ALL OF US, and that we can express criticisms as well as compliments

I have 8000+ posts on Dave's and the majority are positive statements about my great experiences here... but a fraction, at most 10-15% and probably more like 5%, are negative and these days it seems like dave's is less welcoming a place for them

the pendulum has swung: six years ago Dave's was a place hard on the praising, now it's getting hotter for the criticisms to find a place

let's all just get along: everyone has a right to state what they think... let's not forget that