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mc_jc

Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Location: C4B- Cp Red Cloud, Area-I
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 2:44 pm Post subject: I need a favor |
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A friend of mine has written to John Huer regarding his articles in the Korea Times attacking both Korean culture and the foriegn community.
He just left South Korea to take up a position at a college in Pennsylvania and is within considerable driving distance from the University of Maryland's main campus at Adelphi.
He needs help compiling all the articles that people deemed offensive toward Korean culture and to the foreign community.
Here is a copy of the letter my friend, Tom, sent to Mr. Huer;
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Dear Mr. Huer,
I am an adoptee living in the United States who had previously lived in South Korea for numerous years while working for the US military there and as an ESL lecturer. I find your articles in the Korea Times regarding Korean culture as well as the English teaching community as being offensive. You continuously attack ESL teachers as unqualified, drug-abusing slackers who don't contribute to the educational environment in South Korea. Then you speak offensively about Korean culture and traditions without any real consideration for Koreans' emotions toward the issues you write about. Yes, Koreans tend to get emotional about criticism of their culture and traditions, but so do Americans when foreigners question their traditions and culture. Also, having majored in Sociology for my undergraduate studies, I can tell the difference between educating your readers about certain aspects of their culture that could be an issue to foreigners living in South Korea and just spouting diatribes that criticize both Koreans and foreigners alike. Your statements are based on personal assessments with no real reference to back them up. I feel this attitude further contributes to the alienation of the foreign community as well as foreigners' misconception about Korean traditions and culture.
Mr. Huer, I currently live in the US and also within considerable distance from the University of Maryland campus at Adelphi. In addition, I am in the process of drawing up a letter to the president of the university listing all the offenses you have made toward Koreans and the foreign community in your articles published in the Korea Times. I have print-outs of every article related to these offense as well as the guarantee of a signed statement from about 560 foreigners and Koreans living in South Korea who feel offended by your articles in the Korea Times. I strongly believe this will help the university consider whether to terminate your tenure at the university's US military campus in South Korea.
Also, please bear in mind that I did speak to the Contracting Command- Korea (CCK) at Yongsan regarding your offenses and they informed me that such comments are prohibited by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which states that no contractor or their dependent will make disbarraging remarks about the culture of the host nation. Since your comments could be seen as offensive to both foreign and Korean residents, you are in direct violation of the SOFA and this would reflect greatly on your SOFA status. I told them that I would wait on forwarding them the articles until I received a response from the University of Maryland.
Mr. Huer, to avoid any possible damage to your reputation as an academic, I propose to you that you should write a retraction of the comments you wrote in the Korea Times. This would replace the need for a public apology to both the foreign community and South Koreans. Also, refrain from writing further articles in the newspaper that would be deemed offensive to both the foreign community and South Koreans.
I personally believe you are using your position of authority and within the confines of the SOFA status to purposely offend both South Koreans and the foreign community thinking you have complete impunity. I would like to remind you that it is not the case, especially with people like me within the US who could do something about it. You need to be careful of what you say and how you say it or else your academic integrity would seriously be questioned and reported upon.
XXXXX XXXXXXXX
Sociology, MA, PhD
University of Pittsburg
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Any help you guys can give would be greatly appreciated, especially from posters like Real Reality. |
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E_athlete
Joined: 09 Jun 2009 Location: Korea sparkling
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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"please stop writing bad things about Korea, it hurts our feeeeeeeeeelings"
this seems to be his principle argument.
Korea has regulations that denegrade freedom of speech if you are not a national?
Last edited by E_athlete on Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:27 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mc_jc

Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Location: C4B- Cp Red Cloud, Area-I
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:15 pm Post subject: |
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He's not Korean, he is an American citizen working for the University of Maryland at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul.
He is living under the SOFA regulations, which state that no contractor will say or write anything disbarraging about the host nation.
Also, being an academic, he is held accountable for his actions, which is what my friend wants him to realize. |
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E_athlete
Joined: 09 Jun 2009 Location: Korea sparkling
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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mc_jc wrote: |
He's not Korean, he is an American citizen working for the University of Maryland at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul.
He is living under the SOFA regulations, which state that no contractor will say or write anything disbarraging about the host nation.
Also, being an academic, he is held accountable for his actions, which is what my friend wants him to realize. |
you mean accountable for thought crimes or speaking your mind?
Being an academic isn't what it's cracked out to be these days. |
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Smee

Joined: 24 Dec 2004 Location: Jeollanam-do
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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Well, hopefully in his real letter he'll spell the name of his university correctly.
No time to dig up all the articles now, but you can run a google search on Huer to get the ones that were taken apart by bloggers, and you can run a search here for the threads that already exist about his more eye-roll worthy articles. On the KT site you can also get a list of articles, and though their search function isn't good you can find letters to the editor written by Koreans who disagree with him. |
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Elvis Gratton
Joined: 12 Jul 2009
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 5:19 pm Post subject: |
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Your buddy and Mr. Huer sound like they really deserve each other. Maybe these two "PhDs" put together might be able to scrape up a sophmoric level of knowledge about how the real world really works. |
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PRagic

Joined: 24 Feb 2006
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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Maybe Huer should throw his name in the hat for supreme court justice.
What about the Korean SNU English prof who writes op-eds for the Herald? He is always lamenting Korean faults, yet nobody jumps on his back. |
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Kimchi Cha Cha

Joined: 15 May 2003 Location: was Suncheon, now Brisbane
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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I don't like Mr. Huer's articles as much as the next guy but also don't like the tone of your friend's letter. Whilst he may be right in his belief that Mr. Huer is intentionally writing controversial pieces as he sees himself as being above reproach and in doing so he working outside the bounds of the SOFA agreement. Your friend's letter comes across as a case of him not liking Mr. Huer and his writing, and hoping to bring him down on a technicality.
I think your friend would be better placed if instead of this approach, he tackled Mr. Huer on the issues he disagrees with. Your friend's motives come across as less than noble IMO, and whilst I do agree somewhat with his sentiment, I can't support the approach your friend is taking. Censorship is something that a lot of Westerners feel uneasy about and your friend's approach comes across as trying to censor Mr. Huer for opinions he doesn't agree with.
Like I said, I have little time for Mr. Huer but think your friend would be better placed to find a different approach to tackle Mr. Huer's articles. |
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mc_jc

Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Location: C4B- Cp Red Cloud, Area-I
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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That's certainly agreeable.
Tom was thinking that by making the university aware of the things one of its professor's writing, they might revoke his tenure if Mr. Huer didn't retract his statements.
I mentioned it to him that he is better if he left things alone, but he put himself on a crusade to bring him down. He left in 2004 and he stated that before he left, the media was starting to play a huge role in the negative stereotyping of foreign English teachers here.
But he found it just stomach-wrenching to read inflammatory articles from fellow Americans putting down other Americans simply because he believes he is of a higher status than English teachers.
Yeah, Korea doesn't have much in the way of preventing libelous remarks being made about foreigners, but the US has a system to right this wrong. |
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BreakfastInBed

Joined: 16 Oct 2007 Location: Gyeonggi do
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 11:10 pm Post subject: |
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Couldn't finish it. It smacks of someone trying too hard. I made it to the first sentence of the second paragraph. I don't understand being "within considerable distance from" something. Is he saying he is close to this university or far away from it? Whichever it is he has phrased it incorrectly. Reminds me of some of the embarassing stuff I've written when trying to impress someone, using penultimate instead of quintessential and stuff like that. |
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samcheokguy

Joined: 02 Nov 2008 Location: Samcheok G-do
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 12:06 am Post subject: |
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I wonder if Heur was a white male in a real discipline (a Ph.D. in Sociolgy) he'd have any career at all... |
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