Here's an audio documentary in two parts from CBC Radio's Ideas, on being and becoming Canadian, and the experiences of one Korean family.

I haven't written any articles for OutsideInKorea in a good long while. Rather than offer the usual excuses, let me point you to my new project, one that has taken up most of my time in recent months, and something I'm pretty excited about: jobsee.kr.

Like every government everywhere, the Korean government has a long and storied tradition of getting things exactly wrong, of creating policies by fiat and without consultation that worsen the problem they were intended to address, and result in unintended consequences down the line. The newest proposed change to regulations for the single largest group of foreign temporary residents -- holders of 1-year E2 English teacher visas -- neatly fits the bill.

So, without further ado: here's a belated Christmas present, Level One of Mastering Korean. Share and enjoy.

On a community website where I spend a lot of time, someone asked recently for advice on how to deal with his noisy neighbours. He doesn't live in Korea, but he thought that the couple next door was Korean, and that when they were shouting at each other in the wee hours, they weren't shouting in English. He reasonably took this as an indication that some knowledge of their cultural background could come in handy if he girded his loins enough to talk to them about it.

There are, to put it bluntly, a lot of ESL textbooks for adult learners that are, to varying degrees, crap. There are many and varied reasons why these books are awful. Many of them are weighed down under more than one layer of language guano. You're waist-deep before you even get started, digging through the stink to find something useful.