OutsideIn Korea

E2 (English Teacher) Visa Changes

2007-11-07T02:08:34Z

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.

]]> There have been some recent and welcome improvements to immigration regulations in Korea recently, with holders of spousal F-class visas, for example, being granted more freedoms and rights, and these have been very welcome for long-term foreign residents. The changes, it must be said, have not come as a result of any consideration towards (the mostly male) foreign professionals with Korean spouses resident here, they've come from the changing requirements of male Korean citizens with foreign wives, a pairing once almost unheard-of. It's a responsee to the rapidly shifting demographics in the farming communities of Korea, where last year saw a rise of mixed-nationality marriages to more than 40% of total marriages in the countryside, from near-zero as recently as five years ago. The story behind this sea-change is a fascinating one, and one that will have revolutionary effects on Korean society in the decades to come. The short version: there are thousands of male farmers of marriagable age in the small towns and villages of Korea entirely unable to find Korean wives, because of both demographics (the rock-bottom birth rate, the preference (actionable in recent decades through banned but not unusual sex-selective abortion) for male children, and the flight of young women and men both to the cities) and economics (no city girl wants to move into the countryside, which is for the most part like moving half a century into the poverty-sticken past). So women are being imported from China and south-east Asia, and what was once a nearly-total ethnic uniformity has exploded into something very different. It's going to make for interesting times.

But that's not what I want to write about today.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Recent years have seen a rise both in the frequency and intensity of media hand-wringing over some of the less savory people showing up in Korea to teach English. There have been fear-mongering exposés (nothing new, it must be said) of foreign teachers using and selling drugs, and recent discoveries of expat teachers with records of sexual abuse of children in their home countries have (justifiably) terrified many.

Now, I've long argued that the responsibility for the execrable overall quality of English 'teachers' in Korea can be laid squarely at the foot of the Korean government. Because of the overwhelming demand for teachers, they have, since the early days, allowed anyone with a) a pulse, b) English as a native tongue, and c) a degree in any discipline to come to Korea to teach English to children, adults, university students, whoever.

It doesn't take a great deal of insight to realize that merely being able to speak a language does not magically grant one the skills to teach it in a classroom situation to others. To speak it with others, certainly. And I will grant that given the paradoxial pedagogical laxity with which most language schools and education departments are organized and run -- an artifact, to a large extent, of a focus on the business rather than the educational needs of the 'customers' -- many tens of thousands of 'teachers' from foreign countries have been able to fake it. Make with the idle chat, collect a paycheck. Some of those even had some natural ability or interest, and became, without the benefit of any kind of formal training in educational principles, to become effective teachers. A very very few (a handful of the hundreds I've met over the years) actually had some kind of certification to teach that wasn't laser-printed in the back room of a 2-week TESL Certification mill in Bangkok or Bangor.

But the vast majority of arrivals over the past couple of decades have come and gone to make some easy cash, party, travel and have an overseas experience, because, thanks to the open policies of immigration here, it's been cowboy country.

If the Korean government had required or allowed (and we could choose any or all of these) a) teaching experience, b) certification in teaching or in ESL from an accredited institution, c) any kind of vetting process before the candidate boarded a plane, d) the establishment of some kind of standards agency or organization, e) even the most cursory of regulation of the legendarily corrupt and massive hagwon (private school) industry, f) professional foreign consultants/interviewers (because, in all honesty, it seems almost impossible for many Koreans to distinguish seriously odd or hinky behaviour or personality traits from what they perceive to be the overall oddness of foreign attitudes), the consequences would have been better teachers, better quality of education provided, less conflict between foreign employees and Korean employers, and a more stable, professional workforce. Of course, making it more difficult for the less desirable candidates to show up and get in front of a class would increase demand and salaries for the ones who were professional and qualified. I can't say that that would upset me much.

But nothing was done, and 'teachers' good, bad, and ugly poured into Korea. And some of them, almost inevitably, were kid-fondlers, some of them were idiotic enough to not be able to resist getting high, and most were less interested in teaching than they were paying off their student loans. (I've nothing in principle against drug use, but when one lives in a country where the laws and cultural norms are different from where one was raised, one makes allowances. When in Rome.) But naturally, it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, and the bad news that gets the breathless xenophobic media coverage.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

So the government has just announced it is planning to institute the following changes, beginning in December 2007, according to the Korea Herald. In less than 7 weeks time from when I write this, at the outside.

According to a Ministry of Justice press release, foreigners who apply for teaching visas will have to submit a criminal background check, a medical check, and must undergo an interview with the closest Korean consulate to their home town. Visa runs to Japan will also be scrapped. Teachers must now receive and renew visas their home country.

Now I find little to argue with in terms of health checks. It seems a reasonable hurdle, one that other countries in which I've worked have required in order for me to receive a visa. A criminal background check, ditto. These are quite reasonable, and sensible, even if they do not really address the problems that they are ostensibly intended to address, which is dangerous or criminal behaviour once candidates arrive in Korea, nor do they address the real problem, which is that an open door employment policy opens the door to everyone, desirable or not.

But the last two stipulations, let alone causing grief for people who might be interested in coming to Korea (and it can be depended on that there are very few who really want to come Korea, but again, that's another story), but it will cause a change in the English education industry here that will result in chaos and difficulties for the very people -- business owners, students, and parents of children who are students -- that the new legislation is meant to protect.

First, in a country the size of Canada, for example, from which the vast majority of English teachers in Korea these days come, the nearest place that a potential candidate from Nova Scotia or PEI would be able to have an interview would be Montreal. For someone from the Territories, or Northern BC, or Saskatchewan, it would be Vancouver. These are journeys of more than 1000 kilometers in most cases, and expensive. Given that most foreign teachers give as their primary reason for coming to Korea the need to make and save money, this is going to choke off a significant percentage of potential teachers. School owners in Korea, notorious for their stinginess, almost certainly won't be footing the bills, even if the interview in Canada is a success. The notion of requiring face-to-face interviews is a reasonable and good one, but this is a counterproductive way to do it.

Second, the requirement for return to one's home country in order to renew a visa is a death knell. Previously, E2 visa holders, if changing employers (or, in years past, merely extending their contract at the same employer), could hop over to Japan for a weekend with their paperwork, and return with a new visa. The requirement to spend, at a minimum, $2000-$3000 dollars to return to Canada, America, Australia (or wherever) to renew a visa will mean that an even larger proportion of teachers will spend no more than one year in Korea. There would simply be too little remunerative incentive to do so.

Which means that continuity for students is lost. Which means that rather than having teachers who have over a few years had the time to develop some sensitivity to Korean culture, some understanding of the people, some language skills, and some armour against the culture shock that hits everyone in their first 6 months -- well, you'll see a continuous carousel of shell-shocked newbies, their heads ringing with alienation, complaining, carousing, and, most importantly, given that there will be no new requirements for professional experience or qualification, not having the time to learn how to actually be effective teachers.

The result will, of course, be fewer teachers, but not better ones. This makes long-term pros like me, unaffected by these visa changes, all that much more a valuable commodity. I'm OK with that.

But I do hate to see the Korean government shoot themselves in the foot yet again, especially when the net result will be fewer teachers, another low ebb for quality and availability of education, no improvement in the actual quality or professionalism of people who jump through the new hoops, and the system once again failing the very people its meant to serve -- students of English and their families.

I applaud the Korean government for taking the long overdue iniative in making an attempt to clean up the mess that the industry is in, but I can't help but condemn them for not addressing the real problems, and enacting 'reforms' that will only make the situation worse.

Unintended consequences.

44 Tips For Getting A Job In Korea (and Keeping It)

2007-09-05T07:27:12Z

Here's a braindump of some tips and tricks for getting a job in Korea, and keeping it once you're here. I'll add to it periodically as I think of more. If you have any specific do or don't questions, or you disagree with any of my advice, feel free to leave a comment. Don't forget to check out my Teaching In Korea -- The Skinny as well, if you missed it the first time.

Do not get too excited at an offer -- if you have a pulse and degree, you'll get an offer.
Do apply for several jobs that look interesting.
Do ask for contact information for previous or current foreign teachers at the school. If it's refused, walk away.
Do understand that most hagwons (private schools) are run in what you may perceive to be an unprofessional, haphazard manner. Part of it is cultural -- leaving things to the last minute and then PANICing is a time-honoured Korean tradition. How much of this you think you can endure is up to you.
Do be wary of agents and recruiters. They don't have their spotty reputation for nothing. You will be better off in many (if not most) cases by being in contact with your potential employers directly.

]]>

Do make sure you get a contract to look over before you agree to anything.

Do ask old hands to look over your contract at Eslcafe or Koreabridge.

Do your research. Forums like Eslcafe and Koreabridge can help you prepare and answer a lot of your questions.

Do read the forums and try and triangulate what a standard contract looks like.

Do be aware that forums like the ones linked above are chock full of negativity and resentment.

Do be aware that many of the other foreigner short-timers you meet are also full of negativity and resentment.

Do be professional and firm in your dealings with your potential employer. Know what you want, but know also what is standard

Do not get involved with drugs. Just don't. Develop a love for booze.

Don't show up at work drunk or disheveled.

Do dress the part of a teacher, even if you don't feel like one. It will be noticed and appreciated.

Do get a feeling for some of the concepts that underpin Korean culture and you'll be miles ahead of most new arrivals.

Do make sure that your employer is meeting regulations in terms of pension and national health deductions.

Don't worry about teaching. If it's kids you'll be wrangling, you'll be doing more wrangling that teaching.

Do teach as much as you can, even if you feel like a babysitter.

Don't make the rest of us look bad.

Don't worry about getting food and stuff from home. These days there are box stores in most places where you can buy imports even if you're outside the mjor cities, and websites where you can order them.

Do bring shoes if you have big feet. Outside of the major centres it can still be hard to find size 11s or 12s, and any bigger is effectively impossible.

Do plan ahead for the possibility that things don't work out. Do be aware of the consequences of a midnight run. If you can't bear it, give notice, get a release letter (you can find one at Koreabridge to print out), and keep your options for the future open.

Do make sure you are willing to accept the terms of the contract as written. Be aware that you will be held to them, even if your boss may feel that he or she is not similarly beholden. Be aware that emphasis on personal relationship as overriding contract paper is a part of Korean culture, but that this can be used against you in a Catch-22.

Do not teach private lessons on an E2 (teaching) visa. It's against immigration law.

Don't try to sneak a fake degree past the authorities. It's a major cause celebre these days with both famous Koreans being outed and scam-artist 'teachers' being deported. You will almost certainly get caught.

Do make sure you have multiple original copies of your documents when possible.

Don't go out and get drunk and disorderly in Itaewon. Don't be that guy.

If your primary reasons for coming to Korea are any two of women, beer, and money: go somewhere else. The expat community has too many of you already.

Do make an effort to learn some Korean, even a few phrases at the beginning. Koreans have problems with nonstandard pronunciation of their language (there have traditionally been very few non-native speakers), so work hard on that.

Do learn to read the alphabet. It's only a matter of a few hours, and is quite elegant both orthographically and philosophically.

Do be aware that when people laugh at you, it's almost always out of embarassment on their part, not maliciousness.

Don't get overly offended at what seems like excessively blunt comments ('It must be hard to be fat') or personal questions ('Why aren't you married?'). Despite the way it seems, they are actually efforts to become closer, rather than the opposite.

Don't overpack. Especially if you're in any of the cities, you'll be able to buy most everything you need (bar clothes, perhaps, if you're XX-large).

Don't take promises that you will receive training on arrival too seriously. Chances are it will involve a tour of the classrooms and then a drinking session (if you're lucky).

Be aware that Korea, even with its burgeoning Protestant Christian communities, is a drinking culture. If you are asked to socialize with your coworkers (and there is every chance that you won't, but if you're lucky) it will almost certainly involve food and drink. If you are puritanical in this regard, you may not be asked out again.

Don't criticize Korea in front of Koreans, at least until you are certain that you are friends, and probably not even then. It achieves nothing but bad blood, and Korean people are fiercely proud, even as they are as aware as you are of all the problems. Do as they do -- if you can't say anything nice, say 'well...' and change the subject, and say something positive. If you feel compelled, match your criticism with some similar failing of your home country. I can't emphasize this enough: be gracious and civilized, even if you don't think the people around you are.

Don't argue in public with your boss. If you disagree, fine, but be firm and professional, and take any disagreement to a private location. Do not make him or her look bad in front of others, or they will bear you a grudge.

Do be aware that no matter what you're going through, other people have lived through it too. Reach out, either online or off-, to other expats if you feel like you're going to lose it. Everybody feels that way sometime.

Don't give in to culture-shock inspired despair. If it's your first time overseas, it's going to bite you hard after a few months. It passes, but never goes entirely away.

Do learn a little history of Korea -- a little goes a very long way with Koreans, who will be pleased and surprised at any effort in that direction.

Do some reading around the Korean expat blogosphere. Personally, I come away angry and depressed every time I do it, but if you're still keen on coming to Korea after a few hours of reading the K-blogs, you'll be just fine.

Do travel around Korea a little -- it's not easy, but outside of the cities, it's really quite a lovely place.

Korea's still a pretty hard place for expats, but it's nothing like it was a decade ago, so don't whine. Seriously. Just don't.

I've known literally hundreds of people here in Korea over the years from stressed-out newbies to multi-year old hands whose distress and grief could have been avoided by following some of these simple tips.

Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

A Free Korean Language Course

2007-02-02T01:39:37Z

Just as there are a lot of terrible ESL books out there, there are also a lot of egregiously bad textbooks designed for foreign learners of Korean. In fact, I've rarely seen such badly organized and poorly thought out language texts as some of the ones I've tried to use to improve my Korean. It's an insight perhaps, into the quality of language education in primary and secondary schools, if the Korean-made textbooks used to teach English and other languages are as poorly put together. Help is at hand if you're a self-directed student of Korean, though.

]]> The American Foreign Service Institute used to publish a series of courses targetting a wide variety of languages, for the use of diplomats and other government employees posted to overseas positions. The Korean one -- Mastering Korean, available in two levels -- is the best that I've ever seen, the most comprehensive and logically-structured introduction to the grammar and structures of the language

It's not pretty in terms of design -- it has no illustrations whatsoever and is typset in Courier -- and it's not intended as a classroom text, but for self-study, particularly if you have a modicum of knowledge about linguistics and grammar in English, it's very good indeed.

The other good news is that it's in the public domain. So I'm pleased to be able to offer the course for download here, from this site, free of charge. All I ask is that if you link to it, you link to this page, rather than directly to the files in question. Each chapter is in pdf form, and the audio component has been converted to mp3 files.

There is one gotcha, though. The author uses his own romanization, one different from either the old McCune-Reischauer romanization or the revised one adopted by the Korean government since 2000, and there is minimal use of the actual Korean alphabet in the examples and exercises. The romanization used is a sensible one, particularly if one knows the sounds of Korean already, and some of the quirks of pronunciation. If you take care to note, for example, the regular transformation of syllable-ending consonant sounds (for example a consonant-spanning ㅆ is romanized as 'ss', even though it may be pronounced as a t-like unreleased stop followed by the sibilant), you'll be OK. I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the alphabet and its sounds first (it's a matter of a few hours to a few days), then learn the system used in the text, comparing and keeping mindful of the quirks as you go.

So, without further ado: here's a belated Christmas present, Level One of Mastering Korean. Share and enjoy (and if you know of any other good textbooks for learning Korean, please feel free to let everyone know about them below, in the comments).

Update: You can find the Level Two course here!

Circles

2007-01-12T00:47:07Z

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. I responded:

Koreans are fighters, certainly, but no more than anyone else, I don't think, and it's not like it's a cherished part of Korean culture or anything. What is a part of Korean culture is to ignore people who are outside your circle of personal friends/acquaintances/family. If someone's not in your circle, they are an unperson, so a) their feelings are not considered b) you can be unembarrassed about airing your dirty laundry, in whatever form.
So if these folks are indeed Korean, making friendly overtures so that you impinge on their humanradar (depending on how old-skool Korean they are (ie if they hew fairly closely to the usual Korea-Korean norms, it'll work)) might just make you a person to them, in which case they'll be too ashamed to make all that noise.

]]> Someone else suggested in no uncertain terms that they thought my suggestions were bigoted, which completely shocked me (and pretty much everyone else). After one of those interminable long arguments about what constitutes racism and what doesn't, it seemed like my use of the word 'unperson' had triggered a strong response, which wasn't intended. I should probably have used a word a little less emotive. Live and learn. In the course of that argument, which ended up involving a good hundred people, I offered the following mini-essay about some Korean Kultural Konstructs, adn I thought I'd share it here.

[Have a look at some background material], and then I'll try to pull some threads together into a nice package:

Some of the forces at play in molding some of the ways in which some Koreans tend to perceive both themselves (that is, their own identities) and others with whom they interact (as well as Korean Identity as a whole) are the concepts of chemyeon (face, sort of), neunchi (sensitivity to social subtext), kibun (personal mood+life force), bunuiki (group mood), cheong (loving attachment to one's immediate circle), and han (sorrow and rage angainst injustice). All of the translations I've offered are weak and inaccurate. For the most part, none of these words translate well (or at least pithily) into English: we know the feelings, perhaps, but they are very difficult indeed to discuss. I believe one of the strengths of Korean, and one of the reasons Korean folks can speak of cultural norms so easily, is that they have single words to describe them.

Each of these deals with the way one interacts with the group, or the way the group impinges on one's identity and emotions. This is no accident. Koreans are brought up (this is changing, as all things are, but not as much as much else in the country) to understand their indentity within various overlapping circles, the first, of course, being strongly-connected family. Marriages are the binding of families, not individuals (many marriages in the past were arranged: some still are), for example. Extended families are still the norm. The elderly (less so, again, than in the past) are almost never put in retirement homes or the like. Brothers and sisters share a generational name (one syllable amongst the three syllables that constitute 95% of all Korean names). The list goes on. As I said here:

Relationship words are blanket nouns denoting relationships between people that are commonly used in informal conversation between people, rather than given names - older brother, younger sister, uncle, auntie, grandmother and so on. (In the slummy, thin-walled building I used to live in in Busan, it was de rigeur on Saturday nights to hear sounds of passion and female cries of 'Opa! Oh, opa! (older brother)' from the playboy-next-door's apartment.) These extend to the common practice of referring to a woman as 'so-and-so's mother,' rather than using her given name.

In a restaurant, on the street, wherever: one calls people (in Korean) 'uncle', or 'auntie' if they're older, or 'grandfather' or 'grandmother', regardless of their relationship. There are a thousand variations.

This and more stands in contrast to the western tradition of identity being predicated on the individual, on him or her first, followed by context. In Korea, it's context first. (It is amusing to me at least to note that when we say something like 'hey buddy' to someone we don't know in English, it's usually in an aggressive tone or situation.)

Another thread to this, and part of the reason this is so, is that Korea is the most Confucian country in the world. Confucian ideas are relevant here because (as I also wrote earlier)

Confucius focused on the need to maintain social order though willing or unwilling submission to the five primary relationships :
Ruler and subject

Parent and child (teacher and student)

Husband and wife

Older and younger person

Friend and friend

All of these relationships are explicity hierarchical, excepting, significantly perhaps, the last, although friendship of a Confucian bent is a considerably more meaningful proposition, it may be argued, than 'buddies' in North America might be.

Confucian beliefs permeate Korean society, for better and for worse (egregious sexism is a downside, for example). Regardless, here it is again one's relationships that defines who you are, and what you can and cannot do. Note (because it's unfortunately necessary, it seems to say so) that these are generalizations about an entire nation, not a taxonomy of the beliefs of any given individual.

It might be said that Buddhist beliefs have some influence (honoring the god inside the other) here, and that may be the case, but Korea is about 45% Christian, and both Buddhism and Christianity are just veneers on the old animist beliefs, to an extent, anyway, so I won't go there.

But when you put together the confucian primary relationships together with ideas like 'cheong' and 'bunuiki', and believe deep in your bones that proper, civilized behaviour means acting in accordance with these baked-in ideas, Korean people are left in a deep and difficult-to-resolve quandary: you can't behave in accordance with these principles with everyone. It's just not possible to treat the taxi driver and the garbageman, the kid behind the counter at the 7-11 or the guy in the next car at the stoplight as part of your primary relationship group (family, friends, coworkers, bosses, alumni).

So what happens? Well, if you're not part of one of the groups that count, then you are more or less in my way. I'll call you 'uncle' or 'auntie', but that's as far as it goes. Not all Koreans are rude or unpleasant to everyone not in their circles, of course. This is not what I am saying.

But manifestations of this are everywhere, and it's only in part hierarchy. People are (to a western eye) shockingly rude to waitresses (there are no male servers, for the most part), to clerks at shops. In their cars, they seem to ignore other drivers, and pedestrians. Neighbours, especially if you haven't met them, effectively don't exist. Regionalism has made an internecine battlefield of Korean politics. Park Chung Hee's graduating class made up most of the government during his military rule, and the same thing happened when Chun Du Hwan took power, with his class, in 1979. Examples of both inside-group and outside-group thinking are everywhere.

That said, Koreans can be amongst the kindest and most welcoming of people, particularly to foreigners who are so far outside the inside-group that they need to be thought in entirely new ways -- in other words, as individuals. And once a foreign person becomes part of a cheong relationship -- with family, friends, coworkers, whatever -- you'll find it hard to find people as loyal.

Are people outside the circle 'unpersons', as I suggested? Well, I think so, even if [my accuser] understood the word to mean 'sub-human' (I did not). But it's not a value judgement, it's a coping mechanism. [My accuser] was overlaying his (reasonable) beliefs, based on his culture (I assume he's not Korean), about 'all men being equal' to the situation, and gleaning a mistaken understanding that there was a boot on someone's forehead if I was correct, or that I was racist for saying what I did, even though I did not intend my comment to be disapproving, merely explanatory.

So: in general (again, weasel words that are made necessary by the pointing finger of disapprobation) Koreans tend to immediately slot other Koreans into one of two buckets, and the second bucket is the large one. In that bucket is everybody who just doesn't matter as much, and is treated in that way, because otherwise daily interactions would be untenably complicated, people whose identity, affiliations, family, status, educations and age are unknown, and who therefore can't jump into the first bucket until some relationship is established. (This is, for example, why every book you read that talks about doing business with Koreans seems confused about why Korean businessmen insist on trying to establish some personal link, and may ask what seem like overly-personal questions. It's not irrational or sentimental, it's baked-in to the culture.)

I haven't made a complete tour here (by any means), and it would take a full book to do justice to the topic, anyway, I think (one which I've often thought of writing), but hopefully someone found this useful or interesting.

Note that although most of what I say here is something you could read in any textbook, some of my conclusions and dotted-line drawings are my own.

Textbooks That Suck And Textbooks That Don't

2006-12-08T05:19:06Z

I teach adults for a living, and I've been doing it (interspersed with periods of product R&D work in IT) for longer than I care to remember. I conduct business skills workshops these days, as well, but my bread and butter is language teaching.

A bane of the ESL teacher's existence is the undeniable fact that there are, to put it bluntly, a lot of textbooks for adult learners that are, to varying degrees, crap. The reasons for this state of affairs are many and varied, of course. Many of them are weighed down under more than one layer of the old language guano. You're waist-deep before you even get started, digging through the stink to find something useful. But I'm here to help.

]]> A few of the most common problems:

You Vill Follow Zee Instructions: scrupulous adherence to outmoded 'methods'

The Horrors of Clipart: design that is user-unfriendly, or just plain ugly. (Much could be learned from good web site design, here)

Siloed Syllabi: chunks of grammar (or language functions) are attacked (I choose that word with care), worried at like a terrier with a rat, then forgotten in the next section

The Random Walk Theory of Textbook Structure: throw slips of paper labelled with verb tenses and grammar patterns into hat, shake it and turn it out on your desk. Voila! There is your outline for your textbook. (Korean-language textbooks for English speakers are the purest example of this kind of thing, for the most part)
Formulaic Fundamentalism: Begin with stilted dialogue, then vocabulary list, follow up with humiliatingly banal 'activity', ancient, inauthentic reading and comprehension questions: lather, rinse, repeat.

More Words, More Better: Business English is all about reading interminable articles, parsing spreadsheets and boring the tits off anybody in the blast radius.

Be Free, Little Butterflies: Speaking skill is what the students want, amirite? Structural knowledge is soooo 10 minutes ago, dude. They can't form the present tense yet? No worries -- toss 'em into the pool, get 'em babbling away with this randomly constructed list of fascinating questions about eating noodles! Right.

These are, of course, just a sampling of the sins against the teacher and insults to the student committed by textbook publishers, of course.

The three biggest producers of lines of ESL textbooks for adults are Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, and Pearson/Longman (Oxford and Cambridge Presses both have poorly organized, confusing, slow websites. Prepare to be frustrated if you visit them). There are others, of course, but most of the series I've encountered in decades of teaching have been from these publishers, for better (sometimes) or worse (often).

Variation in quality between different titles, even within a single publisher's catalogue, is a bit shocking, even to an unshockable old duffer like me. They range from superb (American Headway) to merely adequate (like New Person to Person, by Jack Richards, whose essay '30 Years of TEFL/TESL: A Personal Reflection' is a must-read if you're in the field) to slightly embarrassing (New Interchange sucks in more ways than I care to think about).

The same problems and the same wild variation in quality exists in the Business English space as well. Cambridge's New International Business English is one of the worst books I've ever seen along several of the axes of awful I mentioned above. A real stinker. Global Links from Longman is slightly better (while making the idiotic and all-too-common (and bewilderingly stupid) mistake of using readings that start with things like 'Carly Fiorina is CEO of HP...'), and Communicating In Business, also from Cambridge, is actually pretty damn good, if demandingly difficult.

If you've made it this far, you're probably looking for a recommendation or two.

These are mine: if you're teaching English to adults (and you can group them more or less into levels from False Beginner to Advanced), you can't do better (as of this year) than the American Headway series. They are well-designed and engaging, and structured in such a way that it is clear that they were written from a deep understanding of the way people approach and learn language. They have great depth for the dedicated teacher, and plenty of material that will make the novice look good, merely by following along. They eschew most of the cliche content that makes so many ESL textbooks tedious exercises in repetition. They have excellent companion teachers' guides. I can find very little to complain about (other than Oxford's tendency to use the same small stable of voice actors for all the recordings in a book, and even across different books) -- I've used them for a few years now, and am happy to revisit them with each new class. Each time through, I find new ways in which links between concepts and structures have been embedded in the books' structures, and ways to extend and enrich the material.

If you're teaching Business English, I recommend Cambridge's Communicating in Business. It's intended for Intermediate to Advanced students, and demands business knowledge on the part of the teacher, but it rewards effort, and is directly applicable to the requirements of students wanting to increase their skills in and understanding of the language of international business.

Got some recommendations of your own? Post them in the comments, below, with my thanks. There are a lot of books I haven't seen (for which, if experience is any guide, I can count my blessings).

A Short Korean Food Primer

2006-09-06T05:32:42Z

Are you new to Korea (or planning to come) and want to know how to order food at one of the local eateries, or just know what it is? Do you live somewhere else and want to impress that beautiful waitress (or waiter, I guess) at your local Korean restaurant?

Well, despair no more, friends, because I'm going to give you the beginnings of a Rosetta Stone for ordering Korean food with style and aplomb and hopefully not too much embarrassed-for-you giggling.

]]> It might help a little to peruse Learning to Read Korean Part 1 and Part 2 (Parts 3 and 4 are upcoming) before you jump in, but I'll try and provide some phonetic cues in this article which will make it unnecessary to actually be able read Korean (that said, it's really easy, so I encourage you to give it a go!)

Throughout this article, I'll use the Korean, then the revised romanization, then a phonetic approximation for those who are not familiar with the sounds of Korean (regrettably, a prerequisite for proper pronunciation of the revised romanization scheme), then the translation.

An example: 밥 - bap, 'bahp', rice (cooked)

Dining Customs

In Korea, you order your main dish, which is frequently some kind of soup or stew, often served individually in a heated stone or clay bowl to each diner, or in a larger pot or pan in the center of the table over a gas fire, which is shared amongst everyone at the table. Also shared are the constellation of 반찬 (banchan, 'bahnchahn', side dishes) -- the more there are, the more sumptous the meal is perceived to be. It is perfectly fine to ask for more of a given side-dish if it's all eaten (and is provided without charge), and it is unnecessary to eat all of the each of the side dishes (and in fact might give a bit of an impression of gluttony).

Everyone also gets a small individual lidded stainless (or sometimes ceramic) bowl of short-grain, glutinous rice, which you are generally expected to finish. Long-grain, 'fluffy' rice is almost unheard of -- if that's what you get in an overseas Korean restaurant, it's just not the Real Thing. The rice bowl is customary kept to the diner's left, and the soup or stew to the right. Stainless steel chopsticks and long-handled shallow steel spoons are customary, although Korean folks (overseas or in touristed areas of Korea) may try and be 'helpful' and give you a fork. Be gracious, thank them, and put it aside in favour of the chopsticks. Many restaurants (but by no means all) have areas with floor seating and table-and-chair seating; the former is, of course, the traditional style.

Food is very regional, and every little village and town has its own specialties, for which, according to the locals of that hamlet, it is justifiably famous. Regions also tend to have their own takes on standard dishes like 김치 (kimchi) or 김밥 (kimbap) or 비빔밥 (bibimbap).

Some etiquette no-nos if eating with Koreans (or just trying to be polite a la mode Koreane): don't

blow your nose at the table
pick up your utensils and start eating before the eldest person at the table does so
stick your chopsticks upright in your rice and leave them (edit: this is done with the rice offering during annual graveside ceremonies to honour ancestors, and so is inappropriate to do at a convivial dinner)
pour your own liquor -- watch what others are doing (the matter of drinking etiquette deserves its own essay, which I'll tackle sometime later

Answers.com mentions a few other things as constituting bad table manners

Bad manners include [...] chewing with an open mouth, talking with food in one's mouth, [...] stabbing foods with chopsticks, mixing rice and soup, and picking up food with one's hands...

As far as I've seen in 10 years here, those are pretty much nonsense, at least in any but the most absolutely formal of situations.

The Language Of Food

Here are some vocabulary elements that show up in the names of various foods, and will help you to guess what category, at least, the dish might fit into.

밥 - bap, 'bahp', rice (cooked)
장 - jang, 'jahng', paste
자장 - jajang, 'jahjang', black bean paste
된 - doen, 'dwehn', fermented soy beans
고추 - gochu, 'gohchoo', hot pepper
김 - gim, 'k/gim', dried laver seaweed (the initial sound is partway between 'k' and 'g', usually romanized in the past as 'k') (note also, that it's not the same 김 and the one in 김치 (kimchi).
떡 - deok, 'dduhk', chewy rice cake (the inital 'd' is highly aspirated)
두부 = dubu, 'dooboo', tofu
고기 - gogi, 'gogee', meat
닭 - 'dak', 'dahk', chicken
돼지 - 'doeji', 'dwehjee', pork
감자 - 'kamcha', 'kahmcha', potato
회 - hoe, 'hweh', raw fish or other raw seafood
찌개 - jjigae, 'jeegay', soup or stew
탕 - tang, 'tahng', soup or stew
국 - guk, 'gook', soup or stew
면 - myeon, 'myuhn', noodles
주 - ju, 'joo', alcoholic beverage (소주, 맥주, 동동주, etc)
차 - cha, 'chah', tea
물 - mul, 'mool', water
불 - bul, 'bool', fire

비빔 - bibim, 'beebeem', mixed
냉 - neng, 'nehng', cool or cold

Those syllables (there are many many more, of course) are enough to get you well down the path of figuring out the most common Korean menu items! Let's start putting them together and see what we get. (

된+장 = fermented soy bean + paste: one of the most common bases for soups and stews.
고추+장 = hot pepper + paste: the other most common flavouring, after 마늘 maneul, 'mahneuhl', garlic)

See how easy it is?

How about the everyday light meal or snack, 김밥?

Well, 김+밥 = seaweed rice, which is what it is. Rice with goodies, wrapped in a seaweed roll. Sushi roll ahoy!

How about that old dinner standby, 불고기?

불 + 고기 = fire meat. Sounds painful, but it's the grilled marinated beef that is iconic of Korean BBQ. Variations are 닭 불고기 (chicken + fire + meat) and 돼지 불고기 (pork + fire + meat).

Now, let's put together some even longer dish names, why don't we?

된장찌개 = 된+장+찌개 = soybean + paste + stew.
김치찌개 = 김치+찌개 = kimchi + stew.
두부 찌개 = 두부+ 찌개 = tofu stew. Woohoo!

What about that other everyday Korean food that everybody knows and loves, 비빔밥?

비빔+밥= mixed + rice, which is exactly what it is (except you do the mixing, which adds to the Power of the Delicious, if you do it right). And, of course, it's what you mix in with the rice and the 고추장 that makes it sing. A sunnyside-up fried egg on top is mandatory, in my humble.

Let's try that again with another noun. How about

비빔면 = 비빔+면 = mixed noodles, the noodle equivalent of 비빔밥.

A standard Koreanized Chinese food is 자장면. What's that?

자장 + 면 = black bean paste + noodles.

One of my all-time favorite Korean foods is 냉면. What does that mean?

It's easy: 냉+면 = cold + noodles.

We can get even fancier, because there are two kinds of 냉면.

물 냉면 = water + cold + noodles (cold buckwheat noodles in a cool broth)
비빔 냉면 = mixed + cold + noodles (cold buckwheat noodles with veggies and seasoned pepper sauce, that you mix in the bowl in much the same way you mix 비빔밥, of course!)

Fantastic stuff in the summer time.

And, last but not least, we can now read the label on that old favorite from university days, ramyeon (ramen in Anglified Japanese).

ramyeon = 라면 = 라 + 면 = ra + noodles. I dunno what 'ra' means, but it's darn tasty.

Cool, huh?

Now, I won't pretend that this list is exhaustive, and there are synonyms and other words for some of these things, as well as many, many more ingredients and combinations Just a few tastes from the groaning buffet table. But after studying these building blocks, you should be able to navigate your way through that Korean-language menu on the wall with a little bit more authority.

Good luck!

(If you have any additions or corrections, feel free to leave a comment, below.)

A Brand New Day?

2006-08-25T07:43:36Z

I can count on one hand the number of English teachers I've met in the ten years since I first came to Korea who were actually certified teachers back in their home country. If the proportion topped 2%, I'd be shocked.

There is one reason for this, and one only, despite the acrimony and scattershot accusations that fly around in waves whenever the Korean media decides once again -- something happening at the moment, but I've promised myself that I won't let this site go topical and start talking about news ephemera, so I'll leave the able chest-beating to others -- that some more ad units can be sold if they haul out the dead horse 'foreign teacher as parasite' strawman to give it another few whacks. The root of the problems is obvious, and it's fixable, but the gordian knot of money and politics and attitudes towards education in Korea continues to keep it from being fixed.

]]> You see, almost anyone can legally come to Korea to teach. We can omit the word 'almost' if we choose from a pool of native speakers of English who have graduated from a university, in any faculty at all. We can omit both the words 'legally' and 'almost' if we choose from a pool of native speakers of English who are willing to falsify their documents.

This is, to speak plainly, ridiculous.

Now, like I said, of the hundreds (thousands?) of foreign teachers (so called because of the jobs they've held, rather than any consistent set of qualifications or experience) that I've met here over the years, more than 99% had received either no formal training, or perhaps had attended a two-week TESL training course (special sale this week only at Bob's TESL Hut™!). Of those, there were some who actually were adequate teachers, despite the absence of formal training. Some combination of dedicated, enthusiastic, articulate, language-aware, empathetic, smart. Most, however, were not.

And that isn't to say that each and every teacher I met who had the heavy qualifications and experience was a great educator. Most teachers, when it comes down to it, just aren't that good. But most of the paperholders I've met were at least better than adequate. There just aren't many of them on the ground here.

Why on earth would this be the case? Why would a nation so obsessed with education and the perceived status that scholastic achievement confers allow a situation to develop where the overwhelming majority of foreign language teachers were unqualified, inexperienced, and often utterly disinterested in the actual profession of teaching?

Well, because the government said it was OK. Proof of graduation from a four year university, in any field, along with a job offer (which is, thanks to the unscrupulousness of most recruiters and the cluelessness, to be blunt, of most hogwan (private institute) owners) is enough to get you an E-2 (English teacher) visa.

Now this is good news for the thousands upon thousands (latest figures put the total number of foreign English teachers in Korea at 15000) of young recent graduates desperate for a little travel and some money to pay off their student loans. Great news, in fact. Nothing could be easier than to pop over to Korea for a year or two and babysit some cute Korean kids.

But it's absolutely heart-breakingly bad news for students of English, whether they be kids forced to study after hours by their parents, university students looking towards a global future, or adults studying for their work or personal improvement or retirement or whatever. If they're savvy, or lucky, they may be able to find a school that hires actual teachers, or find one themselves, through word of mouth or connections. But if my experiences in the last decade have been any guide, they've got about 1 chance in 100 of finding someone who's both capable and qualified.

Editorials in newspapers like The Korea Herald have been suggesting recently that parents actually ask teachers at the private institutes their children attend for proof of their qualifications. Well, sure, but that conveniently ignores the lack of filtering assumed to have been done upstream, not to mention the fact that even if the parents could speak English, they might reasonably be assumed to be less than qualified to evaluate the veracity of any documents produced (assuming the teacher in question was not so offended that they refused to produce said documents, digging themselves in turn a deeper hole of mistrust). It's tacit acknowledgement that the system is so badly broken that there's nothing to be done but arm yourself, stockpile textbooks and pencils, and get ready for the education apocalypse.

Tacit acknowledgement that the system is so badly broken that there's nothing to be done but arm yourself, stockpile textbooks and pencils, and get ready for the education apocalypse, that.

But there's an smarter, less ad-hoctastic way to fix it, and it would be win-win-win for everyone involved, except of course for the cowboys, the forgers, the sex-tourists, and the 'native speaker teachers' who are incapable of properly forming the simple past tense, let alone teaching it.

Raise the standards for E-2 visas. Raise them high. Qualified teachers only, with experience. Nothing less than a CELTA/DELTA or equivalent if the candidate is not university-educated to be a teacher. Interviews for those candidates, performed by people who understand English, understand western mannerisms and culture, and who can (as few Koreans seem able) winnow out the scam artists and freaks (hell, hire native-speakers for the job!) Interviews that actually ask them to do a quick spontaneous demo lesson, if you can imagine that.

What happens under the new regime? The quality of language education rises. Happy government, happy students, happy parents. Demand continues to outstrip supply for teachers, and the imbalance increases, but the pool of vetted candidates are quality, and their cachet and remuneration increases to a level similar to those of full-time Korean professional employees. Happy teachers. The (perceived or actual) number of 'freaks and refugees' decreases, leading to a decrease in lurid tabloid exposés, which might make the media unhappy, but to hell with them. Private institutes close in droves, of course, but there are far too many of them, and far too many solely concerned with turning a profit, anyway. On the hagwon-owner upside, they can guarantee quality instruction, and can charge more for it. Quality over quantity permeates the education system. It's a Brand New Day!

I'm being facetious, a bit, as is my wont, and I leave details of implementation to people more energetic than I, but I'm serious about this. There is one easy way to fix most of what is wrong with foreign language education in Korea, and English education in particular, and the filthy cloud of confrontation, mutual wariness, distrust and resentment and angst that hovers over the language landscape: raise the bar. Go upmarket, and do the right thing, rather than the short-term economically expedient thing.

Because attacking symptoms rather than causes is a fool's game.

[Update : Welcome, Joongang Daily readers. Nice of you to drop by.]

Learn To Read Korean -- Part Two

2006-08-25T00:51:04Z

This is Part Two in a multipart series of articles covering the basics of reading and writing in Korean. By the end, you should be merrily sounding out anything you run across
(and doing it with better pronunciation than most foreigners I've met who've been here for years).

Last time I talked about some of the philosophical and design principles underlying the Korean alpabet -- hangeul -- and introduced the vowels.

This time, we'll have a look at the consonants, starting with a little background on the elegant design principles behind them. Recall that the Korean alphabet was consciously designed rather than just having evolved, so linguistic elements and relationships were deliberately built into alphabet.

]]> Design

(If you're not familiar with the linguistic terms above, velars (variations of k and "hard g") are formed when the back of the tongue meets the upper back of the throat. Alveolar consonants (n, d, t, "flap r," l) are formed when the tip of the tongue meets the alveolar ridge, on the roof of the mouth toward the front. Dental consonants (s, sh, j, ch, and similar consonants) involve friction between the tongue and the upper part of the top teeth. Bilabial (p, b, m) means two-lipped; the lips come together and are released. Vowels and glottal consonants (h and 'ng' in modern Korean) are formed in the throat.)

Korean consonants can be arranged into five groups based on depending on how the sound is produced within the mouth. Amazingly (to me, at least), each of these representative consonants is a simplified diagram showing the position of the organs of the mouth in forming those consonants. How cool is that?

Looking at the diagram, you should be able to see that there is an element common to all the consonants in a particular row.

The first consonant in each row is the simplest; this is a representative consonant for each group, and is the building block for the other characters in that group. These changes are largely systematic: adding a horizontal line to a simple stop consonant (sounds like the t/d or p/b pairs in English) forms the aspirated consonants (those made with extra air), doubling simple consonants gives us the "tense" consonants (pronounced with glottal tension, for which there is no real equivalent in English).

So, looking at the top row of the diagram, ㄱ( called 'kiuk') is a basic consonant. It sounds most like a hard 'g' in English (but has long been romanized as both 'g', 'k' and 'c', and so we have kimchi and gimchi, for example).
ㅋ(called 'kiut') adds an extra horizontal line, and gives us a more aspirated 'k' sound.
ㄲ (called 'ssang kiuk' where 'ssang' means double), the doubling of the basic consonant, gives us a slightly strangled (glottal tension added) 'k' sound, sometimes romanized 'kk'.

Looking at the diagram, you might notice that there are other triplets as well -- ㄷ ㅌ ㄸ (roughly and usually romanized d, t and dd), ㅂ ㅍ ㅃ (b, p and bb), ㅈ ㅊ ㅉ (j, ch and jj) -- and one doublet ㅅ ㅆ (s, ss), the regular and aspirated 's' sound.

It is important to notice, if you're serious about all of this, that there is no consistent differentiation between voiced and unvoiced consonants in Korea, as there is in English. Most English consonants appear in unvoiced/voiced pairs -- t/d, p/b, k/g, s/z, sh/zh, f/v and so on -- but in Korean, we have triplets -- basic, aspirated, and tense. Voicing does appear in Korean, but as a function of location -- for example, when a consonant appears between two vowel sounds in a syllable. This is, in my opinion at least, one of the root difficulties, almost universally ignored or misunderstood, in pronunciation interference for both Koreans learning English and English-speakers learning Korean. If you are a teacher, having a good understanding of this fact -- that aspiration and glottal tension are the fundamental differentiator in Korean consonants, with voicing not contributing to meaning, while the exact opposite is true in English (and voicing has a strong effect in English on syllable length) -- can be invaluable in helping your students understand how to clarify their pronunciation in a systematic way.

Notice that the five representative consonants to the right of the diagram, as well, showing the relevant part of the mouth involved. Ingeniously, each of these representative consonants is a kind of simplified schematic diagram showing the position of the mouth in forming those consonants. How cool is that?

One thing that we have to note before going on: I mentioned that Korean vowels are invariant in the last article, but that is not true for consonants. The good news, though, is that the changes, based on position within syllables, are quite consistent.

A Note On Romanization

Romanization is a somewhat complicated issue, unfortunately, and the revised romanization instituted by the Korean government in 2000 (not without criticism) to replace the McCune-Reischauer system of 1984 has not percolated in any systematic way through the country yet. The new system eschews use of diacritics and other non-alphabetic symbols (other than the hyphen, occasionally), and was intended in part to make it easier to type romanized Korean on computers. It is far from perfect, but is, in my opinion at least, an improvement. The major strike against it is that it essentially requires one to be familiar with the sounds and conventions of spoken Korean, and so, though useful for Korean speakers, is of limited use 'out of the box' to those who don't speak Korean.

The Korean government site has this to say about that

It is true that most Westerners hear "ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ" as "k, t, p, and ch" when these consonants appear as the first letter in a word. But the problem is that "ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅊ" also seem like "k, t, p, and ch" to the average Western ear as well, and the differences between each of these vowels are important in Korean. The Korean phonological opposition must be given first priority in a Romanization system designed for Korean, even if to foreign ears these differences are not easily recognized. In addition, when the differences between "ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ" and "ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅊ" are written with consistency, it makes non-native pronunciation of Korean more distinguishable to native speakers.

and I tend to agree with them.

English Equivalents

Here, then is a table showing rough equivalents for the consonant sounds in English,which you can compare with the diagram earlier:

back of the mouth:

front of roof of the mouth:

two-lipped:

behind the teeth:

in the throat:

Putting It Together

OK, let's look at a couple of examples of putting together letters to make a syllable. There are consistent rules for making syllables, which we'll look at in Part 3, but for now, a few sounds to flex our Korean muscles.

Let's take ㄱ + ㅏ = 가.

ㄱsounds like a hard 'g'. ㅏ sounds (always) like 'ah' (this is not romanization, but phonetic rendering for clarity). So

ㄱ + ㅏ = 'ga' (which has in the past often been written 'ka'). It's the root of the verb 'to go'.

How about another?

ㅅ + ㅗ + ㄴ = 손

ㅅ sounds like a soft, lightly aspirated 's', ㅗ is always the monophthong 'oh' and ㄴ is exactly equivalent to 'n'.

ㅅ + ㅗ + ㄴ = 손 = 'sohn', romanized 'son'. It's the noun 'hand'.

At this point, I will leave you once again with this link to give you some audio help. Try the first few lessons again to get try and nail down your sounds. Don't worry if there are things you don't get yet, like the logic behind the position of characters within syllables -- I'll be covering them in future. At this point, though, with some practice, you should be able to sound out most (but not all, because we haven't talked about consonant positional variation yet) syllables you see.

As an exercise, try to sound out this:

안녕하세요?

When you've got it, you're able to greet someone, to say hello in mid-level formality, in Korean, the first thing everybody learns.

(Spoiler: it sounds like an yeong ha sae yo, with the syllables run together, following closely on one another.)

Stay tuned for Part 3, where we're going to start pulling everything together, and the real power of hangeul starts to shine.

Learn To Read Korean -- Part One

2006-08-17T06:11:24Z

This is Part One in a multipart series of articles covering the basics of reading and writing in Korean. By the end, you should be merrily sounding out anything you run across
(and doing it with better pronunciation than most foreigners I've met who've been here for years).

Korean is a very different language, structurally, from English and many European languages. For Korean students of English, and for speakers of other languages trying to learn Korean, it's a hard slog getting beyond the basics. To my continuing shame, although I can read and write the language with some facility, after nearly 10 years of exposure to it (and, I'll admit, study of it that has been at best haphazard and desultory), I'm very far indeed from fluency.

The good news, though, is that reading it is literally a snap. A few hours with the basics, and almost anyone can be up and running. Or walking, at least. The writing system is about 14,000 times simpler to learn (scientifically speaking!) than Chinese or Japanese, and truly elegant in its design, philosophy, and suitability for capturing the sounds of the spoken language.

]]> Before we begin with the basics, you'll need to be able to actually see the Korean text in this page. Tutorials on how to install East Asian fonts (if you don't have them already) can be found at Wikipedia, for a variety of common operating systems.

If you can't see this -- 안녕하세요! -- then go and install the fonts, and come back. It's OK, I'll wait.

History

Right, let's begin with some background.

King Sejong was the 4th King of the Choson Dynasty. In 1446 (dates vary, as do details of the story), scholars of the government office chip'yon'jon, or the Pavilion of the Assembly of Sages, were appointed by the King to invent a new writing system for Korean. Until that time, Chinese characters had been used to represent the sounds of the syllables of spoken Korean (The characters are called hanja, and still sometimes used to this day in print. Learning a basic set of 1800 of them was until recently a compulsory part of the education of all South Koreans, and they still play an important part in place names and personal names).

Writing had for centuries been the province of the educated elites, and this new system (although scorned in early days as writing for 'women and children') was created with the aim of spreading literacy. It was a success -- Korea now has a literacy rate of 97.9 percent, one of the highest in Asia.

A book of instruction for the new writing system was published, called Hunmin Chongum: "The proper Sounds for the Instruction of the People". The script it introduced later became known as 한글 (in the new romanization, hangeul).

If there is sound natural to Heaven and Earth, then there should certainly be writing natural to Heaven and Earth. Thus the men of antiquity relied on sounds and designed characters, thereby to convey the circumstances of the Myriad Things and to register the Way of the Three Germinants, we of later generations cannot change them. However, the winds and soils of the Four Quarters diverge, one from the other and sounds and breaths, following them, are likewise different. Presumably because the outer kingdoms have their sounds but lack characters for them, they have borrowed the characters of Chinese to take care of their needs. This has been like a handle that ill fits the hole; how could they have been applied with out obstructions? -Hunmin Chongum

The Vowels

Besides its simplicity and elegance, one of the most fascinating things about the Korean alphabet is its grounding in the philosophical principles of the time, and its deliberate connections to the physical configurations of the organs of speech.

There are ten vowels (and eleven dipthong vowel combinations) and fourteen consonants (and five doubled consonants) for a total of 40 phonemes. Characters are shaped with symbols (dots and circles, horizontal lines, and vertical lines) that represent the fundamental elements of the cosmology: respectively heaven, earth and humanity. Heaven is a round dot, Earth is a horizontal line and the symbol of mankind is a vertical line. All the vowels in the Korean language are combinations of dots, horizontal and vertical lines. These signs are further balanced into the the opposing energies of yang (bright) sounds and yin (dark) sounds.

Here are the vowels:

The ten basic vowels are those with only one long straight vertical or horizontal line (earth and human): ㅏ and ㅑ, ㅗand ㅛ, ㅓand ㅕ, ㅜ and ㅠ, ㅣ and ㅡ.

If the dot (represented in this font as a shorter perpendicular line) is to the right of the vertical, we get some of the "bright" vowels: ㅏ ㅑ ㅐ ㅒ. If it's above the horizontal, we get the last two brights: ㅗ ㅛ.

If the dot (represented in this font as a shorter perpendicular line) is to the left of the vertical line, we get the "dark" vowels: ㅓㅕ ㅔ ㅖ. If it's below the horizontal, we get the other two darks: ㅜ ㅠ.

If there is no dot, the vowel is neutral:ㅣ and ㅡ

Adding a second dot (short perpendicular) to a vowel adds a "y" before the basic vowel sound("ah" becomes "yah", for example): ㅑ, ㅒ, ㅕ, ㅖ, ㅛ and ㅠ.

A horizontal vowel (ㅗ or ㅜ) can be paired with a vertical vowel to form a dipthong. The horizontal vowel always comes first in the pairing, and this results in a "w-" sound in front of the pure vowel to give us sounds like "wah," "weh," "wi," and so on: ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ and ㅢ.

So far, we haven't matched any of the characters to their actual sounds, so don't worry if it's not coming together for you yet.

For that, I'm going to give you this link for basic vowels, and this one for dipthongs. Open it in a new tab or window, and mouse-over to listen to the vowel sounds as you look over what I've said about the vowels. If you repeat the sounds, think about the shape of your mouth as you make them, and how that relates to the bright/dark/neutral labels.

Coming Soon

If you want to skip ahead and listen to the consonants as well on those pages, they will be the focus of Part 2, where we'll see how the design of the consonants (which are created in all languages by the modification and interruption of the flow of air by the physical parts of the mouth) are cleverly modelled on the physical movements needed to create them.

Part 3 will deal with how syllables and words are put together, the relatively simple rules for reading and writing them, and the few but consistent exceptions.

Part 4 will talk about the difficulties and challenges of the romanization of Korean, why it's such a mess, why Koreans have so much trouble with English pronunciation (though they need not) and what you can do to make the situation better as a teacher (if you are one).

For now, one parting piece of essential advice to keep in mind: unlike English, the sounds of Korean vowels are (essentially) immutable. No matter where they are in a syllable, they make the same sound. This is one of the pure joys of learning to read Korean, and something that many (if not most) new learners of Korean miss, in part because of the confusion that reigns in romanization.

Have fun. You're about a third of the way to being able to read Korean!

Revolution Rock?

2006-08-15T08:43:36Z

There's a new LG Telecom ad that's been playing on Korean television recently. As happens all too frequently, I'm having a little trouble telling if it's hilariously clever or dumb as dirt.

Here, you watch it, and decide what you think.

]]> See, here's the thing. Or the things. I've mostly gotten over the kind of pop-eyed apoplectic rage I used to feel when advertisers used rocknroll songs I loved as the soundtracks for their shills. It doesn't bother me any more -- I've made great strides in anger management over the years. So if LG wants to use The Clash's Revolution Rock to sell mobile telephone services, well, I can live with that, even if I don't like it much.

But I'm wondering if they had anyone who could speak English vet these lyrics:

Revolution rock, it is a brand new rock
A bad, bad rock, this here revolution rock
Careful how you move, Mac
you dig me in me back
And I'm so pilled up that I rattle
I have got the sharpest knife
so I get the biggest slice
I got no time to do battle

It seems a bit rogueish for an arm of one of the biggest chaebol in the country, one that owns so much of it, to be admitting "I have got the sharpest knife, so I get the biggest slice". And being "so pilled up that I rattle" might be one heck of a fun way to spend a lost weekend, but it's a bit much in Korea, where the last I heard one could still get the death penalty for it. But the imagery and lyrics, coupled with the tagline, are the bits that have me trying to figure out if this is clever or clueless.

Everybody knows about the Korean predilection for public demonstrations. Often violent ones. It's probably one of the enduring images that the outside world has of Korea, much as the government would like for it to fade away -- headbands, fists in the air, chanting hordes, riot cops younger than the demonstrators cowering behind plexiglass shields, blood, fire. So an ad showing people spontaneously joining some kind of mob, admittedly happy and brandishing cell phones rather than molotov cocktails, well, that's just cheeky. And flashing the tagline "Join the Movement" at the end? Is it a clever reference to and inversion of that enduring image in the minds of foreigners?

I don't know. I just don't know. Crass, sure. But being semi-convinced that the Makers of Marketing Decisions at LG didn't understand much of the lyrics of that song other than the word 'revolution' just doesn't jibe with the bit that impressed me the most -- the tagline "Join the Movement" pops up right after Joe Strummer sings "I got no time to do battle".

It's either brilliant or just plain lucky. I have no idea which.

On Visas

2006-08-15T05:05:54Z

I am planning a series of articles on the practicalities of visiting, living and working in Korea. Here's the first: visa information for people who may be planning to come to Korea.

If you're a national of any of a wide variety of countries, you can enter Korea for up to 90 days without a visa, simply by showing up. If you're Canadian, you can enter visa-free for up to a six month stay. Longer stays require that you get a visa before you arrive, and of course, working while on a tourist visa is illegal.

For the vast majority of people entering Korea to work as teachers, the E-2 is what they will be applying for. If you are offered a job, you can either apply for and get the E-2 before you leave your home country, or come to Korea without a visa and do The Visa Run later. The most common destinations for visa runs are Fukuoka and Osaka, in Japan. Both Korean embassies are well-used to the constant, endless stream of E-2 applicants trooping through, and are quite efficient. Like most embassies and consulates, they do tend to have odd opening hours, but if you time things right, you can leave Korea one day and be back the next, E-2 in hand.

]]> Working during that period after you arrive under the visa waiver program and before you do your visa run (if necessary) is illegal, no matter what your new boss might tell you. Many people do it anyway.

The E-2 is tied to your workplace -- if you quit your job or are fired, you lose your visa, and must exit (and re-enter, if you wish) within a relatively short time. Other restrictions include a prohibition from working anywhere besides the company or institution who hired you, without permission from your employer, or teaching privately. This restriction is widely ignored, but can potentially get you deported if you break it. I've never personally known this to happen to anyone, though.

There are a wide array of other visas, but the only other ones that potential fresh meat (that'd be you, if you're reading this) might be interested in are probably the H1, the F-2 (and F-2-1, which is, as far as I can tell, identical to the F-2), and the C4.

The F-2 (which I hold) is a spousal visa, for those married to a Korean national. It allows you to work where you like, at as many jobs as you like, and to enter and leave Korea freely, among other things. Recent changes to the visa (I believe as a result of the massive increase in international marriages, to a great extent driven by the unwillingness of young Korean women to marry farmers and their consequent importation of brides, mainly from SE Asian countries (a topic I will do some talking about at a later date, I promise)) have given us foreign spouses some great new latitude, including a provision that allows you to apply for permanent residency in Korea after 5 years holding an F-2.

The H1 is the working holiday visa, for young citizens of countries with which Korea has reciprocal arrangements. I don't know if teaching is a job permitted under this visa -- there's very little else in the way of work if you don't speak Korean -- but I worked under similar visas in New Zealand and Australia back in the day, and they are great for the young, poor traveller.

The C4 is a temporary employment visa. I suspect that the chainsmoking, emaciated, leotard-clad Russian girls I invariably used to see at immigration offices back in the day -- entertainers, don't you know -- were applying for these visas, or the E-6 entertainter visa.

On the fringe are the cowboys. I've personally met a few people over the years -- usually Canadians, thanks to that 6 months entry visa-free -- who had spent several years in Korea, teaching private lessons, always on a tourist visa, always working illegally. They'd simply hop out for a holiday in Thailand or somewhere twice a year, then come back and get another tourist visa on entry, and carry on. All of the ones I've met have claimed to make anywhere from five to eight thousand dollars a month doing this, tax-free cash in hand. I don't recommend it, of course, because I do not advocate breaking immigration law, but I include it for completeness.

If anyone has questions, feel free to add a comment below.

Grand Opening

2006-08-14T00:51:45Z

Welcome to the site, friends and neighbours!

As usual, it took a lot longer than I'd expected to get things to a point where I was ready to pull back the curtain. I'm almost there, though, and ready, I think, to go public. You may have seen the post at Metafilter Projects, or on my personal weblog, or one of the bookmarking sites. Or if things go well, one of the tens of thousands of weblogs that linked here after the word got out, because the buzz went memetic or bloggorhea set in, or something.

Not everything is 100% finished yet, and I'm gearing up (and laying in supplies of coffee) to write a whole bunch of new content, but most of the flesh is on the bones, and the features I plan to add are coming together.

This site is about Korea. About me in Korea, yes, but the focus, at least in future, I hope, will move closer to Korea than it is to me. That'll be a challenge, given the size of my ego and the joyful abandon of my self-regard. I hope it will be both entertaining and practically useful for anyone who visits with specific questions about or just vague interest in life in Korea. The title is a minor play on words. First, as waeguk-in (foreign persons) in Korea, we are perpetually outside. This, like so many things, is changing. Korea is no longer the hermitage it once was. I will write much about this in future.

Second is the idea of the world looking in at Korea, and, as near as I can tell, just not getting it at all. And, bless 'em and all that, but the Koreans just don't seem to be that good at telling stories about themselves to the rest of the world that don't make people wince and raise an eyebrow. Or two. There is a groundswell of interest in Korea overseas these days thanks to that so-famous-in-Korea 'Korean Wave', of people on the outside looking in. At the same time, interest and knowledge of the rest of the world grows within Korea, as people on the inside look outwards. It's an exciting time to be here, and I hope I can share a little of that excitement with visitors to this site.

]]> One of the things you'll notice is that I'm including ads on the site. If you know me through my personal weblogging persona, you'll know that I've railed against advertising far and wide, all around the weblog world and elsewhere. Well, that's true. But despite the fact that this site uses the superb Movable Type content management application, and does bear some structural resemblance to a weblog (permalinked, regularly updated, chronological posts and so on), and despite the fact that many of the things I've written and plan to write are in the first person singular, I'm hoping that the site will grow into a resource for people interested in Korea, and not just another place for me to spout off about my many fascinating opinions. As such, I think ads are a reasonable thing, and I promise not to make them too obtrusive. A lot of good advice was recently given by someone whose opinions on these things I respect, Matt Haughey, and his advertising success with Metafilter and his PVRblog helped me make the decision to monetarize the site. That, and a few dollars coming in will help spur me to adding new content more regularly than I do at my personal site.

And, to be honest, I love to write (and I like to think I'm pretty damn good at it), but I just don't have the kind of drive it takes to market myself old-school. I have a friend here in Korea who makes money freelancing for publications, and it seem to me that he spends more time on sending out his work and chasing editors than actually writing. I'm just not interested in doing that. I'm going to write whether I make money at it or not -- I've been doing it for years at my own personal site -- but given the choice, and the ability to do it honourably (by the rococco intricacies of my own personal honour checklist), I'll take the 'write and make money' option.

One of my missions with this site is to look unblinkingly at problems, but to take care not to descend into that pit of negativity.

The dream, of course, is a full-time travel-writing gig, wandering the planet and telling stories about it. In other words, what I've always done, but with a paycheck attached.

One thing that the outsider notices almost immediately when socializing with other waeguk-in here is the relentless negativity amongst much of the foreign community towards Korea. It's grinding, and depressing. There is much wrong with this country, as there is with any other place you care to name. I've shaken my fist at the sky in pretty much every country I've lived in, at one time or another. One of my missions with this site is to look unblinkingly at problems, but to take care not to descend into that pit of negativity. I won't whitewash anything or fall automatically into the platitude-trap of 'not worse, just different', but I also will not rag on Korea out of habit. Or, if I do once in a while, it'll all be in fun. Honest.

Anyway, have a look around, kick the tires, take it for a test drive. There are probably some things that are a bit broken, and the look of the site is evolving. You can help me out and let me know what you think by dropping me a comment on this post. What would you like to see in a site dedicated to information about living in, working in, doing business in, or just visiting Korea?

Retail Rituals

2006-06-20T12:50:12Z

In Korea, there's F-Mart and D-Mart, L-Mart and G-Mart, and the current top dog of the X-Mart retailers, E-Mart. They are all much of a muchness, and are a microcosmic case study, I suppose, of the Korean predilection (and skill, it must be said) in taking someone else's idea (in this case, a household goods retailer, K-mart (of course)), reshaping it for the Korean market, and barfing it out again, adding only the most cursory Groucho-glasses-and-nose disguise.

Recently my wife and I went to the nearby E-Mart to do some shopping, get out of the house, engage in the soothing Retail Ritual. The Retail Ritual calms me, these days, if it's in one of these huge ultramodern, brightly lit stores. Odd, for an old hippiepunk like me, who has little good to say about our marketing-driven civilization, and often.

]]> That said, I don't care shopping for anything other than food, so I guess I can still fly my freak flag proudly. And although stores like Walmart and Costco are a scourge on the landscape back in North America, sucking the life out of smalltown centres, feeding low-wage, no-security, permanent part-time slavery, homogenizing the already desperately whitebread-and-mayonnaise landscape even further ...that's not so much the case here. The box stores sit in the middle of already existing major shopping areas, beside subway stops, and have the opposite effect, if anything, revitalizing cruddy areas and triggering some urban renewal. These stores also tend to employ women under better conditions and for better wages than they might otherwise receive in this sexist nightmare of a nation. But more on that later.

So the wife and I were trundling around with our cart, happily sampling and grazing and knocking small children down (well, I was the one knocking them down, and the wife was the one scolding me - she pretends to tolerate my aversion to the little buggers, but I don't think she really does), when one of those spine-chillingly weird Korea moments happened, that nobody much seems to notice or comment on, a situation which sometimes leads me to theorize that I'm living an extended hallucination in a Matrixy goo-filled pod somewhere, fed digital imagery to pacify me by some higher machine intelligence which is extracting my life energy to run pachinko machines in Osaka or something.

Some facts first that will help explain, I hope, my flash of The Weird.

In Korea, like Japan, walking into a shop or restaurant will usually result in a hail of welcomes and other ritualized greetings from the employees. I hate these, but I must admit they make me feel all shiny and special too. I am a good consumer, and I really am welcome here, and I should buy something to celebrate that, I say to myself, before I realize their cunning ploy and adopt the anti-salesperson scowl that is my customary demeanor while in-store.

In Korea, it's (and excuse the romanization, but I'm going for clarity of pronunciation more than the current textbook romanization) 'uh-suh-ohseyo,' which more or less translates to 'welcome, and please buy lots of our overpriced crap!' On departure, particularly if you have in fact purchased some crap, it's 'kahmsahmnida' or 'kohmuhpsoomnida', both of which mean 'thank you, and spend again'. Well, OK, just 'thank you'.

The other necessary fact to know is that upmarket department store chains like Hyundai or Lotte and also these more middle-class retails outlets like E-Mart and Walmart and Carrefour (foreign business, which are floundering and leaving Korea, more on which, later) all employ way, way too many people. Behind a typical watch-counter at Lotte, for example, you might see 6 to 8 men (always men, behind the watch counter, for some reason) loitering about, trying desperately to look busy, beseeching you with their eyes to please come and look at a watch or two, just for a freaking minute you rich bastard, come on ...and then swarming up like Keystone-Kops-as-filmed-by-David-Lynch when someone does.

It's good, in some ways, that so many are employed when they might otherwise not be, but you can be sure that the only way such a situation can be justified is by paying extremely low wages. The idea behind these clusters of clerks is that such heavy concentrations of service-people enhance the feeling -- that wealthier Koreans, including the growing middle class, seem to just love -- of being catered to by hordes of low-born types or a reasonable facsimile, grovelling before the shopper's imperial whims. See also : Dynasty, Chosun.

Walking around the aisles of the supermarket sections of these stores is a hazard course of (usually) miniskirt-clad (invariably) young female product demonstrators, who want to give you a sample of coffee, or help you choose that perfect shampoo, and (usually) older (invariably) females in the fresh-food areas, cooking up some pork or slicing up some veggies, and inviting you to chow down, using the (invariably) plastic green toothpicks.

(What's the female equivalent of 'avuncular'? Damned if I know, but that's what these fresh-food ladies are. Ajummacular, perhaps.)

The younger ones, the ones that staff the toiletries and dry-good aisles, are always goooood-lookin', though, and pretty obviously hired on that basis, and apparently instructed to bend over, but demurely, whenever possible. Which makes astonishingly little sense, even ignoring the sex-discriminatory aspects, as the vast majority of shoppers are middle-aged women, who are unlikely to be seduced by the milky thighs of these miniskirted productistas.

Anyway. Any given row in the supermarket sections of these chains will house anywhere from a minimum to two to a maximum of six women, some of whom are apparently hired just to stand there and smile at people.

This repeated perhaps four or five times, and you could hear the chorus of voices throughout the store. Nobody else even batted an eyelid, but I was just transfixed, with chills literally running up my spine. The Weird.

So back to the trundling and the shopping and the running-over of children. As we were rolling down the ramyeon aisle, the sixth or seventh repetition of the ecstatically faux-happy, 50's-style E-Mart Song was coming to an orgasmic close, and there was a slight crackle over the PA, and a voice.

A female voice, one that was absolutely perfect in its unctuous, saccharine, mind-colonizing tone, oozing into your ears, grabbing whatever handholds it could find and whispering, irresistably : everything's going to be all right, there there, just lay your weary head on my soft, perfumed, padded bosom....

Anyway, this voice sweetly but firmly intoned 'uh-suh-ohseyo' ('welcome'). And every single woman employee in the place turned from whatever they were doing, as one, faced in the same direction, towards whatever Mecca-equivalent was operative, and repeated 'uh-suh-ohseyo' while bowing deeply, to nobody in particular. The voice paused a few seconds, then said 'kohmuhpsoomnida', and once again, every single woman, matching the weirdly unnatural, woman-as-service-automaton voice, chanted 'kohmuhpsoomnida.

I know what the rationale behind it was, and understand that many Koreans really think that sort of stuff is spiffy, and are drawn to shop somewhere that shows that kind of rigorous employee-indoctrination methodology, but it was still deeply, excitingly Weird.

Of course, I forgot about it 5 minutes later, while buying beer, which was, after all, my secret mission for the day.