OutsideIn Korea

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.

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.]

Posted by Chris at 5:43 PM | Permalink

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:

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.

Posted by Chris at 10:51 AM | Permalink

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!

Posted by Chris at 4:11 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Chris at 6:43 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Chris at 3:05 PM | Permalink

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 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?

Posted by Chris at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)