My fellow English teachers finally got around to arranging a welcome party for me. Before, a couple of them were away on various engagements, but we were all finally in town at the same time. A few other teachers joined us as well from other departments.
It was a delicious meal. 우리 (duck) served up samgeopsal-style with the normal sides of kimchi and sauced up vegetables. There was also quite a bit of soju being poured. I tried my best to keep up, but this unfortunately meant that I couldn’t keep anything down for the majority of the next day. Luckily, I didn’t have to teach.
I spent most of the evening talking with the most fluent of the English teachers. We discussed many things, among them my honors paper and his interest in Anime. He would like to actually team-teach with me at some point, though I fear that this might require too much work to do over successive weeks. Once or twice properly spaced out would be acceptable to me, though.
And of course the ubiquitous question arose, “Why did you decide to come to Korea?” I’ve been getting this question a lot from various people. Here’s the stock answer: At my school, I studied East Asian history, but my school was too small for me to study Korean history. Thus, I only studied Japanese and Chinese history. I feel this is unfortunate since there are three major players in East Asian history, not two, and if I want to continue studies in this field, I should know about that third player, Korea.
The real answer is more something along the lines of, “Well, my Middle Eastern history professor wanted me to apply for The Program, and I picked the country and research topic (Entertaining Teacher from America) that would require the least amount of work on my part. I accepted the opportunity when it came because who wouldn’t accept a one-year paid vacation to a country half-way around the world?
Not that it’s been a vacation, nor that I thought it would be. Far from it, in fact, but I can’t help but feel a little guilty about my less than pure motivations. Like I’m using these people somehow. Sure they’re getting something out of it, but from what little I know about Korean history, about how they’ve been stomped on by every major power in the world, and used, and torn, stitched… Well, I just feel like I’m a part of that now. A little. When I realize how many people come here to teach just because Korea will pay them a lot of money to come and how many of those people do not bother to learn about Korea or Koreans or Korean and how many of those people do not g.a.r.a. what happens in this country…
For instance, in our last night in Chuncheon, my friends were at a bar. (For those of you who know Korean, you’ll appreciate this. I just typed “our friends” and had to correct it. Man, I’m in it deep now!) They met some Canadians also teaching English in Korea through another program. The other program doesn’t really appreciate our program for some reason, perhaps because it’s U.S. government sponsored (or perhaps because we actually teach by ourselves while they mostly just help out as live tape recorders). At any rate, they were getting a little pushy with my friends, so my friends asked them, “How long have you been in Korea?” A year or so. “And how much Korean do you know?” Korean? Why would we bother to learn that?
That kind of attitude? Well, it makes me feel a little guilty about my own less than pure original motivations for coming here. Luckily, it also motivates me to not become one of those people. Luckily, my original intention for coming here is going out the window, and my desire to actually learn about this unique people is growing everyday.
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