It’s noon on a Thursday. Most people I know are beginning their lunch breaks right now, a needed respite in the middle of a long work day. Not me, I just woke up, swinging my feet out of my low-slung Korean bed and thinking, Well, that was a nice six hours of sleep.
Yeah, you do the math. I went to bed when the sun was up. For the second night in a row. This is all a part of a promise I made to one of the outgoing teachers at my school: for the first month, I have to say yes to everything the other teachers offered. You want to eat spicy chicken feet? Yes. You want to drink dongdongju, juktongju, and then verbally assault each other at a karaoke-like noraebang? Absolutely. You want to stay out until 4:30 am and then go get delicious samgyeopsal, pork you grill right at your table? Your offer is my desire. So I swear, this new lifestyle which follows no pattern and no diet conducive to healthy living is just me going through on my word.
As a result, you teach a few classes and then somehow find yourself with a mix of boisterous Americans and silently-sloshed Korean businessmen in some Western-style bar buried deep within an apartment building. They’ve got a Confederate flag, Skid Row albums, and a NYPD SWAT uniform on the wall. They call themselves Funnybomb. Yeah, Funnybomb.
As I watched the bartender perform an elaborate cocktail show for our two departing teachers, I realized how our world always baffles me more each day. The Korean bartender does a hip-hop dance to a Beverly Hills Cop-sampled song, slinging cocktail shakers around, breathing fire, all while wearing an Osama Bin Laden mask. Bottles of single malt Scotch line the back of the bar and the bar food is seaweed paper with soy sauce.
This cultural mishmash puzzles me because Korea is one of the most homogenous places on earth. There is very, very little foreign blood here. Korean culture in uniform and all-encompassing. There seem to be many fewer differences between people from Busan and Seoul than between people from New York and Dallas. But at a certain level, Koreans seem to exemplify how even monolithic cultures are affected by globalization. The drinks are Scottish, the music is urban American. Even the expressions of the Korean teachers I spoke with in many ways seemed influenced by the West. The very way they emote, their hand gestures, even the occasional rise and fall of their rapid-fire Korean speaking almost seems little different from the way young American girls interact. It would be easy to write this off to the universality of human characteristics, but these teachers are young, know English, have been to America. You do not see that same way of expression in much of the older generation.
I ended up talking to the Korean teachers for almost the entire time at Funnybomb. Even after a few days of teaching, I had already noticed an invisible wall which existed within the school, in which the foreign and Korean teachers operated in different realms. Which is a shame, because the Korean teachers seemed like great people. I mentioned this to the other teachers later on and they had their own assessments. David, who is leaving on Friday, thinks it’s because the Korean teachers don’t think that we do Korean things. So if they knew that we wanted to go to a noraebang or go to a hof and get samgyeopsal and that they were welcome, they would want to come. But I learned from Chris, another fellow teacher, that there are other complicating factors. One is that many of them live far away, which makes a cab ride after a night out long and lonely and expensive. The latter problem is perhaps the biggest and the one which surprised me the most, especially when I found out the foreign teachers make about twice what the Koreans do, and that’s not including our housing.
I was surprised that they would pay the Korean teachers so little and us so much comparatively. When I’d done the calculations on my salary before coming, I figured, Well, it’s not the greatest money in the world, but my housing is paid for and the taxes are pretty low, so I should do decently. But now I realize that I’m living like a king by their standards, which is pretty unbelieveable considering my qualifications and teaching experience (nil). I also reconsider the behavior of the foreign teachers. What does that say about Americans when we’re out late every night, throwing money around like it grows on trees, shouting loudly, drinking beers on the street? That we’re just here in Korea to make easy money and live a life even wilder than college? I’m reminded of part of Hunter S. Thompson’s advice for surviving Las Vegas: don’t abuse the locals. Maybe we’re not abusing them but we might be flaunting whatever advantages Korea has graciously offered us.
I’m not going to stop going out and soaking in the sights and smells of big city life in Korea. But I think I will certainly attempt to be a better teacher. I feel like its the least that I can do given how well off I am here.
For now, I’m off to school, planning how I can convey the concept of homynyms to a bunch of sleep-deprived ten year olds. Look forward to a post on teaching and the rat race that is Korean education.
UPDATE:
I just found out today that my school is very seriously considering changing the way Korean teachers are paid. The Korean home room teachers will have their salary based on how many kids are in their classes and how many come in and, most importantly, how many leave. This is really big news and has big ramifications for us. There are three classes per block and the Korean teacher may teach one or two classes in that block. So if the foreign teachers fail to get the kids learning English and parents pull kids out, the Korean teacher suffers. But nothing happens to our salary. I think that the burden is clearly upon us to do our best because our fellow teachers’ well-being is dependent on it. We can’t really afford to slack off. I hope the other foreign teachers recognize this as well.
1 Comment
July 3, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Keep em coming. I enjoyed the read and your perceptions. There is a subtle call to accountability which should run into everyone’s life in this.
I really appreciated that.