I’m all for a bit of a pile-on in the comments when it comes to our friend Jon Huer. (Hee hee! – Sorry Rob) As long as said pile-on is constructive and troll-free. Rob has expertly covered Heur’s latest OpEd piece but I thought I would add my 2c worth with this little piece recently posted at The Chosun Bimbo:
Unhappy? Frustrated? Feeling Under-appreciated?
Have I got the article for you! (Notwithstanding my own feelings of unhappiness, frustration and under-appreciation.) Dr Jon Huer, scion of all things wonderful about Korea, has decided that his ivory tower, somewhere on Yongsan Garrison, from which he seldom emerges by all accounts, gives him an excellent view of what it is like to be an English Teacher here in Korea and proclaim the source of so much of the bitterness that often grips some of those in our ranks.
The problem is, he makes a number of good (albeit quite obvious) points.
And to rub salt in the proverbial wound, his OpEd piece over at The K-Times accurately describes some of the complaining and whining that I have been guilty of this week.
I am most impressed by some of these foreigners saying the nastiest possible things about their experiences in Korea. Their violent loathing of everything about Korea is in some ways quite shocking.
To read their descriptions of life here is to read some of the most negative and unhappiest of human evaluations and social experiences.
The degree of their bitterness and rancour is, on first encounter, quite incomprehensible.
Well…one likes to think of one’s self as at least being comprehensible…!
To paraphrase Huer, English teachers in Korea get pissed off because their expectations of being treated special-like (because of their “white-looks”, education and “superior society”) and their expectations of professionalism (ever held a Korean to a contract?) are not met when they end up being treated like regular Koreans by an uncaring boss out to make a buck at the expense of everyone save himself.
Or to put it another way:
Life sucks. Get over it.
I have. A quiet weekend of reflection is a fine thing, and really the problems that occur in my microcosm of Korea are either trivial, surmountable or I couldn’t give a fuck-able , and so on Monday I will start afresh.
Huer’s article did get me thinking on some wider issues that I think are worthy of some complaining though. I have drawn attention (as have many others) to the state of the Korean Judiciary, The way English Teachers are treated in terms of their working environments is a legitimate concern, and if there was anything that was worth complaining about, it’s not HIV tests to become a teacher it’s the education system that we are employed by, which is overly and needlessly competitive and so backwards and arcane so as to be be more like the 18th century than the 21st.
I would be seriously looking at what I was doing if a North Korean defector can eloquently and quite accurately offer criticism. ‘Specially since they never listen to us.
In the end Heur’s article addresses a small but vocal minority here on The Peninsula. If you could only access Dave’s ESL circle jerk cafe on the interwebs you would be forgiven for thinking that Korea is a spectacular shit hole. In reality it’s not. And in reality those who aren’t complaining are the ones out there living life and getting all they can from living in Korea, and who seldom have time to log on to Dave’s (or write blog posts heehee!) or leave comments and bitch.
See also RoK Drop for an interesting discussion in the comments there.
20/04/2009 at 5:29 am Permalink
One of my biggest complaints is that I have been here for 7 years, almost entirely at the same school, and I am not allowed to vent my frustrations like the K-teachers do. They can complain until they are blue in the face, but heaven forbid, should I do the same. Then the ground opens and fire spews out, and suddenly I become the bitch-from-hell.
In my humble opinion, the reason for a lot of the complaining done on blogs is because, as outsiders, we are not allowed to vent our frustrations in any other areana. All that pent-up frustration has to go somewhere, hense the blogs…..
Anger is nothing more than misplaced frustration.