As readers know, I’ve spent a great deal of cyber-ink documenting incidents of Canadians acting stupid in Korea–see Stupid Foreigner Tricks. Well, Seo Sang-won wrote into OhMyNews to document a case of Koreans acting stupid in Canada. It appears Vancouver libraries have a grafffiti problem, the bulk of it contributed by Korean students studying in the city.
Canadian Library Suffering Because of Korean Graffiti
“Dae~han~min~guk”
There might be a lot of you who, hearing these words, would think of the chants and emotions during the 2002 World Cup or the recently concluded World Baseball Classic. But shameful it might be, this word was one of the examples of Korean graffiti discovered at a public library in Vancouver, where I live.
Like all other areas in Canada, each district of Vancouver has a public library. Canada’s public libraries are not just simply places to borrow books or study for tests, but also play a role as a kind of community center.
You can borrow anything from books to all kinds of music CDs, movie and documentary DVDs and videotapes. Moreover, on occasion, they hold lectures for residents, book signings and various classes, and play an important role in binding the district’s society into a community.
These libraries are now falling into poor health due to indiscriminate Korean graffiti. Of course, the level of seriousness differs according to district, but if you go to most public libraries, you can easily find traces of graffiti left by Korean students on the desks, walls and bathrooms.
In particular, the graffiti is concentrated on the reading room desks, so it irritates the many people who go to the library to read or study. Looking at one of the desks, which appeared almost papered with Korean graffiti, one could mistakenly believe that the library had hosted a “Korean graffiti contest.”
There’s also English graffiti, written somewhat smaller, but the reality is that it’s so few that it’s hard to find. There are some desks that have so much graffiti on them that it’s hard to sit down at them and concentrate on your reading or studies.
You can easily discover Korean graffiti on the library walls next to the emergency exits and bathrooms.
Most of the graffiti is written in almost-impossible-to-erase ballpoint pen, white-out and marker. You can even find cases where the graffiti has been carved into plaster walls or wooden desks using a sharp tool. One library near where I live even printed a notice asking people not to write graffiti and posted it on each of the desks.
The notice, written in the name of the library staff and users, pleads in a roundabout way for users to refrain from writing on the desks, saying, “We are tired of looking at the damage you have caused to our study carrels… If you must express yourself, please do so on paper. We can provide you with scrap paper at the Reference Desk.”
I, too, have tried to erase the graffiti with an eraser every time I saw it, but it was no use with graffiti that has been written with ballpoint pen or marker on the surface of wooden desks. Korean libraries, too, are suffering seriously because each desk has graffiti on it. In particular, it’s said that the desks used by teenagers are particularly bad.
I don’t think I have to explain in the piece why one shouldn’t write graffiti in libraries or other public places. It goes without saying why. Every year, more and more Korean elementary, middle and high school students are heading to places in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, including where I live in Vancouver, to learn English or study abroad while they’re still young.
Leaving aside the “grown-up debate” over sending young children abroad to study or learn a language, I think it’s praiseworthy when I see students who have come to a far-off foreign land at an early age to study heading to a library with their friends after school to pass the time in a beneficial way reading books or doing homework. I’d just add that I hope these students learn not just English, but also an understanding of a better public order and a culture of showing courtesy for others.
14 Comments
To be fair, while the bottom photos appear to be written by possible Korean high school or college exchange students who should know better, that 대한민국 and 즐즐즐즐 on the top picture screams “child” or “foreigner.”
I will not be convinced Korean students are responsible for the grafitti until I see some grafitti referencing “독도”.
This is obviously a set up by the Canadian government in retaliation for Canadians’ exclusion from the cultural understanding group. Sure, the organizer of the group is a non-Korean, but the meetings are held in 대한민국. Hello????
if this is the extent of non-Korean netzien outrage at the obviously Korean destruction of public Canadian taxpayer property that says something. were the situation opposite, i suspect the Korean netzien outrage might even take to the street with people protesting… things canadian
Looks like some folks need the Appa Window.
http://tiniancards.wordpress.com/
Slow news day, Marmot?
I take it you don’t find Korean middle school kids scribbling on Vancouver library desks a burning issue?
Not with thousands of Jindo dogs being murdered each year in the United States, Lee Hyo-ri’s plagiarism theatening to tank Korea’s image and …. Kushibo stubbornly denying us more than one post per topic of his wisdom. THESE are burning issues!
This library, at least, doesn’t have any homeless crowds, who often yell, cry, snore or spit. Oh, regular patrons in the public library (in my neighborhood) don’t even bother to turn off their phone. Well, I should be thankful to my library that it hasn’t any Korean kids. Homeless crowds and unruly patrons are enough for me to handle, and I don’t want to suffer more…
There is a Korean saying, “the pot that leaks in the house will leak outside of the house as well”. Someone should teach these kids some manners before they go outside Korea.
The author’s concern is no doubt that this may give non-Korean (and some Korean) Vancouverites a bad impression of Korean yuhaksaeng…which I think is a legitimate concern. The same way that some non-Koreans residing in Korea get uncomfortable when they see or hear of the embarrasing antics of other non-Koreans.
…But why didn’t the Coquitlam library make the marginal effort to translate the notice into Korean? (Marginal, because for those who don’t know, Coquitlam is one of the major Korean population centres in the Vancouver area…surely they have someone on staff who could have done the translation?) Something like:
야, 날라리들, 여기는 호프가 아닌데 낙서 금지!
…Come to think of it, these may not be yuhaksaeng (visiting students) at all, but 1.5-generation high school students, or the children of gireogi eomma.
…낙서가 금지되고 있소, to make the sentence complete….
…the bold bits in red ink, just to make it extra serious….