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English Spectrum has earned the media spotlight once again! The website, which was temporarily shut down last year thanks to a vicious netizen offensive sparked by the discovery of photographs of foreign English teachers and Korean women engaging in party behavior deemed unbecoming for both parties, has apparently failed to mend its ways, reports the Kukmin Ilbo. I’ve translated the piece below for your reading pleasure. A note on the translation, however: even though I was able to find the original English text in some instances, I’ve used my own translations for the direct quotes.
“If you teach English in Korea, you can easily meet Korean women. There are a lot of sexy and bold women. If you made your living stacking cans in a Walmart back home, would women talk to you? (from “10 reasons why teaching English in Korea is better than working in a Walmart back home”)
Some of the native-speaking English teachers of the website “English Spectrum” have yet to correct their “bad habit” of degrading Korean women. “English Spectrum,” a community of foreign English teachers who have come to Korea, was chastised by public opinion early last year when it threw a lewd party with Korean women.
A foreign English teacher by the name of “S***” wrote on the site’s weblog on May 10 a post on “10 reasons why teaching English in Korea is better than working in a Walmart back home.” He claimed in the post that one can meet sexy and bold Korean women easily, and you could easily make money. He said in Korea, you could make 40 dollars an hour just saying a few things in English and being a little entertaining. In the United States, you couldn’t make 40 dollars even working five or six hours in a Walmart. He included in the post a handful of 10,000 won bills and a black-and-white photo of two young Korean women.
It’s the same in a discussion board called “Discussion Living in Korea,” which discusses various thoughts about life in Korea. There are many posts degrading Korean women.
“Who looks for Western women these days? There are so many hot K-bitches.” “Basically all Korean women date three guys at the same time. But Korean women talk nonsense like they’re dating just one boyfriend.” “Don’t date Korean women under the age of 28. That way you can avoid 90 percent of the Korean women with a princess complex.” “Act as if you’re uninterested in Korean women who want what they don’t have.” “Never call a Korean woman first. If the girl doesn’t call, find another girl.”
There was also a post entitled “I was fired after I was caught masturbating in my room [apartment] at the hagwon building.” On May 25, a foreigner by the name of “J***” complained, “I’ve thought about masturbating during my class break because my female coworkers wear skirts, but I was masturbating in my own [apartment] room, so why was a fired? It seems my hagwon owner was spying on me with binoculars from the roof of a building near the hagwon.”
There were even posts insulting Korean men. A foreigner name “B***” who wrote a post entitled “Koreans who can’t speak English” said he’s sick of Korean guys “cockblocking” in bars in Jongno and elsewhere, and that he would cockblock Korean guys so they couldn’t sleep with Korean women.
This behavior on the part of the foreigners who are active in English Spectrum has been pointed out several times. In December, netizens alerted the Korean Internet Safety Commission that a Korean porn site called “Kimchi Slut” was linked to English Spectrum. On April 20, the commission handed down a warning to Kimchi Slut to correct its content.
At the time, an official from English Spectrum said it appeared one of its members had linked the site in its bulletin board without their knowledge, and that it would be hard to find out which members were writing what.
An official from the Korean Internet Safety Commission said it was currently deliberating three URLs related to English Spectrum based on tips from netizens. He said that based on the result of the deliberations, it could order the site shut down, issue a warning or take other measures.
Kukmin Ilbo, Kuki News Kim Min-seong mean@kmib.co.kr
If I had to make an early prognostication, I’d say this won’t blow up like English Spectrum-gate last year, if for no other reason than everyone’s attention is focused on the World Cup. Plus with a slew of recent stories about Korean men degrading Vietnamese women, the righteous-anger factor might have been brought down a notch. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
NOTE: In the event that this does spark another wave of anger against English teachers, I direct readers in the ESL profession to GI Korea’s helpful advice on how to pass yourself off as a GI.
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29 Comments
Thank God there are no larger problems involving women on the Korean peninsula like trafficking, oppression or starvation that would distract the Hankook Ilbo in its important coverage of minor-league English websites.
Slim: That’s the Kukmin Ilbo—I always mix the two up. Anyway, I just corrected it in the post.
Duly noted, with level of disgust unchanged.
Unfortunately, my China policy post is getting pushed further down the page.
Oh my f**king god! I almost pissed myself.
“If these schools don’t want gay teachers, or bisexual teachers, or masterbating teachers, or teachers who eat their Chunky soup with a fork instead of a spoon….THEY HAD BETTER PUT THAT IN THE BLOODY CONTRACT!”
Article 3, Line 8:
Teachers shall not engage in any activity which consists of palm to foreskin manipulation. Such conduct will result in immediate
ejaculationtermination.So… it’d be okay to masturbate if I were circumcised? Better tighten up that contract.
Ok, look at this:
“If you teach English in Korea, you can easily meet Korean women. There are a lot of sexy and bold women. If you made your living stacking cans in a Walmart back home, would women talk to you?”
You think any waygook talks like this? Uh uh. The “you can’t get a real job in your own country” racist kyopo bullshit is shining through this agent provocateur troll posting…
If this isn’t a kyobo bastard I will eat my hat.
OK, Robert, I am going to throw down the gauntlet. What is the word for ‘cockblocking’ in Korean?
I don’t buy any of this as true, not even for a second. I’m immediately skeptical that anyone (in their right mind) would post such comical comments, particularly being a guest in Korea for the following reasons:
1) Given the nature of the comments, it’s clear the posters intent is not only to inflame Koreans but anyone with any common sense as a guest in a foreign country.
2) Anyone with a college degree in America immediately goes into management at Wal-Mart, not stocking shelves or cashier type jobs.
3) I can’t imagine anyone pulling their tool out and masturbating in public (in a classroom much less) in Korea given their shitty jails & prisons — the school owner spying on the teacher is believable, but from a neighboring building’s rooftop, come on, get real.
4) If you need to depend on picking up chicks in bars, you’re doing something wrong to begin with and looking for the wrong type of woman. In fact, if Korean men are cockblocking you from women in Korean bars, they are doing you a big favor.
5) Calling any women a “bitch” is just immature and childish, unless she cuts your penis off or screws your best friend. This term is used to solicit a reaction from people, at best, a negative reaction at that.
6) The so called “comments” someone named Stan supposedly made here sound like they are made by a low-intermediate level English student. I’m most suspicious of Stan’s “gangster Konglish, plagued with run-on sentences (typical Korean style of writing), poor vocabulary, and horrible grammar” in his post.
–Remort
Where I live, Walmart staff would mostly have to be Spanish teachers if they sought an adventurous career change.
Hadn’t given a thought to the idea that the whole posting is fake — although the idea of a local paper falling for it is eminently plausible.
I strongly advise against tarring kyopos with such a broad brush here.
Wait a second here… let’s not go blowing these posts out of proportion. The post ‘10 reasons why teaching English in Korea…’ really only has a couple short blurbs on Korean women, and the post actually takes a much harsher tone towards American women. Second, the guy who posted about masturbating supposedly did so in his own apartment and was walked-in on by his boss. He may have been slightly guilty for not locking his damn door (after all, anyone who’s been in Korea for nine months like that guy claims to would know that Koreans don’t always wait for the door to be answered before opening it.) The ’spying with a high-powered telescope from a neighboring building’s rooftop’ was meant as a hyperbole (as the poster said at the end of the post). He also explicitly stated that he didn’t masturbate inside his hagwon classroom.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the posts calling women ‘bitches’ on hand at the moment, since they aren’t linked-to and I don’t have enough interest in this to search for them, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’re being blown all out of proportion, as well.
The Top Ten reasons while funny, are largely true. While working at my last degree mill in Korea, one of my “colleagues” had in fact been a Walmart greeter, the lowest on the Walmart food chain. He spoke like Gomer Pyle and was probably dumber. He lectured his students about trout and bass fishing.
And he was a “visiting professor.”
Go Figure!
I think it’s interesting to note that all the comments on the article about Korea>Walmart, everyone is telling the author he’s an idiot. It would have been good journalism of the ‘newspaper’ to include that rather then just saying, “don’t trust those english teachers”. But there you have it with media finding smoke where there is no fire.
I think the Kukmin Ilbo is taking things out of context, at least if your translation is correct. Firstly the guy wasn’t masturbating in this class room, it was his house as another poster has already written. And his boss walked in on him! That should be agaist some kind of privacy law! In your translation it refers to western women as “women” and korean women as “bitches” but if you look at the picture at the top of your post and read the text it clearly calls both “bitches” which is a slang term widely used for all women (not a nice one) but the point is he refered to both as “bitches” not only Koreans.
Anyway, sounds a bit like it was translated incorrectly to make it sound much worse. Also, has there never been a Korean man post about his time in a foreign country and how he loves the women there? Sure there has been in the history of the internet. Nothing these teachers talk of is illegal. They pick up women who want to be picked up. That’s what men do. Korean men do it, there are thousands of love motels for that very purpose. Surely Korean men do this in other countries also.
If this isn’t a kyobo bastard I will eat my hat.
Maybe they don’t stack a large enough foreign books section, their staff barely speak any English, and their insurance policies are a bit overpriced, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame Kyobo for this fiasco.
Oh my god I HATE this kind of stuff! It pisses me off soooooo much! I hate people talking trash about Korean women. It drives me bonkers! It’s not Korean women, it’s a universal — generally, foreign people are attractive to natives.
So, if I were a French dude (a la the “Woody, I am going to steal your girlfriend…” guy on Cheers) and I was in the States, then I would probably have a bit of an edge in the dating scene. (Love, Actually, has a great little bit about a British dude going to Shiboegan or some such and the girls fall for his accent.)
As a sidenote, went to Mary Jane’s (the place where the orginial ES dumbassed behavior took place) yesterday to see how it was going — it’s a very, very closed bar as best I can tell.
My translation, as far as I know, is fine. The Kukmin Ilbo’s Korean translation of the English, however, might not of accurately conveyed the actual tone of the original English posts, but I’d have to compare the two again to see. As for the “bitches” part, the Korean text was kind enough to use the English term:
“누가 요새 서양 여자들을 찾나? 끝내주는 한국 계집(K-bitch)들이 널렸다”
While my Korean slang is not what it should be, the Korean translation for “bitch” (gyejip), as far as I know, is not used in the same manner as the English term is used.
Why, Matt, since you asked, the Korean text used the English term, with a Korean explanation for what it means:
한국 남성을 모욕하는 글도 있었다. ‘영어도 못하는 한국인들’이라는 글을 쓴 ‘B＊＊＊’라는 외국인은 “종로 등의 술집에서 ‘콕블로킹(cockblocking, 유혹한 여자와 성관계를 할 수 없게 방해하는 행위를 뜻하는 비속어 )’ 하는 한국 남자들 때문에 신물이 난다”며 “나 역시 한국 남자들이 한국 여자들과 잘 수 없게 콕블로킹을 하겠다”고 말했다.
Cheers, Robert! I guess this is one of the times when a concept cannot be translated wirh one word, but requires an explanation. The closest I can think to cockblocking is 장애가 되다.
LOL. Teachers, y’all really need to start giving lessons in “vulgar” slang. Like Travolta said above, “bitches” is just how we often refer to women. I can’t say that it’s right, but rather that’s how it is. You’ve got to inform your students so that they can better understand the world around them, or at least the English movies shown in Korea…and when they read our mindless digital drool.
No i wasn’t saying your translation is bad. Im saying the newspaper translated the original English badly.
I’m still waiting for the New York Times to run a piece featuring nulji’s or bluejives’ comments on some website to opine that kyopos are denigrating American men and women.
That shows what an immature level the Korean press (and by extension, society) is at and that nulji, is why I compare Koreans to children.
Since the Kukmin Ilbo sees something untoward about the term ‘K-bitch’, perhaps they should also visit Sexparan’s web address and see what new name they’re calling themselves these days (NOT WORK SAFE).
That’s not for the foreigners, folks - it’s all in Korean (though it is a ubiquitous hub for white-girl fantasy flicks).
So, any guesses on when the Korean media’s going to get around to reporting that?
Well, seeing as the sexparan.com domain is registered to a ‘Hansen Kovaski’, if the Korean media ever DID get around to reporting on that site, they’d probably end up finding some way to blame the foreigners for it.
The moral of the story? Koreans are free to degrade their women all they like, but god help the foreigner who tries to do the same. Here’s a quick ‘cheat sheet’ for all you folks at home:
Koreans keeping Korean women as sexual slaves: Acceptible.
Japanese keeping Korean women as sexual slaves: Unacceptible.
Koreans running Internet sites (with hardcore porn) that denigrate Korean women: Acceptible.
Foreigners running Internet sites (without hardcore porn) that denigrate Korean women: Unacceptible.
Really though, for all that “Dynamic Korea” is trying so desperately to shed its image as a provincial backwater, it sure is super-easy to create a bloody National Scandal (especially if you’re a foreign English teacher, apparently.) What will ‘alert netizens’ (read as: “bloody rabid idiot racists”) dig up next?
MW: LOL. Teachers, y’all really need to start giving lessons in “vulgar” slang. Like Travolta said above, “bitches” is just how we often refer to women.
It’s vulgar, all right. Do it once in the workplace, and expect to get written up. Do it a few more times and expect to get fired. This is gutter ghetto talk.
Just some people screwing around on a discussion board. Happens all the time.
umm….i think it is fairly obvious that the ORIGINAL articles in question were complete satire. to get excited about this is even more retarded than the stories themselves. the guy made a list, it is somewhat funny, but some koreans took it the wrong way. it happens every week. i think there are some really good points made in it actually. and if you read it with an open mind it is actually postive about korea and the women. that is the scary thing.
I think the quality of these English teachers shines brightly in their attitudes. They are usually bottom feeders that come over here and give the rest of us hard working weagooks a bad name. Have the good taste to partake of the local fruit with discretion and taste, Wait a tick they have neither.
How accurate is that new flag thingie, Robert?
Ha ha I’m the guy that complained about Korean men cockblocking me in Jongro. It happens and it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Don’t take it personal…..
7 Trackbacks
English Spectrum Makes the News again…
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