Proving the amazing power of Robert Koehler’s Marmot’s Hole, today’s Sakkeon-eui Nae-Mak (사건의 내막 — “Inside Story”?) one of the sleazy tabloid newspapers I like to read on the subway coming home after work (my chauffeur is on holiday), has as its front-page feature (including photos lifted from his site) the scandal of ruggedly-handsome serial-killer English teacher Chris Charles’ supposed adventures (reported here on Marmot’s Hole August 7) seducing his “students” (most of whom look suspiciously like Itaewon bar girls). The newspaper’s website doesn’t carry the story yet but I’ll update with a link and hope someone else has the stamina to translate that later. I’m sure the netizens love this one: A victim who disclosed his real name and place of work!
Nice going, Mark Turner. Your low-down tattling to newspapers “and police” has borne fruit. Now Charles’ Xanga site is password-protected, which means I won’t be able to read his first-hand account of being hounded out of the country.
{ 130 comments… read them below or add one }
I expect Koreans to try to shaft me, But what I really hate is the low life waygook who tries to shaft another waygook, or dob in another waygook, just so they can try to get into the good books of the Koreans. All these people manage to do is to shaft other foreigners, and in the end, the low lifes end up being shafted by the Koreans, they were hoping to impress. To those out there who like to suck up, remember this, doesn’t matter how many times you let them give it to you up the rear. You will NEVER be one of them. Koreans don’t like sucks, and neither do waygooks. Good one. As ‘The Ugly American’ who recruited Korean, Japanese collabarators to work for the new ROK govt said, “Once a whore, always a whore!”
The guy was stupid for writing an honest blog about his life and making it public. He was just asking for some bitter person to discover his site and splash it all over the anti-foreign media. If this is Mark Turner’s doing, I hope he realizes that media coverage of this kind of thing hurts the image of all foreigners, including Mr. Turner.
I had read Charles’ site for quite some time now, really just to see what’s going on his life while in Korea and how far he would push the content extremes of his site. From my first encounter with this site, I knew it was just going to be a matter of time before someone made an example out of him as what not to do in Korea.
What’s the lesson to learn here? Well, 1) don’t use your real name, 2) don’t include a picture of yourself, 3) don’t publicly state your place of employment, 4) use a non-Korean server, 5) watch out for pathetic & loser waygooks trying to get in good with the Koreans. If Charles were a Korean, some ajumma would have just given him a good slap… and that would have been the end of it.
–Remort
I’ll expose my ignorance on the matter….who is Mark Turner? How did he bring this to the attention of the netizens/the public/the media? We really didn’t need another of these scandals to drive the netizens into another frenzy about english teachers.
I thought it was really careless to have a website like that when I saw it, now it’s ammo to be used against every foreign english teacher.
I just read through the comments on the original posting and now I see how he got involved. what a #@$#@….
“my chauffeur is on holiday”
Somehow, I thought you were a man of the people, Brendon. (Or was this a joke?) Although I understand there’s a very privileged life a few of you expats enjoy I may never (sadly) be privy to….
Anyhoo, when I saw Mr. Turner’s original comment, I honestly thought it was just a troll…maybe I misread it, but I thought the commenter was being facetious, as in, “imagine what would happen if….” One of the places he said he’d release this too was a website called breakingnews.com, which would not appear to be a likely place to post news about English teacher hijinks in far-off Korea.
It’s quite possible that someone else saw the post and followed up on it. I’m sure that this blog is read by many more people than actually comment here.
The only surprise here is it took so long for a Korean tabloid to run the story. Hope Chris is on summer holiday and isn’t inclined to return to sell his toaster and iron. Do feel sorry for the Korean girls who were pictured on his site, mostly innocent photos of his co-workers and students.
Guess the only way to de-sensationalize the-foreigner-having-his-way-with-”our”-women issue is for thousands of similar sites to be stood up. Until then we’ll see English Spectrum III, IV, yada yada every few months.
And of Mark Turner…total cunt.
If I were a Korean parent, I sure wouldnt want an obvious scumbag like Charles running amok teaching my kids in the hagwons.
But, of course, protecting your own image (you guys definitely have an image problem over there) is definitely more important than rooting out an over-sexed, closet pedophile who happens to be in a trusted position as teacher.
Why am I not surprised?
Seouldout, I have to agree with your sentiment re the posting of photos of his students and co-workers. Were it any other blog, it’d be okay, but the juxtaposition of those pix with the other stuff there is not good.
I’m sure the hapless women who appear there didn’t know what kind of other stuff he had on his blog…but their unwitting appearance there might make life difficult for them, depending on how the story is spun in the Korean-language media.
I mean, heck, if it were here in Canada, and there were a white dude with a blog like that and all the subjects were white as well, the whole thing would be just as questionable.
As far as I can tell, he wasn’t actually doing anything illegal, but frankly, he seems to have been exercising really poor judgement.
Sewing, I agree with that last comment.
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I have refrained from commenting to this point, but I think a few things are in order, here.
1) Robert’s publishing the url and details of this little known site (which I and many others had never heard of before) guaranteed that someone in his wide readership would turn him in. Even before Mr. Turner had written his comment, I predicted this would happen.
2) Contra those who spoke of another English scandal in the works, attributing it to Mr. Turner, the scandal was not caused by Mark Turner, but by Charles himself. If Charles would have shown good judgment, Robert would not have linked to his site, Mark Turner would not have read that piece and turned him in, and the Korean media would not have publicized this story. Mark Turner is only the third link in the chain.
3) Finally, while I have mixed feelings about what Mark did (one thinks of the biblical injunction about “ratting” on slaves: “To his own master he stands or falls”), I do believe that the English teaching community, and the foreign one, generally, actually gains credibility by taking a stand against unethical or unprofessional behavior. I refer to Charles’ posting pictures of his coworkers on his blog when they were almost certain not to know the contents with which their pictures would be juxtaposed. That is in addition to the whole issue of his sexual escapades with his students. Commenters on this site who are cursing Mark Turner, if their comments are read in the Korean media, will only solidify the perception, held by many, that foreigners and foreign teachers are unprofessional horn-dogs.
NathanB: Yes, yes, and yes! Right on all accounts.
NathanB, you make good points, though I don’t believe what Turner did will give foreigners, particularly foreign teachers, credibility in Koreans’ eyes. If he were concerned for the collective “well being” he should have shot an email to Charles explaining the hornets nest he was playing with. The comments that will likely be read in the Korean media will be the ilk of Bluejives’ “pedophile”, which, based on the photos shown, is a lie.
“the English teaching community, and the foreign one, generally, actually gains credibility by taking a stand against unethical or unprofessional behavior.”
Do we see Koreans taking a stand against maniac bus drivers who endanger children and the community-NO!, Do we see Koreans taking a stand against police who turn a blind eye to law breakers-NO!, Do we see Koreans taking a stand against taxi drivers who endanger other drivers-No etc etc etc.
Of course, take action against a paedophile, but there are bastards out there who will dob in a teacher for doing privates, collude with Koreans to help diddle a waygook out of his pay. Charles wasn’t being too bright, yea but he commited no crime.
Hey Turner! what are you going to do about all the Koreans who refer to my wife as the foreigners whore, or cum receptacle. Are you going to report it to the media? Go to the police.
Guess what? The media don’t care, the police don’t care Why because it’s Koreans being bastards.
By the way, what’s the “BF” (Bravo Foxtrot) reference for in the post title?
Just as you do “over there”. I’d suggest you put your own house in order first.
Since you’re in NYC, you can start with the Korean who got out of his SUV and the let his wife drive herself and their two children over a cliff in it.
http://www.wnbc.com/news/9696681/detail.html?rss=ny&psp=news
“Bravo Foxtrot” is a military term. You can look it up yourself.
My military training in intelligence analysis pays off regularly, not just in my use of disguised crudities. It helps me think about what’s really going on. The women photographed on Charles’ site were not his students. That is a figment of his imagination. The settings of almost all of those photos are Itaewon bars (check the wallpaper) of two stripes: sleazy and a little bit less-sleazy. (Several photos are taken on a yellow sofa with matching fabric wall covering, yet the sofa in Charles’ apartment is classic low-class orange Naugahyde.) Therefore it is reasonable to assume the women photographed were photographed consequent or precedent to a paid sexual encounter with Charles. They are also not really “victims”. Prostitutes taking semi-nude pictures with lonely English teacher who then lies about them — still quite creepy, but not a scandal.
The Sakkeon-eui Nae-Mak newspaper’s website is (wait for it) http://www.breaknews.com — making this front page story very likely the direct product of Mark Turner’s action. And I think that’s pretty low.
The Sakkeon-eui Nae-Mak headline breathlessly reports that the English teacher in question was seducing high school girls. From Charles’ writings and the photos, there’s no evidence of that. Those women all look to be in their 30s. This xenophobic distortion by the newspaper is also a direct product of Mark Turner’s action.
Brendon:
Yeah, I caught the website name. Mr. Turner mentioned in the original thread that he would pass this on to—among others—breakingnews.com, which led me to think it was a ruse. (According to its website, breakingnews.com would appear to specialize in news from the NYC-Philly-Baltimore-DC area.) But I guess he meant breaknews.com, which you linked to up above.
The nude photos are not what bother me personally…as I said, he’s an adult and he can do what he likes. It was just the posting photos of his (non-nude, for those who haven’t seen them) co-workers in particular, in juxtaposition to those other pix—juicy bar girls or not—that to me personally, seems to indicate a lack of good sense.
Thanks for clearing up Bravo Foxtrot…looked it up. Although it’s probably safe to say that these two fellows were not buddies to begin with!
By the way, apart from this issue, how readable or reliable is 사건의 내막 overall? The one thing we don’t have enough of here in North America are the down-n’-dirty, current affairs daily tabloids like they have in Europe. (There are daily tabloids, of course, but it seems like we colonials haven’t perfected the fine art of high-level yellow journalism the way our former masters have.)
OK, in defense of Mr. Turner, the fact is that the site in question was bound to draw attention. I mean, come on, given EVERYTHING that has taken place in the last year or so, the site owner should have known better than to post stuff like that. Making cracks about Korean students wanting to work on their “foreign oral skills” showed extremely poor judgment, and frankly, if he’d been a teacher in the West, he’d have lost his job for doing something like that. Given the extreme stupidity of it all, especially when you KNOW teacher behavior is coming under greater scrutiny from the public at large, I don’t feel terribly sorry for him. Don’t get me wrong—I’m as concerned (actually, as a foreign blogger, more concerned)—about sensationalist, xenophobic and inaccurate reporting as the next guy. But come on—if a teacher would have wrote that on his website in the States, the local media would have caught it and he would have been fired.
I disagree. As Brendon point out, the local media are more likely to confuse and distort this issue to serve their own base desires and those of their readership, a readership that itself is base enough not to care that there are moral English teachers such as yourself out there “taking a stand”, but will instead be all too eager and willing to tar YOU with the same brush. Trust me, no one will make that distinction. Accordingly, not only will the English teaching community not gain credibility, by exposing one-off freaks like this Charles and allowing them to be made representative (in the minds of Koreans) of all English teachers, the English teaching community (including you) as a whole loses even more credibility. This, indeed, is what we are now seeing. The only ones who gain (and this only in their own minds) are those English teachers who get a smug sense of satisfaction from “ratting”, which allows them to feel good either because it proves to them that there is at least another English teacher out there with morals lower than their own, which offers a sort of validation, or because they are insufferable prudish hypocrites to begin with.
And Austin makes the truest point of all: no one, Korean or otherwise, likes a snitch.
What’s fair is fair, I hope Mark Turner has nothing to hide while here in Korea for his own sake. Personally, I wouldn’t intentionally piss off any ex-military dudes…
–Remort
It appears Mark is lobbing grenades from the safety of a Canadian redoubt.
Is it just my imagination, or do the most insufferable moralists around just happen to be Canadian? Just as America is the world’s policeman, does Canada want to be the world’s conscience or something?
If I may say so, I don’t particularly have a “dog” in this fight. I refrained from commenting earlier, and as my allusion in the previous comment should have made clear, I am not entirely comfortable with injecting oneself into another’s employment situation, as Mark apparently did, and as I would not do. What I do object to are the attacks on Mark Turner, whom I don’t actually know, just as I had earlier objected to previous attacks on Shelton, whom I also don’t actually know. I’m fairly consistent that way; no needless attacks: no comments from Nathan B.
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Just as the death of a few Palestinians upsets the world more than thousands dead in the Sudan, I think that the bulk of the commenters here are emphasizing the wrong thing.
Your “dog” is this comment, Nathan, which has nothing to do with Mark Turner specifically:
Making that kind of site is about as smart as this http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZcpmcmRzYRk
Whether it is his right to do so is besides the point – it’s just freakin stupid. As for the guy who “snitched” – whatever makes you feel better about yourself I guess.
Dogbert, I think that’s a general truism. At the very least, “taking a stand” would involve not condoning what was clearly unprofessional behavior, or condemning the whistleblower, even if, as I say, I am not entirely comfortable with injecting onself into another’s employment situation. Again, there is no certifying or regulating body of teachers, here, and I am not on such a hypothetical body, so I have little interest in commenting specifically on the individual in question.
The people who were attacking Mark Turner were, essentially, arguing that what he did would make the situation worse for the rest of us foreigners. I argue that those commenters, and not Mark Turner, will do that. You and I will have to disagree on that one.
is mark turner’s name in the newspaper story? does it say that the paper found out about the website because a concerned english teacher wanted to help koreans clean up the industry?
am guessing the answer is no. (wish i knew some fancy way of saying that so it sounded like i was talking over a radio.)
so, all mark turner did, if the coverage can actually be traced back to him, is make things worse for english teachers in korea. the story is “bad teacher,” not, “good teachers help us.”
regardless of what you think, nathanB, it really just comes down to what the average korean thinks. they read newspapers, not the marmot’s hole (although, they should, of course).
>Is it just my imagination, or do the most insufferable moralists around just happen to be Canadian?
Depends on what morals you are moralizing. Janet Jackson’s boob would never have been a scandal in Canada. To generalize, Canadians tend to moralize from the left, whereas Americans tend to moralize from the right.
The Lady Kyunghyang thread would be even more entertaining than the original magazine article.
Canadians sanctimonious moralists? I don’t know about that. I think a few are. But to compensate, we did give the world ice hockey.
Having read this guys blog on a couple of occasions, and disregarding the fact of whether he has actually done something illegal. The guy was asking for trouble.
One of his posts was the transcript from MSN Messenger, which he believed was a student trying to set him up. Now any sensible person realising that if a student knew of the website and was considering trying to set him due to his lifestyle (real or imagined) then perhaps it might be time to tone down the content….but oh no!!
A few posts later we get nude photos of some of his earlier conquests. Whether these were paid for, students or other we have no idea.
Reading through some of the comments it appears he also managed to upset several Korean/American or Korean/Canadian girls.
Whether Mark Turners intervention was right or not in peoples eyes i feel that.
1. As a person in his proffesion, to have such a site is highly irresponsible and would cause offence and lead to the loss of his job in most countries.
2. This site being reported to the papers or the authorities was inevitable.
I leave you with a question…back in your home country, if you found out one of your childrens teachers had a site such as this would you report it or just say “oh well, he is pretty dumb but its not hurting anyone?”
I would think the majority would report it.
No, Nathan, here’s the issue: Ratting on actual crime is fine, a moral duty in fact. Ratting out a cad to the yellow press and “authorities” in a way calculated to appeal to their known prejudices and to provoke a lynch mob is not. The guy was not an elementary school teacher, a middle-school teacher, or a high-school teacher. He is (was?) an instructor at a for-profit institute teaching adults. The closest American analogue to this position is a community-college or Learning Annex lecturer. Yes, I would have concern if this man were teaching my small children. But if he’s a creepy fantasist teaching adults, gee whiz… Leave him alone to his creepiness. Children merit special protection; adults really don’t. Frankly, getting mixed up with a creep or two is part of many a young woman’s learning curve.
Indeed.
Frozen babies, Jon Benet Ramsey dude, creepy English teachers with highly suspect websites…
One wonders what the average Korean in the street is thinking about such strange foreigners in their midst….
Friggin’ hate the bastids
Hated ‘em already, tho
i have a feeling that this thread is going to get away from one important issue: what’s happening with that website now that it’s been in the paper.
is there someone posting on this site who has access to the xanga one? it would be very interesting to see what’s going on behind the curtain.
just ask all the girls from the benetton ad.
” Do feel sorry for the Korean girls who were pictured on his site, mostly innocent photos of his co-workers and students.”
Which makes me respect the co-worker who refused to allow him to put her image on the net (and him for at least having the ethics to follow her wishes).
This one is a tough one for me to comment on, because though I am a prude, I believe to each his own within broad reason. If those girls wanted to pose nude for him and have it pasted on the internet – it’s their life. If these people wanted to hang out with such a person – fine. But I doubt I’d find myself doing so, and like I said, I came away from the orignial post with positive thoughts about the co-worker who didn’t want much to do with him…..
Bluejives: “an over-sexed, closet pedophile who happens to be in a trusted position as teacher”
Sewing: “As far as I can tell, he wasn’t actually doing anything illegal, but frankly, he seems to have been exercising really poor judgement.”
That’s gold.
The problem is he’s white – for a bluejives.
In the great motherland, sex sells and the industry produces more Won than fishery and agriculture, love motels dot the skyline, you can buy the services of a whore anywhere from a barbershop to a tea delivery service, and the best things about the laws and legal system protecting children (and women) from sexual predatores is that —– the fact it is so rotten and weak was exposed in a series of high profile news articles some months ago….
but all those guys are of the correct race……..They belong in the motherland (some (say) they wish so darn bad they had never left)……..(but never seem to return to)……
“It was just the posting photos of his (non-nude, for those who haven’t seen them) co-workers in particular, in juxtaposition to those other pix—juicy bar girls or not—that to me personally, seems to indicate a lack of good sense.”
I think the guy’s an ass based on what I saw in the blog, but I would say I call into question the idea the co-workers didn’t have any idea what he did on his site, because the one co-worker did say she didn’t want to have any remote part of it – even in harmless posts on it…..
Hey, thanks for bringing in a few more cases of emotional baggage, Dogbert. We’ll just stack them next to your “I hate gyopos” refridgerator box.
“if he’d been a teacher in the West”
We’re also taking about hakwons here. I try to remember never to even use the word “teacher” when talking about a hakwon, but prefer the term “language instructor” — and I am someone who regularly defends the nature of what others call nothing but a bunch of losers. If we go into a discussion of even something like this talking about “schools” and “teachers”, we’ve pretty much already thrown it way out of wack, no?
“Should i pay them $60 per/hr or $70 per/hr to talk to me?”
“1. As a person in his proffesion, to have such a site is highly irresponsible and would cause offence and lead to the loss of his job in most countries.
2. This site being reported to the papers or the authorities was inevitable.
I leave you with a question…back in your home country, if you found out one of your childrens teachers had a site such as this would you report it or just say “oh well, he is pretty dumb but its not hurting anyone?”
I would think the majority would report it. ”
Well, he’s a story, and it’s true….
My 3rd grade teacher — in a public school – not a Korean hakwon – got to be pretty famous in town (maybe 15,000 people) – when her husband took a very raunchy sex tape to work to show to his friends, and copies of it eventually made it around pretty much everywhere. She was not fired.
Should she have been? I had no clue what was really going on since I was in third grade, but looking back on it, I’d say no. I’m a prude. I probably would tell the principle to take my child out of her class, but really, what she did – even who she was – did not impact on my education or my morals or anything else. It was a scandal beyond her work as a teacher in a world outside of the school.
With this guy’s case, I would not complain if his hakwon fired him for the kind of what I consider a low-life mentality, but I would not complain if they didn’t either.
I do not have a problem with after-”school” connections between adult “students” in a hakwon and the teachers. A hakwon isn’t a “school” and the relationship between Korean adults and students in the hakwons isn’t one of “teacher-student”. When I worked in an all adult hakwon, we were forced to socialize with students every friday night – to go along with our 40-50+ hour a week in class teacher schedule. We had to go out drinking and clubbing with our students. It turned out to be fine, because with our extremely heavy split course load, we didn’t have much time to go out and meet other Koreans to begin with…
I’m not really defending the guy’s character. I think he has a disgusting one. And I am not someone who would defend a sex abuser. I suffered from it as a child. If he were committing crimes by having sex with underage individuals or raping women, I’d call for him going to jail and letting the Korean inmates have their way with him on a regular bases as well as beating the shit out of him on a routine schedule.
If he were teaching in a college and having sex with adult students at the college, I would view the case in a very different light.
But, based on what I read on the site, I might think the guy is a classless asshole, but “reporting” him – to who? the police? for what? To his hakwon? That’s fine with me.
But, then again, I would have thoughts about what sex in public is like in Korea in general when I thought about whatever reaction the hakwon would have. I’m not a big fan of Korean society’s use of sex in public already. Barbershops, bath houses, tea shops, room salons, all of it. I regularly had to walk home through an entertainment section of a city. Sex sells in Korea. It sells openly. And it is all around you.
So, I have a hard time burning at the stake someone I do consider an ass I wouldn’t want to hang around more than 5 minutes…..
In the great motherland, sex sells and the industry produces more Won than fishery and agriculture, love motels dot the skyline, you can buy the services of a whore anywhere from a barbershop to a tea delivery service
Yes, USinKorea. I’m sure you are quite knowledgeable about such matters, from extensive first hand experience, I presume.
You guys are practically tripping over yourselves to defend what appears to be a clearly questionable fellow. Fact is, if the tables were turned, and if a Korean guy was found to be doing the same sort of thing in a the similar situation back in the States, you’d all instantly turn into overzealous Concerned Citizens, so lets cut the race card bullcrap, shall we?
Bluejives: “Frozen babies, Jon Benet Ramsey dude, creepy English teachers with highly suspect websites…
One wonders what the average Korean in the street is thinking about such strange foreigners in their midst…”
If it weren’t for their race, like with you, bluejives my pal, they wouldn’t want to talk about much of it.
Is it still somewhat common for cat burglars to rape the wife and/or daughter of the family so they won’t report it to the police? Did you even know about that in Korean society, the great motherland, bluejives? I am assuming you did, however, catch the high profile news articles over the last 12 months or so they exposed how poorly the Korean justice system deals with sexual criminals. Or, how about the frequency with which married and unmarried me go to prostitutes in Korea? Or, how about how accepted and widespread the sex industry is?
How about this one, bluejives…….You showed above you want to make the whitey a pedophile despite the fact it didn’t fit the truth, and you wonder about how those with your blood can stand it in the motherland having such “people” in their midst, but what about the penchant for high school girls in Korea’s sex industry? Something that is noticable in Japan and Korea but a good bit different from what you get in that land you love to say you hate (the US for those who haven’t seen bluejives and I discourse with one another before)? Do you….perhaps….ever…..contemplate what perhaps those fellow blooded want-to-be-countrymen of yours think about Korean men who partake in those things? or with those girls?
Now….their not white…..
“cut the race crap, shall we”
Gee, bluejives, I couldn’t agree with you more.
“Yes, USinKorea. I’m sure you are quite knowledgeable about such matters, from extensive first hand experience, I presume.”
Project, bluejives….project…..
Yeah, given the fact I have a lot more experience in the motherland than you, I am much more knowledgable about such matters than you. You are correct. I gained my knowledge of the sex industry by living and working and paying attention in the motherland.
I never went to a whore in Korea. Never been to one period. Like I’ve said a few times now, I’m a prude.
But, the sex industry and the Korean use of it is huge, widespread, common, and unavoidable, even if you don’t use it.
But, see, again….you do that bluejives thing. Avoid addressing the point, and it is you who constantly bring up race and nationality. It is the cornerstone of your thought on everything related to anything you comment about on the blogs. But, pretend it isn’t….
On your question about if this guy were a Korean in the US — if he were instructing at a hakwon and made such a site — nobody would hear about it, because nobody would care. A sleezy person putting up a sleezy website? Hard to imagine that happening in the US or Canada…..wow…..
Usinkorea,
I take back my hypothetical question regarding a teacher in another country teaching children and having a similar website.
I admit i went off at a tangent there.
But i must also take you to task over the female teacher you describe, so she and her hsuband made a tape for their own use, her husband shows it around (probably without her knowledge) and it gets into the press.
I agree she doent deserve to lose her job, she hadnt done anything wrong and im sure her husband didnt get anymore home made videos!!
But that is very different to someone in this profession (i will stay away from the term teacher) having a website such as this one.
He seems to view his working environment as another potential pick up joint.
I also feel that he may be taking advantage of his position to achieve his goal.
Not to mention his pictures of “Student of the Month” Non-nude but going from other content on his site, what are we to conclude he means?
Everyone has different views of what is acceptable and what isnt, personally i dont find this acceptable and i am no prude, but i am not trying to burn him at the stake, i feel his own stupidity has put him in this situation and he will have to deal with whatever happens next.
I totally agree with your description of his character though!
USinKorea, let me make it very simple because maybe that’s the only way to be understood around here.
You should be more mad at Chris Charles than Mark Turner. The fact that most here is vilifying Mark Turner for what he did and basically covering up for Charles is very telling. It kinda tells me something about the people here as a group.
Koreans are not the ones with an image problem in their own country. You folks truly dont comprehend what it really is to be a minority, operating in a system where you dont have the luxury to be tried by a jury of your own peers, do you? You all basically think Korea’s a joke. Guess what? Joke’s back-firing. It’s high time examples are made.
“and it gets into the press.” It didn’t get into the press. It was a small enough town that everybody heard about it as the copies of the tape increased.
“i feel his own stupidity has put him in this situation”
This is part of the problem where I have agreement breaking down with many others on the thread.
I agree with pretty much everything you described about what the guy’s character flaws are, but then it seems we are saying that the problem wasn’t those character flaws, but the fact that he posted them on the web….
I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but something seems to be askew here.
I dislike the guy’s lifestyle. I dislike what he showed about his character on his website. Basically, I think the guy is an asshole and he showed himself to be an asshole on his website.
But, my point is also that even if he hadn’t made the website, I’d still think the guy was an asshole.
If his hakwon wanted to fire him for being the way he is, I’d have no problem with that. If they wanted to fire him for setting up the website, I’d have no problem with that. But, the fact he made the website doesn’t exactly make the crucial difference for me….
Especially since it seems clear the women pictured on the site did so with consent. Like I wrote above, he photoshoped the one co-worker out who didn’t want to be part of his website. It is clear he just didn’t throw up people’s images at will.
I am also sure he is not Kushibora —- someone with multiple personalities. It seemed clear from the website he acts in real life the same as he posted on the internet. What I mean is, he seems to have been just as openly sleezy in real life.
So, I find his website distasteful. I find his life style distasteful. I would not want to hang around the guy. But, obviously some people did and do.
In the end of the day, this is how I’d sum it up — they guy is who he is and aired it out, and people are reacting to it. That is all fine and natural. As some said, he brought this on himself.
Where I have a problem with it is where Bluejives and his racism and the same echoed in Korean society comes in…..
Bluejives,
i agree. everyone here is trying to cover up for the guy with the website. that’s why no one linked to it before and why it was not held up for a good (sad, knowing, Satre-esque) laugh.
also, i hear that everyone is getting together a slush fund to help that dude get out of the country so he can continue his good work from abroad. we all support it, so we’re willing to pay for it. (didn’t you get the letter? set your decoder ring to Alpha.)
as to koreans not having an image problem in their own country, i wonder why it is that some polls show a lot of koreans wanting to leave korea for greener pastures.
Umm, here’s an “image problem” with teachers (HT Lost Nomad):
“Teachers Molested Disabled Students”
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2006082372838
Along with the “progressive” Korean Teacher’s Union issuing pro-N. Korean textbooks and unsupervised hakwon businesses, Korea has much larger problems than some clown with a blog. If some of you fulminating here are really concerned about children in Korea (which I doubt) you should get a little perspective on this country. It’s fun to slag on this guy but don’t think this is some burning issue for the entire nation, especially if you’re overseas looking at Korea through the wrong end of the telescope. The biggest problem with Korean education is Korean teachers, as my friends and co-workers often tell me.
Usinkorea
“but then it seems we are saying that the problem wasn’t those character flaws, but the fact that he posted them on the web….”
I am not saying the problem is that he posted them on the web, i am saying he was foolish enough to do so and will have to face the consequences now that people have taken offence to the site. I am sure there are others like him around the world who have a similar outlook on life but dont keep an online diary!
Has he done anything illegal….i dont think so.
Has he shown a lack of good judgement….i would say yes.
As i already stated i feel it was inevitable that his site would at the very least create contoversy. At the end of the day everyone draws a line between what they see as acceptable or otherwise. Clearly Mark Turner thought this was unacceptable and took what action he felt was merited.
Bluejives,
I dont think people on here are trying to cover up what Chris Charles has done. How could they its on the web?
The fact is he hasnt broken any laws, but merely made some bad decisions.
“Koreans are not the ones with an image problem in their own country.”
This is what I love about you bluejives. There is so much you say that shows you are in the ballpark of having a clue, but don’t.
Koreans don’t have an image problem in their own country, the foreign bastards do — if you’ll let me complete your thought.
“You all basically think Korea’s a joke.”
No. I think you’re a joke, bluejives. I think you’re a racist. And what most of the people “defending” Charles are saying here and have said elsewhere where you have popped up is that Korea’s bigotry (echoed by you) is wrong and detestable (as it is with you).
Keeping thumping away at the hobgoblins, bluejives. Which means I’m jumping into one of the other things we go on with each other about: “you all” —- which you all?
See. This is where your bigotry comes in. Where you expose how blood and race blind you. The handful of blogs I read, the same ones where you and I sometimes go at each other, are made by people I believe you would consider part of “you all” right?
And who are these you all? For one thing, they are people who have bothered to spend a good many more years of their adult lives in your motherland than you have. They are people who have created a life for themselves in Korean society. A good many of them have also taken the time and effort to learn the language and study the history. In short, they are people who have invested a lot of themselves into quality time in the society. (More quality time than you have chosen to spend, I add again).
But, to you, because of their race – their minority status – their not having the same blood flowing through their veins as you – which you believe makes you as Korean as Koreans – you have to belittle them and find creative ways to dismiss them – for what? – because they dis the motherland….and motherrace….
So, you have to consistently label the actions in the specific topic at hand “crimes” and “criminal actions” even though you will not address the issue when it has been pointed out several times now that no crime was committed.
And it is very, very telling…..
Your use of the idea of a “jury of your peers” and law-breaking is a mental defense mechanism used as an attempt to disguise the real driving force behind your mental processes on this. You have to subconsciously continue to pretend this is an issue of sex crimes, because you can’t admit that what is really driving you is the same racism that makes you attack “all” the non-Koreans who dare say something negative about “your people.”
“USinKorea, let me make it very simple because maybe that’s the only way to be understood around here.”
And that is the point. Be clear. Be clear to yourself. Then be more clear to me and us in your postings. Stop throwing up smoke screens. Just let the bigotry not just shine through, but state it in more plain fashion.
Or, defend the smoke screens. Tell us how what the guy did is criminal and how he should be brought to a Korean court and sentenced by Koreans. Or, show us quotes that prove how “all of us” find Korea to be a joke and hate the place and the people……
Give me some names of commenters and bloggers who hate Korea and constantly piss on it to justify your claim. I am assuming I am one, right?
Bluejives,
미국놈은 Bluejives에 대해서 심한 인종차별하고 있네요. 이상하게 생각하는 것은 어째서 Bluejives은 귀국하지 않아요?
이제 인종차별주의자 대국 미국에 계시지 않고 , 조국인 한국에 어서 와요!
Maybe you can ask your mother to translate it for you, Bluejives.
“As i already stated i feel it was inevitable that his site would at the very least create contoversy. At the end of the day everyone draws a line between what they see as acceptable or otherwise. Clearly Mark Turner thought this was unacceptable and took what action he felt was merited.”
I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but something is just askew here.
I find myself pretty much in complete agreement with what you’ve said in these comments, but then something comes back seeming a little out of wack.
“it was inevitable that his site would at the very least create contoversy.”
“Clearly Mark Turner thought this was unacceptable and took what action he felt was merited.”
Why was it clearly going to create controversy?
What was unacceptable?
And what actions were taken?
None of these are rhetorical questions.
In answering these questions, I’d have to come to an understanding with people on the definition of a hakwon and what is acceptable and unacceptable in connection with them.
Is dating a Korean who comes to the hakwon wrong? That would be a key question to answer at the start of the discussion.
My view is that you can’t talk about a hakwon as if it were a real school – a high school, college, or even community college. Hakwons are very different from what we consider “schools” in the US or Canada.
To me, I could find reasons to advise a language instructor not to get involved with someone at the place of work like a hakwon, but I do not believe such a thing is “wrong” and certainly not something to “condemn”.
Others will think differently, and all the other things this one (asshole) instructor did builds on top of this first key breach.
Because, if dating someone who comes to study at a hakwon is not in and of itself a bad breach of what is right, then what do we have extra with this specific case?
We don’t have a crime. I think that is the overwhelming conclusion of the comments here beyond bluejive’s desterate attempt to find a cover for his bigotry.
What it seems like we have is consenting adults agreeing to be part of this guy’s sleezy life. The women in the nude photos posed for them, and it seems based on what he said on the blog, the people invovled knew they would be part of the stuff he did on the website. At minimum, there isn’t enough, that I know of, to conclude he used this material on the internet without their consent.
So, is what we are objecting too not just the sleezy nature of the guys character rather than any clear breach of ethics?
What I mean is – what makes the posting of the items on the web such a taboo other than the fact we find his whole lifestyle sleezy?
What I mean is, I am sure I can find equally or worse sleeze on the net by bloggers who are both Korean and non-Korean. So, what makes this guy’s sleeze worse to the point he needs to be attacked by the press and society in general? I would say it is the fact he is a “teacher” and works in a “school” and picked up “students” in the school – but, that can’t be it for me, because like I said, a hakwon is a very different kind of place than what everybody has in mind when they read the world “school.”
And if we can’t pin the breach of the taboo on the “school” angle, then what?
Well, race…..
What made this guy’s sleeze a sure thing to become such a public outrage was the fact he was non-Korean and an immigrant/migrant.
And his poor judgement starts to be not that he put his sleeze on the internet, but that he should have known the race factor would cause an national/public uproar.
That is what bothers me.
I think the guy is sleezy. I am sure I would not be able to stand being around the guy in real life. And I really found his website distasteful. But, I find much about sex in public in Korea distasteful (just as I do here in the US – like Atlanta’s famous lap-dancing stripclub scene). But what makes this story so big in Korea is not a “natural” distaste people have for this guy’s kind of sleeze, but the fact he is a foreigner working in a hakwon.
If someone disagrees with me on the nature of hakwons and what it means to be a “teacher” in one, then I believe they can form a very reasonable argument about why a great amount of outrage should be heaped on the guy in public.
But, unless we hinge the outrage on the definition of what a hakwon really is in Korean society, it seems to me too much of it is based on bigotry. (And I know it is for bluejives).
Stop playing the race card. Take responsibility for your own actions.
Isnt that what fine, upstanding white folks in the US have been telling minorities all this time?
Wassa matta? Cant heed your own damn advice?
Usinkorea,
I think we are in agreement on the majority of this, with exception of why this is newsworthy – Being from the UK i am fully aware that the press will print stories to sell papers, so i dont think this is purely down to his race or his job, it comes down to his race, his job and the fact that at this current time its a “hot topic” to Koreans and will shift a lot of papers.
A few more GI related incidents (not that i am requesting any!) would shift the focus and this whole incident is a non-starter.
To answer your non-rhetorical questions with, and at the risk of repeating myself.
Nothing about that site is unacceptable to me, but i dont like the image he portrays.
However, a site like that will be fine for some people but offend others depending on what they deem to be acceptable, just look at some of the comments he received from various individuals, some love the site some hate it.
Obviously Mark Turner was offended and i believe he stated that he ciculated the website address to a lot of Korean friends, including a couple of police officers.
The key to this is what people find acceptable.
Mark Turner, didnt think it was.
Before i go and leave Bluejives and UsinKorea to fight it out!!
Has anyone on here who has worked in a school / Uni / Hagwon been briefed before starting work that it is a written school / Uni / Hagwon rule that to have relations with a student would not be tolerated??
Just interested as i know a teacher who worked at a college in the UK where students were 16+ was told that he would lose his job if this happened.
Bluejives comment #59.
Yes. BJ. More of your usual. Fail to address points. Create strawman arguments. And display your bigotry.
“Has anyone on here who has worked in a school / Uni / Hagwon been briefed before starting work that it is a written school / Uni / Hagwon rule that to have relations with a student would not be tolerated??”
I was told by my first hakwon owner: Do not meet Koreans outside of class. All Koreans, male or female – except as part of the mandatory socializing sessions on Friday nights. She said meeting Koreans outside of work – whether students or not – was just giving free language lessons. She said she was trying to protect me from being used.
Above all, she went on to stress, absolutely do not meet Korean women outside the hakwon – whether student or not. Not only would these be free English lessons, it would impact the reputation of her school in the “small town” of this 250,000 population city. If word got out that me, this non-Korean white American, were meeting Korean women in public alone, it would make her institute look bad. And again, she meant all Korean women, whether students or not.
She repeated this conversation 2 or 3 more times in the following months each time she found I was not doing what she had ordered – until she finally realized I wasn’t going to listen to her.
It had everything to do with race.
This was in 1996.
“Just interested as i know a teacher who worked at a college in the UK where students were 16+ was told that he would lose his job if this happened.”
I would emphasize again — a hakwon is not a university. There is a fundamental difference.
Michael (54): Not sure if the comment was directed me, as I don’t think I’ve been “fulminating” but I do live overseas…. I have 2 nephews and 4 nieces in the public school system in Korea, 2 nephews already out of it (I’ve seen both of them go through their army service too), and 2 nephews who’ll be starting their long, arduous educational lives soon, so I do care about the education they’re receiving. As far as politics are concerned, as all but the 2 oldest live in the GNP heartland (Daegu), I’m not too concerned about it, although wasn’t it the Busan chapter of the KTU that was caught ripping pages from a North Korean textbook a while back?
Hey, bluejives, here is one for you to consider when asking about what Koreans would think about sex crimes involving schools (real schools):
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2006082372838
(hat tip to Lost Nomad)
“The commission had already reported to the prosecution six people on charges of breaking the law on the protection of youth. Among these six people are the former chief of administration, known by his surname Kim (59), who was already sentenced one and two years in prison each for sexually molesting two students, and a superintendent of a boarding house, Lee (35).
The commission investigated the sexual assault case in Inwha and Inwhawon and uncovered that four teachers and staff of the school had sexually assaulted two handicapped students and molested another two from 2000 to 2004. ”
1 and 2 years – for a real crime – in a real school – and including handicapped kids.
—speechless—
……what I would do to these people (and for bluejives, what I’d do to the priests involved in the sex scandals in the US)….. would greatly stretch the bounds of both the US and Korean constitution in terms of torture and inhumane treatment.
The worst abuse I’ve seen in hagwons with my own eyes (not having taught in one) is the mere fact that there are high school students getting out of their classes as late as 11 at night to do what? Go home, study and do their homework, catch a few hours sleep, and go through the whole routine again the very next day, 5 and a half days a week, week in and week out until they finally pass their university entrance exams.
…week in and week out, year in and year out…
Sewing, my comment wasn’t directed toward anyone in particular, and I just wanted to use the word “fulminating”
I was kind of surprised you even read it.
The education system in Korea is dysfunctional, and I know this because Koreans tell me so. Some foreign goofballs in hakwons might be a part of it, but that’s like a blister on a cancer patient.
Sewing comment #65
I am currently in an MA program for teaching at the secondary level in the US, and this is one thing I make sure to speak about in class when talking about my experience in Korea to teachers and future teachers. Like me, I know many of them have heard in the past how Koreans and Japanese students score higher on tests in math and science than American students in articles bemoaning the US educational system. But I explain that the Korean system definately isn’t one we should copy to fix the problems we have in our system in the US. It is really sad to see how much life is sapped out of Korean youth.
Fulminating is a good word. There’s a lot of that going on at the Marmot’s Hole 24/7! Extemporizing, provoking, prodding, needling, slagging, trolling, strawmanning, arguing ad hominem….
Your last analogy there is totally tasteless but probably apt.
“You folks truly dont comprehend what it really is to be a minority, operating in a system where you dont have the luxury to be tried by a jury of your own peers, do you? You all basically think Korea’s a joke. Guess what? Joke’s back-firing. It’s high time examples are made.”
This really is a racist joke right?
In case Bluejives hadn’t noticed wayguks are the minority here in Korea. Being “tried by your own peers” western courts means being tried by people of similar standing in your community, it doesn’t mean being tried by fellow gypos, therefore Bluejive if he is in the US does have that luxury, and far more easily accessible than do the wayguk minority here in Korea. We live in Korea we do not think it a joke, in fact many of us love Korea.
That does not mean that we have to be happy about the hyperbole, exaggeration, and lies in the Korean media. Eg1 the Korean press have again recently referred to incidents involving english teachers, whilst conveniently omitting to mention that some of the incidents referred to involved korean national and gyopos.
Eg2 continued articles about westerners taking advantage of “innocent” korean maidens, i.e. trying to pick someone up, this in bars and nightclubs of scantily clad people, and with numerous korean guys and girls doing the same thing, never anything about “passport hunters” who try and catch western men just to get out of korea and then dump them.
In fact the very fact that some wayguks are happy and willing to live in, and marry people from, other cultures makes them inherently less likely to be racist than those born and raised at home.
My korean wife and I have suffered far more racism in the short time we’ve been here 14months than we ever experienced in England in 14years.
I haven’t noticed anyone condoning Charle’s behaviour, he appears to be a slimeball. However, there is, as pointed out a difference between being a slimeball and carrying out criminal acts, and a difference between teaching vunerable kids and fully grown adult in a hagwon.
…Comment in response to Michael in 67.
USinKorea, I agree. Test scores look good, but hardly tell the whole picture. I don’t know how broken the educational system is here in North America—certainly its critics say so, but we don’t have kids going through it so I don’t know, and my own experience of public schools was pretty good. But many people pushing for change on this side of the Pacific seem to look to test scores as a major indicator of teachers’ performance or the quality of the education system in general. Knowing what I know of what kids have to go through in Korea and Japan, I don’t know if using test scores as a yardstick is always such a good idea…if as in those countries, all education ends up being geared towards simply getting the highest score possible on an exam, to get into the right next school, all so that one can get a job at the right kind of company upon graduation—based solely on the name of the university one attended. And then for men, the right kind of company means a good salary (with all the requisite late night drinks with colleagues, etc.), while for women, it means, sadly, merely the opportunity to meet the best marriage candidates. It’s not a healthy system at all. Just yesterday in Japan—with a similar corporate and educational culture to Korea—a study was released indicating increasing stress among employees of major companies (although a contributing factor was cited to be the end of lifelong job security and the introduction of Western-style linking of pay increases to performance. Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060822/ap_on_he_me/japan_salaryman_stress_1). Following up on what Michael wrote, hagwons are a direct consequence of the need to excel on entrance exams.
…And that test-, performance-driven culture is appearing in North America: there have been TV news stories of late exploring the increasingly hectic schedule of after-school studies, music practice, sports, etc. that North American kids are going through.
…On the other hand, if it’s high math and science scores that have helped drive Korean industry to the point that by some counts SK now has, what, the 10th or 11th largest economy in the world and therefore is leaps and bounds beyond where it was in the 50s in terms of standard of living, well, maybe it isn’t all bad….
Forgot to note that we wayguks in korea definately don’t have the luxury of a jury of our peers, since korea still doesn’t have a jury system, although I hear they’re going to try it from 2007.
Forgot to note that we wayguks in korea definately don’t have the luxury of a jury of our peers, since korea still doesn’t have a jury system, although I hear they’re going to try it from 2007.
Really. This I gotta see. =)
Bluejives,
I looked through some similar stories over the past few months.
Firstly, this one:
Another sexual assault case at an English Village where a brother Korean is accused of molesting a child.
And here are your comments:
As this was “another” paedophilic incident perhaps you had something to say about the original incident, involving a brother kyopo.
Your comments:
Hmmm. As paedophilia is a concern of yours, as seen in the comments above, I have to wonder where your outrage was then. I’ll get to that later.
Perhaps immoral sexual activity is what draws your ire. For example during the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany this
incident in Apkujeongcertainly gained some notoriety.
Not much to say about that one, too.
Hocus pocus. Comments magically appear when the
agassi is getting her groove on with whitey.
&
And something is seriously wrong
with YOU.
So, Bluejives, where was your voice when the blood brothers are hittin’ it? Were you working on ridding your Korean accented pronunciation of “glory hole”?
Is it fair of me to suggest you hang out in men’s rooms? Well, given your oh so easy use of the p-bomb in comment 8 above, I say yes.
seouldout, that was brilliant! Never has the truth been said better!
If I might interupt this gangbang on Bluejives for a moment, the man has a point. It is a bit disturbing that people seem more angry at the alledged tipster than the teacher.
Anyway, I talked briefly with the paper in question today, and the article should be posted at BreakNews.com within a couple of days.
Bluejives deserves a gangbang – him finally having a point or not.
As to the point, I’ll stick by what I wrote about it above: the key seems clearly to hinge on the definition of what a hakwon is – whether hooking up with someone from the hakwon is close to the same as hooking up with a student in a real school – like a university.
Otherwise, what do you have to hang the outrage on — beyond finding the guy sleezy or not?
And being sleezy isn’t enough to warrant giving kudos to someone who brought the wrath of mixed couple bigotry down on him – or – maybe someone could conclude being sleezy was enough justification.
Again – the key to me seems to be whether you believe it is highly unethical/immoral for a teacher of a hakwon to hook up with a student at a hakwon.
Bluejives is still full of shit, because he can’t base his attack on that alone. His bigotry makes him state and restate the idea it is a crime — against all reason to the contrary. And then throw in his usual clap-trap about the white devils.
I’ll restate what I think is the key question for this thread and this issue and the role both Turner and Charles played in it:
What makes the posting of the items on the web such a taboo other than the fact we find his whole lifestyle sleezy?
What I mean is, I am sure I can find equally or worse sleeze on the net by bloggers who are both Korean and non-Korean. So, what makes this guy’s sleeze worse to the point he needs to be attacked by the press and society in general?
Regardless of whether hooking up from someone from the hagwon is right or not, it’s definitely uncool to then go talking about it online. I mean, I don’t mean to tell anyone who they can or cannot sleep with, but Christ, if you’re going to bang students—hagwon or otherwise—be freakin’ discrete. And clearly, most Koreans (and Westerners, I’d hope) might find this disconcerting:
And you wonder sometimes why we have the reputation we do. It’s not all the media’s fault.
I’ll wait until I read the article before deciding whether the tipster brought the “wrath of mixed couple bigotry” down on the guy. For what it’s worth, the reporter seemed like a reasonble enough young woman who I’m certain would consider any constructive criticism sent to her by email.
Of course it is rude to take pictures of the girls you’ve banged or pretended to bang and then post them on your skeezy Internet site replete with pornography and leering references (“foreign oral skills” — what does that even mean?). And by most standards it’s inappropriate to be fishing from the company pond; I surely wouldn’t do it meself. Come on, Robert — only Bluejives and Nathan Bauman would so willfully twist this situation into one where I and other commenters are excusing Charles.
Being a skeezy cad is not a crime. Yet Bluejives and others, including the scandal-mongering tabloids and netizens, treat it as such — or worse. Usinkorea is correct: The only reason there is any interest in this is that the skeezy cad is a foreigner. It’s one thing for known trolls like Bluejives to play to this prejudice (we expect it from him), but it’s surprising that someone who presumably has been subject to general prejudice against foreigners would then turn around and stoke the fire. For that, Mark Turner earns a hearty Bravo Foxtrot.
Robert, this thread raises issues related to the question of notification, while your thread addresses the issue of malfeasance. I don’t see a problem with reserving comment about Chris Charles (the blogger) here, given that this thread deals with another issue. Folks wishing to discuss their upset about (or support for) Chris Charles should simply post on your thread.
Let the troll-bashing continue unabated…
I agree with Carr though I didn’t feel any particular thing one way or another about Marmot’s post or comments. What I attack is bluejives and what he brought into the thread and much of that is also based on the history we have with each other after having read each other’s comments for a long time and also gotten into it with each other several times in the past.
Again, bluejives started out by calling the guy a closet pedophile. And what lies behind this need to exaggerate what is already sleeze is the bigotry. Kind of like, now that I think about it, turning 20 gallons of fromalyne dumped into the Yongsan sewer into a story that eventually leads to it being used in a horror movie. Which is where “It’s not all the media’s fault” comes into play – both in relation to where this story is likely to go now that it is hitting the national press and clearly what happened with the great water dumping case of 2000.
Ya can’t post your Foxtrot Bravos and still expect them to love ya in the comments.
24 hours and 83 comments — this perennial topic is like a self-licking ice cream cone.
As for Bluejives’ comment that Chris Charles is a “closet pedophile”, he must be well-closeted. Of the women photographed on his Xanga site there isn’t a single one that looks to be a day under 30.
Last comment before logging off for the day:
I didn’t get that much of the point of critizing Turner for his actions at first. It wasn’t until getting into the thick of attacking bluejives that it made sense to me.
What did Charles do that warrants the measures of giving his name to the police and sicking the Korean media on him?
We’ve got to have something more than being a sleezy asshole in real life and on the internet.
If those two things warrant national media attention and a police investigation, you’d need a special mega police division in Korean society and 2/3rds of the forests in Brazil and a monopoly on the world’s ink supply……
I’ve refrained from commenting but I think I could clear things up with a few “bottom line” points to make regarding the gangbang of bluejives….
Bluejives overreacted and said the guy with the website was a pedophile. This is obviously not the case as all of those women appear to be in their 30′s. They are obviously of legal age so let’s stop with the pedophilia thing right now BJ. You gain no credibility by making such ridiculous comments.
Bluejives thinks people here are defending the guy with the website because he is a whitey. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Nobody that I’ve seen on here has defended the idiot. They merely claim that the guy didn’t break any laws…he was just plain stupid. There is no law against being stupid as far as I know. If you don’t break any laws, then why the netizen frenzy? It is a valid question BJ but don’t assume that raising the question is a defense of the website owner’s actions. It’s not.
The bottom line is Bluejives is acting just like all of the other Koreans…overreacting, adding false info about pedophilia angle and accusing those who point out the guy didn’t commit a crime as being racially biased in their defense of him. Bluejives is in fact, a frenzied netizen with his own common sense blinded by his own racist dogma. It is the frenzied K-netizen like bluejives that need to add the false information of pedophilia and whatever other spin they can throw in the mix to justify their racist stereotypes. It’s called sensationalism and it’s the tool of choice in the Korean media and the goobs like BJ who do their best to whip the masses into a frenzy.
Sure, the guy with the Xanga site was a complete moron. Yes, it looks like he photographed some of his coworkers and bargirls and liked to call them his “students” much like Hugh Hefner calls his models “Pets”. I won’t defend the idiot…..but I won’t hang him or call him a pedophile either which is what bluejives and the Korean maniacs will soon be doing all in their quest to forever sensationalize issues to suit their own agenda. What is their agenda?…..to continuously do everything in their power portray waeguks in a negative light. When you go out of your way to ostracize a group of people and continuously add false information and innuendo to do it, that my friend bluejives ol chap…..is racism and you are a racist.
BJ…How would you feel if Koreans were always put in a negative light constantly where you live? Have you ever…EVER seen an anti-Korean media campaign where you are? Has there ever been a candlelight vigil for someone who was killed by a Korean driver in the city where you reside? When a Korean breaks the law over there or acts like an idiot in a public forum, is it on the news for 7 days straight followed by anti-Korean protests and Korean bashing in the media? No???? I thought not. Do you know why? Because state sponsored racism like that only exists in a few countries in the world; Korea being one of them. It is so ingrained in you that even Koreans living abroad are often caught up in the frenzy….like you BJ. It’s funny that you don’t see the Japanese acting in such a childish manner. Are they more intellectually evolved than their bumpkin cousins? But I digress………..
Anyway…who didn’t see this coming? Xanga boy is a complete tool.
> The bottom line is Bluejives is acting just like all of the other Koreans…overreacting
Responding to someone’s dumb overgeneralization with an overgeneralization is not the best way to make an argument. Plenty of people in Korea see the other sides of issues and do not respond in a stupid way.
Maekchu, you make some good points, but apart from Haisan’s observation, I’d also add that frankly, the Korea-Japan comparison (“Japanese are mature; Koreans are not,” to paraphrase) is tiresome. (Not saying you’re a major perpetrator of it; someone raises it every other day on this or other blogs, it seems.)
Well, given the extent to which Koreans love to compare themselves to the Japanese in everything, it’s only natural that foreigners on the receiving end of their xenophobia fall short of their next door neighbors. That you find such comparisons “tiresome” suggests that they have the intended effect: to needle exaggerated Korean (or is that “Corean”) pride precisely where it hurts the most.
Ahem …
should read
Well, just watch some Japanese game shows, then get back to me on the maturity bit. Anyhow, qualitative comparisons like that are just a ruse. Not an issue of “Corean” [sic] pride for me, not being one myself, and there’s nothing wrong with debating issues with Korean society (as is done here 24/7), but the meme about relative “maturity” between Koreans and Japanese is offensive. …And it goes both ways: having either nationality or their supporters assert that they are superior to the other nationality is offensive.
…as in innately superior, in the dream world of subjective judgement, divorced from statistics and other quantifiable metrics.
As an addendum, I’ll point out that I wholly agree that pretty much everything Bluejives writes is offensive. I don’t doubt that Bluejives and other Asian-Americans/Canadians have been on the receiving end of some nasty stuff—especially in the past, and the further in the past you go the worse it was—but dealing with that by spouting your own racist take on things is not a solution.
” If you don’t break any laws, then why the netizen frenzy?”
Can anyone point to me which site this netizen frenzy is taking place at? I want to read for myself what they’re saying.
Whether the Japanese are “innately superior” to Koreans is something I’m neither well placed to decide nor inclined to care about. What is true is that Koreans are much more nationalistic and racist than the Japanese, an assertion about which there is very little of the subjective. When I start getting reports of Japanese men attacking random foreigners they see walking with Japanese women, or 2channel denizens working themselves into a frenzy over some lewd posting on a website set up by an English teacher, I might start to have reason to change my mind, but until then I won’t hesitate to say to any foreigner looking to work in that part of the world to opt for Japan over Korea if at all it can be helped: as even surveys on expat stress levels in various Asian countries bear out, Japan is simply a far better place to be a foreigner than pretty much any other Asian country, while Korea is among the worst, and stories like this one only bear the statistics out.
Assign the blame to “innate” or other causes as you please, but the general Korean attitude towards foreigners is indeed infantile by international standards, and it is all the more difficult to forgive in light of the existence of a much better example so close by, just across the sea. It’s no “ruse” to call runaway chauvinism which can make news out of the mildly lewd BBS and blog postings of a few expats for what it is, and if it takes a little shaming on the world stage to make Koreans start to rethink their attitudes, all the better for it.
Do racism and ethnocentrism exist in Korea? Yes. They are things that need to be dealt with. That wasn’t the point I was making, however. It was one specific passage that Maekchu wrote.
I’m pretty sure Maekchu didn’t intend it the way it came out, but: “It’s funny that you don’t see the Japanese acting in such a childish manner. Are they more intellectually evolved than their bumpkin cousins? But I digress………..” smacks of 日本人論 to me.
He was probably doing it just to get a rise out of Bluejives. As Bluejives is clearly a troll, all’s fair in love and war I suppose. But that particular line of thinking—comparing Koreans to “children” as opposed to the “adult” Japanese—is offensive, no matter which way you look at it.
…And yes, I do find the corresponding phenomenon of 韓國人論 just as problematic.
Just a couple of points:
1) People keep saying that this guy hasn’t broken any laws. I’m not a lawyer so don’t know for sure but I’ve an inkling that Korea’s obscenity laws are quite strict and that publishing pornographic photos on a website is probably technically illegal. Whether, the fact that it is an American site would invalidate that I don’t know. Perhaps someone in the know could clear that up for me.
2) There has been some debate about the difference between teachers at school, and instructors teaching adults in a hakwon….I believe the point is that it is inappropriate to have a relationship where one party is clearly in charge of the other. This is why officers shouldn’t fraternise with enlisted soldiers and why managers shouldn’t have relationships with employees. As a teacher who presumably is in control of grades, this guy is in the position of being able to abuse his authority.
Finally, it’s a little bit off topic but I thought you guys might appreciate the story. A couple of years ago (2001 or 2002) there was quite a big scandal when a Korean art teacher posted nude (art) photos of him and his wife on his personal website. I believe he was forced to resign on moral grounds. No point here, so make of it what you will.
Daeguowl;
re:2) abuse of power with students is an issue, but let’s not generalise. Adult “students” are not concerned with “grades”, they just want to improve their oral skills. And he seems to be putting a lot of himself into his classes (extra-curricular activities), so maybe he’s good for business.
It’s not enough that Korean ho’s are giving Koreans a bad name, it’s even the Korean men prostitute bitches in China, plying their trade.
http://www.chosun.com/national/news/200608/200608240058.html
Is this a newsworthy story too? There isn’t a day that go by, without some news story about ugly Koreans ruining the international reputation of Korea.
Robert, exactly what was there to “tip”? Had the man broken any laws?
If he had, the proper place to “tip” would have been the law enforcement authorities, not the scandal sheets.
Sexual morality in Korea is very loose but at the same time, very conservative. It’s socially acceptable, and you can do whatever the hell you like with sex, including visiting brothels, singing up a storm with room salon girls, cheat on your spouse, have one night stands with your students, and even have homosexual fun….. but.. a big but…as long as no one finds out what you’re doing. Because you see, if this thing goes public, that’s when the shit hits the fan, and you’ll be mercilessly hounded out into the open. Read for instance this case of Koreans:
http://www.chosun.com/culture/news/200608/200608230352.html
So yeah, you’d have to be really stupid to volunteer information that you’re proudly breaking all the social taboos, and/or you are extremely brave.
Thanks for the link, Cm. Dang! Too bad I didn’t know about those Korean juice joints while I was in China. There’s plenty of Koreans in northern Virginia, so if you hear of any ‘host bars’ in my corner of the world, give me a tip!
cm, good points. There was also the scandal last summer mentioned on this blog regarding the swingers’ club in Gangwon that was busted, due to photos being posted online of their, er, partakings, as I recall. No foreigners were involved in that one at all.
“Bluejives is in fact, a frenzied netizen with his own common sense blinded by his own racist dogma”
Here here!! clap clap clap clap
daeguowl’s point 2:
See. This is why discussing hakwons as “schools” by itself throws the whole discussion too out of wack. Hakwons for adults don’t give “grades”. The instructors are not in a position of authority over the people who come there. These simply are not “schools”. You can’t think of them as “schools”. It is more like a Taekwondo class at a YMCA or local gym.
As for point 1, please. We’d have to picket Marmot’s Hole if we applied this technicality if it is an actual legal technicality.
And I’ll add, getting this back to the orignial few comments, I would also not stone Turner who was offended enough by the sleeze to start the process of taking this to another level by contacting the police and the Korean press. I think he was wrong to set in motion something that has a good chance of turning into another English Spetra or whatever or the other stories claiming sex abuse by ESL intstructors we’ve seen this past year. But, when I first read this post, I didn’t feel any significant feeling toward him or his actions.
“You can’t think of them as “schools”. It is more like a Taekwondo class at a YMCA or local gym.”
Therein lyes one of the fundalmental difference between Korean parent thinking and Waegookin thinking. To Koreans, hagwons are indeed schools. So much so that they’d pay a sacrificial family fortune each month so that little precious ones have the opportunity to go and ‘learn’ so that they can pass ‘the test’.
We are not talking about kids hakwons. We are talking about a hakwon for adults. Very big difference.
Considering that many Korean parents still pay for their university kids’ education, and that Korean ‘kids’ live at home until they get married, what age group are you talking about?
I dunno, this whole episode is akin to saying “Hey, Charles Ng committed some of the worst multiple serial rapes, tortures and murders in US history, and other crimes in Canada. So let’s ignore the fact that most serial murders there are white and Hispanic dudes but start investigating all people of East Asian descent living in Vancouver and Seattle!”
Talk about muck-raking and trying to tarnish a whole sub-population of English teachers based on the actions of one or two who did – and will continue to slip thru the system. Shit sells, obviously. Is it any wonder they can’t get enough foreigners to work in Korea anymore?
While I respect and agree with many of the posters here,I must point out that most (if not all) of you have had no personal contact with this man.Unfortunately, I have and it was part of the reason I left that particular place of employment.
I do understand why the automatic response to this ‘issue’ has become an ‘Us vs Them’ debate.I have been in this country for a while and know full well how the local media will run with a story regarding ‘foreigner behaviour’ and not let facts get in the way of a good story.
MY bottom line is this….this particular individual fits the exact profile of the ‘Evil Native Speaker Teacher’ that the Korean media often harp on about.I have no qualms about the probable hounding and driving out of this man.I,personally, am willing to accept some short-term heat from the Korean public if it means that this person is driven from these shores.
I will also point out that I have no personal axe to grind with this guy. He was nice enough to me when I worked with him but I found him offensive then and I find him offensive now. His behaviour in Korea goes much deeper than a few photos of prostitutes on his website.
I don’t intend for this comment to be a ‘teaser’ for more sordid details to come.This will be my one and only contribution to this subject.
Suffice to say that I think ‘we’ should channel this energy towards defending someone who has been truly wronged by the stereotypes and presumptioms so prevalent within the Korean media and the society it claims to represent.
Let’s all consider this like reasonable people, shall we?
Here we have a situation involving a foreigner who happens to be a teacher, sex, and students. Do you really expect the Koreans to leave this alone? I mean seriously, from just a basic human tendencies POV, would YOU leave such a thing alone in a hypothetical vice-versa scenario? Of course not. The simple fact remains that no amount of Talmudic, hair-splitting rationalizations will redeem Chris Charles from his basic weirdness.
Did he commit a crime? No. As many here pointed out, he has not committed any proven crimes.
But I see incidents like this as a symptom of a much larger problem. Expats, especially Americans, generally have one major fault. Failure to conform to Korean society. If you live in Korea for any extended period of time, you’re supposed to work, talk, act, behave like Koreans so. Many expats seem to have this stubborn, subconscious mentality that the entire Korean society and people is supposed to somehow conform to their Westernized sensibility, and not the other way around. You forget that you are in another people’s country. You insist on being different.
Well then, dont be surprised if they do treat you different.
Cm,
I don’t know. From the images on the site, none looked college aged. I have also been out of the racket for some time. There aren’t nearly as many hakwons that cater to only or mostly adults as there were in the mid-1990s. However, when I was teaching at an adult only hakwon, and at a mixed one, only about 10% of my students or less were university age. The vast majority were 27-37 but with a fair amount in their late 30s and 40s.
bluejives bj bj bj….
What a character…..
“If you live in Korea for any extended period of time, you’re supposed to work, talk, act, behave like Koreans so.”
Nice try at a fallback. But we know you. We’ve gotten to know you. And this does not fly….
Got to be Korean to be in Korea huh?
This relaly is cute.
And the kicker is how you’ve only spent 1 year in country yourself.
But in that time, you got what it means to be an expat there and how all these others just don’t get it…
….this really is good for a chuckle…
There are some Koreans who are truly racist pieces of $#!t but, I think the problem lies in the fact that the majority of Koreans in Korea are fairly short sighted and rather short tempered, which many foreigners may take offense to. This may be in part due to culture & history, but more so the Korean media that fails to broaden the perspectives of the typical Korean.
But in that time, you got what it means to be an expat there and how all these others just don’t get it…
I find expats to be highly interesting creatures. The social dynamic between Korea and the expat is fascinating for me. As I discover much about the hidden concerns, fears, motives, and attitudes of an expat as they can only be expressed within the relative safety and anonimity of an internet forum, I feel the thrill of inquiry, perhaps not unlike that of a primatologist or an anthropolgist studying the behavior of African mountain gorillas. Shakuhachi has asked me why I do not return to the motherland. Perhaps I will someday, as a formal student of expats, so that I can observe them in their natural habitat. Maybe this is my calling in life. I shall publish much articles and books concerning the expat.
I think the problem here is that this guy was acting like Koreans do. I mean, he went to hostess bars, probably paid to have sex, took pictures, and fantasized that the girls were his students… It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation, apparently. Heck, if this guy had molested and beaten his students in the classroom it would have been par for the course, as far as conditions there go. So no, I don’t think the problem here is that this guy didn’t ‘act Korean’ — it’s that he didn’t act like Korean society expects him to act — there’s a big difference.
Bluejives said: “Here we have a situation involving a foreigner who happens to be a teacher, sex, and students. Do you really expect the Koreans to leave this alone?” …and…
“The social dynamic between Korea and the expat is fascinating for me. As I discover much about the hidden concerns, fears, motives, and attitudes of an expat as they can only be expressed within the relative safety and anonimity of an internet forum, I feel the thrill of inquiry, perhaps not unlike that of a primatologist or an anthropolgist studying the behavior of African mountain gorillas.”
As a studied participant-observer steeped in both native and adopted habitats of the (almost anthropomorphic!) White-tinged Korean expat, you will no doubt bring your expert knowledge to bear and confidently proclaim the answer to be a resounding Yes. And pooh pooh the mammalian-like expat for expecting anything less than the lowest common denominator, yes? Take a tip from Goodall and Boas – the “thrill of enquiry” pales next to realizing how misguided your (Daehancentric) assumptions were. But please do publish: I’m sure Cornell’s anthropology department will be chomping at the bit to give a clever human like you that little bump to tenure track.
Bluejives also said: “Expats, especially Americans, generally have one major fault. Failure to conform to Korean society. If you live in Korea for any extended period of time, you’re supposed to work, talk, act, behave like Koreans so.”
But seriously, do you really see “failure to conform to Korean society” as a fault? Like, do I really have to trash my much-loved CD collection for K-pop? My subscription to the New Yorker for the Korea Times? And so on? Good God man, have some mercy!
No, you won’t. Firstly, you can’t distinguish publish from plagiarize, as seen in comment 48 of Korean Univs don’t make the List, again. (Nice catch, Partypooper.) And this doesn’t count as publishing. Secondly, what editor would care to extend any effort to clean up your shoddy English? Articles and books are countable nouns. Contractions require apostrophes. If I, a computer geek by profession, know these these rules, how come you, with delusions of publishing, don’t? Lastly, you’re a racist loon. And an unoriginal one at that.
“Like, do I really have to trash my much-loved CD collection for K-pop? My subscription to the New Yorker for the Korea Times? And so on? Good God man, have some mercy!”
No, no need for that. Everyone has their own choices to make. On the other hand, incessant whinings about K-Pops is just that, whinings. Accept the fact that different people may enjoy different tastes. Just because you think K-pops are beneath your standards, doesn’t mean anything.
This is good. All these advertizements about “cheap girls” and “great sex” keep bringing white young men from Canada and the US at slave wages.
Once they get to Korea, they wind up teaching elementary school students and way-old azummas.
Then, the hakwon owners refuse to pay them in time, saying they ran out money. Innocent white men still fulfill the one-year obligation and get kicked out of the country penniless.
Well, websites like these are similar to Nazi propaganda pictures featuring “good place for Jews to live”. Once you believe this, you are fucked.
“behavior of African mountain gorillas”
Yeah, I had you pegged as believing we all were subhuman. What a trip….
And now it’s just the expats, right? How about remembering all those things you’ve said about the people in the place where you say you are just an “expat” yourself, BJ? Tell us some of your wisdom from NY. Hey, how about telling us how you have learned to conform. That should be a hoot. Tell us how you have learned to act like, talk like, be an American, and how the shit you get in NY is based on your failure to conform. I’m got the pop corn popping. Can’t wait to read all about it.
Why not just make it mandatory for all Korean women to take taekwondo to protect themselves from would-be evil waygooks like Chris Charles?
I saw two Korean chicks fighting in the subway this week. I’m not sure why they were fighting, but it sure was HOT, HOT, HOT!! Some ajumma came over and broke up the girl-on-girl action. 
Come on people, those chicks on his website were all either: 1)Itaewon “bar chicks”, 2) super hot models from car shows/very famous actresses, or 3) company employees, err coffee girls.
–Remort
When I read remarks from bluejives, I mainly curse the Marmot for baiting posts like this one that have brought such reactionary, retrograde views into our lives. I do not fault bluejives because he has no control over inherited attitudes that predate him and are older than kimchi, if not older than Christ. I have to say with all due respect that I remain astounded that such banal nativism survives to this day…
I’m going to say something nice about Bluejives. Swallow heart pills now…
He has at least stuck with the same screen name. He has brought the wrath of many, like myself, because of what he believes and says, but he has kept on spouting the crap under the same name for a long time. So much so, he has to face our memory recall on it when we pummel him.
He could have created a different persona and screen name to post his thoughts under so he would not be deal with us being able to play the new stuff in a context with all the old stuff.
Even if he has posted under different names, he has been the bluejives we all know and love for a long time….
CM, I don’t think K-pop is below my standards, I think it’s below anyone’s standards. The most boooooooooring, Western-music plagiarizing, (did I say boring?) tripe I’ve ever heard. If it were just a tad better it’d at least have a ‘cheeze’ element worthy of kitsch. But sadly these guys and gals and K-hip-hop gangstas (lol) actually take themselves seriously. I mean God, my 13 year old niece writes better songs and doesn’t listen to that kind of shite. As you don’t, I will take it upon myself to feel embarrassed for you and yours.
Chris Charles was just mentioned in one of those news magazine shows on kbs. they went to the hagwon but was told that he quit two days ago(when the reporter showed up). they interviwed some students and i couldn’t quiet understand but heard the word 변태. they also interviewed a girl who dated a english teacher who told her that he will always be there for her…until she got pregnant.
Yeah, it’s too bad I missed that reporter. I heard she was pretty cute. I would have loved to have taken a few photos with her.
Hmm…I’m generally if reluctantly with bluejives on this one. And I see too little sympathy here for the women involved.
If I had the choice between being a Korean woman with her half-naked photo stuck (and multiplying) on cyberspace for all eternity or going through what that “teacher” has gone through as a result of his own actions – and what exactly has happened to him to elicit all this talk of lynchings? – I’d rather be the “teacher.”
The fact that he boshopped out one photo does not prove that he was given express consent to post the other pics; I find it hard to believe that any Korean woman, even a hooker, would consent to that in a shame culture like this. (What they consent to away from the camera lens is another matter, and their own business of course.)
Needless to say, the image of English teachers was bad the moment the first ones stepped off the plane. As the Koreans usually put it, How unqualified does a foreigner have to be (자격이 얼마나 없길래) to want to come here and teach English for so little money? This attitude reflects their own money=everything attitude, their own desire to get out of Korea asap – and their nagging belief that Westerners should be above living here. But the assumption has always been that young Western men would only come here for one reason.
This flap is not going to have much effect on the teachers’ image either way.
Anyway, the scumbag had it coming to him. Even a Korean would have got sacked for this – and talked about in the press (though probably not by name).
seoulmilk, any ideas on how to find that particular show online?
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