Note to Korea Times: Please, in the name of all that is good and holy, would you discontinue the “Foreigner’s View of Korea” column?
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Enough of this crap
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on February 21, 2007 at 12:45 pm, filed under Asides, Korean Media, Ministry of Barbarian Affairs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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33 Comments
Could that one be any more incoherent?
Too funny. I think he was stoned when he wrote that too.
Where do they find these guys?
can someone translate what he’s trying to say? the headline doesn’t fit the content. the content is very incoherent. seriously, where do they find these guys?
I wouldn’t call “reading stories to children for four hours a day” a “job” but yeah, it’s a “nice touch” Beavis.
there is a chance that this poor guy wrote a really great letter that the newspaper then edited into the sad mess it printed.
also, you can’t blame the guy for the headline. most likely, he didn’t write it.
JD, didn’t you see his byline–he’s a contributing writer for the fish wrapper known as the KT. Plug his name into “news search” at the top of the page and you can read more of his dreck.
Also, read the rest of the craptastic KT and tell me any of it has seen editing.
Who exactly is the “head of visa status” nowadays? And are they really that ugly???
Do people really come to work here (or in China for that matter) without any thought as to what visas they will need? I have to question his qualification to teach anything if he really “worked illegally without knowing it.”
Also, what the hell does he mean by “parody of foods?” Potpourri, cornucopia, plethora - what word was he going for? Unless, of course, he doesn’t believe that Korean street food is in fact real food, but rather something created to satire real food.
Michael,
you’re right. there is no excuse for that sort of thing.
unless… he was working on an email to his mom and by mistake copied and pasted it into a work file that was then sent along with everything else to the printers.
or… he’s on working some kind of large scale art project called “Taking the Piss: My Adventures in Korea.”
What an idiot. If the above is true, then he has publicly admitted to having committed a crime. Our best hope is that some responsible individual at Immigration sees this and gives Simple Simon the boot.
BTW, Iceberg, I was a bit confused by what he’d written as well, but I think I’ve got it figured out: it’s possible that he’s simultaneously excited and repulsed by the prospect of screwed over. Simon, get thee to a nuttery…
“The first day was good. I went home…”
To be fair, I must agree with his point here. I consider any day that I make it home a good day.
it’d be pretty hard for nitpicking immigration officers to not pick him up … but, he’s towing the money-grubbing-stupid-foreigner line extra hard and Koreans love that sh*t
At least it’s in the Korea Herald and not in Korean.
Dreckfully blahful craptantric shitzpah.
It’s a good thing he merely reads to children rather than teaches grammar. How do we go about petitioning the KT to discontinue this column? Maybe we should all prepare our own article and submit them all simultaneously?
Wasn’t Shelton looking for a newspaper job?
Oranckay, you are online-alive, after all.
What’s going on? Taken it down altogether or working on it?
But, we know what white color looks like even without you giving a link to your blog.
Oranckay lives! We miss your blog.
Is it time you departed the bando? Be honest with yourself. Take the quiz.
http://www.gotoquiz.com/the_is.....rea_quiz_1
You guys just reset the Korea Times for inflicting Rick Ruffin upon readers who are trying to keep down their breakfast.
resent, that was
Did I break the law? Probably. Why don’t I put my photo, name, and story into a newspaper? Smooth. Oops, forgot my address and cell number in case the police want to contact me…
Oh, the parody of flavors whistling into your skin! What are you guys talking about. I thought he captured the warmth of the Korean people illegally…errr, I mean nicely.
He does have that Nick Nolte mug shot thing going on.
He does have that Nick Nolte mug shot thing going on.
Actually, he looks like a washed-up version of Will Ferrell.
Antti (17): Oranckay is going for the minimalist approach. His blog is profound in its utter simplicity! That, or it’s a picture of a polar bear in a snowstorm.
Maybe this is really a piece of performance art. It’s kinda like a Jackson Pollock with words.
I was just thinking the same thing as caliboy888, per jd’s comment # 10.
By the way, Woody, that quiz is so funny! It’s got the whole range of possible non-Korean reactions to Korea. Wow. Everything from dewy-eyed romanticism, to pining for a unified nation, to head-scratching bewilderment, to clear-headed cynicism, and everything in between.
#26: Performance art? That’s it, there isn’t supposed to be any meaning. It’s a collage of pointless phrases.
Reminds of the time in college when a guy claimed he had discovered the meaning to the lyrics in Yes tunes. “Dude, you really have to stop dropping acid.”
Quiz was kinda funny. It has a limited range of possible non-Korean reactions to Korea; half the time my own reaction wasn’t on there. Certain ridicule-points are way over-used, some of the premises are way-exaggerated. Cynical with no balancing warmth or positive perspective; “just a joke” but gets unfunny halfway through. Reads like it was written by someone who really despises the nation and its people, like Gerry Beavers…
That was my take on it, too, sanshinseon - it was sometimes funny, but its author seems to head down paths of frustration or negativity that are typically travelled on only by those who are new to the country, don’t know how to react, or simply don’t feel comfortable living here.
For example, #3 doesn’t offer the choice of ‘doing nothing, even though you know that it’s not unique to Korea, simply because little is really gained from doing anything, although something could be lost’. However, for someone who wishes to avoid arguement or ill-feeling, or possibly losing money through lost contacts, this is really the choice to make.
While not suggesting anyone pander to ignorance, I don’t see the point in becoming ‘that guy who’s really up on his seasonal weather, and who’s a bit of an ass about it’. As sanshinseon mentioned, there’s really nothing positive about it.
Sanshinseon, gbnhj:
It was silly of me to write what I wrote about that quiz, although I did find it somewhat amusing. I certainly couldn’t reduce my own interactions with Koreans to such simple stereotypes. I must admit, however, that I do see traces of my own evolution from a certain naïve romanticism to a more clear-eyed realism, but I certainly don’t share that kind of embittered cynicism that the quiz’s author implicitly considers virtuous. And I still grow teary-eyed when I think of all the beautiful, ancient, pine-clad mountain temples I have visited in Korea (but perhaps the tears are partly because of the steep climbs involved).
Yeah, sewing, i’m sure with you on that…
Yeah, it was a little discomfiting. As if just shrugging your shoulders, or being internationally misanthropic, or other reactions natural to me are just inconceivable. I still took the test, though. I think 84% is a little high, and the text accompanying that result was laden with the kind of attitude you mention: something about having ‘em all figured out, which I’m farther from believing now than ever before!
That’s one thing about these online quizzes and gags I see about Korea. They’re usually so, I don’t know, persistently disdainful, and it’s a drag. It’s like grumpy expat 2.0 stopped holding boring bitchfest/bullshit-about-them parties and went online. Or maybe it’s the same bunch, and they’re just older, less connected, and lonely but still here and bitching by bandwidth instead? I dunno.