In the KT, Tom Coyner talks about Korea’s reversed brain-drain, i.e., “The Return of the Gyopo.”
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Korea’s Reversed Brain Drain
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on June 29, 2007 at 10:28 am, filed under Asides, Korean Diaspora, Ministry of Barbarian Affairs, South Korea. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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11 Comments
I’ve tried and tried to eliminate the use of this “English business slang” into English documents produced in my office. No one seems to understand that they aren’t used by English speakers in English-speaking countries.
Kyopos and Koreans who have lived and studied overseas are definitely improving the level and quality of English used in the Korean business world. Standards are certainly rising.
Unfortunately, it has also brought some who think they know it all when it comes to English. We had a writer at a client company who refused to accept any of our changes to his grammar mistakes and other mistakes in usage, which were extensive. They were actually angry that we would suggest that there were any basic mistakes in grammar at all and rejected all of our corrections.
This was not an isolated instance, either. Many of the writers at client companies insist on changing the English because they think they know English better, having spent a few years overseas. This attitude has been increasing in the last couple of years and was a real problem for us this year. One of our kyopo writers (who really is very good), refused to have his name attached to one publication complaining that the client had changed everything to Konglish.
Snow, I hear your pain and understand it completely. Some years ago, I had a chaebol client reject a photograph because the young Hispanic girl in it looked black to them, hence not real American (blond, blue-eyed). They said they had been to America before and that they “knew what black people looked like”.
Ouch.
Meanwhile, for some reason, when I read “The Return of the Gyopo” in this thread, I can’t help thinking of unicorns and tacky fantasy novella.
ecorn,
You’re banging your head against a brick wall. In the ten years I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that some ‘English’ expressions will fall out of use (thanks in part to the work that EFL teachers and EBS edutainment programs did in pointing out the very Korean nature of these expressions); but often, these expressions only go away to be replaced by new ones.
“We had a writer at a client company who refused to accept any of our changes to his grammar mistakes and other mistakes in usage, which were extensive. They were actually angry that we would suggest that there were any basic mistakes in grammar at all and rejected all of our corrections.”
There’s also the problem of the author writing the text for a Korean audience in mind, which means that it will have a different structure than what we’d expect (some would say that it lacks cohesion).
As one of those “gyopos” I have no desire to live and work in Korea. My brain would get tired of CONSTANTLY using the right verb endings in that confucian work environment. My ex, who was also Korean American and infinitely more fluent in Korean then I was, was also tired of talking like that.
If I found a worthy women there, I’d take her fobby ass back to live with me in the states.
WangKon,
One of the reasons I chose to study Korean on my own is I find it insulting and disturbing that most Korean language textbooks for foreigners tries to get us to use the most honorific verb endings all the time…which few Korean people use unless they are sucking up to their boss or their grandparents.
While I’m not sure if I’m a brain or something, I will return to Korea within two years. I’m an expat, BTW.
“One of the reasons I chose to study Korean on my own is I find it insulting and disturbing that most Korean language textbooks for foreigners tries to get us to use the most honorific verb endings all the time…which few Korean people use unless they are sucking up to their boss or their grandparents.”
You must not have made it past level 2. I have a number of Korean language textbooks. They all start out with the honorific formal, then introduce honorific informal, and then banmal. The reasoning explained to me was that it was better to be too polite than not polite enough. Those long formal endings are almost never used in daily conversation here in Korea, even with seniors. Joseonjok in China still prefer the long formal endings in the workplace, but that is changing as more and more Joseonjok are influenced through contacts with South Koreans.
If I had to compare the “Return of the Gyopo” with the “Return of the Jews”, I’ll have say that the people who have been wandering and living in other people’s countries for 3000 years seem to have a much better reasons, organization, and a sense of connection to their identity and ancestral land.
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3,0000 years of history? Puah! What about our 5,000 years of history huh? Moses ain’t got nothing over Tangun baby! Then we would be almost doubley attached to our ethnicity, huh?
Btw, fellas, I’m being sarcastic…