This is kinda interesting — SNU’s Korean and Korean Lit Department is reportedly going to hire a German-born Korean professor currently teaching and researching in Great Britain. The professor would teach Korean to both Korean and foreign students.
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Is it usual for a Department of Literature to be also responsible for language instruction?
Actually, I should just translate the department name better — Korean and Korean Lit Department:
http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~korean/bbs/index.php
Doesn’t it say they are just thinking about hiring the guy?
Anyway, if the guy is really that good, I think it would be a good idea since the article says he would be teaching the Korean language in English. A lot of “foreigners” are attending Seoul Nat’l these days and getting a good English introduction to the language might be a good thing.
However, even with a Ph.D. in Korean Linguistics from London University, who the guy really be qualified to teach native-born, Korean-language majors at Seoul National University (SNU)?
I have worked with several Korean professors who have gotten their Ph.D.s in English Literature and Linguistics from US universities, and there have been none who I would want to study English from. I have a feeling that Koreans at Seoul National University may feel the same way about learning Korean from a foreign-educated foreigner.
Anyway, I wonder if this “German-born” foreigner looks like your traditional German or your traditional Korean? If he looks like your traditional German, then I think many SNU Koreans will be reluctant to study with him, no matter how good his Korean is. Imagine the shame of having to tell your friends that you learned “Uri Mal” from a white guy. Also, I am sure they would be testing the hell out of the guy’s Korean language ability.
Korean Language and Literature Department. First, foreigner criminals, then foreigner schools, and now Korean and Korean lit. department. Robert, how did you ever get a high enough TOEFL score to get into Georgetown?
There is a interesting interview in the Korea Herald HERE with a South African woman studying in Korea named Bronwyn Mullen. I am posting the link in this thread because I think it is somewhat related to this topic, in a roundabout way.
She is a student at Sungkyunkwan University, works partime on a Korean TV show, and speaks Korean quite well, based on what I have heard in THIS VIDEO and if it is the same woman.
In the interview, she talks about being harassed by stalkers and blackmailers. I do not know what kind of blackmail they are trying to use against her, but in the interview she says that it has forced her to get therapy.
I do not really think she needs therapy because she seems to be a pretty strong woman, and I also wonder what a Korean therapist might be telling her?
I hope she is working with the Korean police to get her stalkers and blackmailers put in jail because seeing the jerks going to jail would probably be the best therapy she could get.
Also, maybe part of the problem is that she has gone too native and may be getting some bad advice from her circle of Korean friends and maybe even her Korean therapist?
If she asked for my advice, I would tell her to keep her phone number and to work with Korean police to get the jerks trying to blackmail her.
Blackmail is a crime in Korea, isn’t it?
#2,
My Korean is so poor that I depend on the kindness of marmotal bloggers – thanks.
“Also, maybe part of the problem is that she has gone too native and may be getting some bad advice from her circle of Korean friends and maybe even her Korean therapist?”
Amazing. One story about a non-Korean woman in therapy and you want to blame Koreans for it. And you STILL choose to live in Korea and STILL wonder why you make enemies among Koreans. Do you accept any blame for this predicament of yours, gbevers?
JKster:”Amazing. One story about a non-Korean woman in therapy and you want to blame Koreans for it.”
Gee, let’s see. Attractive Korean speaking South African coed exchange student on a Korean campus begins to get stalked and blackmailed after appearing on Korean TV.
Who would you blame? Japanese?
Do you accept any blame for this predicament of yours, JKster?
Oh wow. A TV celebrity from a popular show getting stalked and blackmailed? Someone call CNN! Screw the hurricane, we have a historic event in the making!
Really? A TV personality is getting stalked/blackmailed and your response is ‘That’s Koreans for you!’? That’s pretty pathetic, dude.
I’d say the blame goes to the creepy idiots who stalked/blackmailed her. You know, as opposed to the entire society, which is pretty ridiculous. But in case I’m wrong, my uncle and his three year old son would like to send their apologies to Miss Mullen over this regrettable incident.
“I have worked with several Korean professors who have gotten their Ph.D.s in English Literature and Linguistics from US universities, and there have been none who I would want to study English from.”
I agree, but I would have no problem studying Korean under the German. Mainly because I’ve studied various languages for most of my life, and I’ve noticed that we (non-Koreans) simply study language differently. We actually USE the language in class and speak as much as possible (rather than silently memorize grammar rules and vocab definitions). I have no doubt the German prof could teach Korean to Koreans much better than a Korean prof could teach English to non-Koreans. It simply comes down to how they learned their respective languages and how they subsequently teach them. The German prof easily gets the nod here IMO.
“Robert, how did you ever get a high enough TOEFL score to get into Georgetown?”
English was Robert’s second language?
bumfromkorea:
I guess this guy is from the John McCain school of distortion. Pardon me for being the honest one here, but I don’t see anyone blaming an entire society or saying anything remotely similar to what this bumbf**kkorea guy is “quoting” here.
Oh, and the fact that there are perpetrators in Korean society is not a condemnation of the entire society. Talk about blatant insecurity.
“The German prof easily gets the nod here IMO.”
I have to agree. Would you rather study English under Henry Kissinger or Dan Quayle?
The girl in the video that was posted up is not Bronwyn Mulllen. Mullen doesn’t have the girl in the video’s fluency. Far from it.
Anyway, I don’t know what pricks gbever to post about Mullen here. It doesn’t seem related to the topic even in a roundabout way. Might as well talk about Korean cat food made by Korean workers who may or may not be joined to a Korean union.
Have a nice day, Mizar. Try not to choke on your own words, or if you do, try to do it in a public area where people can help you out.
bevers, wrong woman.
Mizar, inject some bleach into your veins with preferably a needle and syringe found from a local heroine addict’s trash can.
maybe you’ll be able to wash out your dirty Korean genes.
fuck head.
that means he made the whole thing up.
I’m a XXX Park. My family was successful during Japanese rule. My two gomos spread their legs to Japanese guys. They were successful. My grandma says Japanese were very kind to her.
My profanity and pure rudeness aside,
Mizar is puppetting to be a Korean,
Mizar is puppeting to be “wjk” at times.
what a low life.
you can’t live life the way you are, AND you plan to vote for Obama, AND you oppose KOR-US FTA, AND you happen to be Korean?
if Mizar is a white guy, and he’s some serious racist misogynist. He does what all of them do. “My wife” tells me blah blah blah about Koreans.
Losers. Your wife will tell you anything you want to hear. That’s the concensus.
So the girl in the video is not the girl in the article? Well, I guess all foreign girls must look alike to me.
HERE is an article with a picture of the real Bronwyn Mullen, and judging from the quotes in the article, her Korean still has a ways to go.
JK & BumfromKorean,
We must have a communication problem because, as Mizar said, I was not blaming “all Koreans” for Ms. Mullen’s problems. I blame only the jerks that were stalking her and trying to blackmail her.
My suggestion that she might need to get advice outside her circle of Korean friends was based on advice I often gotten from my Korean friends, which is, “Just try to forget about it.”
If her Korean friends are telling her to just change her number and forget about the harrassment, then I do not think that is good advice because it leaves the jerks who were harrassing her free to harrass other women.
By the way, Ms. Mullen’s Korean language ability does not seem to be good enough to be studying in a Korean university, so I do not understand why Korean universities are allowing in students with such basic Korean language skills.
For example, I had a Mongolian student in my Advanced English class last semester who could not speak any Korean. His English was very good, but his major was not English and our school does not have English lectures for foreign students. I asked him how he could understand his major lectures, and he told me he could not understand them and said that he just read English language books on the subject.
That does not make sense to me. Why bother coming to a Korean university and wasting your time and money in a Korean classroom if you cannot understand the lectures?
You people have outed yourselves. Lies, distractions, fallacious logic. tsk. tsk.
These people are race baiting and *I’m* the troll?
Thank you my sock puppets.
“We must have a communication problem because, as Mizar said, I was not blaming “all Koreans” for Ms. Mullen’s problems. I blame only the jerks that were stalking her and trying to blackmail her.”
Of course, it’s obvious enough that people try to distort your comments here, but this is not a communication problem. It’s a whinny insecure Korean male syndrome problem.
Fortunately, not all inherited the genes. Some, like WongKon actually display have a great deal of self respect and intelligence.
And of course Mizar5, being a paragon of virtue, will not boast about his own dispassionate analytical logic.
His first language is newyorkese.
It’s so amusing to watch Mizar try to backspin after being caught making a string of non sequiturs.
Mizar: “I blame McCain.”
LOL!
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