Korean Views to Censorship

I have no time during the day to post, so felt so out of touch with foreigners today, especially because the two other foreign teachers at my school were in Japan getting their visas. Because we were short the two teachers, we did the Junior G-TELP test with the intermediate and advanced students. Apparently the kids can't understand, "This is a test. DO NOT TALK." Finally, tired of it, I told them that if I had to warn them more than twice, that whoever was talking would have to give me his test and stand in the hot and sweaty hall until class was over. No one had to stand in the hall! Between making sure the kids understood how to complete the listening part and trying to keep them from cheating, I couldn't do anything more productive than flip through a magazine all day.

The adult class was quite interesting. I wasn't going to bring up the issue of the censorship, for fear that I'd get out of hand and criticize their country too harshly. However, Grace brought up the Kim Seon Il video, so I felt OK gently steering the topic over to the censorship. It turns out that Grace's 10th grade son and Melissa's 7th grade daughter saw a beheading video sometime last week at school (I'm not sure if it was of Kim Seon Il or Nick Berg). The teacher was out of the room, so the kids downloaded the video, watched it, and deleted it off of the computer before the teacher got back. I asked them if they were angry that their kids had watched it, and Grace surprised me when she said, "No, that's his right." Melissa only said that she wasn't angry. Now perhaps some parents had a problem with it, but Ulsan tends to be on the very conservative side of things, so if these two mothers didn't have a problem with it, then I can't see there being enough parents in the rest of the country angry with their kids accessing the video to warrant the government's actions. I explained my and my blogging compatriots' problems with the censorship, and they agreed, saying, "The government is crazy!"

Now, there is the possibility that because I'm the teacher, that they felt that they had to agree with me to show the respect that a student should show to a teacher (even though they're all in my mother's generation). But I don't think that they were agreeing solely because of that. It seemed that they agreed, with varying degrees of conviction, that censorship is bad. They also don't use the internet that much, so can't understand the online culture; I had to explain a "blog" to them. None of them are going to go home and write a letter to the MIC or anything, but they do agree that blocking information is a problem.

Grace asked me if I had seen the Kim Seon Il video, and I hesitated, then said yes. They cringed, thinking it was disgusting, but weren't at all angry or upset that I'd seen it. Just to clarify to them, I explained that some people thought it was disrespectful to Kim Seon Il and his family to see the video, but that I thought it wasn't a problem, as long as it wasn't done in a flippant way. I think that as long as people watch the video with the realization that it was a real event that happened to a real person and that his family is grieving, realize what a terrible thing it was, and know that we must work to prevent similar events in the future, then it's actually a good thing.

Grace's son's class discussed the troop deployment, and came to the conclusion that the troops must go to Iraq in order to avenge Kim Seon Il's death. Well, they could go to bring peace to a country, let people have a better life, or more, shall we say, momentous goals, but I suppose they could still accomplish those things, and avenge Kim's death.

The new signs were up at the academy today. I couldn't help noticing how much better they looked than the old ones that were faded and peeling off. The Korean teachers have a meeting tomorrow, and Dave's warning that a change of names meant a change of ownership echoed in my mind. Surely Sandra would have some idea if anything like that were going to happen, and surely she would have let me know about it, right? Dave also said that, at least in Ulsan, there's no middle ground for academies any more. Either they're doing really well, or they're struggling. Well, my school isn't doing really well, so I guess . . .

I have 3 months left, stay afloat until then!