It’s excellent because it’s heartfelt and makes a very good point, but without the longwindedness. As they say, a “picture is worth a thousand words,” so what you see here speaks volumes.

And two of my own images were used in its making, so I am flattered.

There have been several articles in the Korean English-language media over the past year or so that have portrayed the community of foreign English teachers as being divided on the basis of visa type as a result of the E-2 visa regulations implemented in late 2007. All of these articles were published in the Korea Times and written by Kang Shin-who.

Apparently, the writings of a single reporter have played a big role in getting the wrong story out there and mischaracterize the motivations and actions of many of the main players, and even utilizes quotes of questionable origin. The article over on Popular Gusts is pretty interesting and exhaustive, well worth a read.

Why is it that one of Korea’s oldest, most sober, and ostensibly serious journalistic outlet is always publishing pictures of underage girls in their school uniforms, or pictures of foreigners in their bikinis at the beach?

[Source: Chosun Ilbo]

In case you were wondering, if you look at some other pictures, there WERE boys there, too. Except the editors chose to put in a shot of this girl THREE times, I guess because you could see her belly button.

At the same time, last summer, a group of South Asian men were arrested for apparently doing the same on a beach on the east coast (although they were also reported to have “groped” some women, but that wasn’t confirmed as fact in the article). This was called “sexual harrassment” with cameras, however, and set a dangerous precedent, in this author’s opinion.

But why is it that when the Chosun Ilbo continues to publish upskirt shots of underage girls, or graduation celebrations that show their bodies through wet (and hence transparent) white uniform blouses, or foreigners in bikinis without mosaicing or other efforts to preserve anonymity, this is OK? If you are a Chosun Ilbo photographer, you can publish bikini shots and upskirt photos of teenage girls, but if you’re a brown foreigner, it’s “sexual harrassment?”

This doesn’t make sense. And legalities aside, is this really journalism? Or a bunch of old men sitting around, making excuses to dispatch staff photogaphers with telephoto lenses to snap pictures of underage teenagers? This adds to the media enviroment that legitimizes the sexualization of underage girls, and the sexual objectification of women in general. One should expect better from one of the nation’s oldest newspapers. If I want to see skin, I should go buy a magazine that shows such things. I don’t know how Koreans feel, but as an American, I’d be very ashamed if The New York Times photo and multimedia sections wasted time recording teenage girls at graduation spraying one another with water, or had staff photographers with 300mm telephoto lenses taking upskirt shots of underage girls.

[Source: Chosun Ilbo]

Is this national news? I can understand perhaps one shot of a legitimate story on the problem of girls violating uniform standards that showed how they were sneaking about and doing it. But if you look at the gallery linked above, there are more than 10 shots of the girls in the “changing area”, some of which nearly reveal underwear. Do we need this to get the point? No. As a heterosexual reader, might I be curious about such compromising shots? Sure. But they have no place in a serious, national newspaper. And the sheer number of shots in the photo section of that newspaper that day outnumbered those of real political demonstrations, real news happen domestically and around the world.

Can the Chosun Ilbo really even call itself a completely professional newspaper with this kind of pornographic and pedophilic photo coverage?

Korea Beat has graciously translated the 매일경제 (Maeil Kyeongje) article that was originally introduced by Sonagi over at The Marmot’s Hole and talked about in the post previous to this one.

Interestingly enough, the link to the site that apparently is selling materials to “seduce Korean women” doesn’t work. (http://www.DateKoreanWomen.com) And even if it did, who cares? Are such activities illegal? Is this online book with a broken site even really popular? The Korean media certainly spends a lot of time worrying about what consenting adults do legally on their own free time. If I throw a wild party in my house, or a private establishment, is it worthy of national news? Is this still the era of the “family state,” with the authoritarian president at the head, who controls all aspects of life, both military and civilian?

Honestly, national newspapers — this kind of reporting, whether of Koreans getting a little frisky in a Kangnam nightclub or foreigners having private relations with Korean women — this sort of sensationalist and racist coverage is juvenile. One doesn’t see The New York Times doing such stories, which don’t even belong in a high school newspaper.

Here’s another article written by Lee Eun-ung, founder of the “Anti-English Spectrum” web site and group. He continues to rant on about all the crimes purported to be committed by foreigners in the Kyunghyang Shinmun story “외국인 강사 약물검사는 차별?” (“Are Drug Inspections of Foreigners Discrimination?”) and once again presents a compelling story to the lazy reader, but one devoid of concrete numbers or statistics, when they are readily available.

He mentions the recent ATEK petition and human rights complaint, and from the very choice of title mischaracterizes its origins — the HIV test is the main sticking point, and many legal scholars, along with Korea’s own Ban Ki-moon, agree it is a human right violation, both according to the principles of international as well as principles of Korean law. He doesn’t mention the numbers of HIV+ English teachers allegedly identified, nor the numbers of English teachers caught for drugs. This is because the numbers are against him, and this is telling. The numbers are so low that they would not be worth mentioning to help his case.

In the case of the English teacher allegedly arrested for molesting a child in 2007, why does this not appear in official police records? And had there been such an arrest, given the state of the Korean media and its extreme bias against foreigners, would there not have been some reporting on an actual arrest of a foreign English teacher who had abused a child? Again, where are the statistics? Where are the media reports? And the “tip” being based on a single biased source — the same former girlfriend of an Australian English teacher who called newspapers and also presented a Konglish-ridden, anonymous email written from a Hotmail account allegedly from the ex-boyfriend — this is pretty specious and spotty “evidence” to say the least.

And most of the “incidents” mentioned by this man/organization — while unfortunate — have nothing to do with the law, and the tips seem to come from jilted exes wanting revenge. Such as the man who slept with a woman, who later found out he was married back home — what gives this man the right to “pursue” or “investigate” this individual, or interfere in private matters? The fact that the person in question is a foreigner? Or that he apparently gave her a venereal disease? Do such things not happen between Koreans? And even if what he had done had been illegal, what gives private citizens the right to follow, chase, or “investigate” other private citizens? Report them to the police and be happy you did your civic duty.

But this man encourages people to “take action” against foreigners. Based on what? Their personal behavior? Preferences? Because you don’t like the way one dressed? This line of thinking is extremely dangerous. If a foreigner does an immoral thing, this is a sign of what ALL foreigners do? If a Korean or Koreans do something, it can never define a pattern. Even in the crime statistics, exactly 13 of nearly 20,000 E-2 visa holders were arrested for doing drugs. This does NOT jibe with the media accounts of “foreigners gone wild”, but then again, none of these media accounts actually presents the numbers. Isn’t that interesting? Most of these yellow journalistic stories about foreigners cite apocryphal stories, from anonymous or unconfirmed sources, with no police reports or records, and they do not agree with the Korean government’s own crime statistics on foreigners, which the government DOES keep and track. (Sorry, Assemblywoman Choe Young-hui — you’re wrong on that count.)

Even the “English Spectrum” site that this Lee Eun-ung bases his entire raison d’etre upon was a single, sarcastic, and fictional piece that the vast majority of foreigners in the discussion also attacked the author for writing. It was not taken seriously by anyone. No one “used” it. It was not used as a guide to seduce Korean children, no more than most people in the foreign community have ever even heard of the “Secret Sites” apparently selling guides on how to seduce Korean women (‘한국여성 性的비하` 비밀사이트 성행). It’s the same logic as “Anti-English Spectrum” — hold the entire foreign community responsible for the acts of a few, or even a SINGLE idiot.

Such behavior is, in a word, racist.

One wonders how Korea would have reacted if, because of serial killer Cho Seung-hui, the United States started labeling all Koreans in the US as “ticking time bombs of murderous rage caused by excessive academic pressure and a distorted Korean culture based on post-colonial violence that stems from a male-bonding sub-culture of required military service and hazing in the service of what is essentially a hierarchical culture that is used to decades of brutal dictatorship and uses corporal punishment and torture in its official institutions.” Hey, it’s based in fact, within Korean society, right? And now, in America, there are cases of Korean male students murdering, abusing, or violating American kids (Cho Seung-hui and Hanse Park and Sung Soo Kim), right?

So, according to the KOREAN logic, we should hold these individuals as responsible representatives of the entire group, right? During the same time period that Lee Eun-ung is talking about (from around 2005-2009), according to RECORDED statistics and RELIABLE news reports, Korean students in America have murdered 32 people, sexually molested many others, and are suspects in the kidnapping/murder of another. Now, even according to Korean government statistics and even within an irresponsible yellow media, there have still been NO murders committed by English teachers, no injuries, and no cases of sexual molestation. NONE. Even the yellow media reports have never produced a name of a foreigner, or an actual arrest of a foreigner for committing such a crime. They talk about them, but never prevent specifics — because they can’t. So, acccording to the Korean logic, the United States and the rest of the world should hold ALL Koreans responsible for the actions of several crazy ones, and close the borders to them. Perhaps we should require all Korean nationals coming to Korea to undergo psychological testing and wear tracking devices so that we know they cannot commit these crimes? They committed them before, and that means alll Koreans are prone to commit such crimes again. That is the Korean logic in this situation, the logic employed by the “Anti-English Spectrum” man, and all the others.

Because if foreigners can earn such a reputation from zero to even a few cases and have restrictive laws made regarding them, then after dozens of murders, rapes, and molestations committed by Koreans, shouldn’t the United States call all Koreans a “danger to the American people?” If one thinks about this logically, the fact of the extreme racist bias in the Korean media and a population that accepts it without question is obvious.

Pieces such as the ones mentioned above prove this point only too well.

Here’s another classic one from Yonhap, entitled “자질 시비 원어민 교사 판친다” or “Unfit English Teachers Run Unchallenged.” Of course, the article is based nearly completely on hearsay and rumors. And the one actual complaint with numbers was that there was the statistical equivalent of 160 foreign teachers out of 5,417 who left their jobs early. That’s a whopping 2.9% of the population. Oooooh. It’s an epidemic, indeed. Crunch the numbers, Yonhap.

And where are the interviews with the alleged teachers who said these things? How come, in these little exposes, is there never an interview with a representative for foreign teachers, or the foreign teachers in question. This researcher went so far as to interview people with the Ministry of Education, the Korean Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, and lots of Korean teachers who have lots of bad — but purely anecdotal — things to say about foreign teachers.

But no interview with an ATEK (Association for Teachers of English in Korea) representative, who might point out that the number of people who jump off their contract is quite low, and the reasons for doing so are often related to not being paid on time, if at all, or for the many, many times Korean schools and hagwons simply lie about the contract conditions before bringing foreign teachers over.

The major point: the “problem” of teachers not finishing their contract is surprisingly LOW, considering the abuse that many foreign teachers experience in terms of false contracts, and this is just another piece beating up on English teachers without interviewing a single one of them, or talking to a group who can represent their point-of-view.

It’s a high school-level hit piece, pure and simple. Rumors and hearsay from panicky moms and hostile Korean teachers — note that I quit a job at a prestigious foreign language high school in Seoul after a Korean teacher started spreading rumors that I was running a pornography site. Reason? I would not allow the Korean staff to change my grades so that they could accept bribes that they regularly receive for adjusting class rankings.

I wonder what they would say about me if interviewed for an article like this. And how does it look if they don’t even interview me to get a response?

Shoddy and extremely biased journalism at its best.

There is no statistical proof — in fact, there is ample evidence to the contrary — that foreigners should be singled out as any of these things, as the living embodiment of societal concern for these particular ills. But what is particularly easy to do in a land with an immature and unprofessional news and broadcast media, as well as a population more than willing to believe whatever is said about societal outsiders, is to make the outsiders seem more alien, more deviant, more scary.

This is easier than looking inwards and facing societal problems straightforwardly. This is a culture that is not in the habit of doing so, in which even the law tends to work against embarrassing news exposes, distrusts investigative journalism, and doesn’t ask for evidence when the force of popular opinion happens to be in line with the news at hand.

Having come from a problematic relationship with government authority, a distrustful public, and a media tradition that doesn’t include the double-confirmation of sources, the printing of retractions, or demand high ethical standards when it comes to conflict-of-interest, it is not too much to say that much of what passes for news in this country would not get past the editor of a typical college newspaper in other, more developed nations.

But when it comes to singling out foreigners, a group with no previous power to fight or answer back, the Korean media has become absolutely notorious in its attacks on us, its defamation of our character, and shameless distortion of the truth, all just to get a rise out of the public. When it comes to dealing with foreigners, the Korean media is “yellow journalism” at best, or racist scaremongering at worst.

The time for sitting down and taking it has ended.

Harassment of foreigners, in this editor’s observation and opinion, has been increasing in recent years, along with a decreasing sense of morale among the foreign population. With the increasingly negative media reports about us, hagwons are reticent to hire male teachers out of fear they might sexually abuse children, and the hagwon has actually started to earn a more dastardly reputation than the clubs of Itaewon a couple decades past, which is no mean feat.

However, it is not surprising, given what the Korean media writes about us, as inherently alien, diseased, deranged, and dangerous. Let’s shine the light of simple truth on the Korean media’s lies about us. And in this editor’s experience, when the blinding light of truth comes up against the darkness in which lies, ill intentions, and deceit best festers, the victory of light is guaranteed. History shows this again and again.

Let’s bring light to the darkness of ignorance, disingenuous reporting, and sheer ill will. When both your primary weapon and best defense is the mere, simply truth, that’s a powerful thing to fight against. The liars and cowards who vilify us must know this, deep down — it’s just that we, as foreigners, were the easy kids on the playground to pick on. We have no advocates, no friends in the media. We are alien, unknowable, suspicious.

No more.

And the question to ask would be — would Koreans in other countries think any differently? Do they? Would they accept this kind of vilification were the tables turned? I think we all know the answer to that, and have seen cases of it in action.

So, let’s fight back with the moral rectitude of simply wanting to see the record, demanding proof, asking for a show of evidence, and the performance of logical, clear-headed thinking in this nation’s media.