The wording behind the title is looking at a common and ever-increasing trend in Korean-foreign online society in which young Koreans – nearly always females – are seeking young, wealthy Westerners who happen to be outside of the much maligned English teacher/GI job spheres.

The reasoning behind this is not surprising given the largely negative press both groups receive in the Korean press on a very common basis. But, I must admit deep down it saddens me when I see a young Korean choose to turn their heads to the potential of making friends with people of the two career paths I honestly believe have helped, more than other expat career fields, make South Korea the 13th largest economy it is today.

Anyone whose spent a decent amount of time in Korea and perhaps managed to learn a bit of lingo – or at least, managed to find some Korea-based English-language discussion boards and/or blogs – realises fairly quickly that GIs and English teachers are not held in particularly high esteem on the Korean peninsula. This is largely due to the media’s over-zealous publishing of seemingly any and every negative story – factual, or more usually embellished or outright false  – regarding GIs or English teachers, when they commit or are perceived to have committed heinous acts. These stories get processed into the recesses of the average Korean individual’s mind and with little or no counterbalancing positive stories to reflect the good that the vast majority of individuals in these positions do, well the mud sticks.

Now, I’m going to come truthful here and tell how I’ve happened to have come across this increasingly prejudicial phenomena affecting Korean twenty- and thirty-somethings. As you may know, I’m a single guy and as such I decided to join one of Korea’s more well-known dating/friendship sites, you know just to see what’s available. Hence, through my perusal of said site, I’ve happened to have come across several young women with seemingly well-developed English skills seeking anyone wealthy (what a surprise!) yet not of the English teacher/GI career paths.

This saddens me, not because I’m desperately seeking stuck-up princesses. But, because hell, their English is so well developed thanks largely – if not entirely – to the work of previous English educators here in South Korea or overseas. In fact, if their English ability was largely acquired overseas, it pains me more to see this prejudice as it shows that they spent time – in some cases, perhaps a significant portion of their lives – overseas yet cannot detach themselves of the prejudice that befalls English teachers and GIs in this nation. As such, whilst they may have learnt the English language, they learnt little critical thinking, reasoning, openmindness and empathetic skills whilst learning said language. And, this saddens me.

I may not be a gung-ho warmonger who loves the military – in particular the US military – and all it sets out to achieve. And, yes the US military did, has and will make plenty of mistakes, including here on Korean soil. But, for the most part I think the US military has done a decent job with the people of South Korea and has such I believe the South Korean populace should at least tolerate, hopefully respect, and if possible, thank the US military more than they do so presently. The US military is far from perfect and its role in the Korean War was also not perfect. But, I still do not believe the US military and its personnel deserve a fraction of the distorted, or wholesale fabricated, half-truths, mistruths and malicious slander it has been known to receive. Or, the grudging animosity, mistrust or downright disdain its soldiers are known to receive at the hands of members of the local population. Having family members in the Australian defense forces and having met some officials of the US military, I know the sacrifices, dedication and often self-less work these individuals put in to protecting others. To see that dedication disregarded or downright treated with disdain, saddens me.

In closing, Korea I already love you but I would respect you a whole lot more if you were to respect those who come from other lands to assist you and your people. 99% of said individuals are decent, law-abiding folk who come with the best of intentions, hoping to help your citizens whilst at the same time perhaps learning a bit more about the country. Most of said individuals are not bad, vile, lecherous, disease-ridden, drug-addled convicts as your media often likes to universally portray.

I ask your people, in particular your young people, to accept, help when needed and welcome those who come, have come and will continue to come to help you become a more developed nation. I know many already do and I thank the kind folks of this country from the bottom of my heart, as I have been truly blessed with kind gestures from friend and stranger alike. I just wish I could see more goodwill being extended to those who come to help and learn more about you and your country. Thank you.

What I experienced yesterday was a cock n’ bull story to get me railroaded into signing another year of my life doing something I’d possibly not want to do! I may not be China, but yesterday I was damn near Shanghai-ed, I tells ya!

Needless to say I’m not incredibly impressed about the lies, manipulation and deceit to get me to do something I ultimately don’t want to do. If the individual in question had been truthful and told that I cannot get an extension for less than one year with this employer, I would have respected them and their decision much more than being fed a healthy of bullshit.

I’m going to play it cool until our next meeting whereby I’ll them know that their story is a crock of shit. This will buy me time to make a firm decision on what to do, where to go next. A big part of me now doesn’t want to extend at all given the lies and deceit that was replaced for truth and integrity in what should be a mature business negotiation. But, hey in Korea, the ends often justify the means!

A middle school principal in Chungcheongbuk-do, after being found guilty of molesting a female teacher, was reinstated as principal of the school, which had had to suspend classes, and, after three months, as education researcher. “He conducted his special research without difficulty, and was reinstated when the suspension expired,” was the shocking, clumsy excuse from local authorities. What kind of “special” research can such a person do to become an educator?

Every time I see such a report I can’t help but think bitter memories of my own school days. I had many excellent teachers but there were some awful people who were just called teachers. Back then there was one male teacher who would pat our bottoms and rub our shoulders because we were “cute”. One of my friends was a favorite of his, and he would rub her cheeks and tell her to sit on his lap. When I think of it now I can see it was clearly sexual harassment, and it happened every class hour.

I hated all of those teachers and their classes, but there was really nothing I could do about it, because he was a teacher, so “you can’t step even on his shadow.” Eventually somebody told their parents about it and it became known to the school, but nothing changed. Then he became the principal and continued to teach classes. The only thing that changed was when he felt our bottoms he would say, “oh, are you going to report this, too?”

As I got older I realized how wrong it was and got really angry. If you ask your girlfriends about their experiences in school, you will find that one of them has memories of a “pervert teacher”. But it continues today. Let it slide 100 times, and perhaps the criminal can make a genuine apology, and everything that happened then can be buried. But to make that kind of person into an educator, who has to be a model for and teacher of others, is just against common sense, isn’t it?. The thought that such a light punishment will bring a halt to two years’ worth of sexual molestation is a joke, but I can’t understand why the Chungcheonbuk-do Office of Education decided to smear ink on the faces of its teachers, who ought to be more respectable than anyone. The Office wasted no time attacking a post of mine protesting the teacher’s reinstatement, calling it “defamation”. Our necessary acts are someone’s defamation, apparently.

Frankly, whenever I hear of someone complaining of the drunken, sexual shenanigans of foreign ESL teachers, all I can think of are falling-down drunk businessmen, massage parlors on every corner, and articles like this, and one word comes to my mind: “projection”.

I applaud the writer, Woo Ho-gyeong, for her honesty and courage for posting such a strong article in modern-day South Korea, which is still deeply conservative and sexist beyond it’s thin veneer of liberalism and democracy. Being a foreigner here you often become discouraged by the seemingly constant demonisation and scapegoating us non-Koreans receive in the local press for seemingly any and all social ills which befall the Korean peninsula. I often wish that the locals would just look at the things a little more constructively and not take the bait that the often self-interested, xenophobic and malicious mainstream media in this country continually dishes out. Then, an individual such as Ms. Woo comes along and restores your faith that things will eventually change here and Korea will eventually achieve its full potential.

The truth is that present-day Korean society - like many societies, but we’re talking about Korea here is fundamentally flawed largely due to abuses of power by many/most in positions of authority and power. And, due to a lack of gumption to thoroughly prosecute these wrongdoers due to antiquated Confucian beliefs that these individuals are demi-gods and should be treated as such, and that any publicity will damage the (obviously flawed) institution, place of employment, Government office, etc.

Life continues as usual, smoke and mirrors, appearance over substance, lies over truth. That is of, course, until there’s a convenient scapegoat to be found to take the fall. That way the general public can purge their pent-up frustrations and continue on as usual after a brief release. Meanwhile, the true culprits rise on to even greater heights. I appreciate how this writer realises that foreigners and other individuals of ‘lesser standing’ are often those who are pillorised when caught and/or assumed of committing seemingly regular crimes within Korean society itself (and/or transgressions, as in the case of foreign men having the nerve to hook up with consenting Korean women).

The truth is that in Korea, more often than not, the emperor has no clothes! Everyone knows this but goes out of their way to provide an elaborate charade for themselves and outsiders so the truth is never fully revealed and no face is lost as a result.

I applaud you, Woo Ho-gyeong for your brilliant article. May it be become an impetus for more young Koreans such as yourself to say enough’s enough and it’s time for change whereby all individuals are treated (and punished) equally and whereby the old habits of sweeping crimes under the carpet is no longer tolerated.

Year of the Earth Ox - 2009 design

Well, the Lunar New Year or Seollal as it’s called here,  is just around the corner and as usual I’m trying to cash in on it using my superior language skills! 헉 This design is one of many Asian kitsch and other items of inferior quality at my online design store. Now that I’ve got my shameless blogging out of the way, let’s talk about my Friday night here goes …

Well, Friday night was my latest stupid drunken adventure in the Land of the Morning Calm. As a result of that night, I’m now the owner of a non-functioning cell phone, a depleted wallet, an unexplained knock on my head and am a somewhat remorseful fool who finally admits he has a binge drinking problem at times.

The night was jovial and well-spirited, I met some of my soccer friends at the regular bar and began drinking the night away, chatting with each other and the barmaids and having a good time. I started chatting with my friend’s Korean buddy, who I’ve met several times and we ended staying till closing time when we then ventured of for some food.

After which, he gave me a lift home or somewhere in the vicinity – which was stupid as we both were dead drunk. I have very little recollection of just what happened afterwards and I just remember coming to it freezing cold in the early morning with the sun out about 15 minutes walk from home.  I trudged home, bitterly frozen and proceeded to crash not before accidentally dropping my cell phone into the toilet,  stupidly checking it whilst peeing. D’oh! Dumbarse!

Now, most of you must be thinking why on Earth would I be writing this and shaming myself by doing so. Well, I’ve got to an age now where I like to be true to myself and others and readily admit when I make a mistake or have a problem. And evidently, this is one area in which I have a problem as this has been the third time in six months where I’ve either been stupid or obnoxious whilst drunk and put myself and/or others in danger. I don’t drink very often and usually when I do, I drink moderately but, occasionally I go overboard such as last Friday and that’s when problems occur.

I have no idea what happened for the last hour of my night and have no idea how, when and why I got the bump on my head. All I know is that I lost control and am lucky I wasn’t bashed, injured and/or arrested. From now on, I think I’m going to have to either stop drinking or enforce strict cut off limits for my drinking as I clearly can’t control myself when I drink too much. For those affected by my drinking shenanigans I genuinely apologize for my stupid actions.

With that out of the way, why can’t bloody cell phone companies produce more water resistant phones, my phone was only momentarily in the can but it now doesn’t work at all. I’m going to have to go phone shopping in the near future. Sigh.

Parramatta Road, otherwise known more aptly as Parramatta Car Park, on a reasonably quiet day

Despite a three-fold increase  in population in the last century, Sydney has barely expanded its aging rail network and as the city – bounded by mountains on three sides and the ocean on the other – is running out of space to expand and as petrol prices rise and air quality deteriorates – the car is finally being questioned as the best method of getting people around. Thank Christ, surely all this was apparently at least 10 – 15 years ago! And, thank goodness people are finally realising that humongous McMansions in the back of Woop Woop are not the best enviornmentally sustainable option.

All this sounds good, you would think. But, not every one is happy as you can see in this article focusing on Leichhardt, which would be transformed if the planned metro line from the city to Parramatta ends up being built going through there; and this article, where residents in Ku-ring-gai – where I was born and raised – would see more sustainable, medium-density developments built along the rail line. Shock horror, will someone please think of the children!

Photo of Roseville, on the north shore in Ku-ring-gai on the left, and what it may look like if strategic urban consolidation occurs along its rail corridor

Rant: You’d think people would be able to rationalise that if you live five kilometres west – in the case of Leichhardt and 12 to 20 kilometres north – in the case of Ku-ring-gai – of the centre of a metropolis of over four million people, you may have to share your suburb with – shock, horror – other people!

The NSW State Government is to wrest a wider scope of control in planning the proposed Metro West rail link and is hoping to be the recipients of $8.1 billion from the Commonwealth Government’s Infrastructure Australia fund in order to do so.  This along with other urban consolidation initiatives are no doubt going to piss off many local councils, residents and NIMBY groups!

And, people wonder why I never followed through with being an urban planner and instead find myself teaching English in a foreign land. There’s nothing more frustrating that seeing things that will benefit many being withdrawn as they will slightly inconvenience a vocal some. Though, I think the chances of this latest proposal getting off the ground is slim, which is a shame as Sydney was once a great city.

Pity is that unless things change and decisions are made and followed through, we’ll be looking at Sydney in forty years and wondering just what went wrong, it used to be a great place that run somewhat efficiently. Meanwhile, South East Asian and East Asian cities of comparable populations – not to mention Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – will leave it in its dust and Sydney will become the Montevideo of the Asia-Pacific region.