Dispatches from the Peninsula

by Chris Tharp

  Most Korean students attend hagwons after their regular school hours. If they’re lucky they go home, maybe grab a bite, and then are stuffed into vans, off to one of tens of thousands of hagwons around the country. English hagwons make up only a small percentage of these after-school academies: there are math hagwons, science hagwons, music hagwons, art hagwons, Korean language and literature hagwons. Most operate late into the night. Nine or ten o’clock is standard for English academies, though it’s not unheard-of for students to get out of hagwons at eleven or even twelve. There are stories of some operating all the way to one in the morning. Recent legislation is said to ban this practice, drawing the line at eleven p.m., but Korea is a country of many laws and selective enforcement. A few white envelopes passed into the right hands could give little Min-woo a couple more hours to master the present perfect tense every night.

  When I first learned of this system, of what I was being paid to participate in, this simple question crossed my mind: How much would it suck to have to go to school after school? These poor, poor kids.

  The most alarming thing about hagwons is the variation in quality. Despite some recent attempts by the government, it is essentially an unregulated industry, resulting in a Darwinian swamp of greedy operators doing whatever it takes to lure Mom’s won. Some are well-equipped and well-staffed, with quality classrooms, plentiful books, and other materials. Others are fly-by-night outfits with shady owners only in it to grab the cash and run. I’ve been in hagwons that were unheated in the coldest winter months, with the students sitting in tiny rooms around rickety tables wearing parkas, their breath visible as they attempted to master English prepositions. These are thehagwons for teachers to look out for: perpetually understaffed, and even more importantly, underfunded. There are volumes of horror stories about teachers being paid late or not at all, being put up in filthy hovels, and being cheated out of their taxes, pension, bonuses, and airline tickets.

  The reality is that in a hagwon, education doesn’t rank first. This honor goes to profit-making. If the mommies start complaining and pulling their kids, radical changes in curriculum and policy will be instituted overnight. After all, there is always the competition across the street. Just the slightest complaint from one mother is taken with utmost gravity by the hagwon director, and the orders are passed down the food chain in order to pacify the unhappy customer. What the directors usually don’t realize, though, is that overreacting to one mother’s criticism often ruffles the feathers of the other hens in the brood, causing a counter-reaction. You can’t please everyone.

  Many new teachers fail to understand this fundamental truth about what they’re getting into. They want to come and teach and be effective. They want to make a difference. But what they actually make is the mistake of setting high standards and being strict with their students, believing themselves to be educators, rather than mascots. Such is the highway to teaching suicide, and academy directors show no affection for the newly arrived Westerner who wishes to inspire his or her students through regimentation and tough love. This is a sure way for a high-minded teacher to get canned. Aside from providing examples of perfect pronunciation, foreigners are not brought into the hagwon to teach, really. That duty is reserved for the Korean teachers, who give homework, mete out discipline, and instruct the kids in grammar and writing. Foreign teachers are there to keep enrollment up, impress the mothers, and above all, entertain.

  I got a lucky draw. I blindly took the first job that was offered to me and was fortunate on that first day to walk into a modern, clean, and well-funded school. The Bayridge Language School was owned and operated by the Daekyo Corporation, one of the largest educational service companies in South Korea. The building itself (also the property of Daekyo) contained office space, too, as well as three other hagwons specializing in non-English subjects. When I walked into Bayridge, it was clear that the boys in the main office had invested some money in the school. A large, shiny red logo hung behind the front desk, behind which sat a very pretty young Korean woman (demure smile; tasteful makeup; straight, glossy black hair). Jimmy greeted me from the communal teachers’ office and gave me a tour. The school occupied two floors of the building and came complete with fully stocked classrooms (whiteboards, chairs, tables, desks); a science room (microscopes, model of the small/large intestine, take-apart human brain); a computer lab that was home to about twenty PCs and a digital overhead projector; and a shared staff room stocked with books, teaching aids, and games. As far as facilities went, this was top-notch, and I can’t imagine any new teacher strolling through the door and being underwhelmed. Judging by both my apartment and school, I had gotten lucky.

  After introducing me to the non-English speaking director–a devout Christian woman with the English name Brenda, who spent a lot of time alone in her office praying (Please Lord, I beseech Thee, more students!)–Jimmy led me upstairs to a classroom, in which sat six women in their thirties and forties. This was the school’s “housewife class.” Manyhagwons offer a once- or twice-a-week class for housewives who wish to improve their English, and this was to be the first trial-by-fire of my ESL teaching career. Jimmy gave me a fifteen-second introduction in Korean, handed me the attendance folder and textbook I was to use, and unceremoniously walked out of the classroom as they tepidly applauded, shutting the door behind him. The clapping immediately ceased, and I took in the housewives, whose eyes looked like those of livestock about to be slaughtered.

  “Good morning!” Despite my jet-lag-dizzy head, I did my best to inject the proceedings with some good ol’ fashioned Yankee enthusiasm.

  Silence.

  I tried it again. “Hello!”

  One of them waved very weakly. I waved back.

  “Good morning! It’s okay… you can talk back… hello?”

  A pause. I cleared my throat.

  “Hello?”

  “… Hel-lo…,” one of them murmured as her face turned into a ripe tomato.

  And thus it began. I had been warned about some Asians’ pathological shyness when it comes to speaking English in front of native speakers, but I figured that anyone who signs up for a class would have already overcome such a barrier, that they would be ready and willing to talk away, even if imperfectly. But here I was, confronted with the reality of a group of women who had paid to speak English with a real, living foreigner, but were too terrified to actually vocalize any words. It was going to be a long fifty minutes.

  What about me? What teaching methods could I have employed to open them up, to break the ice and get these ladies talking some English? Surely there is an arsenal of tricks useful for getting new students to open up. The truth is that I had none. Jimmy had led me into the bear cave without even a pep talk; he just opened the door and chucked me in like the proverbial Christian to the lions. There was no prep, no orientation, no discussion of syllabus and/or methodology. And aside from some drama workshops and improv classes that I had presided over back in Seattle, I had almost no practical teaching experience at all, especially when it came to ESL. I was a complete neophyte, and if not for the textbook that I clutched like a Gucci handbag, I might have flung myself out of the fourth story window, right then and there.

  I managed to make it through the class relatively unscathed, relying on the exercises in the book to make up for my utter lack of preparation or knowledge of what to do. Soon enough the bell rang, and Jimmy led me by the sleeve back downstairs, the school’s other wing, the real money-maker. It was only my second class, yet time for me to hit the front line of children’s ESL education: morning kindy.

  Bayridge was one of many schools that specialized in kindergarten English immersion. Five- and six-year-olds would come to the school every weekday to do basic kindergarten, almost exclusively in English. These are perhaps the most successful of all the English language programs in Korea, because they are catching kids at the perfect age for language acquisition, throwing them into the sea of a new tongue and letting them swim. These programs are a
lso some of the most lucrative for any institution, since the tots spend several hours a day under the school’s care, and the parents are billed accordingly.

  The bell rang, and I watched as the other teachers scurried to their rooms: Pavlov’s dogs carrying plastic baskets full of books, photocopied worksheets, board markers, and colorful flash cards. Jimmy escorted me into my kindergarten class, where I met my Korean counterpart, an emaciated, bug-eyed Korean girl named Lisa, who many of the children snarkily referred to as “Gollum Teacher,” a nod to her resemblance to the tortured creature from Lord of the Rings. Yes, the kids were ruthless.

  After the requisite introductions, I found myself attempting to stare down twelve lethally cute six-year-olds dressed in identical yellow sweat suits, on which the company logo was prominently displayed. Children of this age are universally adorable, but the Korean variety of kindergartner occupies what may be the highest plane of cuteness. Black bowl cuts, pigtails, and matching uniforms, accompanied by their tiny dimensions: this was cute concentrate, enough to practically paralyze me. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

  I figured I’d again hit them with enthusiasm.

  “Good morning!”

  In unison: “GOOD MORNING, TEACHER!”

  They showed almost none of the shyness of the housewives. These little imps had been conditioned.

  One of the boys pointed at me and screamed in laughter, which lit like white magnesium around the classroom. Suddenly all dozen of them were pointing and screeching: East Asian groupthink at work.

  I figured I’d try a new line on a boy nearest to me. “How are you?”

  His eyes rolled back in his head and he convulsed with laughter, his body possessed by an entity of pure chaos.

  I tried the saucer-eyed girl next to him. “How are you?”

  She stood up and belted out, “I FINE THANK YOU!”, then jumped up and down like a miniature demon, clapping her hands.

  I repeated the line to another girl–the only shy one of the bunch–who just stared ahead, refusing to utter a word. When I asked the boy next to her “How are you?” he replied:

  “ME SPIDERMAN!”

  He leapt out of his chair, pretending to shoot webs from the palms of his hands. This served as a cue for the rest of the boys to bolt from their seats, resulting in a spontaneous superhero mêlée. One girl joined them and proceeded to wrap herself around the lower part of my left leg. A boy with bleached streaks in his hair got on top of the table and shouted:

  “I’M UNG-GA!” He squatted down and mimed shitting on the table. This move was repeated by two thirds of the other students, who squealed with poo-poo/pee-pee joke bliss.

  Just then two of the girls were at the white board, scribbling maniacally with the board markers in red and black. As I bent down to try and intervene, I felt a sharp poke near the center of my ass. Bleached hair UNG-GA boy had hit me with the most practiced weapon in the Korean kid’s arsenal: the dreaded ddong chim.

  I remember a similar thing from those two years of misery in my life which was known as middle school. Sometimes, when bent over at a locker or desk, one of those awful thick-necked boys who already had a moustache would poke you in the ass and say “Ha! Just checkin’ yer oil!” He’d then saunter off, looking for another weakling to call “fag” or menace with a wedgie.

  The ddong chim (which translates as poop needle) is the Korean student’s version of the North American oil check, yet it is far more pervasive. Boys and girls of young ages practice it with abandon, with the tacit support of the Korean teachers–who, when faced with an angry foreigner who objects to such a thing, just laugh and say, “Oh, he is doing the joke.”

  They think it’s cute. I don’t. It is a finger in my ass, and such privileges are not even extended to my girlfriend.

  But things had already gone too far for me to put my foot down. In the course of one hundred and twenty seconds, I had completely lost control of the class. I yelled and tried to act harsh, but it had no effect. It was obvious that these kindy kiddies just saw me as a huge stupid white clown. Kids can smell fear, it is true. This group had sniffed it out like a pack of starving, feral dogs, and they were ripping off large mouthfuls of my teaching confidence. But this was just the opening salvo, so I gathered myself, and did what any self-respecting morning kindy teacher would do on the first day:

  I pretended to be a wild gorilla and ran amuck.

  Channeling my best inner silverback, I went at them. Where this came from remains a mystery, but some primal voice inside me was chanting, Gorilla! Gorilla! Gorilla! I pounded my chest like an enraged King Kong, howled, and charged–grabbing tykes under my arms as I passed, with the intention of taking them back to my den to be devoured (this gorilla craved flesh). I snarled and barked, all the while terrifying the living hell out of my miniature torturers, who scattered like roaches under a turned-on light. I was now in control. The gorilla could not be stopped! At least until Gollum Teacher came back to restore order.

  She opened the door and entered with total authority, her bulging eyes aflame with indignation. She opened her mouth and a jet-engine voice rumbled from a place deep within, filling every crevice of the small classroom and even frightening me. The children were back in their seats within three seconds, backs erect, hands on their heads, and staring straight ahead like tiny soldiers. Silence was observed. An air of absolute solemnity descended upon the room. Gollum Teacher then, drill-instructor-like, rattled off a litany of questions, to each of which the students answered, as a group, Nae! (Korean for yes). After the last question, she scanned the kiddies, who were still at attention, gave me a quarter smile and a shallow bow, and strode out of the room.

  They listen to their fellow Koreans. I don’t even enter into it. This is good to know.

  * * * *

  I knew very little of what to expect before actually arriving in Korea, but by the end of my first two weeks on the ground, I knew I wasn’t going back to the States anytime soon. During my brief time in the country I had managed to procure:

  One good, secure job with a company that was sure to pay me on time;

  An apartment, near work, nice;

  A set of friends, brand-new;

  A fascinating, unknown place and culture to explore;

  One girlfriend–Korean, and hot.

  It’s as if, when entering the country, at Immigration, I’d been handed a magic bag containing a brand new life. It was like being in witness protection or passing into an alternate universe. I was ecstatic, and began regularly having nightmares where I found myself back in America. Sometimes I was stuck there for good, and other times I would realize that I had to be at work first thing in the morning. In Korea. On several occasions I literally awoke with a slamming chest and sweat pouring over my body. This was anxiety of the highest order. I had stumbled onto something good and I didn’t want to lose it.

  When you’re over 30 and broke back home, coming to teach in Asia can be a sort of paradise. This is especially true if you take to teaching, which I did. I enjoyed my classroom time. I’m a big kid at heart–a real goofball–so I’d just teach some and play more. That seemed to do the trick, since if the kids were happy, so were their mothers and by extension, my bosses. And it wasn’t just the job that I enjoyed. I was fascinated with living in Asia, with being surrounded by newness. I explored the restaurants on my own, going in solo and pointing at random selections. I’d wander the markets and try the street food, marveling at the strange ocean life being sold: cuttlefish, octopuses, orange sea squirts, and pink worms resembling huge, flaccid penises. It was all amazing to me and I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t come to Asia sooner.

  Yes, it was a honeymoon period. Novelty is exciting and those first few months were no exception. But strip away the novelty and I was still enjoying the hell out of my new circumstances. I was teaching thirty hours a week at Bayridge, which as far as teaching goes is a grind, but I barely noticed it. I had worked some shitty jobs in my day: dishwasher, truck loader,
laborer, courier driver, temp office drone, fishmonger. I had even once been paid to poison a lake (invasive weed control). I had done some awful, low-paying, soul-destroying, ball-busting gigs. Compared to most any of those, teaching kids how to say “The eraser is under the desk” was the easiest thing I’d ever been paid to do. It was cake.

  My new friend Sam agreed. He was a 6’4” sinew of a guy from Boise, Idaho–a cynical, whip-smart, no-bullshit fellow Northwesterner whom I immediately bonded with.

  “Dude, you wanna know what I was doin’ for a living before this? I was pouring concrete. Have you ever poured concrete?”

  I shook my head in the negative.

  “It fucking sucks.”

  As much as it initially surprised me, I soon found out that not everyone was so enthusiastic when it came to teaching here. I immediately started meeting scores of people who hated their lives in Korea, people who counted the days until the end of their contracts, people who incessantly moaned about every inconvenience, perceived affront, or cultural difficulty. These folks weren’t just the odd whiners, either. They were everywhere.

  At Bayridge were two such champion Korea-complainers. They were a couple from Texas, Jeff and Renee. They had moved to Busan together and were both hired to work at the hagwon. They had been there for a several months by the time I arrived and bitched about their jobs and the country at seemingly every chance possible.

  “Koreans never tell you the truth. Jimmy tells us one thing but tells the kids’ mothers something else. I just can’t deal with all of this dishonesty.”

  “You know we can’t play CDs in the classroom anymore? One of the moms complained, saying that she can just do that at home and that we should be teaching more? What does she know about teaching English.”