Arrival in Korea: Stepping Out

After a gruelling 24hr travelling experience that included a 13 ½ hr flight, a 6 hr layover, and two 1hr shuttle buses, I finally arrived at Gwangju, South Korea, my home for the next week. Here we are going through the training course for the Jeollanamdo school board - learning bits of Korean language and how to manage the classroom. Apparently this is not the norm for teachers in Korea as some school boards throw you right into classes without any time to decompress. The other teachers here come from all over the world and represent a wide range of age groups, genders, and academic backgrounds. Despite the differences everyone here seems to thirst for adventure of some sort. You could say that the first prerequisite of the job is being able to step on a plane and leave everyone and everything you know behind.

Education is a big deal in Korea and English is a compulsory subject. It is amazing to read the history of this place! In less than thirty years Korea has emerged from a fairly impoverished nation to become one of the most industrial nations on the planet. On the scale of global development Korea is the equivalent of an overnight success. This is a high-tech fast paced country which exports everything from Samsung electronics, Hyundia cars, to various pharmaceuticals. They see the ability to speak English, the language of international commerce, as a key component of securing their future growth and prosperity. English is not only important on a national but also an individual level. In Korea, English is one component of the national exam that will determine what university a child will go to upon graduating high school. For many parents, investing in their children's education will secure their retirement because Koreans do not typically place the elderly in a retirement home. So needless to say there is a lot riding on the subject of English for the average Korean.

I make mention of this all as a way of explaining what has brought me here – it is to say that I am not here due to anything that I have done. Although I stepped on a plane and signed a contract, none of this would have happened if there wasn't already this demand for native English speakers. In the opening ceremony speech, our regional manager confessed to an audience of new teachers that “English is a powerful language”. This comment although not intended with any malice was an accusation that pointed directly at me. Prior to this I had never thought of the privilege I had as an English speaker, but here I was preparing to give lessons on an imperialist language that has disempowered indigenous populations throughout Asia and the world over. It is a language that homogenizes within a culture and adapts to the differences in local dialects. It is a language that extends rights an privileges along a hierarchy. Again, it is the language of imperialism.

I began to resent the privilege I had received and never asked for; but as offensive and unjustified as my privilege is I have been given an opportunity to teach not because of who I am but because of what English represents to the future of individuals, families, and communities in Korea. While the world holds English above all other languages, equality is an impossibility not because of its dominance but because our differences persist despite external limitations. Maybe we in the West can help by stepping out of our privilege to find some common ground between the “us” and “them” paradigm?

After spending only a few days in Korea, the locals that I had a chance to interact with showed incredible patience, generosity, and understanding. On a number of occasions I had to explain that I was a vegetarian – repeating again and again the only English words they seemed to respond to like “vegetable” and “no" "meat/beef/pork”. I couldn't help but think had roles been reversed and they were the foreigner in North America would they have received the same compassion? Would there be anyone who understood the Korean term for vegetable? Not likely. Foreigners brave enough to venture to the West are simply expected to speak the language fluently and are blamed if they fall short of this expectation. I'm grateful for my experience so far and the Koreans I have had a chance to interact with but this is not the standard everywhere. Within a week I'll be headed to Haenam which is said to have a very limited number of English speakers. For any foreigner, living in rural South Korea is both a compromising alienation and a step out farther from their comfort zone.