My ex-boss, internet etiquette and unfortunate placement in the Korea Times

I worked for 2 years at a Min Byoung Chul English Hagwon in Seoul.  As hagwon jobs go, I was treated well and learned a lot about Korea and teaching there.  Dr Min, a minor celebrity in Korea took pretty good care of us.

I thought he had lapsed into obscurity, but perhaps not.

From the Korea Times:

The “Sunfull” Campaign began as a preventive measure to combat cyber bullying by removing anonymous negative comments on online message boards and to encourage people to instead post positive ones. Since it began in May 2007, the Sunfull Movement Campaign Office said Sunday the number of “Sunfull” or positive messages, posted on its website (www.sunfull.or.kr) exceeded 500,000 as of Nov. 1.

“It is remarkable that we can gather together such a high number of online comments. The Internet is a very strong communication tool and many still fall victim to cyber bullying. This campaign is about etiquette education,” said Min Byoung-chul, founder of the Sunfull Movement.

Also from the Times and, in fact, in the article just above Dr min’s:  Reckless Driver apologizes after online posting.

Netizens criticized the reckless driver. “It was ridiculous. It seemed like he was intending to cause traffic accidents,” a person using “Hayannunmul” as an ID said.

Another netizen “Uro” said such reckless driving is an out-of-bounds behavior. Others sought legal punishment as the driver threatened other people’s lives.

As the cyber attacks increased, the troubled driver posted an apology on an Internet community message board.

…

People again criticized him for not showing enough remorse and he apologized again, saying what he did was dangerous and cowardly. “I will behave appropriately next time,” the driver said.

As the cyber attacks increased, the troubled driver posted an apology on an Internet community message board.

I hate some of the driving practices I see here and part of me rejoices in seeing this guy dragged through hot coals.  Another part wonders if it is ever possible to apologize enough to satisfy enough netizens to allow life to return to normal.  I would hate to see myself caught running a red light (as I did in the spring, because tree-leaves obscured my view) and being hounded for it.  Not everyone who behaves badly is guilty, after all.

On the other hand, I approve of anonymous comments to some extent.  I prefer that commenters here consistently use the same pseudonym, but am not fussy about knowing precisely who they are.  If the price of internet freedom is some impolite commenting, that is fine with me.

On the first foot (I have already metaphorically used both hands) driving someone to suicide is probably too much.  I only use ‘probably’ as no one can say how sensitive a person is or what his/her mental state is from the internet.  Sometimes a strongly-worded comment is appropriate.

How do charter schools compare to hagwons?

The New York review of Books has an article about charter schools and the documentary Waiting for Supermen.

It is a long article and I have not finished reading it, but what I have read is interesting and might relate to Korea’s hagwon culture.

Briefly, the movie sings the praises of charter or private schools and blames public schools for America’s educational problems.  On the surface, this seems reasonable.  However, as the article points out, the charter schools are awash in money – at least compared to the inner-city public schools the movies uses for comparison purposes.  Indeed, the article claims the movie is pretty cagey about which public schools and which charter schools they use for comparison purposes.  The article offers the statistic of one in five charter schools achieving better scores than public schools and nearly two in five performing worse than public schools.

The movie seems a propaganda piece but the article, apparently without bias – offers a more interesting picture.

Here in Korea, my understanding is that public high schools don’t even try to cover all the material needed for the University Entrance Exam but expect that students will either go to hagwons or watch EBS (the government-run Educational TV station) to fill in the gaps.

It is probably a good sign that the US is taking a greater interest in education for its children.  I fear that the Korean model is an example of taking that interest too far and I wonder what the middle ground is.

I do intend to read the full article – and I recommend it to others – but need to prepare to drive to the in-laws tonight.  More later…

I like the Donga Ilbo

But seriously, Tweeter? (My bolding)

When Tweeter’s role caught on, Mark Pfeifle, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, said that without Tweeter, the Iranian people would not have been able to join hands to fight for freedom and democracy. He added that Tweeter should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Can social media sites such as Tweeter and Facebook genuinely spearhead social revolution? Amid the widespread introduction of smartphones, the number of users on social networking services has surged, with that of Tweeter topping 150 million and that of Facebook exceeding 500 million. Considering the sheer number of subscribers, such services could change the world. There are skeptics, however. Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian-born journalist and bestselling author, has provoked debate by saying social media is merely “a disorderly crowd lacking both central authority, leaders and a sense of consolidation” in the latest issue of the magazine The New Yorker.

That Gladwell article is here and I may touch on it, with regard to Dong-a’s article.  I am on Twitter, mostly to follow friends and haven’t really sent any ‘tweets’ myself.  I do know that individual messages are called ‘tweets’ though and that the network is called ‘Twitter’.

The Dong-a usually seems to have more of a weekly format, where articles are less about sex and more about facts and discussions.  I like it.  This article just caught my attention.  Oh, and the “Next year is the year of Darwin’ article they kept a link for on the main page for two years or more disappeared a month ago.

Alright, the article itself is a little interesting:

Tweeter allows contact among people who have little chance to meet each other in the real world and to exchange thoughts and feelings real time. Via Facebook, a member can have hundreds of “friends” with whom he or she has never met. Gladwell, however, says it is very difficult for people to share critical minds over pending issues that hold weight and values big enough to prompt them to bet their money, time, career and life and show a sense of consolidation to tackle them given weak relations in cyberspace.

Korea’s situation seems to be different, however. Yonsei University journalism and mass communication professor Yoon Young-chul said, “Koreans who have a similar propensity tend to gather together.” Unlike people in other countries, likeminded Koreans form communities from the very beginning and share information, he said. When sensitive issues such as a dispute over a person’s educational background flares up, Koreans tend to band together and consolidate through social networking services. A case in point is the netizens’ group “Tablo, We Demand the Truth,” which questioned whether the singer Tablo studied at Stanford University in the U.S. as he claimed. Gladwell might have overlooked Koreans when making his criticism of social media.

This seems a error in scale.  The Iranian revolution – failed- affected directly millions of people. Tablo’s (entirely correct) claims that he studied at stanford… not quite so important.  The Tablo networks feel more like those old Urban Legends, like  ’Clean the internet day‘ or ‘post office charges for email‘.

It was a group of people who – seeing as their claims were false- seemed to be malicious in their attacks claiming that Tablo’s degree was forged.  I might support a group asking Tablo to get a less annoying name, by the way.

Oh, the Korea Herald article (linked above as ‘entirely correct’) spells Twitter correctly.

Another internet oddity

Of the spam form, that is.

I recently did a Google search for “Busan Department Store” - I probably left out the capitalization.

The second link was for Asia rooms , which gave me this paragraph:

In Busan, shopping in one of the best activities to indulge in as the city affords its visitors a range of choices and provisions. In Busan in Korea, you can expect the same kind of experience as you would from any progressive global culture. One of the many tempting shopping destinations in the city is the Busan Department Store in Busan. The specialty of the Busan Department Store in Busan is that it houses big global brands and is mainly an up market place to shop in. moreover, here, at the Busan Department Store in Busan, the activity of shopping is not just a pastime; the authorities have improvised the Busan Department Store in Busan to transform shopping into an experience.

The words are mostly right and mostly in the proper order: the “in” in the first sentence should be ‘is’, but I’ve seen and occasionally typed worse.  Still, there is no content there.  you might wonder where the “Busan Department Store in Busan” is.

The Busan Department Store in Busan is centrally located in the city and is a shopper’s haven.

Well, that’s a big help.

The one thing that convinced me there is no such store was this:

Also, the daily hours of operation of the Busan Department Store in Busan are between 09:00 am and 08:00 pm.

Those hours are too good.

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I am an HTML neophyte – I tried to link to Asia Rooms using “rel=nofollow” to avoid increasing it’s page ranking.  I hope the link works.

Vancouver Olympics were near my hometown

At least that’s what this globe would suggest:

Ottawa; that Pacific city

The globe is a beautiful one and the countries and oceans appear inlaid.  It is a solid and expensive-looking ornament in the lobby of my son’s kindergarten.  I did not study the whole thing, but the cities of other countries appeared in their correct places.  The globe was a few years out of date with Russia spread unbroken across the top of Europe and Asia.