Before coming to Korea, I had heard that Korean’s had a love/hate relationship when it came to the foreigners working in their country. I was told that as a foreign teacher, I would be treated with little respect and that common misconceptions and racist assumptions would make it difficult to make genuine friends.
Thankfully, I have not yet experienced a single act of distaste or racism by any individual I have run into. I am sure there are some assholes out here just waiting to dispel my naïve comfort, but I imagine I can just as easily find morons in the States, so it won’t change the fact that most people are genuinely nice and polite here.
Having said that, there are some pretty disparaging caricatures of Westerners used in the media and by politicians during campaign seasons. There was a recent “20/20” like expose that painted foreign teachers as womanizing drunkards who had no respect for Korean society.
Here are some comic panels that I recently came across that represent some of the more common stereotypes foreign teachers’ receive:
“If I stay in my hometown working at WalMart, no girls will ever talk to me.”
Because the minimum qualification required to work in Korea is a BA, there are a slew of teachers that have little experience and classroom know-how. Undoubtedly, there are some bad teachers around who should never have gotten their jobs to begin with. These poor teachers breed the perception that all foreign teachers are people who simply could not make it in their home country.
“We love you foreigner teacher!”
This is probably the biggest fear generated by conservative politicians and old people: that Korean women will date westerners and that “the West” has subverted Korea’s national identity. It would be a disgrace to have the nation’s pure Korean bloodline tampered with!
Korean young people do seem to have an interest in American pop-culture, and that may benefit foreign men when it comes to dating, but I personally don’t understand the fear some people have of this. All the young Korean male teachers I work with are married to attractive nice women, so it doesn’t seem like they are being left out in the cold by these Westerners.
Race baiting is a popular tactic used by any idiot whose argument has no real leg to stand on.
“When I came to Korea in 2000, I only had 200,000 Won, but now I have 5,000,000,000 won because I found a rich housewife.”
Your basic Xenophobia: foreigners are leaching off of our society and our nation’s wealth. The message has been reproduced in countless languages in just about every country on earth at one point.
Oddly enough, I kind of like the comics! They have a “Crumb” kind of flair to them, and I am interested to see what other stereotypes and prejudices the artist can come up with.
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8 comments:
Pretty enlightening stuff. Being a Mexican in America, I felt racist accusations were something worth addressing but not something that represented the general populace. Do you feel these images are only a minorities opinion.
Thanks Steef. In my personal experience, this kind of characterization is one only held by the minority. I may be wrong about that, but most folks I run into don’t seem to hold these preconceived notions.
I thought I would be more sensitive to this kind of thing, but it doesn’t bother me much. I understand that there are racists and idiots in all societies, and I won’t hold every Korean to these thought process. If someone ends up spitting on me on the streets for walking with a Korean woman…I will likely take offense to that.
Not surprising after hearing the stories I have about how politics works over there. (mostly from reading GI Korea's blog)
Thanks for the link Hydralisk! It looks like a mighty fine blog that I should read more often.
Roland, we are all confident you will win the hearts and brains of your students and their friends and families, which is what counts at the final scoring.
Er... and re dating the girls... ;-)
The artwork is vaguely similar to Crumb. The facial features (esp. the big nose) remind me of certain white supremacist cartoons as well.
I always wondered if these cartoons were really an indigenous work drawn up and written in Korea or if they were something "adapted" from somewhere else.
The outwork is far more reminiscent of Crumb than anything else, and the way the Korean text is positioned doesn't look natural, as if placed after the fact, or by someone who isn't a native Korean speaker.
I felt the same thing Kushibo. I had not looked at these since leaving Korea, and your comment allowed me to reassess them and consider their implications now that I have been gone for a few years. Still enjoy your blog however.
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