La Haine

Every week at Elite, we foreign teachers conduct one-on-one interviews with our students as part of their curriculum. Apparently, this isn't standard in every hagwon, and that's too bad because I think it's the part of the job that I enjoy the most. There are always two questions provided by the high mucky-mucks at Elite on our website, which Jessica and I then amplify to fit our purposes. Sometimes, the students' responses can be really amusing, and sometimes it can be a forum for students who are too shy to talk in class to make use of their English skills. For me, it's the closest I get to doing ethnography nowadays. Whereas I like it when there are a myriad of different responses, I think it is even more interesting when there is a definite congruence in their answers. Case in point: this week's questions about "good" and "bad" countries. There was certainly no surprise in which countries were the students' favorites. Korea was far and away the most cited; other favorites included the Netherlands (because their national team plays soccer well), Switerzland (because of their neutrality), and the United States (because it is a strong and rich country and because hamburgers taste good). There was also an overwhelmingly lopsided vote for the "most hated" country: Japan (other nations of ill-repute included Switerzland because of the 2006 World Cup loss, "Africa" because it's too hot, the United States because of it's arrogance and provocation of terrorists, and North Korea because of the war and the bomb). The fact that Japan was the "most hated" country among my students isn't all that surprising. Tension with and outright hatred against the neighbor to the East runs deep here, going back to the days of the extremely violent colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula (1910-1945). The Japanese regime has done little to relieve tensions as of late, as it refuses to grant reparations to Korean "comfort women" from the occupation era, not to mention the former Prime Minister Koizumi's insistence on making an annual pilgrimage to the Yasukuni Shrine that honors, among others, war criminals who are directly responsible for the misery of many Koreans. However, what I found most intriguing was that in addition to the usual grievances levied against Japan, the contemporarily contentious issue of Dok-do was mentioned by most of the Japan-haters. Dok-do is one of countless territorial disputes that exists in the world today. Basically, it is an island in the East Sea that has been under Korean control since at least 1954 but is also claimed by Japan. Although there hasn't been any outright conflict regarding the issue of Dok-do's sovereignty recently, Japan is largely seen here as raising tensions by conducting a survey of the continental shelf near Dok-do this summer. What interests me, however, is that my students were aware of the dispute. These are children who couldn't tell you were most Asian countries are on a map (let alone the rest of the globe), and yet they know where Dok-do is and have intractable positions supporting Korea's claim. It makes me wonder whether it is in school or at home that they learn about Dok-do. Of course, I doubt any American child their age could name our disputed territorial posessions around the world, or even begin to comment on the question of sovereignty regarding our indigenous populations. At any rate, this week of work offered a glimpse into the burgeoning political attitudes of Korea's youth (or at least those who live in Cheonsang and go to my academy).