Korea Beat

Choi Hui-seon, the “intern reporter” who wrote a previous piece apparently relying exclusively on the Anti-English Spectrum Cafe site, has another piece up online basically running through exactly the same format.

Hat tip the The Marmot’s Hole.

“Korean women are really easy to get into bed.” “I often have one-night stands with Korean women go whoring.”

Recently the website ‘korea****.com’, embroiled in controversy for sexually derogatory comments about Korean women written by native speaker instructors in language hagwons, has been joined in its mockery of Korean women by other, similar websites.

Every day at the site ‘***cafe.com’, originally created to make it easier for native speaker instructors to obtain useful information, tens of posts go up saying things sexually derogatory of Korean women such as, “Korean women are really easy to get into bed,” “I often have one-night stands with Korean women or go whoring,” “married Korean women don’t have sex lives with their husbands, so they like to have sex with us.”

34-year old Mr. C, an English teacher from the UK, wrote on ‘xxlove.com’, an online community for foreign instructors, that, “I came to Korea for the money and the K-pusxx (a rude slang word for a Korean woman’s genitals). Those are the only two reasons to come here,” and even publicly posted photos of himself.

Again, this blog cannot overemphasize the danger presented by white people with heavily pixelated faces.

47-year old Mr. S, who until last year taught English conversation at a university in Sojae in Gyeongsangbuk-do, openly wrote on his blog that, “I love to see completely naked Korean women,” and was criticized by students. When the problem grew large Mr. S voluntarily left the school. Mr. C, a former US soldier who taught English at a language hagwon in Seoul, invited a female student of his to his home and had sex with her, taking nude pictures of her and publicly uploading them to the internet. He even included a caption with the photos that read, “my co-worker took pictures of racing models and uploaded them, but I uploaded pictures of my student. It was really fun.”

He also wrote of a female Korean instructor at the same school that, “she has a cute face, but so far I haven’t seen her naked so when I do I’ll have more to say.” Immediately netizens and police caught Mr. C and at the end of last year he was deported to the United States.

39-year old Lee Eun-ung of the Anti-English Spectrum Cafe, which constantly exposes foreign instructors of low character, said, “the government has rolled out various policies to attract many foreign teachers, but with an insufficient screening system sex criminals and other unqualified with poor academic credentials are having an easy time of it,” and emphasized the need for the government to take action.

43-year old native speaker instructor Mr. J, recently caught in Busan, sexually molested a student while teaching in his native Canada, and came to Korea after repeatedly getting in trouble with police for assaults and making threats, he said.

Currently teaching English at an organization in Busan, while he was working in a language hagwon he stabbed a child with a pin during a lesson, and was often absent from work, showing his insincerity regarding lessons.

Mr. Lee said, “when foreign instructors of low character cause hurt, we should demand an investigation by authorities to prevent a cover-up and publicize the case so that there may not be further victims,” and asked that victimized women file reports.

The Chosun Ilbo put up these newly-released photos purporting to show Kim Jong-il out and about on an excursion to Hamgyeongnam-do, where he supposedly engaged in activities which included visiting a factory. The Chosun finds it particularly hard to believe he was wearing his parka in the late June heat, but does note it could be due to the apparent rain.

It appears that prisons across Korea had better start redesigning prisoners’ toilets or they can expect to be paying out the… ahem.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the use by correctional facilities of open toilets for prisoners leads to emotional damages including humiliation and the state must pay compensation.

But it was also decided that no compensation need be paid for the denial of outdoors exercise as a punishment.

The Court announced on the 28th its decision regarding the lawsuit filed against the state by 26-year old Mr. Kim, who was awarded W1.5 million by the trial court. The judgment was affirmed in all respects except for W500,000 awarded for the denial of outdoors exercise.

Mr. Kim was sentenced to eight years and ten months for aggravated burglary, and while in prison in Gwangju had to use an open toilet with only a 60 to 70cm semi-opaque screen, and sued claiming a violation of his dignity.

He had sought damages in the amount of W25 million for the denial of outdoors exercise for a 10-day period as punishment for infractions of prison rules and for mistaken prison transfers.

The trial court rejected his requests regarding the use of open toilets and denial of exercise.

He was awarded W300,000 for ten hours spent in chains when an error by a prison employee had him transferred to another prison.

The appeals court ruled, “compensation is required for the humiliation felt because of the noise, smell, and exposure of body parts every time the open toilet was used, and the denial of all exercise for a ten-day period for infractions of prison rules was also a serious violation of physical freedom.”

Accordingly he was awarded W500,000 for the use of open toilets, W500,000 for the denial of exercise, and W500,00 for the mistaken prison transfer.

The Supreme Court affirmed the compensation of W1,000,000 for the use of open toilets and mistaken prison transfer but found no need to compensate for the denial of exercise.

The Supreme Court announced, “prisoners accused of rules violations present concerns for the safety of other prisoners, so the restriction of exercise for them at the discretion of the prison does not violate social standards.”

For an example of the open toilets used in prison you could watch Park Chan-wook’s “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance”.

I don’t have a lot of energy today so I’m skipping the overall top 10. It’s all sports anyway, of course, except this one about Wonbin, this one about the girl in France who lied about not wanting 56 facial tattoos, and this one about the possibility of water on Mars. And now onto the…

Top 10 in world news.

1. A Washington, DC Metro train killed 9 people in an unusual crash.

2. More on the Metro crash.

3. A 16-year old girl dropped 89 kilograms in 9 months.

4. More on the Metro crash.

5. A four-hectare Russian island on the border with Estonia actually floated across the border and stayed there. Russians apparently were heard looking for it while muttering, “it has to be somewhere, it can’t just have gotten up and walked away.”

6. Michael Jackson died.

7. A woman in the UK who claims not to have eaten anything for three years.

8. More on the teenager who lost all the weight.

9. An article about a teenager killed in Iran in that country’s protests against the regime.

10. Another article about Neda, the young Iranian woman shot to death in the protests who has become a symbol around the world of the injustice there.

Although the decline in the ranks of foreign players in Korean pro baseball is generally attributed to the increase in Korean athlete’s abilities (and CJ Nitkowski is now gone), the Chosun Ilbo found mostly financial reasons for their drop in prominence in the K-League.

“Where did all the foreign strikers go?”

It is turning out that the relative importance of domestic and foreign strikers in the K-League has reversed. As of the 25th in the 12-team K-League, foreign athletes had tumbled in importance. Of the top ten goal scorers, eight are Korean and just two are foreign — Chunnam’s Chuva ranks second with seven goals and Seoul’s Dejan ranks seventh with five goals. That means domestic strikers are outscoring their foreign counterparts.

This is an unusual situation, in which the old worry that “more highly skilled foreign strikers would crowd out Korean strikers” has been fading away in the second half of the 2000s. Over the past five years the number of foreigners in the top 10 in goals was 7 in 2005→6 in 2006→8 in 2007→6 in 2008.

Part of the reason is that “wealthy” teams that hired foreign strikers at high cost — Suwon, Seongnam, and Ulsan — but saw poor results on the field have closed their wallets. The wealthy teams saw their performance tumble, leading to a vicious circle of their foreign strikers scoring less often. This year Ulsan is in 14th place, Suwon in 11th, and Seongnam in 7th place, and none has a designated striker. Low-income citizen teams have seen their budgets fall twenty to thirty percent and cannot even consider signing a foreign striker. In 2007 Gyeongnam had Cabore, who led the league with 18 goals, lifting them to fourth place.

Changes in the pro game have also contributed to the change. Min Byeong-jin, sports analyst for SBS, said, “this year weak and middling teams are using their midfielders to cover up their lack of a good striker, so the opportunities for foreign strikers to get goals have considerably diminished.” This is also due to the general decline in scoring (2.7 goals last year→2.4 goals this year) but foreign athletes from Brazil and elsewhere . In the mid and late 2000s there was a “rush” for Brazilian players in the K-League, so that in June of this year 56%, or 22 of 39, foreign athletes were Brazilian. It is likely that domestic midfielders and defenders got used to Brazilian players and developed strategies to defeat them, contributing to their declining goal scoring.

Experts all see positive and negative aspects of this situation. It is good that Korean atjletes are becoming more prominent, but the poor performance of foreign athletes holds no particular meaning for profits.