nanoomi

Earlier I posted a translation of a February 5, 2010 Dong-A Ilbo interview with Anti-English Spectrum’s Lee Eun-ung. A response to the claims made in the article follows. Here are links to the original foreign media articles (National Post, Vancouver Sun, LA Times (Feb. 2009, Jan. 2010)) referred to in the Dong-A Ilbo article.

At the beginning of the article, it asks “Why are foreign media ‘attacking the citizen’s group?’” and “attacking” is in quotes; not so a few sentences later: “Why are you receiving such attacks?” The reporter decided to turn the debate into “us vs. them” – “malicious foreign press reports are distorting things Korean.” This is amusing when you realize that in reality, one of the most critical statements made about Anti-English Spectrum came from an ROK diplomat, Younggoog Park, Minister-Counsellor of Public Affairs at the Korea Embassy in Ottawa:

“Their reactionary views and opinions do not represent the sentiment of Koreans toward Canadians or other foreign teachers,” Park told the CBC’s The Current.

Lee then takes the chance to once again reiterate the reason for forming AES – the English Spectrum incident: “During this incident, postings like ‘Picking up Korean women is easy… I had sex with a middle school girl’ enraged Koreans.” He fails to mention, as always, that the “How to mollest[sic] your students” post on Korean ESL (from which the “I had sex with a middle school girl” quote came) also enraged the foreign English teachers who read it when it was first posted a year and a half before it was discovered by Koreans. For once, due only to the criticism brought up in foreign media reports, Lee does actually admit something he never has before: “[A]mong the people who first joined our group, some concentrated only on attacking and degrading women who date foreigners.”

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In early February the Dong-A Ilbo published two articles (by the same reporter, Kim Hyeon-jin) about Anti-English Spectrum. A short piece, titled “‘Stalkers’ vs ‘Protection of Korean Students,’” was translated by Korea Beat at the time. The longer interview with Lee Eun-ung, which was never translated, is below. (Many thanks to Coola for help with the translation.) I’ll follow this with a deconstruction of the claims made in the interview tomorrow.

Is the “Movement to Expel Bad English Teachers” stalking?

Stalking? Racial discrimination? The manager of the group to “Expel Bad Native Speaking Teachers,” Lee Eun-ung.

The 'LA Times' January 31 interview with the manager of “Citizens for Upright English Education,” Lee Eun-ung. Last February the newspaper published an article about this group in which foreign teachers living in Korea argued that (certain) Koreans who strongly believe that they are of a single bloodline (danil minjok) were conducting a campaign to spread xenophobia. Capture from site.

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In 2000, Hong Seok-cheon became Korea’s first openly gay celebrity. After coming out, however, he was fired from his broadcasting jobs in TV and radio. This November 2000 article about Hong also interviews gay rights activist Seo Dong Jin, who was nearly kicked out of the elite Yonsei University a few years ago for organizing a support group for gay and lesbian students. In 1997 he tried to convene a gay film festival, but local authorities cut off the electricity. The Queer Film and Video Festival only got the green light in 1998 after censors relaxed their conditions.

By 2005, however, a gay couple was featured in a TV advertisement, and in 2006 Korea’s best-selling movie ever at that point (12 million tickets, meaning 25% of the population saw the film in theaters), The King and Clown, was also its biggest surprise hit – especially considering that the drama centered around a clearly gay relationship. 2006 also saw the release of a film aimed at teens which featured transsexuals, transvestites and gay characters [Dasepo Girls], and another Joseon-era film released in 2008, A Frozen Flower, featured a gay love triangle and was a moderate hit.

An openly gay couple is now focused on in a TV drama for the first time, SBS’s “Beautiful Life,” and in this May 29 interview with the writer of the series, Kim Soo-hyun, she makes clear that her “main goal is to make homosexuality a subject that is no longer taboo.” As this article notes, “Its viewer ratings exceeded 20 percent on May 23 when the two came out of the closet, pointing to Koreans’ growing interests in the once-social taboo.” Not everyone is happy with this, however:

With more soap operas and other entertainment programs shedding light on homosexuality, conservative religious groups have begun stepping up on criticism against what they call the “glamorization of gays and lesbians” by TV program producers seeking to draw a larger viewership.

[According to t]he Korean Association of Church Communication (KACC) … “Everybody knows that homosexual relationships are ‘not a social norm.’” The organization then said it is not right for the society to generalize and approve homosexuality, stressing that a series of recent TV programs have overly beautified gays and homosexual love, negatively affecting the acceptable growth of adolescent sexuality.

“The problem with soap operas featuring gays is that homosexuality concerns only a small number of individuals. Most of us have nothing to do with it,” KACC spokesman Shim Man-sup said. “Gays can pursue their own lifestyle privately. But when homosexuality is highlighted and glamorized by TV programs, it not a private matter anymore. Broadcasters must stop commercially exploiting the issue for the common good.”

I hope they start complaining that many dramas glamorize wealth and greed, since living in mansions “concerns only a small number of individuals.” But then, considering most Protestant (‘Christian’) churches here require that their members pay tithes amounting to 10% of their income, I doubt they have many concerns about widespread avarice.

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