New Documentary About North Korea by LiNK

Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) is releasing a new documentary titled "Hiding".  It looks really good, I am looking forward to watching it.

I was unaware of who LiNK was before I saw this trailer for their new film popping up on other blogs.  If you want to know more about them, this is their website.

Here is their "history" as stated on their official website:

In the mid-1990s, over a million people died on the other side of the world, and hardly anybody noticed. Millions starved, hundreds of thousands were imprisoned in concentration camps, and tens of thousands crossed borders seeking food, money, protection and even freedom that they never knew existed. That place was, and continues to be, a land with virtually no freedoms - of speech, assembly, religion, movement and more.

This is North Korea, and very little has changed since then.

In 2001, as more North Korean refugees made the harsh and dangerous trek to free nations, information about the human rights and humanitarian crisis in North Korea began to spread all over the world. Defectors began to testify before major institutions, books were written and reports compiled – all corroborating testimonies of human rights atrocities in North Korea.

In 2004, two passionate individuals learned about what was happening and felt a burden to share with the rest of the world what had gone unnoticed for too long. Educating a group of college students and young leaders about the crisis, together they formed LiNK with the hope of spreading awareness and effecting real change. The organization quickly grew and became a movement of activists empowered by the stories of refugees and motivated by the urgency of the issue. LiNK's work focuses on awareness through mobilizing the grassroots and telling these stories of hope and survival. We meet with governments, NGOs and institutions to advocate for the North Korean people, while working directly with refugees through a network of shelters in China and Southeast Asia - protecting, educating and assisting them to eventually find freedom and empower them to live new lives.

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Homeless Children in America Are Left Behind

The PBS News Hour ran a segment on homeless children in America and the difficulties they face in school.  Being that I am a teacher now, hearing this kind of stuff always seems to make me a little upset.

Around 1.3 millon children in America will experience homelessness this year.  A third of all homeless people are families that have children.  Fewer than 25% of children who experience homelessness will graduate from high school.

Here is the clip:

The clip referred several times to the McKinny-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.  Under this Act, it is the law for public schools to made special arrangements for children who are homeless.

The segment focused on the Seattle public school district and stated that the district is required by law to identify homeless children.  Yet the state of Washington saw a 12% increase last year in homelessness from the previous year and the district identified 6% fewer cases.  Advocates for the homeless say that this is a deliberate attempt by school districts to avoid paying the costs that accompany identifying homeless students.

The video gave the appalling fact that two years ago, 33% of school districts in New York state failed to identify and report a single homeless child.

Funny how when the cameras show up, the districts all of a sudden become all smiles and hand shakes and these poor social workers finally hear "yes, ma'am."  Requiring homeless children to supply medical records, school transcripts, and two pieces of mail from a homeless mother without a mailing address is pretty despicable.

It is not the school district's fault, it is the federal government imposing unfunded mandates and it is every American that tolerates this level of poverty in America.
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The Great Kimchi Crisis of 2010

Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I find the prospect of a shortage of "napa cabbage and white radishes" equalizing a crisis to be hilarious.  Koreans like kimchi... they eat it a lot... they eat so much of it, they have to pay other countries to grow it for them because they are agriculturally incapable of growing all the kimchi they eat themselves.  

I guess I will be a good guest in Korea and do what I can to eat a little kimchi as possible so there is enough to go around for the all Koreans.  These people are all spice addicts.

All the spicy details can be found in an article in the Christian Science Monitor:

The skyrocketing price of Napa cabbage and white radishes has caused a kimchi crisis in South Korea. On Monday, the price of Napa cabbage here stood at about $10.20 per 2.5 kilograms, more than double last week’s price and more than six times last year’s rate.

The first thing to understand here is that kimchi (fermented cabbage) is more important to Koreans than ketchup is to Americans. In a country where the pickled dish is eaten at almost every meal, the price hike has disrupted the nation's eating habits.

Some restaurants have even begun charging for the condiment. Matriarchs are concerned that the crunch will affect the traditional kimchi-making season that begins next month. Even the president’s kitchen isn’t safe: Yonhap News reported that the Blue House switched from kimchi made from Napa cabbages to European cabbages because of the rising produce costs.

"This is the first time that cabbage prices have gone up so much," Park Young-koo, a researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, told the Wall Street Journal. "Since we have monitored the price, nothing like this has happened before."

Even as French-style bakeries and pizza joints have popped up across the country in recent years, kimchi has remained a mainstay in the Korean diet. There’s an old Korean saying that “kimchi is half of all food provisions.” While Koreans no longer bury it in jars underground during the winter, most households have a special refrigerator solely dedicated to kimchi.

In the Seoul area, there’s both the Kimchi Museum (where you can learn about the more than 100 varieties of kimchi) and the World Institute of Kimchi (where scientists are working to unravel the microbiology responsible for the dish’s sour taste). It was a point of national pride when freeze-dried kimchi traveled to space with Korea’s first astronaut in 2008.

Not surprisingly then, cabbage farming is a lucrative business in Korea. When I visited a cabbage patch near Taebaek mountain last summer, I was surprised to find out how seriously farmers took protecting the rows of green heads from thieves.

Korean farmers tend to yield 250,000 tons of Napa cabbage annually. A record-breaking wet summer has destroyed many cabbage crops this year, transforming acres of verdant bulbs to rotting mush. Typhoon Kompasu further devastated crops that had managed to survive the rains. Only 150,000 tons of Napa cabbage are expected to be harvested this year.

On Friday, the Blue House announced sweeping plans to counter the skyrocketing produce prices. The government will temporarily eliminate the 30 percent tariff on Napa cabbages and 27 percent tariff on white radishes. Additionally, the Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corporation will import 100 tons of cabbage and 50 tons of radishes from China this month, the first time a Korean government agency has imported produce directly...

Dang, at $10.25 per 2.5kg maybe I should switch my line of work to cabbage farmer.
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Koreans Might Not Be Dog's Best Friend

South Korea receives much criticism from the rest of the developed world for the still widely accepted practice of eating gaegogi (개고기) or "dog meat".  I did not know how common it was (mostly among older men) before coming here, but it is widespread.

I understand the argument made that dogs have higher emotions and intellects than other commonly eaten animals like chickens and cows.  Dogs also have always had a special relationship with humanity, "man's best friend," and eating dog is almost seen as tantamount to cannibalism.

Last year I was given the chance to try bosintang (보신탕), the Korean soup made from dog meat.  At the time my line of thinking was that it is a cultural tradition and local custom in Korea to eat dog meat, so I would try it once to have the experience.  It was disgusting.  Even if it tasted decent I would still never be able to like it because I object to how the dogs are killed before being prepared and served (they are hung and then beaten to death to best tenderize the meat).

Now there is an article in the Korea Times about how commonly dogs are being casually discarded by their owners.  Is the value of a dog's life in Korea viewed lower than by peoples of other countries?  Maybe...

The number of small dogs found abandoned reached about 12,000 between January and August this year, among which 1,208 were Maltese followed by 1,125 shih tzu and 730 Yorkshire Terriers, among others. 

Jindo dogs topped the large-dog category with 284 followed by 104 Golden Retrievers and 44 Siberian Huskies. Most of them were found in Eunpyeong, Mapo, Songpa and Seodaemun, where residents moved to other places. 

Some pet owners easily abandon their companions once their “craze” for a pet fades, according to experts. “For example, Siberian Huskies originate from the far northern hemisphere, which does not suite the Korean climate. The dogs suffer from hair loss, lethargy and other health problems while owners easily get disappointed,” Prof. Hwang Cheol-yong of the Seoul National University told Yonhap News. 

Animal shelters conduct mercy killing of abandoned pets unless the owner shows up within 10 days from the notice, while a few very lucky ones are adopted. 

Many experts said more local administrations should implant a microchip with information about the pet owner so that people take complete responsibility for their animal companions and not treat them like casual toys. At present, Seongnam City in Gyeonggi Province has implemented such a program.

There are many pet shops in my city with cute little dogs in the windows.  I see skinny Korean girls giggling at them all the time thinking about how cute it would be to have one and walk around with it in their purse.  I think they treat the purchase of a dog like the purchase of a new cell phone.  Like it is only a two year contract and then you can get a shinier and more entertaining one.

Dogs are also not really suitable for the Korean lifestyle.  Koreans work and go to school the most in the OECD and take few vacations.  They do not spend much time at home.  Additionally, they live in apartments and dogs need to go outside to be walked and to use the bathroom multiple times a day.  I am sure that Koreans underestimate this and do not appreciate the gravity of taking on a twelve to eighteen year commitment.

Absolutely, these dogs should be planted with microchips that contain their owners information.  People need to take responsibility for these animals or at the very least find them a new home if they are unable to continue caring for them.  Also, if they are in fact genuinely lost animals, they can be returned to their homes and spared the grief of the owner's looking and worrying about them.
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You Could Get With That

Special thanks to Marmot's Hole for showing me this commercial by Korean automotive maker, KIA.  I have never seen it before, but apparently friends back in the states are telling me it is not new.  But I have not watched American television in almost two years, so it is new to me.  Hilarious!

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South Korea Pwns Competition At World Cyber Games

I will admit I have never heard of this competition before now, but it is a growing event and it had its 10th anniversary this year.  Anyways, Korea mopped up there... and I guess I am posting this to state I am not surprised.  Koreans play computer games like its their job... and for some of them, it is...

South Korea has won the title of grand champion for the third straight year at the Olympics of the video game world.

Four gold medals were awarded to South Korean gamers Sunday at the 10th annual World Cyber Games Grand Final, a four-day contest in Los Angeles with more than 400 competitors from 58 countries.

South Korea previously dominated at the grand finals in Chengdu, China, and Cologne, Germany. This year's winning South Korean gold medallists were Young-Ho (Flash) Lee in StarCraft, Jae-Min (Knee) Bae for Tekken 6, Sung-Sik (ReMinD) Kim for Warcraft III and the three-man Sanarae team of Young-Ho Jeon, Hyun-Sub Kim and Tae-Kyung Park for Lost Saga.

Gamers from the United States weren't far behind South Korea, with three gold medals. Earning the accolade was the five-member CounterLogic team for League of Legends, the six-man AmeriMiX team for Quake Wars Online and Alec (Acai28) Castillo for Guitar Hero 5. Castillo bested a player from the United Kingdom on Rush's The Spirit of Radio in the final round.

"It's a really fun song," he said after Sunday's closing ceremonies. "I beat him at the last second."

Players who previously qualified at regional competitions held across the globe faced off for tournament-style matches in 13 games for more than $250,000 US in prize money, as well as televisions, netbooks and other gear.

The five-member NaVi team from Ukraine toppled a team from Denmark to take $25,000 US for dominating in the first-person shooter Counter-Strike.

Other gold medallists were Fernando (Pantaneiro) Rogoski of Brazil for Carom3D, Charlie (Tenshii) Elliott of Australia for Asphalt 5, Kevin (daimonde) Santner of Germany for FIFA 10, David (d.Daveyskills) Kelly of the United Kingdom for Forza Motorsport 3 and Kalle (Frostbeule) Moertlund Videkull of Sweden forTrackMania Nations Forever.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/10/04/cyber-games-winners.html#ixzz11UHK8yCu

Here is a video of the opening ceremonies if you are curious what it is like to participate in international video game competitions.

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Remember Swine Flu? You Weren't Helping

If you were unfortunate enough to live in South Korea last year during the swine flu scare, you had to put up with a lot of bad science and quasi fear mongering in the public school system.  Childrens' temperatures were taken every day, teachers were forced to wear masks, anyone who sneezed was sent home on the spot, and schools were being continuously doused with special chemicals.

Then there was the hand sanitizer.  Lots and lots of hand sanitizer.  I had bottles of hand sanitizer shoved in my face at least five times a day.  I was required to put some on the second I walked onto the school grounds.

I already knew this, because it is should be common sense to everyone, but antibacterial soap and hand sanitizers are effective at killing bacteria... not viruses.  Bacteria and viruses are different things, and antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizers do nothing to stop viruses.  Swine flu is a virus.  I tried explaining this to a couple Koreans last year, but to no avail.

Some alcohol based hand sanitizers claim to kill viruses, but it turns out it does nothing to stop the spread of airborne viruses like swine flu.

Article in the LA Times:

Spoiler alert: If the presence of all those alcohol-based hand sanitizers makes you feel safe from disease, skip this blog post.

The sanitizers – Purell, Germ-X and the like – started popping up everywhere last year following the outbreak of the H1N1 “swine flu” virus. But new research out of the University of Virginia finds that they are of no particular use in warding off the flu. They also failed to ward off rhinovirus, a major cause of the common cold.

The researchers, led by Dr. Ronald B. Turner, tested the sanitizers in real-world conditions. They asked 116 volunteers to carry around a sanitizer with “enhanced antiviral activity” and use it every three hours while they were awake. Another group of 96 volunteers followed their usual routines.

Researchers tracked them for 10 weeks, collecting specimens once a week to test for flu and rhinovirus. Additional samples were taken whenever a study participant complained of cold or flu-like symptoms.

It turned out that sanitizer users developed 12 flu infections per 100 volunteers, compared with 15 cases of flu per 100 volunteers in the group that didn’t do anything special. In addition, there were 42 cases of rhinovirus per 100 volunteers among the sanitizer users, versus 51 for the control group. Neither difference was statistically significant.

The researchers surmise that hand transmission is less important for these viruses than previously thought. Perhaps public health officials should pay more attention to how these viruses spread through the air, they said.

Previously, Turner and colleagues had established that alcohol-based sanitizers removed rhinovirus from hands better than soap and water.

The results were presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Boston. The study was funded by the Dial Corp., which makes hand sanitizers and old-school soap.

The study was funded by the Dial Corp.  So it is ironic that they published findings that would hurt the sales of their own products.

I first heard about this on the Colbert Report.  Check out this clip, this was one of the best threat downs I've ever seen on his show.  Some funny stuff.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
ThreatDown - Record Breaking Gays, Koalas & Purell<a>
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

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Korean News Agencies Either Hate Us Or Cannot Do Math

Special thanks to Brian in Jeollanamdo for finding all the articles on this issue.

A new report from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology was submitted to the National Assembly giving some statistics on the dropout rate of native English speaking teachers in South Korea.  Brian showed that it was covered by five different new sources and their facts and statistics were all over the place and wildly exaggerated.

These misleading and contradictory statistics are being used to make NESTs look bad, so I think they deserve some special consideration.  I do no have the report, and nobody else seems to have a link to it.  I feel like these numbers being thrown out there are slanderous, and it would be nice if this report got a translation into English and shown to the public if it is going to be reported in English speaking Korean newspapers.

First, from the Times we have this:

According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, the number of foreign teachers who failed to complete their working contracts last year rose to 425 from 283 a year ago. This year as well, 252 native English speakers have already left schools as of July, according to Rep. Kim Se-yeon of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) who asked the ministry to submit the statistics to the National Assembly.

... 

The number of language assistant teachers at elementary and secondary schools increased to 8,473 this year from 7,631 in 2009 and 5,115 in 2008, meaning about 80 percent of schools nationwide have foreign teachers this year, a sharp surge compared with 48 percent in 2007. 

I thought Koreans liked math.  This is very simple to figure out.

425/7,631 = a dropout rate of 5.5% for 2009.
283/5,115 = a dropout rate of 5.5% for 2008.

The rate of native English speakers failing to complete their one year contracts stands at 5.5%.  That is what it was for two years in a row, and what it probably will end up being this year or close to.

Real quick, why do teachers leave their contracts early?  Lots of reasons, here are some common ones.

1) Placed in schools that mistreat them.
2) Placed in living conditions (apartment or neighborhood) that are intolerable.
3) Medical emergency preventing them from working.
4) Family or personal emergency that requires them to return home.
5) They find another job.

Quitting is also a very difficult choice for a native teacher and not taken lightly.  If we quit our jobs before the end of our contract, we are instantly homeless, jobless, without healthcare, might have to repay our flight reimbursement to come here, without the money for a flight reimbursement home, without a job reference, and stranded without help in a country that we no longer can legally exist in.  This is not something that native teachers want to do.

When you look at the range of what could possibly happen to an individual that moves halfway around the world and places themselves in a country where they do not know the culture or the language, I say these numbers are pretty good.  Let us pretend we hired about 10,000 Korean 20 or 30 somethings and took them away from their homes and families and sent them to live in the United States.  They would not know how to speak English and they had to give up all their familiar creature comforts and habits (maybe like eating kimchi).  What percent of them do you think would willingly quit and move back home?  I think perhaps more than 5%.

It is also important to know that they also have increased the number of native teachers in South Korea from 5,115 in 2008 to 8,473 in 2010.  That is a 65% increase.  However, how many additional EPIK/GEPIK/SMOE support staff people has the ministry of education hired to help the dramatically increased volume of teachers?  I know for a fact the number of foreign teachers in my city has doubled in the last two years and the support staff to handle all of our questions, problems, and concerns has not increased by a single person.  This means that the existing people are expected to handle twice the volume of work from just two years ago.  This can lead to native teachers in bad situations not getting the help or attention they need, which can in some situations force them to just give up and go home.

Now, Korean English news sources have been fudging the numbers which I have proven are simple to determine.
The next article was published in the Yonhap news.

More than a third of the native-speaking English teachers in South Korea quit after six months or so on the job, challenging the effectiveness of language immersion programs installed nationwide, a report said Wednesday.

The article gave no numbers and it was only two paragraphs.  This is horrible journalism.  How could they possibly say that a third of all native English teachers quit after six months on the job?  The reason is because they are just wrong and cannot understand the concept of a percentage of a percent.

The Korean Herald gives another statistic and it is closer with the Korean Times.

Some 950 teachers, or 4.7 percent, cancelled their employment contract in mid-semester within the first year and 34 percent among them (as of this July) quit during their first six months, according to the survey.

Now... where did 950 teachers come from if the Times article above says 425?  This must mean the 950 teachers who quit are 4.7 percent of the total number of teachers (public and private) in Korea for 2009.

950 / X = 0.047  or X = 20,212

BINGO!  There apparently was about 20,212 native English speaking teachers in the country last year.  So, 4.7 percent of them cancelled their contract.  And 34% of 950 teachers quit in their first six months.

950 x 0.34 = 323 teachers

The third crazy article was from the JoongAng Daily:

More than a third of native-speaking English teachers in South Korea quit after six months or so on the job, challenging the effectiveness of language immersion programs installed nationwide, a report said Wednesday. 

The report submitted to the National Assembly by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology showed 42.4 percent of native instructors last year ended their contract after six months, up from 34 percent in 2008. 

These numbers make absolute no sense.  Once again... only weird percentages were given and no actual numbers, they are either talking about public school teachers or all public and private school teachers combined.  Let us do the math for both...

7,631 x 0.42 = 3,205 public school teachers who quit their jobs in 2009
20,212 x 0.42 = 8,489 public and hagwon teachers who quit their jobs in 2009

Seriously?  Does the JoonAng Daily and Yonhap news seriously think that 8,489 native English speakers who were brought here broke their contracts?  Either these news agencies are trying to make foreigners look bad, or else they are morons.

The last article is from The Hankyoreh:

The report submitted by the MEST to the ruling Grand National Party lawmakers showed that as of July 2010, 66.1 percent of native English teachers ended their contract in six months, without completing their one-year contract period. The number of teachers leaving their job halfway through a contract has increased rapidly from 46 percent in 2008 and 57.6 percent in 2009. The average rate over last three years is 56.4 percent, which means one of two native teachers left school before the contract’s expiration.

WOW!  This says that 66% percent of native English teachers ended their contract in six moths.  That means that the number could actually be WAY higher by the end of the year.  It could potentially reach 100% if we give all those unqualified native speakers enough time to quit their jobs.

This percentage of "66" must be a percentage of a percentage and it is being deliberately misused to make foreign teachers look bad.  It is pretty offensive how much of the Korean news media hates foreigners and has no ethical problems printing untrue and damaging information about us.

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Teen Smoking on the Rise in Korea

Teen smoking in Korea appears to be on the rise according to a new survey.

The number of heavy-smoking secondary schoolchildren continues to rise. 

According to an online survey of adolescents' health published on Thursday by Grand National Party lawmaker Lim Hye-kyu, the daily smoking rate -- the ratio of smokers who have smoked every day for the past 30 days -- rose sharply from 3.9 percent in 2005 to 6.5 percent in 2008.

Lim, a member of the National Assembly Education, Science and Technology Committee, got the data from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. 

Nine percent of boys smoked every day in 2008, up from 5.3 percent in 2005. In comparison, the ratio of those who smoked for more than one day in the past 30 days grew only slightly from 11.8 percent to 12.8 percent. In other words, the ratio of continuous smokers increased higher than that of occasional smokers.

Some 2.8 percent smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day in 2008, up from 2.1 percent in 2005. Of the students surveyed, 10.3 percent of boys and 6.5 percent of girls in 2008 said they had smoked before entering middle school. Only 50.8 percent said they had received antismoking education more than once a year.

The survey was conducted among about 80,000 students at 800 nationwide middle and high schools.

I am impressed with the survey size of 80,000 students at over 800 middle and high schools nationwide.  The statistics are probably dead on.

A possible explanation why smoking is on the rise could be PC Bang usage by teens.  Kids go to internet cafes and sit there for hours with no parental supervision.  There are lots of older people able to purchase cigarettes for them and smoking kills your appetite and keeps your mind focused, two things hard-core gamers want.  Likewise, if a child comes home smelling like cigarettes, it is very easy to lie and say they were not smoking but just picked up the smell at a PC Bang.

Cigarettes are also inexpensive compared to Europe and North America, with a pack usually costing less than $2 American.  There is also a lot of cigarette use by celebrities in movies and television, which always want to emulate.  Plus it seems like every man in the country starts smoking once he joins the army for his mandatory service, so teens who have a father or an older brother who smoke are probably more likely to get a head start on their inevitable bad habit.

We need to start a negative campaign against teen smoking.  I'll start with this.

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KPOP Korral - [Kara] - Lupin

Kara (카라) has five members, Park Gyuri, Han Seung-yeon, Goo Ha-ra, Nicole, and Kang Jiyoung.  They are signed with Daesung Entertainment and they name of their group comes from the Greek word "chara"(χαρά).  Chara means literally "joy", but the group interpreted it to mean "swear melody".

Kara has been one of the most prolific and successful groups of the last two years.  The have had numerous hit singles including "Honey," "Pretty girl," "Wanna," and "Mister."  Their most recent number one hit is "Lupin" (루팡) and it has been one of the biggest songs of the year.

The live performances for this song were pretty entertaining to watch as well.  This is my favorite one.