A Map for Non-Korean Bundang Residents

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I started this map in early 2013. Many in the Bundang and Yongin area have contributed to it. It’s publicly editable so please feel free to add locations.

It’s also not limited to Bundang, so if you know good locations anywhere in Korea, please add them.

Super-Badass Train Will Connect Seoul to Busan in 90 Minutes

From the Korea Times, a new train is being tested with a top speed of 430km/hour (267miles/hour)(!!!).  For my North Carolina readers, of which there are at least two, that’s Asheville to Raleigh in one hour.  Fuck. Yes.

The super-badass looking HEMU-400X is coming to Korea if it passes government testing.

The story says government testing will be thorough due to unforeseen problems with Korea’s current high-speed train, the KTX.  From the article:

In particular, the latest “KTX-Sancheon,’’ which was built through the country’s own technologies, suffered various mishaps including derailment and stoppages although there were no casualties.

The KTX currently tops out at 300km/hour (186m/hour). That’s not too shabby on its own, though I’d sure hate to be on one of those derailments!

Speaking of derailments, the high-fallutin’ US plan to introduce high-speed trains appears to have fallen off the tracks without ever moving forward.  Guess I might have to sign up for a car-share program if I don’t want to blow my savings when I get back from Korea.

Bundang Line Opens Stops in Yongin

Three new stops opened on the Bundang Line this week recently, part of a plan to eventually connect to Line 1 in Suwon.

The new(ish) stops are Guseong, Singal and Giheung, opening up Yongin as a convenient new area for Bundang residents to work and play.

The Bundang Line is in yellow on the pictured map.

On a related note, Popular Gusts dug up a 1988 article about Seoul’s plans for the metro. Notice that 24 years ago, Seongnam was very peripheral.

--Daniel Daugherty

Thanks to Our Readers! Here’s the 맙소사! Year in Review

Thanks to our readers, 2011 was a huge success for us!

Extra special thanks to Jen, who’s been a content machine.

Check out the link below and see a summary for the year.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

–Daniel Daugherty

There’s Only One Way to Settle This: A Brew-Off!

Ah, Christmas season! The one time of the year when your sloppy weekend binge-drinking can take on a classy appearance just by having a tree and/or Santa hat in the room. Or is that just how I do it?  It must have been my mentality this past weekend when I showed up at the upscale Craftworks Taphouse & Bistro for an old-fashioned brew-off.

The three entries in the pale ale competition, in order from number one to number three.

The crew at Homebrew Korea got with Seoul’s overnight craft-beer landmark to compare the size of their pale ales. The winning entrant would be produced commercially and sold on tap at Craftworks as Bukhansan Pale Ale.

I also can’t tell if this is clever marketing or outsourcing to avoid hiring a full-time brewmaster.  Either way, the real winners of this contest were the people who sipped away the afternoon with nary a Cass in sight.

Now, it being a pale ale contest, I didn’t expect too much in the way of innovation. Pale ale is generally like the American pilsner of microbrewing — a safe, reliably similar choice no matter what label is one the bottle. Additionally, the contest rules limited brewers in the variety of ingredients. The three beers in the contest pleasantly surprised me with their diversity.

I’ve attended a few events with the Homebrw crew before, so I wasn’t surprised by the high quality coming out of their club, but it was reassuring to drink something heavy, hoppy, and flavorful a week before Christmas, just like mom used to make.

Number one, brewed by Bill Miller, punched you in the face with hops as soon as it touched your tongue, then left your mouth feeling a bit dry. Like an abused housewife, I kept coming back for more. No wonder I left the place dazed and needing to lie down. Miller said it was meant to be a clone of Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, a valiant and noble mission if ever there was one.

Number two, brewed by Gord Sellar, was the most complex of the group. It smelled and tasted like a Christmas fruit basket decorated with flowers. Every sip brought a slightly different aroma and the beer’s character changed greatly as it warmed to room temperature. It was also unfiltered, which I think worked against it in the competition. Early pints were thick with yeast and hops.

Number three, brewed by Matt O’Dwyer, nobly attempted to match the Platonic ideal of a pale ale. It was an extremely drinkable balance of malty sweetness and a floral hop characteristic. This was a beer you could drink all day and never tire of the taste, although it would certainly make your belly feel full.

The winner was chosen by vote, with drinkers split between entries one and three.  Homebrew Korea’s club representatives then awarded victory to Bill Miller (number one). I’ve had his stuff before and can say he’s one hell of a brewer.

Daniel's smiling under that moustache.

The only losers are beer lovers, deprived of future encounters with the other two entries. After the way I staggered out of there, maybe that’s a good thing.

If you’re interested in attending future events with Homebrew Korea or Craftworks Taphouse, join them on Facebook, where you can RSVP for events. They are often restricted to members or limited to the first bunch of people to pay for tickets.

You can read a rather frank review of Craftworks Taphouse & Bistro over here. I heartily recommend the chorizo sandwich.

–Daniel Daugherty

In Seoul Public English Education, Everybody Loses — Again

Thanks to The Marmot’s Hole for the translation of this article.  Apparently, “students and parents preferred Korean instructors fluent in English over native speakers.”

Let’s just sidestep the issue of public education policy being left to parent and student surveys, rather than language and education experts. I kind of understand the policy decision to de-emphasize native speaking teachers as a key toward English proficiency for Korean students. Native teachers are very expensive to bring over. However, they are not the real problem. The real problem is an English education policy that mismanages personnel and fails to respect students’ needs, forcing parents to spend ever more money on the diminishing returns of a farcical hagwon industry. (Do I sound jaded and cynical, or what?)

Let’s address the elephant in the room, first. It’s apparent before you arrive in Korea that the vast majority of people TEFLing here are grossly un-qualified. Most haven’t even got a fly-by-night TEFL certification or any experience remotely related to teaching, let alone experience managing groups of children. Forget all the AIDS fear, drug testing and worries about “corrupting the youth” — most Korean kids are taught by under-qualified individuals. Yes, that included me when I worked at Avalon. (For those scoring at home, I no longer teach EFL.)

However, the wholesale sacking of mostly unqualified native teachers isn’t going to fix the problems with public English education in Seoul.  From what I can tell of friends’ and colleagues’ “work” schedules, the public EFL curriculum is a non-priority at many schools. They often go weeks without seeing a single class while student assemblies, test days and other events crowd English classes off the regular schedule. A common complaint on Facebook is, “the internet ran out of things to entertain me at work today.”

When these teachers do see the kids, it’s in groups of 30 or 40 who come once a week. Not a chance for anyone to form a rapport or give kids enough reps to justify having a native teacher on hand.

My own students describe public-school English as a one-size-fits-all failure. They lump kids together by age, not ability. This means kids who lived in Canada and can read classic novels in English sit next to kids who can’t pronounce a “z” sound or remember the days of the week. How is this helpful to either student? And remember, this is Korea, where saving face is a paramount concern woven into the fabric of the culture. Some kids will just be left behind by their own ingrained desire to avoid embarrassment. This is a public education policy that fails to respect the socio-cultural reality of 99.9 percent of students.

Dropping native English speaking teachers wholesale is also poor management of personnel assets. Yes, most are unqualified. However, for the few who are qualified and passionate about teaching, the public school setting is the only place that gives them flexibility and planning time to apply themselves properly, as well as a pay scale that respects experience and credentials.

Hagwon hiring standards, on the other hand, are bizarrely low throughout most of the industry. Teachers are replaceable cogs in a preset curriculum cleverly designed to take parents’ money. In most, any actual learning is a happy coincidence. Seoul students will now be deprived of the only qualified, enthusiastic EFL teachers and lessons they can hope to encounter. Unless …

This policy might help the hagwon industry since parents who want native speakers will still be able to demand it with their pocketbooks. Those public teachers who are qualified and enthusiastic will likely gravitate to the industry if they want to continue living in Korea.

However, unlike hagwon teachers, public teachers are used to having the flexibility in their curriculum to design effective lessons based on professional best practices: Lesson plans that integrate reading, speaking, listening and writing skills; and games to reinforce those lessons, keep kids engaged and make them think dynamically in their new language.

Hagwon parents don’t get anything like that for their money, nor do they demand it. As I’ve previously written, they demand more homework and bigger vocabulary lists, not creative lessons and teachers who make the language fun. Those bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teachers with any level of enthusiasm will become soulless TEFL zombies in most hagwons.

In the end, everybody loses. The education system will become even more dependent on hagwons and their flawed educational environments, good teachers will leave Korea or have their souls sucked out, bad teachers will proliferate the system even further, and the needs of children will continue to be ignored.  They’ll lose sleep and stress out over a bunch of classes that aren’t designed to teach them anything, for teachers who don’t care about them.

–Daniel Daugherty

Hagwons, Heli-Tiger Moms and Korean Suicide

When it comes to children and their quality of life, the heli-tiger hagwon moms never fail to amaze me in their seeming indifference toward the suffering of their children.

Working in the industry, I’ve seen firsthand the spirit-crushing results of their insatiable demand for more education: Long hours in hagwons; even longer hours of homework; kids passing out from lack of sleep; kids who have just stopped trying; kids who only put effort into cheating. I even had one student tell me she wished she had never been born because her life was a constant cycle of homework and test prep.

For the hapless hagwon owner, interactions with the heli-tiger moms are a regular, if slightly irritating, occurrence.  “My kid doesn’t have enough homework,” or “My child should be in a higher level,” are stereotypes to anyone who’s taught in a hagwon for a couple of months.  At my previous job, a mother had her kid secretly time teachers with a stopwatch, then asked for (and received!) a discount based on time not spent teaching.  All of these are perhaps justifiable.

After what I heard today, perhaps “seeming indifference” is giving too much credit to some of these moms.  We received a complaint over the phone that two fourth-grade children in a class together are coming home in “too good of a mood.”  Apparently we aren’t doing a good job as a hagwon because children are still happy after three hours in our classrooms.  (I’m as surprised as they are.)

Think of it:  The mothers of these two boys sat down at Tom n’ Tom’s for cappucinos and made a joint decision that their boys’ light-hearted moods warranted intervention.  How does this even come up in conversation?

Mom A: “Have you noticed anything odd about your boy, lately?”

Mom B: “I’ve noticed that he smiles when he comes home from academy. I think something might be wrong with his education. What kind of teacher leaves children in a good mood?  And what kind of academy allows such teaching methods to continue unchecked?”

Mom A: “It’s like you’re reading my mind!  Tuesdays and Thursdays, my boy’s got a hop in his step and a twinkle in his eye — unbecoming traits for the future CEO of Samsung.  I thought maybe I was doing something wrong at home, but clearly it’s the fault of his academy.  I will call them when I get home.  Happiness is all well and good for an executive at Doosan, but we’re not paying first-tier money for second-tier employment.  If nothing else, maybe we can get a discount.

In stroke of serendipity, Ask a Korean! is discussing the country’s notoriously high suicide rate this week, and that extends to youths as well.  I know correlation does not equal causation, but there’s enough evidence to put the theory forward.

–Daniel Daugherty

Scenes from Sin Bundang Opening Night

Wish I knew earlier — rides were free today. This brought out families and couples to take a ride on trains with no drivers. The overall experience was similar to Disney’s monorail, smooth and quiet.

One important thing to note is that the exit numbers at Gangnam have been changed.

–Daniel Daugherty

Scenes from Sin Bundang Opening Night

Wish I knew earlier — rides were free today. This brought out families and couples to take a ride on trains with no drivers. The overall experience was similar to Disney’s monorail, smooth and quiet.

One important thing to note is that the exit numbers at Gangnam have been changed.

–Daniel Daugherty

Sin Bundang Line Opens Today

After a few last-minute delays, Sin Bundang express subway line opened today, connecting Jeongja to Gangnam in 16 minutes. Anyone worried that Seoul was too far away from Bundang will now have a speedy option to complement the extensive bus coverage already available to Bundang residents.

–Daniel Daugherty