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

Quail Eggs Boiled in Soy Sauce

This post is pretty tame, considering my last food-related post involved eating a live, dismembered octopus, but I felt like adding to my brief history with quail eggs.

In general, I’m not the biggest fan of eggs. Unless they’re runny and smothered in Tabasco, I avoid them, especially bwhen they’re boiled.  Today was different.

I saw a bag of quail eggs boiled in soy sauce (메추리 알), all brown and salty looking, and made an impulse buy. I’m glad I did.

When I opened the bag I got a big whiff of soy sauce. The eggs were drowning in the stuff. With their brown color, they looked pickled, not boiled, and I  expected a salty flavor.

I got a surprise instead. The egg tasted sweet. I quickly grabbed another — handful.

Aside from the sweetness, the best part is the way they stay moist all the way through, even the yolks.

The one other time I had pickled quail eggs, I thought I’d eaten a mouthful of sawdust.  Not only were the yolks dry but they were quick-acting — I wondered if a cyanide capsule would respond as quickly as the desertification of my oral cavity once I bit into the yolk.

I doubt I’ll crave them when I sit down to watch TV, the way I do with, say, tortilla chips.  They were, however, a change of pace from my usual snacking options, limited as they are by my Western, first-world concept of snack food.

If you’re entertaining in your apartment, hiking, or going to a baseball game, quail eggs are a solid alternative to squid jerky, with an added bonus: Your breath won’t smell too bad (but your farts might!).

–Daniel Daugherty

WTF: Emergency Acupuncture

This was the scene on the train ride from Chuncheon to Seoul. Note that the resolution hides the true hideousness of this woman's feet.

Jen and I were on the train, next to a young lady who dramatically grasped her head and/or covered her mouth for most of the trip. We thought she had motion sickness or maybe a migraine. Whatever it was, she finally decided the pain was too much to bear.

Staff from our tour group showed up en mass with an emergency four-pack of acupuncture needles.  They removed her high-heeled shoes — natch — revealing two of the ugliest feet I’ve ever seen.  Her left ankle had a swollen lump the size of a tennis ball.  (I’m not even joking about her feet.  They looked like they’d been run over by an 18-wheeler towing a U-Haul trailer.)

Tearing my eyes away from her wretched pedal extremities, I watched as a young woman hammered each needle in with the precision and confidence of someone who’s had plenty of practice, one in each hand and foot.  I should also note that the lady receiving the treatment was relaxed and, dare I say it, eager for acupuncture.  Afterward they propped her feet up and let her rest, before coming back and re-sticking the needles in her arms.

Now, I don’t want to minimize or downplay the lady’s pain and I sincerely hope she continues to get treatment — any kind of treatment that works — for whatever was causing. However, as with most things in Korea, I’m now left with an exasperating number of questions:

1. Is acupuncture considered legitimate medical science in Korea?
2. Is it an officially sanctioned and overseen medical practice?
3. If so, are certified first-aid responders required to learn how to use an emergency four-pack of needles?
4. What is the training regimen like?  Is there a pamphlet or video, as with CPR certification?
5. Are migraine headaches and/or swollen ankles generally considered worthy of receiving first-aid treatment in any country?

I hope my tablet’s camera captured the scene effectively.  Unfortunately, the crappy resolution doesn’t show the needles, but trust me, they’re there!

–Daniel Daugherty

Update: Judging by this picture Jen took on the train this morning, the lady may have been in pain all day long.

She looks to have been in pain all day. Though it may just be that stressful sitting next to Daniel on a train.

It’s Alive!

Today, after more than a year of build-up, I went on a mission to the fish market in Noryanjin, to eat that staple of every foreigner’s Seoul itinerary, san nak-ji — live baby octopus.

The sign to Noryanjin Fish Market

Like roller-coasters and Filipino lady-boys, the actual experience didn’t justify the nervous terror I’ve nurtured since resolving to go for the experience. While it was nothing to be afraid of, it was a dining experience unlike any I’ve ever had.

My friends and I stopped at a market stall and split one octopus three ways, so as to minimize the financial hit in the event that we found it too disgusting to finish. It cost 3,000 won (or there’s a deal: four for 10,000 won) and we took it in a plastic shopping bag to a little restaurant. We knelt on floor mats at a low table. The octopus was taken to the back and sliced up while we received a miserly selection of side dishes, both of which we were handsomely overcharged for.

Daniel looks down at the fish market.

In the time it took me to down two anticipatory shots of soju, our unfortunate entree was presented in an angered mass of slime and writhing. At least this was how I felt as I braced myself to go through with taking a bite of it. I’ve been told that eating san nak-ji is risky because the tentacles may stick to your throat on the way down, leading to:

• Hilarity for your friends

• Justified octopodal homicide from beyond the grave

(Note: The above are not necessarily mutually exclusive.)

My companions and I grabbed chopsticks and tried our best to pick up the angry writhing slimy tentacles, full of anger and writhing, with pitiful results. The tentacles were in “survival” mode, stuck fast to the serving dish.

The view from above the fish market.

Even after a year in Korea, I’m laughably feeble with the flat metal chopsticks found in restaurants. The tentacles exploited this weakness, buying a few more precious moments in their state of composition. One particularly determined segment of suckers rolled over the edge of the dish and stuck to its underside. I swear I heard it chuckle.

Daniel pays for a single octopus.

"I finally got him."

After enjoying my struggles for a couple of minutes, one of the wait staff gave me a pair of cheap wooden chopsticks usually included with convenience-store ramyeon. With my superior tools, I felt like Perseus as he approached Medusa with his mirror shield — fearful but confident in my chosen strategy. I had been told by many Koreans that the only way to prevent untimely death by choking on live octopus tentacles is to NEVER. STOP. CHEWING. (Nobody suggested that I might consider avoiding the dish altogether.)

At last, with a squirming, rage-filled section of tentacle pinched in my chopsticks, I dipped it in sesame oil, opened my mouth wide with my tongue to one side, and chewed it with my molars.  It was irritatingly chewy, just like eating cooked octopus, and when I finally managed to swallow it I was ready for more.

My friends seemed to like it as well. The only piece we didn’t eat was the one with its eyeballs still intact — and I reckon its brain as well — because who wants to chew on a pair of living eyes?

-Daniel Daugherty, photos by Jen Pace

"I'm pretty sure he's aware of what's just taken place."

Some Weekend Links

Thought I’d share a few links I found while checking my “Korea” news feed this morning.

The Waygook Effect posted a “Top” 10 list of the worst English dialogue videos used in Korean public schools.  Believe it or not, they get weirder than this one:

Barack Obama continues to wax hopeful about Korean education standards.  He recently praised Korean students‘ math and science achievements.

Quoth the prez:

In South Korea, teachers are known as nation builders. I think it’s time we treated our teachers with the same level of respect right here in the United States of America.

No one who’s ever set foot in a hagwon would say that.

As for their apparent superiority at science?  Whatever.  Americans might be too stupid to understand evolution, but Koreans still believe in fan death.

-Daniel Daugherty

Video: Getting Sick in Korea

Too true …

-Daniel Daugherty

Racism, Robots and Marketing: TEFL in Korea

I always joke that my employer, Avalon English, is like the Fawlty Towers of educational institutions.  All matters related to product quality, education and worker efficiency eventually come down to marketing and the school’s image.  The company will fall all over itself to maintain or improve an image of quality and prestige, often sacrificing both in the process.

E-Writing is a fine example.  Some parents pay extra money for the privilege of having their children submit weekly essays via the Internet.  I am required to hand out semi-related worksheets to all students who aren’t enrolled in the program, part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to get Mom and Dad to ask “What’s this E-Writing all about?”  This is no doubt touted as a great technological whizz-bang fix-all for their child’s poor ability to organize thoughts with a pencil.  After all, it uses computers!

What parents actually pay for is the privilege for their children to type into a box and click “submit.”  There are few formatting options and the only thing that seems to matter is word count, which is automatically tracked.  There’s  not even a basic spell-check function.

After submitting, the essays are read by an anonymous, likely underpaid, individual in the Philippines.  Though I’m the writing teacher, I cannot access the essays.  You figure it out.

With that in mind, you shouldn’t be too shocked by the latest technological “advancement” coming to ESL classrooms in Korea.  Thirty ESL “robots” are now employed as teachers in Daegu.  Obligatory:  The Simpsons did it!

"No, Juho. 'Linguo IS dead.'"

The “robot” — technically, it’s a remote-controlled automotive computer shaped like a person — reflects another cultural idiosyncrasy tied to marketing:  The preference for white European features.  Like the essays I’ll never grade, it’s controlled by a teacher in the Philippines, but it displays a white female on a monitor intended to be its face.

It's only a matter of time until students throw food at Engkey.

No pun intended, here’s the money quote from Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist the Korean Institute for Science and Technology:  “Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea.”

The fact of the matter is that there are ESL teachers around the world who are much more qualified than I am.  However, skin color trumps all.  Are Koreans racist against non-white people?  I’m not sure.  It’s more likely that hagwons just want to promote an image of American-ness, which they perceive as white, blonde-haired and square-chinned.

The JoongAng Daily‘s take seems to confirm my impressions:

The biggest source of the current problem with foreign teachers lies in English-teaching institutes that hire teachers without careful review. Many profit-driven institutes have been employing as many Caucasian English teachers as possible without conducting thorough checks because the marketing benefits from such practice outweigh the long-term side effects.

Claims of racist hiring practices are common among foreigners and it’s usually attributed to widespread racism among Korean people.  It doesn’t help this perception when we all have to provide photographs with our resumes.  Whether or not the racism is conscious or systemic, it’s real.  Check out this excerpted letter Khadijah Anderson received from a recruiter:

Thanks for your email. I’m a former black teacher so whenever we get black applicants I like to cut right to the chase. At the moment we only have one position in Ulsan that is open to hiring black teachers. You’ve been here a while so you know the discrimination that exists in Korea.  Once in a while we get Seoul positions for black candidates but it is a rarity.

I do think there’s a reasonable expectation of conscious individual racism here because this is one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries on the planet, but this doesn’t reflect my — admittedly white — personal experience.  In my Avalon branch we peaked at eight foreign teachers.  Of those eight, four were non-white and included individuals of Japanese, Pakistani, Argentinian and black ethnic backgrounds.  Whether any of us are actually qualified to teach English is another matter.

It looks like the Korean government might be trying to lead a change toward meritocracy, though.  Per Brian Deutsch, EPIK, a program for hiring public school teachers, seeks to hire Indian foreign teachers.

-Daniel Daugherty

Update: Fixed the Linguo photograph, which wasn’t loading.  I also changed the wording around Khadijah Anderson’s letter, which made it sound like she was accusing all Koreans of being racist.  To clarify, the letter was a surprise because she has had a positive personal experience as a black female in Korea.

Update 2: Corrected spelling of Ms. Anderson’s first name

Learning Korean

After months of putting it off, my company finally offered the free Korean lessons I’m contractually promised to receive.  At first I got excited, full of the hope that awkward exchanges in stores and restaurants would become a thing of the past.  Then I had my first couple  of lessons and began looking at my textbooks.  Now I’m not so confident.

Korean is a particularly difficult language for someone who only speaks English, especially learning vocabulary.  Certain consonant-vowel combinations pop up frequently enough — or they just all start to sound alike to my untrained ears — that within minutes of “learning” a new word or words, I begin mangling them up, combining the wrong syllables.

The other thing I find difficult is listening to people speak.  Korean is spoken very quickly, to the point where words don’t sound quite like their phonetic representation says they should.  I’ve been told by my friend Shoko, who’s pretty good at picking up Korean, that I should pronounce consonants very softly except where indicated, so maybe I’ll start hearing things better once I start saying them better.

The weirdest thing about the language, though, is the social hierarchy embedded within its rules.  I’ve heard it said that a language is a point of view — after all, you can’t think very far beyond what you can express.  The Korean language preserves old-fashioned social roles through honorifics and specific words for use by specific people.  For example, an older brother and a younger brother are addressed differently; if you are a girl, you have a whole other set of words for addressing certain family members; and of course, older people automatically receive honorifics of respect and subservience.

Then again, there are some pleasant surprises, too.  After talking to my local barista, I learned that the Korean language has a joke title roughly translating to “That Guy”: Jaeng-i. When added to a verb, it becomes a sort of friendly observation of a person’s behavior.  For example, while nobody in America wants to be called “tattle-tale,” go-ja jil jaeng-i (“The Guy Who Tells”)  is not exactly a complaint but rather a recognition of what that person does.

These social cues seem strange to me as an English speaker, especially the male-/female-only words.  But what about honorifics for elders?  Outside of the hospitality industry, do we even use “sir” and “madam” anymore?  I notice them used by rural youth in southern states to address their elders, but it always sounds alien and backward to my ears, even after 15 years living in North Carolina.  They certainly doesn’t appear in mainstream culture, like TV and movies, except maybe as points of emphasis.

Maybe I’m overlooking something.  I pretty much only speak middle-class white English.  What social cues do we have in everyday English that I’m not thinking of?

-Daniel Daugherty