Feb 20
By Lee Scott
When we arrived at the police station, the minivan’s owner had gone out to have dinner. They called him and asked him to come back as soon as he could. When he came in, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t recognize him. He was the owner of the vehicle but not the driver. The minivan was used for his business (Chinese imports). When I found out he could speak Mandarin, he and I were able to converse much more freely (I speak Mandarin much better than Korean). He was telling me a little about his business and kept apologizing over and over for the situation. I told him that of course he needn’t apologize since he hadn’t been driving, nor had he even known that his employees were mis-using his vehicle. One of the other police sergeants in the office scolded him about the siren and PA system. Apparently he had the appropriate permits for both, but the two young men who were the culprits had been mis-using them as well. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” the cop told the man.
Feb 20
By Achilles
“I don’t like teaching English!” said “Sally” to the class. “Matt” said the same. And then “Lisa.” And so it continued for an entire week.
Korean middle and high school English teachers from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) might be the most miserable people on the peninsula.
The big news for expats recently is the forthcoming move to cut hundreds of native English teachers from secondary schools here in Seoul. SMOE officials have cited budgetary issues coupled with “research” “showing” that having a native English teacher does little to improve English language skills in secondary students, as reasons for the shift in policy.
Feb 20
By The Expat
This morning’s early stroll around Itaewon started out peacefully. I parked my car and walked up what for lack of a better name is commonly referred to as ‘Homo-Hill’, past the “Why Not?” bar and “SoHo”. Some local heavies were cleaning out a small restaurant at the top of the hill that recently went out of business (or was ‘forced’ to close). As they finished up, the only things remaining in the empty space were a few posters on the wall.
I rounded the bend, approached the top of ‘Hooker Hill’ and began the climb downwards. A local working girl was standing near the front door of her bar, smoking a cigarette. Two large Nigerian men were walking up the hill, approaching the girl’s shop and calling out to her. She quickly ran inside and closed the door.
Feb 13
By David Wills
During my three years in South Korea, there wasn’t much the locals would say to me about China that wasn’t overwhelmingly negative, bordering on the outright racist. Even the very youngest students would tell me about the “dirty” Chinese, who sit around watching each other defecate, stopping only to eat babies or steal something from Korea. Of course, Korea isn’t exactly a land of open-mindedness and enthusiasm for its neighbours. Even by the standards of Asia – where animosity between nations is commonplace – Korea is notable for its xenophobia, its paranoia, and its sheer contempt for people that look, act, or speak differently to those of the one true bloodline.
Yet it surprised me when I arrived in China and found that the opinion of Chinese people towards Korea and Koreans (and I’ll state now that I’m definitely referring to South Korea, rather than China’s ally up North) was unanimously positive. Now, I can’t pretend to have taken a sampling of the population as a whole, but I have taught in China for a year and a half, and could count more than five hundred people having told me about their fondness for all things Korean.
Feb 13
By Lee Scott
It was a little after midnight when we heard a loud police siren coming. A black minivan came tearing down the street, headed to where we were standing near the kebab truck. The driver was veering toward crowds of people in the pedestrian street and blasting the van’s police siren. We couldn’t understand why the van had a siren or what they were doing. The driver slammed on the brakes right in front of a crowd of young men and women who scattered in a panic. All the while the guy in the passenger seat of the minivan was laughing and shouting imprecations at the pedestrians over a P.A. built into the siren system.
Feb 09
By Earnest Lee
Have you ever thought about how weird life can get? Hoping from one culture to another as we have you get a chance to see what useful fictions people live by. At the forefront of sexual politics many have called dogma surrounding marriage and monogamy the biggest illusion and our most cherished useful fiction. What people do at all costs to keep a failing marriage together is really beyond me but sometimes, every once in a while we get a glimpse. Coming to grace us here in Seoul is White Box Theater’s production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”. This amazing modern classic broke ground in 1962 artistically ushering the death of the bubble gum 50’s and the cursing honesty of modern theater and cinema. It won its author Edward Albee the Tony and the New York Drama Critics Award for best play and to top it off, it basically won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama–but due to objections to the play’s use of profanity and sexual themes, the board decided not to give out a Pulitzer in Drama that year. That’s how powerful an impact this work had and has today. I got a chance to see a preview run of the show and talk to director Quinn Olbrich about the production.
Feb 06
By Andrei Lankov
The largest factory in the far northeastern city of Hoeryong is Taesong tobacco plant. It is one of the few factories which has continued its operations throughout the disruption and chaos of the last 15 years. It is also quite a popular place to get a job, the locals work hard to secure a job at the factory.
Indeed, Taesong factory gives its employees a number of impressive perks, since it produces tobacco for the military’s consumption, it is officially considered to be a military enterprise. Therefore all its employees are issued food rations – a rare privilege in North Korea nowadays. Salaries are also quite large (but still below the survival level), but the major attraction of the factory is something else: it’s a place where it is easy to steal things which are in high demand on the market.
Theft has always been a problem in state socialist economies. They are not known for their shortages for nothing, thus there is always the temptation for workers to steal produce or equipment. At the same time, management is not too eager to try to prevent theft. After all, property which is stolen belongs to the state, that is, to nobody. So, there are many cases when management is willing to turn a blind eye to theft.
Feb 06
By Jamie Grimwood and John M. Rodgers
The delay in covering further aspects of PVT Fisher’s case falls into two categories. Firstly, 3WM is waiting on varying degrees of clearance from the US Military to conduct a number of interviews with key figures surrounding the detention of PVT Fisher, as well as further acquisition of otherwise unobtainable documentation. Secondly, there is a key witness to the PVT Fisher case in possession of crucial information that could potentially close the book on a large proportion of the story. This witness has continued to be highly evasive; despite numerous opportunities the individual have not come forward. 3WM has succeeded in locating this individual–who is no longer in South Korea–and will report on any and all further information obtained.
Feb 06
By Iwazaru
How do you stop a scammer? You contact the police, present evidence of the scam and wait for justice to be served, right? Unfortunately that justice may be–and usually is–slow to arrive, if it ever does. The system has to do its work as the judicial machine chugs or sputters along. Such is the current case with Wan-koo Kang (aka Wystan, aka Joseph Kim), the man behind a travel scam that appears to have stretched on over years, raking in tens of thousands of dollars, ruining people’s “scheduled” trips sometimes leaving them ticketless at the beginning of a planned journey or stranded in the middle of a trip with no return ticket. That is until victims began to mobilize and attention turned to Kang’s brazen chicanery.
That attention led to the initial September shutdown of Kang’s Zenith Travel agency and his October arrest (though the court decided not to detain him). But the snake slithered on, continuing his dirty dealings under both his original name and the pseudonym Joseph Kim–Kim worked at the new Expert Travel in the Songpa District of southern Seoul. Brazenly and some would say, stupidly, under the name Kim, Kang sent out an email advertisement for Expert Travel’s “Cheapest Air Tickets” to more than a hundred people, including people he’d scammed while working at Zenith Travel.
Feb 06
By Allen Smithee
As you the reader knows, no teacher ever plans to end up in a failing academy. However, shit happens in this increasingly dicier job market. The dicier the economy the more threadbare are English teacher choices: you’ll grab at anything, even potential stinkers. You do your Internet background check, if the place passes; you dive out the door pushing any misgivings to the back of your mind.
Earlier this year, after two wonderful years of teaching in a public school position, I faced this prospect. My employer had run out of money, rumour had it a retiring government official had embezzled area funds and so the area needed to cut back on expenses. Thanks for your teaching, please don’t name Mr. X in a story and turn in your keys as you leave.
Jan 16
By Seon-Myung Yoo
At 10 p.m., when Jin-Pyo gets up to leave, his older sisters see him out to the door, bombarding him with advices on how to find his way back home. He vigorously explains to them that his smart phone has a navigation application and that there is no need to worry. The mass of harsh intonation of Kyeongsang dialect move out the door to where his car is parked. Then, after the car has driven away, the mass of the sound rolls back into the house as the sisters bring out the special board with blades embedded to cut the radishes in thin strips for the peppered spice to go into the cabbages.
Jan 09
By Mizaru
Part 1
I’m in Love with modern moonlight
And the neon when it’s cold outside
I’m in love with rock ‘n’ roll and I’ll be out all night
To Sinchon Rotary from Incheon International Airport. Airport BusLimousine # 6044. I’m just back from an E-2 visa run to Japan and, yes, it feels like I have been on some sort of public profile tour. I get off the plane, bob and weave through immigration and set feet on solid ground. And it’s not just in my head that Korean Immigration is clocking me and to the best of my knowledge it has nothing to do with making 3WM. I am up to about 10 delays, missed trips, rescheduled flights skittered boat crossings and the like which when all combined should add up to about two months of ‘overstayed visa’ time. Of course it’s a melodrama involving officials and a back-packer, “Why have you overstay?” “I didn’t know, Mr Kim at Immigration office told me to get a bigger passport. I need more pages.”
Jan 02
By Mel Joyce
“If any of [Joe]‘s relatives are reading this page, please contact me. I am one of his friends in Korea.” This is what I found on my brother’s Facebook page on May 31st, 2009. I was stunned. My heart skipped a few beats; this was the reason that I had joined Facebook. My worst fears were taking shape before my very eyes.
I respond to my brother’s friend Jill as quickly as possible. She tells me that he hasn’t been at work in several days. People have seen him in bars drinking, dirty, talking to himself and throwing things. We discuss the situation and his friend says she’ll get a group together to go searching for him. They can’t find him. One friend finds him and he tells her that he has been locked out of his apartment and he doesn’t have a bed. She brings him a mattress to sleep on, but it doesn’t make him stay.
Dec 26
By Jamie Grimwood and John M. Rodgers
3WM first met USFK-appointed Attorney Lee in July at Seoul District Court following the first appeal hearing of PVT Fisher’s trial. Lee, 59, graduated Seoul National University with a Law Degree and also completed the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) School in 1986.
After exchanging business cards and introducing ourselves, Attorney Lee was genuinely and generally courteous. He asked of the origin of our relationship to and interest in, the case. 3WM informed Lee at the scene that we had been informed of some unease regarding the initial sentencing of PVT Fisher from his supporters, that we were an online news service largely for the expatriate community and that if he did not object, could we please take his contact details.
Lee obliged.
Dec 26
By Iwazaru and Peter Ward
What comes next is where it gets very interesting. Successor designate Kim Jong-un is now in the unenviable position of having to preside over his father’s funeral and then attempt to consolidate his grip on power. What follows is seemingly likely to take one of three paths.
Kim Jong-un, with or without the help of his aunt Kim Kyong-hee and her husband Chang Song-taek may succeed in consolidating his power. This might not happen straight away. He may not simply leap into the shoes of his father and start going on tours of the country, giving disciplinary speeches to the high-level cadres that turn up in the newspaper and be the centre of a fanatical personality cult all of his own. The above mentioned has already begun in the North—he was reported to have gone on tours with his father several times, and has his own (still nascent) personality cult. He may take his time, behind the scenes consolidating his power, whilst in public mourning his father’s passing, much like Kim Jong-il did in the three years after the death of his father.
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