“Teacher, What do people in the UK think about Korea?” was a perfectly innocent question asked to me by one of my students when they were trying to divert my attention away from what we should have been talking about. Seeing as what we should have been talking about was so amazingly insignificant it has slipped my mind, I answered his question.
I decided the best strategy would be to be honest. This meant that my answer was “People in the UK don’t really know a lot about Korea” Followed by “They know you had a war and that’s about it” As I was saying I could hear how it sounded. It sounded like the West believed that Korea was a small insignificant country who wasn’t really worth learning about. He, and the rest of the class looked crest fallen. Perhaps assuming that this was a general perception of Asia as a whole he persisted “So, what do people in the UK think of Japan?” he asked hoping that the answer would be in the same vein. Again, I believed that honesty would be the best policy here. “Well, we tend to think of Japan being very busy…very technological” no mention of war or poverty there. Seeing the class looking confused as to why there was such a negative impression of their country I hastily tried to explain.
When I first decided that I wanted to come to teach English in Korea I received a number of reactions. A few people, namely my best friends who liked to travel, thought it was an amazing opportunity to see the world. A couple of people, who shall remain nameless said “What do you want to go there for? Pick a proper country!” and some friends of my mother’s said “where are you going? Vietnam? Oh Korea! Thats right, I knew it was somewhere with a war” and these three opinions epitomise peoples opinion of Korea.
There are a large number of English academies in Korea, Over 7000 in Daegu alone, which all have to be staffed by a variety of western men and women on the look out for adventure. This covers the ratio of people who thought moving to Korea would be an amazing experience. The people who said I should pick a proper country, I feel are just lacking information about Korea. I do find their opinions more negative than those who only know that the country had a war. To decide that a country is “not a proper country” because you happen to have not been there, or you cannot go there on holiday is horrendous. Nowadays if we haven’t been to a place, or its not somewhere we can get Egg and Chips and a pint we aren’t interested.
I will admit that before I decided I wanted to come teach here all I knew about Korea was that they had had a war, and that I had all 11 seasons of M*A*S*H. I will also admit that my preference for this Alan Alda comedy may have marginally influenced my opinion on where to come teach English. However there is so much more to this country other than the fact that 50 years ago they had a war. The people are kind, generous and sometimes unintentionally hilarious. There are many beautiful and fascinating temples to visit, huge mountains to climb and a variety of delicious and downright bizarre food to try. I promised my students that when I got back to the west I would spread the word about Korea and what a wonderful country it was. This is the first step in doing that, Korea is one of the most undiscovered and undervalued countries to the West it seems. It would be similar to people being of the opinion that “Oh Germany…they had a war once”.
