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Category: Korean Education

March 26, 2010

Don’t Know Much About History

Just the latest example of historical myopia from the kids in South Korea. As the university was announcing the plans, the Chosun Ilbo reported a Gallup poll in Korea that showed 62.9 percent of teens and 58.2 percent in their 20s did not know when the Korean War broke out. Also, only 43.9 percent of those surveyed said North Korea is to blame for starting the Korean War, with the figure among teenagers 38 percent and 36 percent for 20-somethings....

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean History/Korean War/U.S. & Korea
December 9, 2008

Roh Legacy Death Watch

There are two entries in this merry vigil: – Roh’s brother ordered jailed over a bribery scandal. – A left-wing agitprop history textbook heads off for the ash-heap of …. Still, the counter-revisionism is going a tad too far when episodes like Kwangju are flat-out written out of history. The idea is to put historical events into their proper context. Kwangju no more defines South Korean history or its modern reality than the Pullman Strike defines American history or its...

Categories Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society
June 25, 2007

House Moves to Cut Funds for UNDP, Human Rights Council

Each entity has recently brought particular discredit on itself, and in each case, there is a North Korea nexus. The UNDP recently failed a UN internal audit after U.S. diplomats outed the organization for allowing its Pyongyang operations to become, as a U.N. staffer put it, “an ATM machine” for the regime. It turns out that North Korea used some of the funds to buy overseas real estate and dual-use equipment, and that the U.N. even had a stock of...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/Korean Education
June 19, 2007

The End of Chongryon?

I’d previously mentioned that  Chongryon, North Korea’s fifth column organization in Japan,  was forced to “sell” its de facto embassy in Tokyo.  As it turns out, the sale was  a  fraudulent scheme assisted by Japanese sympathizers, without consideration, to evade seizure by the authorities.  Japanese authorities have since voided the transaction, and, according to Yonhap, approved the seizure of the building. We also know more about why Chongryon is dying.  I was aware that some adverse tax judgments by the...

Categories Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/The Fifth Column
January 25, 2007

KTU Update

Korean Education takes another small step toward reform. The ministry said soon all bonuses will be performance-related. The seniority system will also disappear. With recognized capabilities, teachers in their early 40s can become vice principals, whereas long-serving teachers with low scores will miss out on promotion. Parents and pupils will now get to evaluate teachers, which is curious from a social perspective, because the status of teachers has traditionally been so high in Korean’s highly Confucian society that the idea...

Categories Korean Education
January 22, 2007

KTU Update

Are you ready for your second story in just four days about Korean Teachers’ Union members being caught in possession  of pro-North Korean propaganda, with intent to distribute?  On closer examination, these appear to be the same suspects I blogged here.   Hat tip to The Nomad, who points out that there’s no evidence that the stuff was actually used in class, although we’ve advanced a step in that direction.  Unlike the case of the previous report, which was about mere...

Categories Korean Education/The Fifth Column
January 18, 2007

Teachers Arrested for Posting N. Korean Propaganda On-Line

Two middle school teachers who allegedly posted pro-North Korean propaganda on Web sites have been arrested, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said yesterday, for violating the National Security Law. The teachers, whom police did not identify, allegedly posted North Korean photos and captions reading, for example, “Long Live the Great Victory of the Military-First Politics.   They are both members of the left-leaning Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union [link to other OFK posts]. Both teachers have also served as...

Categories Korean Education/The Fifth Column
December 6, 2006

Just the Latest Juche Idiocy from the Korean Teachers’ Union

The students went up on stage and told participants they had distributed anti-war badges around the nation in protest against the Iraq war and said they felt unifying the two Koreas was a way to create “a world without wars. They also joined the former communist guerrillas in the shouting of their old slogans against “imperialist Yankee soldiers” and the “puppet regime of Syngman Rhee. Kim, who also instructed his students to operate an online group that opposes the U.S.-led...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/The Fifth Column
November 21, 2006

The Case for Starving the People

I noticed this interesting graf in a story about the effect of the luxury  items sanctions in UNSCR 1718.  For reasons that escape me entirely, some people believe that it’s counterproductive to bar Kim Jong Il from buying sashimi, S-Class sedans, and Omega watches while his people are starving – to – death,  some seem so quick to forget. Over past years, U.S. leaders have described the North Korean regime as an axis of evil, an outpost of tyranny, an...

Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Korean Education/Washington Views
July 26, 2006

Reading, Writing, Rodong

One reason I don’t think the North Koreans would invade South Korea is the simple fact that their infiltration of the South has been so successful as to render war unnecessarily strenuous. Now, the powerful and well funded Korean Teachers’ Union — remember them? — is caught in the act of flogging juche to its members. The ultimate recipients would have been South Korean kids. Although the KTU didn’t disclose the source of its information, this should have been a...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
June 2, 2006

S. Korean Students Will Hold Summit on N. Korean Human Rights

[Updated 6 Jun 06] In the heart of hostile territory, no less — North Cholla Province! The Young Students’ Solidarity for North Korean Human Rights (YSS) announced on June 1, “We will hold the “˜College Students’ Progress Assembly for Improvement in North Korean Human Rights and Democracy,’ which is the first time college students alone have held a meeting related to North Korean human rights. Founded in May 2003, the organization has a membership of over 500 students at 25...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Korean Education
May 29, 2006

Operation Sunshine Continues

LiNK is asking for your help to shame South Korea’s government into showing some concern for the 23 million Korean citizens living North of the DMZ: LiNK is amassing a giant collection of “messages to the president” which we shall put on a banner to be delivered to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to show him that the people of Korea and the world are watching how he deals with the North Korean human rights crisis. Here’s how it works:...

Categories Activism/Human Rights/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society
May 28, 2006

The Dictator on My Bar Napkin

Two recent news stories again raise the one of the most difficult questions free societies face: what role should governments play in limiting the expression of views that are tasteless, offensive, or which might even be lies designed to strip that society of its freedom? Let’s begin with some context. If the first casualty of prosperity is taste, a corollary to this rule is that the depth of affliction is proportional to the speed with which a society achieves prosperity....

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Democracy/History/Korean Education/Korean Society/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 17, 2006

The UniFiction Church Choir

Progress at Last! The last seven years of the Sunshine policy have finally secured a legacy Roh can campaign on. Goodbye “sea of fire,” hello, “deluge of fire!” I’d like to see those neocon skeptics deny that “deluge” beats “sea” any day of the week! This from the lovable North Korean site “Within Our Race” (a rough translation). ================ Who Stopped My Peace Train? My money is on this not being the last obstacle that bars the path of Kim...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Europe/Human Rights/Humor/Satire/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 10, 2006

The FTA Debate Is Turning Ugly

FTA negotiations will likely magnify “anti-American” sentiments in the short run and unleash a backlash in America. — Balbina Hwang, March 2, 2006 There are really three premises to this post, all of them leading to one conclusion: First, a Korean-American free trade agreement would be a good thing for both countries, but particularly for Korea. Second, despite that being demonstrably the case, the usual suspects see the FTA as an opportunity to ride to power on the shoulders of...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Media Criticism/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized
February 14, 2006

Korean Teachers’ Union Gets Some Competition

You may recall how the KTU recently made itself  famous in the Korea blogosphere: its “What a Wonderful World” video for the APEC Summit.  This led, in part,  to an acrimonious controversy over education reform and a silly GNP boycott  of the National Assembly.  On a somwhat more productive front, tt also led to the formation of an upstart rival: The Korean Liberal Teachers Union, established last month by teachers opposed to the educational direction of the left-leaning workers union,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean Politics/Korean Society