Among many problems is that of Korean principals. Teachers are terrified of a certain Neo-Confucian brand of principals whose raison d?etre is almost without exception defined by an unequivocal and undisputed command over ?the flock.? In an essentially unchecked manner, school principals enjoy the unique and unrivaled privilege of having absolute control over the livelihood and future of supposedly free individuals by determining the merit of the teachers? career advancement (or more correctly the lack of it).

Korean teachers can?t afford the luxury of questioning or contradicting authority, even if the suggestions are beneficial to the education of the students. Impugning judgment from above or runs the risk of one being labeled nonconformist within a system which holds ultimate esteem for the concept of hierarchy. If such comportment is criminal, being ostracized is the punishment. A deviant could find one?s years of toil and preparation erased overnight by the impetuous wrath of a mid-level civil servant, who proudly envisions himself as a kind of petit dictateur. Promotions points and of course, the subsequent won (no pun intended) could be forfeited at the slightest waver or suspicion of less than absolute allegiance to his highness. Sometimes just seeming friendly to the wrong person is perceived as treason.

The reign of the Korean principals is, in fact, untenable and deserves remediation for the sake of the rightful education of the students. After all, there are many Korean educators who do believe that the true raison d?etre of schools is the achievement of the highest and best education that its students can obtain. Schools are not formed to nourish the arrogant impulses of an effete corpus of mid-level civil servants who in their delirium imagine their schools to be a diminutive Palace de Versailles where Le Petit can promenade around his court and throughout his gardens.

The phenomenon of principal tyranny has resulted in a disdainful lack of solidarity among the teachers in Korea. Instead of uniting in a cohesive, collaborative and communicative manner, teachers are often ferociously competitive and even clandestine. Consequentially, what is best for the education of the students is severely compromised. Le Petit dictates the empire of his faithful mass of public servants. Such is the sad condition that prevails in many Korean public schools today.

An ardent appeal to the government of President Lee Myung-Bak could be heard in the roar of the demonstration. With a multitude of redhead bands and an assortment of town flags waving in the windy Spring sky of the Korean peninsula, teachers flashed their fists in unison as they publicly vindicated their rights and proclaimed their solidarity.

Framing the central plaza stood numerous informational sites providing literature of a wide assortment. I was particularly attracted to one table displaying a caricature of the Lee Myung-Bak with the caption ?Viva English?. A cartoon beside it portrayed a Korean shouting to a Japanese colonist, ?You forced us speak Japanese when you occupied our land. Now we are being forced to learn English?. Contemporaneously the situation is different. Now it is their very own Korean President Lee Myung-Bak who is being accused of treason towards his own people by forcing English down their throats.

The necessity of learning English is for some Koreans a kind of acquiescence to the exigencies of modern times. Some welcome learning a foreign language and see it as a kind of opening of a window of the world through which they can learn of other cultures and ideas without having to be threatened by the loss of their own. Some refuse to learn it.

Only a month ago bus loads of protesters were also seen in Seoul demanding a ban on the importation of American beef to Korea. On bill boards all around the plaza of the demonstration site of the school teachers, the current Korean President Lee Myung-Bak is mocked in cowboy style riding a bull (with an obvious allusion to the Texan we have all grown to lament). Lee is shown mounted on top of what one could assume is obviously intended to represent an American bovine.

President Lee is no stranger to this manner of derision. He has repeatedly been chided for his dealings with the Bush administration and in the same manner as the Americans do Bush, the Koreans criticize Lee for his policies which are biased in the favor of the wealthy and powerful. The consensus of public opinion is that Lee is far more interested in furthering his legacy than he is to addressing the concerns of the much larger middle and lower income population of his country.

The similarities between Lee and Bush stop with their political views. Lee Myung-Bak is a self-made man who catapulted himself through the corporate ranks before coming President of Korea. Lee promotes Western based ideas of liberal reforms that many believe menace the foundations of Korean society. On the billboard with Lee on his bull, he is posed crashing through the fence and destroying its pillars. Lee Myung-Bak promotes privatization of public institutions such as hospitals and state operated power plants. Many are philosophically opposed to the kind of competitive atmosphere that would be implicit if these so-called reforms were actualized.

The maneuvers of Lee range from a modest revival of his rural birthplace to massive land reclamation and construction projects in the northern section of the country near Seoul. Not at all among the least ambitious of his plans include a mammoth yet decorative seaport mimicking the one in Dubai.

Deep in the mountains near the southeast coastal town of Pohang, President Lee Myung-Bak has stimulated the modest local economy by installing a rather comical tourist attraction. The amusement consists of the transformation of his hometown hamlet into a small folk village honoring himself and his family. Besides the photographic journeys of his life available on display in front of his two boyhood homes, yours truly is featured in a pair of life size cardboard statues accessible to visitors for a hand shake and a picture with Mister President. Thus, everyone is afforded the opportunity of having a picture made with the President of Korea in his home town.

Clearly the current Korean president is not appreciated by most educators or viewed as a sympathetic character at all by many Korean people. One has to wait and wonder what Lee Myung-Bak will leave as a legacy to the educational system in Korea, and to the country at large.

The Koreans are a fiercely proud and independent people who have been engaged in a poignant struggle for the past sixty years to arrive at last to the dawning of the dénouement of this relatively recent revitalization of their nation. It is well known that subsequent to the thirty-five years of colonial rule by the Japanese from 1910 until 1945, the Koreans suffered complete devastation as a result of their own civil war against Communism led by the Americans in the early 1950s. It is an understatement to say that the Koreans are tenacious and determined people. They are quintessentially survivors.

The Koreans have already proven their technological prowess to the world. They are now in the process of reasserting their cultural identity in other domains and framing all this within the world panorama. They desperately want to be contenders on the global stage, and they want to do it as unmitigated Koreans, not as a contaminated version of some Western compromise.

Adventurous spirit at heart, Mitzi is oginally from the rock and roll music capital, Austin, Texas. She has pushed her way around the globe from an eleven year sejour in Paris to currently teaching in Asia. Although a hopeless Francophile, she can now be found in Saigon, where she is writing and teaching English. For her complete bio, click here.

Comments (0)