Korean Kids Say the Darndest Things

It's been awhile since I've updated things on here, but I was incapacitated for about 9-10 days with food poisening, which was a terrible experience. Also, our workload has increased at Seoul Language Academy because we now have to call the students at home after they leave the academy and speak to them in English for 3-5 minutes apiece so that their parents can observe them speaking English on the phone and be convinced that all this extracurricular education really is worth the cost. Brian and I generally end up calling about 20 kids every night, Monday through Thursday and have mind-numblingly one-sided conversations with our students whose every answer is a one word "Yes" or "No," although there are some very pleasant exceptions. Some of the kids speak very well for their ages and carry on enjoyable spontaneous conversations that occassionally reach lengths of nearly 10 minutes if we aren't careful.

Anyways, in other hakwon news, some parents of children in one of our Korean coworker's classes have complained that their children's writing assignments are not being graded by "native-speakers" (a.k.a.-white people) so our boss announced to us the other day that while the Korean teacher will continue to teach these kids, Brian and I as the only two native-speakers will be grading all of the writing assignments for these classes. It is a bit of extra work on top of the new phone-call system, too, but it isn't without it's own benefits. The essays that we grade are from higher-level middle school students who have a decent grasp on how to communicate their ideas in English on paper, but decidedly have not mastered it. There are numerous examples that I will now provide of when that ability to communicate fails (or sometimes triumphs) through unconventional or creative uses of the English language.

Some students were asked to write about what they would do if they were elected President of the Republic of Korea. With varying degrees of megalomania, they each described their political platforms as best they could:

"My ultimate aim is kill Bussi [Bush]. I will drop the guided missile in White House."[!!]

"Second, Korean's economy will boom by me."

"Third, I'll destroy hakwon [private learning institutions]. First, Seoul Hakwon." [that's where I work!]

Another student said, "Last, I'll buy White House." (hopefully our earlier student will realize that "Bussi" doesn't live there anymore before he sends the cruise missiles raining down on his classmate!)

---------------

In another class, I overheard some girls talking while they should have been writing and I scrawled their conversation down quickly because it was hilarious. Korean children are obsessed with who is "Genius" and who is "바ㅂㅗ," (Babo) meaning stupid.

Girl 1: "Genius is not crazy."
Girl 2: "Umm, sometimes genius is crazy."
Girl 1: "You are not genius! HAHAHA!"

---------------

Last week, our Korean coworker handed Brian and I a stack of about 27 persuasive essays from some of his classes and we got right to work on editing them and writing advice and encouragement to the students. To make the job more interesting for myself, I kept a piece of paper seperate nearby to copy down some of the more hilarious parts of the essays, with titles ranging from "Television's Advantage," "Need More Expensive," "Lookism," "Be a Christian," to "Don't Smoke."

The opening hook sentence of "Don't Smoke" was pretty hilarious and very gripping:

"Are you a difficult person that harm other people's health? I mean, are you a smoker?"

Other writing samples were less coherent, but still amusing:

"Be not related to take time, backbiting near from other from other in sometime."

Sometimes, that's what we're dealing with...

Another student said,

"Nowadays Korean politicians' and president's mind have become too dirty."

My goodness, we've elected a bunch of perverts!

In the bluntly titled, "Be a Christian," a student proselytized with this airtight reasoning:

"Third, you can eat lunch without paying. Sunday lunch is free to Christians. And during the Christmas, you can get a gift for celebrate Jesus's birthday freely, no cost, without money, isn't it interesting, right?"

In my critique, I questioned whether this was really one of the top three arguments for converting to Christianity. Doesn't Christianity preach against both Greed and Gluttony? I also mentioned that eventually, you grow up, get a job, and end up spending a small fortune every Christmas season...in retrospect, I hope this kid didn't still believe that his presents came from Santa Claus--oops!

From the essay, "Television's Advantage," there were these two gems:

"Television makes me our life more funny except the News about accident. There are programs that caused our sympathy."

"I agree with that, but I think proper watching television gives us many useful things and makes our life funny!"

Another essay, "Need More Expensive," derided people who made a show of their opulence:

"They just want to show their handsome supercars to their friends and say 'Hey guys, this Porsche is really cheap, it just cost 100000$!' Then their friend may answer 'Wow! X are very rich guy!' Whatever.
"...In summary, you don't need more expensive things. You can live cheaper. But if you still want luxury goods, I can't stop you. However, do not surprise about your money lose in your bank book. It maybe entrance of terrible money Hell!"

Ominous!

In the final amusing essay, a student wrote about a phenomenom he decided to call "Lookism."

"Beauty controls us, our country, and the world...This phenomenom which is tendency to judging people by their appearance is called lookism. This ridiculous vogue has brought disadvantages for us. We should try to remove this phenomenom.
...Also, we donot need to always keep beauty. We have our own characteristic. That is our appeal, our arms against the lookism, and our strong points...What is beauty? There are no answers. But I say, 'We are the beauty.'"

English spelling and grammar issues aside, that is a bit of a profound ending, don't you think? I'll bring you all some more pearls of wisdom in the future as I grade more papers.