Finally, about a week-and-a-half ago, I got the go ahead to get the kids fully prepped because we were doing the speech contest June 9th and 10th (I had recommended doing the whole thing in one day instead of splitting it into two groups, but no one saw the wisdom in that.)
Suddenly urged on, I talked to one of the two sub-bosses, Kim Kyoung Suk, to try to nail down some of the crucial details: I asked her each question, and she would turn to her left and ask Mr. Park each question.
I gradually learned that the dates would be the 9th and 10th, parents would not be invited, that all four English teachers (myself, Justin, Jon, and Cathy) would be judging (although later this would be scrapped because they didn't want to take some of the teachers out of their regular classes, so alternatingly Mr. Park and another teacher who happened to be on hand but seemed to speak little English helped judge on Monday and then Tuesday respectively.
Finally I asked about the prizes; first, the idea had been floated (and I had already told the students weeks ago) that first prize would be an Mp3 player and that second prize would be an electronic dictionary, etc. Then, a week after that, the prize idea was changed once again, and I had to tell them that first prize would be 100,000won and second prize would be 50,000won, and so on. But that day when I asked officially what the final prize amounts would be, Kim Kyoung-Suk returned with the amount of oh-man-won (50,000won) for first prize. Discouraged and disappointed, I wrote the amount down on the paper where I was taking notes. I cautiously inquired then about what second prize might be. I could see Mr. Park was a little bit irritated about the existence of a second prize and he replied sam-man-won (30,000won.) Determined to at least guarantee 3 top prizes for the kids, I persisted in inquiring about the amount for third prize: visibly hesitant, Mr. Park breathed "Man-won" (10,000won.)
Having all of my information, I set to work on formatting the paper to distribute to any students who were interested in participating. That criteria was rapidly changed to, "The top three students who place in each of my classes, according to an unprepared speaking test that I had not yet made." So I also rapidly formatted and printed out a paper for the priliminary speaking qualification test and took it to each of my classes that week, administering it to each of the students, and from each class selecting three to move on to the actual competition.
...but! At the end of the week, after the winners had been notified, Mr. Park changed the rules again so that only the top two from each class would participate! So I had to notify those who were previously slated to compete about the new rules.
One particular class, full of extremely well-spoken higher-level students, complained excessively about the new rules because at least four of the students were very excited about the speaking competition and had already written speeches based on the topics I had given them a few weeks before. In yet another decision that mocked all sense of fairness, Mr. Park heard these students' cries and advised me to accept the TOP FOUR students from this one class, while continuing to take only the top two, from all other classes. I agreed, turned around, rolled my eyes, probably muttered something under my breath, and went back to work.
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On Saturday, the 7th, T-minus two days before the speech competition would begin, Mr. Park called me less than an hour before I was scheduled to come in to work, right after I had ordered a cheeji-spaghetti bake from a Korean restuarant that also served "cheeji" spaghetti. He inquired about how early I could make it in to work ("Uh, I could probably be there in like a half-an-hour") because some of the students were there and had turned in rough drafts of their speeches for me to grade. Mr. Park wanted me to actually make grammatical corrections to every students' speech and return them to the students in time so that they could memorize them with my corrections, which all would have been possible if we had had more than one weekend to do it all before the competition! I told the ajuma to make my cheeji-spaghetti "Take-Out" instead and booked it over to the hakwon to start grading papers before my regularly-scheduled classes.
On Sunday as well, there were papers to be graded and returned.
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On Monday, in our 3rd scheduled classtime, myself, Justin, and Mr. Park descended on the M-GL1 advanced class to give them (and apparently only them) their speaking test. I had already printed out enough of our grading papers, based on 9 criteria for a grand total of 100 points so we three, with those in hand sat at the back of the class and listened to the fours speeches. They were all pretty good and at the end, each student got a prize. Apparently, there were now four top places instead of only three! (50,000won; 30,000won; 10,000won; 5,000won) The children who participated were jubilant.
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On Tuesday, three or four classes were adjourned so that the students could meet on the 5th floor for the larger half of the competition. Nine students would be competing and all of their classmates would be trying to goof around on their handphones or talk to their friends while pretending to be attentive and respectful. Myself, Jon Haase (the new guy), and a new Korean teacher whose name I don't know and whose English abilities I am not aware of, were to be the judges while Mr. Park observed the procedings with a large stick for hitting inattentive students (He didn't want to judge again this time) and Teacher Justin Choi would be the emcee (we had a real microphone hooked up this time and a large green banner proclaiming the Pyeoncheon Seoul Hakwon Speaking Competition in white letters; this banner surprised me more than anything about the competition because while I had believed that no one buy myself was taking the procedings very seriously, apparently Mr. Park had gone out and spent a good deal of money on this banner!)
The students spoke. I timed them. They talked about things like what they would do if they were the president of Korea, what the best method of learning English was, what they thought about racial discrimination, the potential reunification of North and South Korea, and a few other less impressive topics. Most of them were able to keep their speeches within the confines of 3-5 minutes that we had agreed would be ideal beforehand, except for Austin (nickname: "Space-God") who stopped speaking after about 30 seconds and relegated himself to last place in the scoring.
After they were all finished, Justin entertained them with lighthearted antics while myself, the two other graders, and Mr. Park frantically totalled each student's total points and put them in order. The order we democratically arrived at was as follows:
1st) Susan
2nd) Martin
3rd) Yeon Yeo-Yun
4th/5th) TIE: Song-Jae and An Jane.
6th) Su-Hyun
7th) Jung
8th) Lena
9th) Austin (Space-God)
Justin Choi came down from the podium area to review the selections and he and Mr. Park spoke to each other in their native tongue. We waited for our decisions to be announced, but Justin took us aside and said that Mr. Park didn't want Susan to have first place because he had noticed some problems in her speech. Also, he didn't really understand how Song-Jae and An Jane could have tied (if we'd had more judges to tally points from, a tie would have been less likely, but Mr. Park hadn't wanted to vote, although he had in the Monday competition!) Mr. Park had suggested a new winners list that looked like this (changes have been denoted in red):
1st) Martin
2nd) Susan
3rd) Yeon Yeo-Yun
4th) An Jane
5th) Song-Jae
6th) Su Hyun
7th) Jung
8th) Lena
9th) Austin (Space-God)
Jon Haase and myself were shocked. We didn't need Jimmy Carter's election monitoring organization to tell us that these results were dirty. The other Korean teacher didn't care one way or the other, Justin couldn't fathom resisting authority (and ultimately, in Korea, neither could we) so we let it go. There were more prizes awarded than Mr. Park had originally advertised. In fact, everyone except for Space-God received at least 5,000won, but I still felt terrible for the person who was robbed of her 1st place finish by the whims of our boss and Song-jae who had to take the monetarily inferior 5th place when he had received an equal number of points as An Jane (and when she had done a terrible job of translating her speech, using a computer program that rendered it basically incomprehensible in English and would have failed her if I hadn't sat down with her on Sunday at the last minute to try to figure out a better way to express her points paragraph by paragraph.)
Basically, at the end of the day, the 2008 Seoul Hakwon Speech Contest was revealed to be completely corrupt; hard work went unrewarded, the rules changed constantly and randomly, and the democratic and meritocratic method of choosing winners was hideously perverted in favor of deference to the prime authority figure. Sad to say, sometimes all of that feels like business as usual here in Korea.
Mr. Park took some pictures of the contestants for the Hakwon and had me take some, too. Enjoy!
Moment of truth...
Are you ready for the injustice?
Susan, 2nd (1st) Place!
Justin Choi with Martin, the "Winner!"
Our boss, Mr. Park, handing out prizes to Song-Jae and An Jane.
Su-Hyun.
Jong.
Lena.
Justin Choi and Yeon Yeo-Yun.
Song-Jae and An Jane.
