Poeming.

I can feel the focus of everything shifting. I don't want to write about Korea anymore. Anymore than I would New York, once I stopped being obsessed with the fact that I lived there and just started living there. I live in Korea. I don't want to read about kimchi jjigae and if I never saw the words "hermit kingdom" or "land of the morning calm" ever again, I think it would still be too soon.

A lot of the poets I love have spent large chunks of their lives outside of their home countries, and there's always something so charming about reading about that, and I've also been doing a lot of reading lately by more permanent expat writers, and the things that happen when your whole shebang is language, and then you go and change it. That's happening. Of course that's happening. But I feel like I just zoom in so close that I'll never have that charm, because it's so panned out. I don't have any big philosophies about "the Korean people," other than that they could stand to walk a bit faster and perhaps in a more generally organized manner. Which, by the way, came from New York. Which was also not my home. (New Yorkers, on the other hand, could do with a hell of a lot less irony, the boatloads of which I don't miss at all here in Korea.) Incheon people, though -- I've got a whole roster of thoughts about them.

See what I mean? Zoomed in.

But basically what I'm thinking about today is writing, and how fucking weird it is.

Let me back up and explain that there are some things I'd like to be able to do in the future, and in order to do those things, you need money. And in order to get that money, you have to apply for all kinds of grants and whatnot, and in order to get those grants, you need publication credits to prove you are worth anybody's time. And in order to get those publication credits, you have to stop dicking around on scraps of paper left strewn about all over your fucking everything, and gather all of it up and dig through it and figure out what the hell is going on. And then you have to fill in the gaps.

So, I've been doing a lot of that, and I've also started submitting. My thesis, which I've not even touched or glanced at since a reading I gave at the opening of an exhibition, the theme of which I can't even remember now, shortly after graduation -- that's been dusted off. At an awkward 45 pages, it's too long for a chapbook and too short for a manuscript, but how exactly can you go back and add in poems to something you wrote almost six years ago? You can't. So I hacked it up, and now it's a chapbook. And that's doing the rounds.

Beyond that, there are the poems I didn't think I'd been writing over the past few years, which I found, as I said, all over my damn apartment when I started going through things to get ready to move. I mean, they were everywhere. So those have been sorted through, hacked up, stitched back together and typed. And I've started working on some new stuff.

And it's creepy, you know. It really is. I don't do themes, consciously, but they sure as fuck happen. I'll go two weeks without sitting down to write, and I don't look back at what I've just done before I start, but then, after I finish and start flicking through to get an idea of what's going on, I'll see that what I've just put down is the last half of an unfinished poem from a month ago. And I don't mean that in any kind of abstract sense -- I mean, the same exact subject will just pop out in resolution, following the same narrative and everything, as if I'd sat down to do it on purpose. Not that it would ever happen that way, if I did sit down to do it on purpose.

Last weekend I had some friends round for dinner, and afterwards, sitting around on the floor sipping beers, the subject turned to one artist friend's work. He pulled up some images to show the group, and the Koreans in the room, who are not artists and who work in very systematic professions, started in about what it meant. They wanted the summary -- the mission statement. He looked at me, I looked at him, and we both laughed.

It's not that you just sit there and spew out whatever random thing comes to mind -- it's not that at all, but I do think that's what it sounded like when we stumbled over our words trying to explain it. It's meticulous and it's very systematic in its own way, but fucked if I even know what the hell I'm doing in that moment. Part of me does. But it's not the part that's in charge of, say, putting a shirt together with a skirt in the morning, or reorganizing my cabinet space. Or even writing a blog entry.

Anyway, this is all to say that it appears that I'm finally working on a new manuscript, not by any conscious choice, but just according to what's happening. Which is a little exciting after having been all over the map for so long. I just hope I can get enough publishing credits to my name by the time it's finished to get someone to take it seriously. Or I'll just save it to my hard drive, and wait for my computer to crash, so it disappears forever. Who knows what the future holds?

Long weekend: Hermitting.

Everybody's gearing up for the holiday three-day weekend, and all I can think is how good it will be to have three days to get some shit done.

B's off down to Busan for his grandmother's 100 day funeral rites, and to spend the holiday with his family. Mamma B may be getting a bit frustrated. She was a little tetchy at having the non-fiance, as I believe I was previously known, when it came to such matters, down to the homestead for things like holidays in the beginning, but it seems that after we met, now it's assumed that I'll be down whenever B goes. But there's just too much to be done at the moment.

A friend's fiance's tea shop is opening in Seoul tomorrow, and I may get out at some point this weekend to check it out. And I kind of need a haircut. But other than that, I went to the green market up the road after work today, and loaded myself down with supplies to see out the weekend from my breezy fourth floor kitchen, underneath a pile of books and scribbled notes. No shit -- I now have a five section notebook to try to keep track of my life.

This weekend a friend flies back in from a long sojourn back to the U.S., and time will get even slightly more limited. So now is a good time to get a head start on the shit I'm bound to fall behind on between now and summer vacation, if I don't.

I know this is all incredibly vague, but you can trust there's a good mixture of poetry, Korean study, and preparing my fucking life (apartment shit, moving shit, visa shit, school shit) all rolling around in there, and it's not much more interesting than that, anyway.

As for work, what can I say? This open class is a royal pain, as they are wont to be. My schedule has been all hacked up and stitched back together to accommodate the day off, a sports day, a physical aptitude testing day, and the fucking water being shut off in the whole neighborhood for 24 hours, to provide enough practice time for the open class lesson with all of the other available classes. I spent six class periods in a row today teaching three-day-weekend giddy first graders in the windowless library an overly involved and time crunched lesson plan, while they pondered the wonders of an entirely different kind of chair.

The good news is that the class I have chosen, against everyone else's wishes, burst into applause when they were told I had picked them, out of everyone, and seem eager to do me proud. Everyone pushed for three class, because they are the best behaved, and one class can go a little off the rails if you don't keep the reins tight. But one class has the personality and are less likely to freak the fuck out and freeze with twenty odd foreigners, a host of Korean teachers, the principal, the vice principal and the district supervisor all gawking at them.

As for the nonsense involved on the admin side of things, I've given up trying to explain how the windowless library which is walled off on all sides may not have been the best location to choose. The teachers can just stand up to watch the class. Oh, can they? For forty five minutes? Great. Your problem, not mine. As I told one class today, we are there to study as always, and we should just ignore everyone else who is there. Me and them, doing some English shit, just like we always do.

I put a countdown up in my cubicle. Do you want to know what it says? 21 (9). Nine weeks until summer vacation, twenty one until my contract is finished. The pathetic part is that even while I ache with envy for my future life and glance over calendars just to watch days disappear every morning, I know it will take approximately two months before I start randomly tearing up, remembering the kids. The coworkers? Perhaps arranging therapy for PTSD may be more appropriate.

PS -- That whole water being shut off for 24 hours thing? Guess which 24 hours. If you happen to be attending the open class, and if I look unusually greasy, bedraggled and perhaps am emitting visible fumes of odor, don't judge. It's this Murphy's Law of a job conspiring against me.

Revamp.

I've been very busy on the internet for the past week or so, but you wouldn't know it by my posting habits. The basic deal is this: I'm getting ready to finish being a public school teacher, which means I'm getting ready to finish having to be so protective of my identity and personal information. Which is not to say that I've been overly so, these past few years -- I've never been 'anonymous', or anywhere close to it. But there are certain things that are best kept not quite in reach of public consumption, when you are a civil servant.

I'm also working with a group of people to get a big project up and running, the details of which will slowly start to creep out over the next couple of months, I'm sure, once I'm sure I really want to do it, and once I'm sure that... well, that we really can do it.

The long and the short of it is, the Tumblr blog has been almost completely culled, down to just a handful of posts per month which I'd like to keep, just for the sake of my own memories. This blog, too, is soon to undergo a mass editing and revamping. But in the meantime, things may be a bit quiet. Tumblr, also, probably is mostly finished, other than the occasional photo or short blurb or announcement. This is in an effort to try to start reorganizing my online presence, and hopefully concentrate my blogging efforts toward more cohesive posts back over on this blog. Let's be honest -- Tumblr is shitshow central, and while this blog has also had it's shitshow moments, they've generally been less life-wasting in nature. And I don't have much life to waste at the moment.

The other big thing keeping my hands full at the moment is that I've begun submitting to journals, in an attempt to make some sort of 'respectable' 'name' for myself, to help along in the endeavors that are to come. I started it out dragging my feet, kicking and screaming, but I'm beginning to ease into it a bit more. Since even the small journals seem to have a return time of anywhere from three months to over six, it'll be a while before I see how any of that turns out. But by the time I finish this contract, I should be ready to let you all know if anything comes of it.

This blog will not be sliced up nearly as badly as the Tumblr blog has been, but don't be surprised if you see things start to jump around or vanish over the next couple of weeks. I'm also not very good at these computery things, so if weird stuff starts to go on with the formatting, just hang with me and I'll have shit back to normal as quickly as possible.

The Apartment.

Busan's been mocking me for months, because for months, months ahead of schedule, I've been obsessively checking the Peter Pan cafes for apartments. We've been up and down and round and round about what we're going to do, where we're going to move, and what kind of place we wanted to get. Jeonsae or weolsae? Move B in first, or put him in temporary place? New and fully furnished (expensive and small) or big and cheap (unfurnished and old)? Temporary, for the next few years, and on a budget? Or take the hit and start settling into a place we could see ourselves in for a while? North, or central? Or really far north? Or west?

The plan has changed as many times as there are combinations to be found in the questions above. But through it all, I've been combing over the listings, looking for the perfect place. Just in case. Because you never know.

And then I found this one -- a three bedroom 20 pyeong apartment, in a old building, but remodeled. It was closer to the neighborhood that B originally favored, but not too far from the one I was hoping for. Not a terrible commute for either one of us. And almost within our potential weolsae budget (we had a potential jeonsae budget, as well). But the deposit was quite low, so with a bit of readjustment and negotiation, we may be able to squeeze it in. The problem was the fact that B can't move until mid June, and even after that, the rent was a bit high for him to pay on his own, or for me to contribute to for four months while I'm not living there.

There were a lot of things that seemed to be standing in the way of this actually working out -- it appeared to be too far from the station for comfortable commuting, it appeared to be too expensive, it appeared to be listed too early. But we decided, on a kind of whim, to go and check it out last weekend anyway.

Suffice it to say that, despite multiple warnings from multiple people about how real estate websites always make the place look far better than it actually is, the place was actually great. And with a little bit of chatting with the landlord, slowly, one by one, our obstacles began to fall away. The landlord, as it happens, is from Gyeongju, and recognized B's Busan accent immediately over the phone, and took an instant shine to him. He also said that his family preferred to have a younger couple move in, because ajumma and ajeosshi tenants (the only other kind biting at the time) could be a handful, and people with children cause a lot more damage.

So on Monday night, we signed. And on Tuesday morning, B, who has been driving me up one wall and down another with out-of-control wiffle-waffling this whole time (I actually stood in the middle of Hongjae Station on Saturday and shouted at him about 'cultural differences', in response to which he froze in his tracks and, wide eyed, said, "I've never heard you use that phrase before. Must be serious.") had serious buyer's remorse. By the time he showed up to my place last night, he looked as though he'd been run over by a truck, which was odd, considering he'd had the day off work.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Stress."

He'd been up since six am on the internet reading horror stories about people losing their deposits and/or apartments. He'd been down to the city hall office, and found out that there's still money owed on our apartment, and from there spun an elaborate tale of how we were definitely going to end up homeless and penniless, on the streets, fifty million won poorer.

The thing is, our current landlords have only just purchased the property. They've remodeled the place, and listed it up, and then we've come along, the first new tenants. I didn't think, according to that, that it would be surprising that the entire mortgage isn't paid off yet. I also didn't think that anyone immediately desperate to pay off a debt would have set the deposit as low as the landlords originally had it set. But what do I know? I've never rented an apartment in Korea before. So I was willing to hear him out.

Essentially, the issue is this: If money is still owed on the property you are renting, and if the landlords, for whatever reason, don't pay their bills and the building goes into foreclosure, then you, as a tenant, could wind up seriously screwed. You could lose your apartment, and, if the landlord is in that much financial trouble, you probably won't ever see your deposit again either. If you register your deposit, then Seoul protects its citizens with a guaranteed 25 million repayment in just such a case. But that's still a 25 million won gamble. And B was losing his shit over it. I told him not to think about it anymore  for the day, and he went to lie down (at 8:30 pm) with a crushing migraine, having taken only one bite of his dinner.

This morning over coffee, I tried to reason with him -- we had no reason to be suspicious, and certainly it can't be an uncommon situation -- landlords can't be expected to allow their properties to lie vacant while they are still paying them off. Neither one of us has any experience with this, so why don't we just spend the day asking people around us who might know better what they think?

And so we did. And everyone has been very reassuring. Of course, anytime you hand over a large sum of money, you are taking at least some risk. But nobody seemed the least bit worried that our situation was more risky than any other. And then B did what I told him not to do, and got back on the internet, but this time to be a bit more proactive, rather than just to read other people's horror stories and get himself more worked up. He came across 서울 보증 보험, which, for a comparatively small fee per year, will reimburse you almost entirely for you deposit if it happens to be lost somehow.

So now he says he needs to do more "research", but I think we've got the issue pretty much solved. I thought it might be helpful, for those who are thinking of going out on their own with the apartment business, to make a post about a. the ability to check on the debt still owed on your place and b. the government and private insurance policies against deposit fiascoes. I certainly would have never even thought to look into all of this on my own, but I do know that the most important thing is to always, always register any jeonsae or deposit you put down, so that if anything should occur, there is at the very least a legal record (other than the contract) that your money has been paid, and to whom.

So now, after a brief blip on the radar of new apartment bliss, I can get back to worrying about what dining room table will best match which couch. And put this whole apartment mess behind me, months ahead of schedule.

The bigger picture.

Earlier today, a post went up over on Tumblr, which is rather complex and in many respects, an opinion I personally consider to be very valid. But I took some time, after my initial response, to gather my thoughts on the subject.

First and foremost, let me just say that I'm not here to debate the merits of native English speaking privilege. I think anyone who's put any genuine thought into the subject understands what being born into English grants you in this world, and what it, conversely, costs those, like our students, who are not born into it, but for absolutely no good reason I'm able to see are expected to learn it. Those are facts, not opinions, as far as I'm concerned. And like I've always told my students, I'm damn lucky I was born into English, because there is no way in fuck I could ever learn it.

I think it's also important to note my particular perspective on things at this point. Essentially, I am bailing out of this English baloney. You're never going to catch me saying that my job for the past five years has been pointless, or not "real". I don't think learning a foreign language is ever pointless -- it opens you up to considering and reconsidering things that you've always felt to be "natural", it makes you question communication and community, society and culture. It makes you question language. I think it's one of the most valuable things a person can do in their lifetime -- and I say that as a currently very invested second language learner, as well as a teacher, as well as a person who has devoted a lot to language.

However, I don't really see the point of that language being English. Other than the obvious reasons English is championed as the "global" language, as a privileged language, as a language of status, which I trust my readers all to understand enough about for me not to have to go into in detail right now (here's a bit more of my thinking about it, though).

What would I, if I were king of the world, ultimately like to see happen to English education in Korea? I would like to see it diminish, almost completely. Frankly, I would like to see it turn into an elective course open to those students who, for whatever reason, have a genuine interest in or need for English -- those who have dreams to live or travel abroad, or become diplomats, translators, or those who want to read English novels in English -- those who just find the language to be beautiful, or interesting. I would like English to become a choice. I would like to not have to look into the faces of my students when they ask me why the have to speak English in Korea and not have an answer for them, because I would like for every student who is in the room to want to be there.

That's the dream. But it's not reality.

The reality is that these kids need English to survive. Not real English, mind you, but test passing English. Job interview English. Resume writing English, to be reviewed by people who probably don't speak that much English. They need college entrance English, job security English.

Which is why I personally find the removal of the native English teachers from the public schools to be a band aid on the back ass end of the problem.

Make no mistake about it -- the removal of our positions from public schools is about budgets. It's about finally taking a hell of a lot of wasted money out of poorly utilized investments, and funneling it back into other areas of need. Which I would fully support, if it weren't for the only real good we are doing here to begin with.

This year, I'm working with a special group of about twenty students after school twice a week. These boys have dreams, interests and passions like the ones I described above. They want English -- they want to attend foreign and international high schools, they find speaking in another language to be fascinating and a lot of fun. They want international jobs, to travel, to interact with the world on a global scale. They want real English.

For two hours a week, we sit in the classroom and pore over English articles, have English discussions, and work on the boys' own written pieces in English. I'm not talking English writing exam essays -- I mean real written pieces in English, that communicate something that the boys have to say. They're putting to good use not only my native knowledge of the language, but also my training in writing and editing and my background in journalism.

The point of the class, from my own perspective, is to get these kids to see English as more than just an exam or a score -- as a communication tool, which is all a language ever should be.

And that is the dream of the native speaking English teacher in a Korean school. That's what we've heard touted at so many seminars and orientations and district meetings as our job and our responsibility.

But then the kids are shoehorned into our classes, without knowing so much as the alphabet or, frankly, giving even the slightest shit (and really, why should they?). And the kids are taken out of our classes at random to study the test material for their English exams in Korean.

You can't debate the merits of having a native speaker of a language handy -- you just can't. There is so much work that I do at my job that has no direct interaction with the students. I've written about it before -- how I spend a great deal of my work day assisting the Korean English teachers themselves, editing exams, checking exam answers they are unsure about, editing their classroom materials, explaining idioms, answering questions the students have come up with that they don't have the answers to. Those tasks are endless, but they are assisted greatly by the fact that I trained in writing and language for four years and worked as an ESL teacher before coming to Korea, and generally know what the fuck I'm talking about. We don't need to get into the minute details of what would make a better English teacher, Korean or foreign, because the quality there runs the gamut on both sides. But the general presence of a native speaker should be only beneficial.

Which is not to say that native speaking teachers are automatically more useful that Korean English teachers. As the original writer of the post referenced above pointed out, Korean English teachers understand learning English. They understand learning English as a Korean, and the particular nuances of how and when their students will need to engage the language. That is something that a native speaker will never understand. And a good Korean English teacher will wield great skill in addressing those issues, just as a good native English teacher will in their own quarter.

But I guess what it always comes back to for me is this: The kids need this language to survive. In the most superficial sense possible, but they do. And some of them need it on a more real level than others. And as long as that's a fact, I think it's important to keep an eye out for those kids like the ones in my after school classes. The ones like, for example, Jihoon, who don't have the time or money to attend hagwon, because they are busy helping their parents run the family restaurant. Kids like Jihoon will be competing with kids who have had the very best English education money can buy since the time they could walk, for a very limited number of places at the international high schools like the one Jihoon wants to attend.

And my other students will be competing against the same kids after high school to pass their university entrance exams, and after that, to get their TOEIC scores up to compete in the job market.

And what will they miss out on, in comparison to those kids attending 100% English hagwon with 100% fluent English teachers, when their English teachers can't correct their writing essays for the exam with accuracy? Because they can't pay for better.

This is not a Korean problem. This is a worldwide outlook on institutionalized education that needs to fucking change. Test scored and standardized exams, one singular methodology of the way kids are supposed to learn (with many branches and theories, that all come back to the same base) -- labeling kids as "disordered", because they don't fit inside a very tiny little box, and one very particular way of processing information, and even bigger problem with class, and view of physical labor in relation to intellectual labor. It's complicated. It's more complicated by language and racial hierarchy and neocolonialism and, above all else, capitalism. It's a huge subject. But when we narrow it down to the very specific field which we are dealing with, I don't get it.


I'm not here to champion Western methodology over the Korean education system, or talk about the crappy native English teachers, or the crappy Korean English teachers. The truth is, I believe the job demands the best of both. And I believe the best should be expected from both. But the problem is not going to go away with the casting out of foreign teachers from the public schools. The problem is only going to end when Korea lets go of mandatory internal English.

Maybe letting us go is a step in that direction. Only time will tell, and soon enough it won't be any of my concern anyway. But I'm sorry to say that I don't see the merit in that first step being taken at the expense of the kids who can't pay, but who will still suffer the consequences down the line.

Prison museum, Tibetan cafe, apartment chatter.

Yesterday, some friends and I were meant to head up Inwangsan for a bit of a spring hike. Well. The rain saw to it that that plan was ruined, so we decided instead to drop in on the Seodaemun Prison Museum and then head over to Samcheongdong to hang out for the rest of the day.

The prison museum seems to have mellowed out a lot, compared to what I've read in other accounts, and according to a friend who came along who had been there years previous. While I don't think what happened there should be understated, judging by the amount of kids we saw running around, it may not have been the worst decision. Instead, the most gruesome parts of the museum are now represented by the accounts of survivors played in a video interview projected on the wall, which I think lends it all a bit more weight than than seeing mannequins positioned to reenact the scenes anyway -- to hear it from a human being's mouth, who lived through it.

It was a cold, dreary day, which definitely added to the somberness of the experience. Afterwards, despite failing to complete our hiking duty, we went back near Gyeongbokgung to warm up and fill up on  전, 전병, 들깨국수, 막걸리 and various assorted other. 

In good spirits, we headed our friend turned tour guide, who lives in the neighborhood, then took us over to check out a Tibetan cafe associated with Rogpa, which works cooperatively to support the Tibetan community. I was promised the best Chai I've ever had, and it certainly was delivered. 

Afterwards, we headed to a music bar to fill the table with empty bottles and annoy the proprietor with requests. Eventually, the Incheon faction had to stumble out into the cold to catch the next-to-last bus back home, which wound up being the last bus, when Smalltown, who suddenly really had to pee, disappeared around the corner for just long enough for the rest of us to watch the bus fly past. We killed the next thirty minutes down in the warmth of the subway station, before finally boarding the completely empty bus, only to realize too late that the two fellas had ended up up situated, both, in broken seats, which kept spontaneously flinging them forwards, and then dropping them back. This inspired a lot of humorous small talk with the folks who boarded the bus after, a bit amused at the spectacle. 

A good way to end the day. And we'll get back to Inwangsan soon. 

All this northwestern Seoul trekking is not for nothing, it has to be said. B and I are a bit divided over the location of our new place, and I'm championing an area a bit further north of the river than the one he's in favor of. I won major points this weekend, when I pointed out how quickly both Gangnam and Seoul Station can be reached from the orange line (both likely candidates for B's future work sites). Now I'm wooing him with the surrounding neighborhoods, slowly but surely, and the friend we visited who lives there did her part admirably by casually bringing up how low the housing prices are. 

We'll see. 

But for now, we're trying to work out the logistics of his lease being up in June, and my contract not finishing until October. I'd be alright with him coming out to Incheon for a few months, if it weren't for the fact that I feel a bit sketch moving my boyfriend in on my school's dime. I suppose it is technically my apartment, and I can do whatever I want, but the ethics of the situation are a bit questionable to me. 

So instead, we're trying to see if we can come up with 전세, and if we can manage that, we'll be able to move B into a new place when his old lease is up, without him having to pay a large rent on his own for several months (or without me having to pay rent on a place I'm not living in, alternatively). The problem, besides figuring out if we can scratch the money together, is that 전세 doesn't seem to be nearly as common as it used to be, and most places (at least where we've been looking) seem more keen on collecting both a sizable deposit and 월세 each month. But if we can work it out, it would be a nice solution, so that B doesn't have to find a new, short term place, and pay for it. 

It would also be nice to be on 전세 and not to have to pay rent for the time while I'm in school. Obviously. And to have the stress of the apartment sorted, and several months to get all of my stuff moved over, long before the stress of everything else that comes with finishing up my contract will bring. 

Marching ever forward. Hopefully, some of this will start to be resolved soon. 

People who are not in international couples: Stop.

Now that my Korean is improving, Busan is getting into the (much appreciated) habit of sending me little bits and bobs in Korean that he thinks may be of interest. It's nice to be able to have access to these kinds of things, without relying on him to retell things to me that he has read, seen or heard. But it's creating a bit of tension on the front of the foreigner vs. Korean way of seeing certain issues. Opening up more dialogues obviously means opening up more room for differences of opinions, and expanding our the interaction of our different cultural understandings, or views from our differing respective positions.

It's not always cultural. As with most things, a big part of it is just our personalities, and as usual with us, there are sometimes things we take opposing positions on that are inverse of what one might expect. B, in general, is a little less critical of all things media and government related than I am, whether that be the American or Korean media or government.

He sent me the above a couple of days ago. It concerns a story told by a Korean girl who had been dating a foreign guy for eight months, when he suddenly announced that he was going back to his country, and broke it off. She says she knows it's natural for couples to come to an end, but to have things end so suddenly was what was difficult for her.

That's a fair enough response. But the comments underneath are what annoyed me. First of all, that it seems like he just came to earn a lot of money and have a vacation. And then another commentor said that whenever they see a Korean woman with a foreign man, they always think they will wind up with a Korean man in the end, because foreign men will always go back to their home countries.

And then, a comment that I don't necessarily have the language skills to interpret correctly. Directly put, it means, "Don't marry a Korean man. Sad. Go abroad and marry a foreigner." (The word 불쌍하다 can be translated as "pitiful" or "pathetic", but those words in English sometimes have a harsher connotation than the way the word is used in Korean, so I'm being generous.)

It's not horrible. Certainly not in light in the things JTBC and MBC have come out with recently (and no, I don't have the energy or the desire to rehash that bullshit yet again). It's not even that these are not fair points. It's just that I don't really care to hear the opinions of people who don't know shit about shit anymore.

I don't know what B expected my reaction to this to be, or even why he sent it -- he probably didn't have any further motivation than, 'Oh, here's a thing about foreigners.' But he didn't seem to quite expect me to respond the way I did, which was to say that I wish people who live in Korea, who speak Korean, who hang out with Koreans and who stay in Korea would stop expressing opinions about foreigners, and specifically Korean/foreign couples, like they know what they're talking about.

There's not a start to a new school year that goes by without at least one ajumma coworker feeling the need to extend a protective wing over me, when they find out my boyfriend is Korean, and warn me that Korean men usually aren't serious about foreign girlfriends. As if they somehow might know more about my boyfriend and his motivation for being with me, not to mention the general habits of Korean men who date foreign women, than I do. I'm always tempted to ask them how much experience they have with the subject, and furthermore, how many foreign female/Korean male couples they personally know. But the question would merely be sarcastic, because we already know the answer to that. Don't we?

Which is not to say that it doesn't happen. Of course, it does. Just as it happens that Korean girls sometimes get dumped with little to no warning by foreign boyfriends who decide, for whatever reason, that it's time to go home. And part of that is the risk that we take -- the same as many other risks, like being cheated on or being dropped for any other number of reasons. So what?

As I put it to B, when he asked me to explain more, this isn't about being defensive of foreigners. I get just as irritated when Korean men (or women) are the target. Because it goes back to a point I've discussed many times before, which is that people need to stop thinking that interracial, intercultural or international relationships are public property.

If I were Korean, and dating a Korean man, would my coworkers, upon finding out that I have a boyfriend, feel the need to warn me that sometimes men cheat? Without knowing anymore at all about my boyfriend or our relationship? How far overstepping of boundaries would that seem? And why is what they're doing different?

And why do people constantly feel the need to start sentences with, "Whenever I see a Korean woman with a foreign man...." or, "Whenever I see a foreign woman with a Korean man..."?

Whenever I see a woman with a man...

That is fucking ridiculous. And it is no less ridiculous to do it just because a couple is interracial.

As I put it to B, he's met a lot of international/interracial couples through me. How many of those couples have or would ever just up and abandon their partner, because their plans changed? How many have just left to go back home, either at all, or without extensively discussing all factors involved with their partner, as an equal?

Does it happen? You fucking bet it does. But you need more than supposition, one example and seeing interracial couples walking down the street to talk about it intelligently.

But then talking about things intelligently is not the general public's forte.