3.07.2009

In the buff.

Oh man. There's all this hubbub going on about some middle school students who, as far as I can gather, decided to combine the usual middle school graduation egg and flour throwing, uniform cutting celebrations with a bit of streaking. Of course, there's a huge outcry about the moral decline of the nation, blah blah blah. There are photos flying around the internet. I'm not going to post them here, as the Anti-English Spectrum Cafe nutjobs are terrifyingly capable of twisting anything into malicious intent, and I don't, personally, feel like taking the risk of being stalked and deported. But you should be able to find them easily, if you do a little google legwork. Keep in mind though, many of the pictures seem to have been taken after the students have been caught and rounded up by teachers/adults, and their bizarrely shameful posture, which makes the photos look quite shocking in my opinion, is just standard Korean I'm-in-trouble student posture. Plus it was really fucking cold.

Loads of philosophizing on what the whole thing was about, what it means about the young generation of Koreans, or Korean culture. To me, it seems quite normal. It's just made a bit surreal by the context of the situation. Nothing is funnier or more wild, at age 16, than taking all your clothes off and running around where other people can see you. In fact, it's considered pretty funny at any age, really. Just a shame it has to be newsworthy, as well.

I will say that one thing does strike me as particularly bizarre -- apparently the students were simply wandering around the neighborhood. So it wasn't streaking, exactly, per se. Sort of just a little naked... stroll through town.

I don't know. I still think it's funny. But then I'm the one who managed to tell a student waiting outside the office in the hallway yesterday that I liked his haircut, moments before he was called into the office to be reprimanded for said haircut.

Meh. Whateryagonnado? Teacher schmeacher.

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