mr-damon/korea

An animal rights activist confines herself with dogs in a cage during a campaign opposing the eating of dog meat in central Seoul, Friday. Many Koreans eat dog meat on hot days in the belief it will help them "survive" the heat during summer. "Chobok," one of hottest three days, falls on Saturday.

I've taught English in Korea for two years now, and so let me say that what follows is an accurate (and quite average) situation facing most students in the cities. Here's an article by a Korean foreign correspondent who takes issue with these practices and methods.

Six-year-old Yun-ah (not her real name), who started English kindergarten this year, finishes class by 1:30 p.m. and then does her homework. Every day for an hour, she practices vocabulary and intonation listening to a CD. She also has the two-page daily task of composing full English sentences using words she learned in kindergarten that day. At the weekend, she reads Korean folk tales like "The Sun and The Moon" and writes a summary and book report in English. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she practices speaking with a native speaker via teleconferencing for 10 minutes. Her homework is graded every month and mid-and final exams come every three months. It is effectively based on these scores that students are divided into classes.

Some children at these expensive English kindergartens even take private tutoring for English conversation and study at other different institutes in order to survive competition there. Six-year-old Eun-bi (not her real name) who goes to an English kindergarten costing a monthly W950,000, has recently started private tutoring lessons with a native speaker four times a week, for a monthly W560,000.

Kim (34) sends her daughter to the same kindergarten Eun-bi attends. She says difficult kindergarten homework was beyond her capacity to help, so she arranged for more through tutoring or study at institutes for her child.

In some cases, the phenomenon reaches the extreme of pre-natal English teaching. Mothers form "study groups" to immerse their fetuses in the language, with members of at least one pregnant moms' online community on portal site Daum seeking study partners.

The April agreement would have allowed American exporters to ship beef from all cattle. But fears that the meat might be infected, as well as grievances over other policies initiated by Lee, set off weeks of demonstrations, leading the government to ask the United States this month to revise the deal.

South Korea also won the right in the latest accord to inspect a sampling of American slaughterhouses, the trade minister, Kim Jong-hoon, said in a nationally televised news conference announcing the results of his week of talks in Washington with Susan Schwab, the United States trade representative.

"We really did our best," Agriculture Minister Chung Woon-chun said in the news conference. "We did everything we could during the negotiation, including brinkmanship."

Kim said he had taken a large aerial photograph of the June 10 demonstration with him to Washington. "When the American side rejected our demands, citing 'science,' I produced the picture and told them, 'Look at this. Can we resolve this with science?' " he said.

Under the revised deal, American beef from cattle 30 months and older will be barred from South Korea "until consumers' confidence improves," Kim said. The American government will also provide an age certification for all meat shipped to South Korea.

Weeks of antigovernment protests had climaxed with the June 10 rally, which represented the largest outpouring of antigovernment sentiment since the end of military rule in the late 1980s, and virtually paralyzed Lee's government. The entire cabinet offered to resign. Lee replaced 9 of his 10 senior presidential aides on Friday, apologized for the beef deal and pledged a fresh start to regain public trust in his government.

The size of the protests has decreased markedly since June 10. But organizers of the protests have remained unsatisfied, demanding a complete renegotiation to win better assurances to prevent mad cow disease. They also pushed for Lee to drop many of his pro-business domestic economic reforms.

"Driven by a shared dissatisfaction with South Korea's rigid educational system, parents in rapidly expanding numbers are seeking to give their children an edge by helping them become fluent in English while sparing them, and themselves, the stress of South Korea's notorious educational pressure cooker...

"South Korean students routinely score at the top in international academic tests. But unhappiness over education's financial and psychological costs is so widespread that it is often cited as a reason for the country's low birthrate, which, at 1.26 in 2007, was one of the world's lowest.

"South Korean parents say that the schools are failing to teach not only English but also other skills crucial in an era of globalization, like creative thinking. That resonates among South Koreans, whose economy has slowed after decades of high growth and who believe they are increasingly being squeezed between the larger economies of Japan and China."

Tens of thousands of South Koreans rallied Saturday night against a government decision to import U.S. beef in the largest demonstration in a month of almost daily protests.

A crowd estimated by police at 38,000 people filled a plaza in front of city hall. Protesters lit candles, waved placards and chanted slogans criticizing President Lee Myung-bak.

[There was a march in Gimhae tonight, also; a couple hunderd people chanting and holding the same red signs.]

South Korea agreed in April to reopen what was formerly the third-largest overseas market for U.S. beef. It had been shut for most of the past 4 1/2 years following the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state in 2003.



South Korean protesters wearing masks of U.S. President George W. Bush, left, and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak occupy a McDonald's sign board during a rally against U.S. beef imports in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 29, 2008. South Korea's government prepared Thursday to announce the final administrative step needed to resume U.S. beef imports, a move that could intensify continuing street protests against the government over fears of mad cow disease. McDonald's Korea says it uses Australian beef.

Like many countries, South Korea has long been troubled by contradictions over sex outside marriage. Until this century, women faced ostracism -- shunned even by their birth families -- if they cheated on their husbands, but men, especially wealthy ones, were allowed to keep concubines.

Now, even as some hold to fairly puritanical standards -- sex education in schools is still discouraged -- the country's strict social code seems to be weakening somewhat. Divorce is becoming more common, and so-called love motels, which cater to guests having illicit sex, are opening throughout the country.

Those who support the adultery law see it as the last bulwark against the "free-sex culture of the West," while opponents call it an anachronism.

"The state meddling in which sex partner we should have -- that's too much," Lim Sung-bin, Ms. Ok's lawyer, said this month after a three-hour hearing at the Constitutional Court, where his client did not appear. "Such a time is gone."

The nine-member court said it would rule on the case soon. It is deliberating Ms. Ok's suit, along with three other petitions against the adultery law, all filed in the past year.

South Korea is among a dwindling number of non-Muslim countries where an adultery conviction can earn a jail sentence. About 70 percent of South Koreans support the adultery law, according to surveys conducted in recent years by the government and the news media.

Each year, more than 1,200 people are indicted under the law and about half are convicted.