Not just your average TEFL prisoner

Unlike Japan, there aren’t a lot of good books about Korea. Unfortunately Brother One Cell, the story of an “English teacher” who got imprisioned for trying to smuggle dope, is a typically unrewarding read- you learn next to nothing about Korea and surprisingly, considering the experience, almost nothing about the human condition. Instead, you get page after page of facts you didn’t want to know about his life written in some of the most florid prose I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading. Having gone through that torture, I thought I’d at least try to get a blog post out of it, so here are the bits on the boom days of Korean TEFL:

“I went to South Korea in the summer of 1993 to teach English. I couldn’t think of anything better.” page 30

“I wondered how I’d fallen in with such a bunch of freaks… a host of bent Australians, warped British, tainted Canadians, tormented runaway Americans. .. But all of us found teaching work with astounding ease. It didn’t matter, on the whole, that we were ragged and suspect because the demand for English in Korea was so great that almost anyone was accepted” page 38

“As an American with a degree in English and a relatively clear voice, I had an odd, almost accidental power. I was a viable business, in wide demand simply because of my voice and the syllables it could command.

So I taught illegally- teaching English, then, was my first crime in Korea…. Tiny children cried and slept as mothers watched from the window, and I, desperately trying to keep the children happy and awake, repeated the names of animals and colors, pointed at pictures, told them to be quiet, carried in games, toys, blocks- and a soft red ball that I would throw against their heads from across the room to stop them from punching each other, tearing each other’s hair, urinating on the floor and trampling over the puddles in their socks.” page 41

“While the students knew English grammar better than many Americans, in terms of speaking the language they were like Sisyphus, rolling the words from their brains through their mouths to the tips of their tongues, straining, nearing the final push, only to have the words roll back in their throats and back towards their brains in a tangled heap.” page 43/44

“long days of listening to English stagger in its infancy” page 62

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 11th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under TEFL, Teaching English in Korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.