The students

So, more about the students. In the last entry I said that they are not as respectable as I or others might have expected. Well, that’s true, but it’s not to say that they are disrespectful. My point was that Koreans seem to not be as respectful as the students of the surrounding countries, China and Japan. They’d come late, if the department wasn’t so tough on attendance this semester. They turn in their homework late and often in an unpresentable form.
It’s funny. Korea is supposedly the most Confucian culture and the language has the most hierarchal systems out of all languages. To take a line out of a book I am reading, the language “was designed to reveal and maintain social status of the speakers rather than to communicate clearly” I guess the past 60 years of a tight relationship with US has change some of that and I am teaching at a 2 year college in the International School (i.e., American school).
This department is designed to give students an opportunity to get a Bachelors degree from an American school. They study for two years here. Afterwards they have the opportunity to transfer to NPU or a Kansas university.
This has also attracted a few international students to the department. There are two Cambodians, four Chinese, and a girl from Kyrgyzstan. They are much better students than the Koreans. But, I think being international students they may feel much more luck to be apart of the program and committed to it. Also, their English is among the best in Pohang and their Korean is poor. Thus, they are not in class to socialize as much. But the Chinese are a bit of a counter example. Their English is extremely poor and they have a social network. However, they don’t socialize in class. Overall, they are bad students because they don’t understand what I say and therefore don’t turn in assignments. But as far as respect goes, they are the most respectful. They are typically next to their friends in class and don’t have a clue as to what is going on. They must be so bored, but they sit still and quite. Usually flipping through their dictionaries. Meanwhile the Koreans are talking or sleeping.
To give an example of how appreciative the international students are of the opportunity to study in the United States I’ll give you a quote from one of the Cambodian students. Yesterday I was talking with him about different majors, specifically business and economics majors. He said
“I think that it is kind of difficult. If you want to be a businessman you need to have a lot of money to start a business.”
“I heard that in America some people don’t have enough money to start a business so they will work for a company and then become the boss. Amazing”
He was shocked about our level of opportunity. I wrote down the quote right after he said it.

Right now I am on a bus with all 36 of my students. I have been driving along the Eastern coast line for about two hors now. They are watching a Korean film. There is a crooked politician, his gang, and the lone-tattooed-hero. Every scene includes a pointless brutal beating of at least one person. The moral of the film seems to be that life will leave you beaten, bloody, and dead in a lawless world. Typing here and listening to my iPod help block out this painful film. Oh, I think it just ended and yes, in the last scene all the women were dead and the main character was near death. I’ll take my Hollywood, happy ending films.