Hankyoreh and KCTU draw attention to ILO report

The International Labor Organization (ILO) cited South Korea, along with Cambodia, Colombia, Philippines and Iran, as a country in which workers' right to assembly is not well guaranteed.

Great company that, countries where labour activists are daily threatened, beaten, tortured and disappeared. I wonder how many workers will be imprisoned, or killed on the streets of Seoul this summer.

Park Geun-hye vows to save public education - by killing it

It seems Park Geun-hye plans to dismantle public education in the country, so that "quality human capital" might be better produced - oh wait, she won't have to, since apparently it has already "collapsed."

She also says "deregulation" and the "rule of law" will allow Korea to prosper. Quite comfortable expressing nonsensical contradiction, is Park Geun-hye.

And about those tax cuts, Ms Park ...


The Korea Times won't provide an URL for the story, so here's most of it:

"Failed Public Education Undermines Economy"

By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter

Presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) has diagnosed that failed educational policy has undermined the economy.

Among others, she stressed that the next government should put top priority on public education.

``The collapse of public education and soaring household spending on private education are two core problems which should be addressed during the next administration,’’ the former GNP chairperson said.

Park claimed the poorly managed public education system has generated many social ills including a growing number of broken families.

Therefore effective programs for training quality human capital should be given primary importance as a key item on the national agenda.

Successful educational reform will pave the way for the prosperous economy and consequently job creation will follow, she said.

She pointed out that Koreans are estimated to spend some 31 trillion won per year on private education. English education takes the lion’s share of the spending.

Park, the eldest daughter of the late President Park Chung-hee, said her camp is reviewing various policy options to enable the government to support families to take free foreign language programs.

Park singled out tax cuts, deregulation and the rule of law as the three core elements that can revitalize the Korean economy.

She added these three elements will create jobs and improve welfare for low-income families.

Regulations hold the economy back, she said.

According to her, about 500 more regulations have been introduced during the incumbent Roh Moo-hyun administration.

Park promised to ease regulations, if elected president.

Korean teachers lodge complaint with the ILO

The KTU has submitted a complaint to the ILO. The ILO will ask the government to respond this month, but there will be no formal discussion of teachers' charges before November.

Calling on the KTU to support the academic and cultural boycott of Israel

Inspired by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Britain's National Union of Journalists and now the UCU, I am going to submit a motion to the KTU executive, that the union join the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. I realize it's a longshot ...

Free Trade will save your parents' jobs, and whiten your teeth too!

It wasn't easy to get - the teacher responsible for distributing stuff like this denied any knowledge of it - but I've uploaded the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development's 한미/KOR-US FTA propoganda (.ppt, in Korean).

Slides 42 and 52 will be of particular interest to educators. Slide 42 states explicitly that access to education as a public service remains to be negotiated. Slide 52 lists the "education service" areas that the Americans intend to discuss - in short, ALL OF THEM, from primary to tertiary and beyond.

I hope someone familiar with the agreement will find the time to comment on this material ;-)

... because Big Brother is Always Right

"State-mandated net filtering" is in the news:

"What's regrettable about net filtering is that almost always this is happening in the shadows. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered."

The survey found evidence of filtering in the following countries:

Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Burma/Myanmar, China, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen.

Of course, with a little effort, blocked content is very accessable.

Which reminds me, I must give a lesson on using proxies.

The filters are extra thick for school networks, and we're not talking about protecting kids from fisting in barnyards. About once a week, I have to call the local Office of Education and ask politely and firmly for access to sites that contain material good for young (and less young) minds, e.g. Common Dreams and Cryptome.


But I was refused access to reddit.com!

(For the timorous: I was eventually able to confirm that downloading files from sites like the KCNA is not illegal, though the "distribution" of files containing content deemed too sympathetic to The North can get you jailed - unless you're singing in tune, of course.)


And here's a good article at ZNet: The Harsh Reality of Migrant Labor in South Korea

Ministry distributes FTA propaganda to schools

Well, isn't that a nice little effort in inter-ministry cooperation ..

From today's Hankyoreh:

The ministry sent documents to nationwide educational offices and colleges on April 30 - including 60-page promotional materials - urging them to cooperate in raising understanding of the FTA negotiations. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education then conveyed the message to regional [educational] offices to step up efforts to make teachers and students have "a correct understanding" of the FTA and to use the ministry's materials in instruction.

I'll try to get my hands on the material and post on it later.

"it is possible to re-imagine such projects"

Trip to the Kaesong Industrial Complex at Two Koreas and A Raw Deal Between Washington and Seoul (CounterPunch, by Tim Shorrock) deserve links.

Denying student agency in the adolescent rights movement

by Jeon Nu Ri
translated by Kim Seok Cho

Within the adolescent rights movement, teachers are known to share certain tendencies. These are assumed to be occupational symptoms. For example, they tend to speak for a long time in meetings or discussions, as if they were in a classroom. Another symptom, which is to be discussed here, is their ‘excessive responsibility’ for their students.

It’s natural for teachers to be responsible for their students in that they are educators who are capable of changing their students’ lives. However, this ‘responsibility’ sometimes strays from what teachers originally intend and can have negative effects on students who are working to improve school communities.

A few days ago, a student was caught and punished by the school authority for organizing a paper plane demonstration against hair regulations. When I visited the school to protest the disciplinary action, the teacher responsible for the case told me, “You can’t be responsible for his life, but I can.” I was angered by the remark. He seemed firm in his belief that he is responsible for the student’s entire life, so firm that he was mistaking the student for a lamb which is expected to obey its master. He failed to understand that his student could also fight for his rights as a human being.

Even some members of JeonGyoJo, whose goal is chamgyoyook or ‘True Education’, are not free from this ‘excessive responsibility’. When JeonGyoJo launched a ‘Saving-Students Center’ last July, people in the movement supported the project, as teachers were finally showing an interest in the issue of students’ rights. However, the name of the project itself is revealing. It implies that students are merely premature beings who need the protection and care of adults. In other words, students can’t be responsible for changing their realities, but rather are objects to be taken care of by adults.

In fact, this attitude towards students is easy to find even in schools which have a lot of union teachers. Speaking to a student engaged in a one person protest, a union member told him, “It’s time to leave your protest to us.” This attitude tells students that even union members don’t regard students as companions and partners in the True Education Movement.

It’s difficult for teachers, out of love and care for students, to avoid ‘responsibility’. But is what we call ‘love’ for our students a love truly for living human beings? Is it not more like ‘raising cattle’? What kind of ‘education’ requires that students develop and grow only under the control of teachers, ignoring the students’ own needs? This may be due to teachers’ arrogance, a result of the mistaken legacy of Korean education.

True Education should overcome the problem of ‘excessive responsibility’. This will be possible only if teachers and students work together, and help each other grow. This is the True Education we have pursued.

Private school teachers critical of Uri cowardice

Here is the very sexy Hwang Hyeon Su, engaged in a one-person demo (common in S.Korea, as demos with two or more participants must be approved by local police) against the weakening of legislation to make the administration of private schools more accountable.


The sign can be translated as: "Will the Uri Party, which is trying to form an illicit connection with the Hannara Party in rejecting democratic changes to private schools, be like the Hannara Party, which always supports private school owners? [Publicly-supported] private schools should be transparent and democratic."


Hwang Hyeon Su, who teaches at a private high school in Incheon, has this to say: "It's the conservative Christian groups that are forcing Uri lawmakers to reverse changes to the law. They claim that Jesus doesn't want the administration of private schools to change."


Well I say, if the Good Lord was happy with the way schools were being run, then the blasphemous changes made by the Uri government must surely be undone!