“We no longer have the ability to laugh freely”

A recent Reuters story on the prevalence of ‘Wifi bullying’ brings yet more light to the current dilemma of the problems South Korean children are facing at school. In this case, the bullies are forcing their victims to sign up for monthly subscriptions so that they can then take over the wireless connection. This allows the bully to surf the web for free whilst their victim has to pay around $40 each month. However, a recent study carried out by the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association and the Chosun Ilbo newspaper has found that 4.1% of school kids have said they’ve suffered some form of bullying. 4.1% of the elementary, middle and high school population equates to about 300,000 children, and we must take into account that this is only an estimate.

Theres been previous posts about the power netizens have in South Korea but it wasn’t till this morning, as I was doing my daily K-news for twitter searches, that I came across what seems like a new form of netizen.

People like Im are popularly known here as paparazzi, and like their European namesakes, they stalk their prey and capture it on film. But it is not celebrities, politicians or even hardened criminals that they pursue. Rather, they roam cities secretly videotaping fellow citizens committing common infractions, deliver the evidence to government officials and collect the rewards.

Potential victims, like hakwon managers, share tips online on how to detect and thwart paparazzi. Paparazzi study these sites to sharpen their skills.

It was the news media that dubbed these bounty hunters paparazzi after several of them made headlines in the early days by hiding on rooftops near busy intersections and clicking away with their long-range cameras, recording drivers making illegal U-turns and, in the process, earning millions of won a day.

South Korea’s Civilian Paparazzi

Sure its been a little bit since I updated but really there hasn’t been a whole lot to write about. For the most part I have been getting things ready for the move. I have gone to Mexico a couple of times too to see the dentist and bought some antibiotics (I hear doctors don’t give you many in ROK). Its just so much more affordable to travel to Mexico and get anything medicine related than to go to the doctor here and get charged just for the consultation.Of course getting around is pretty hard without a car here, so I have been using the public buses.

Also got 5 immunizations since I had not been keeping up with my record, and I have to say that they really hurt! As for repacking, I had rebalance and take out things between both cases since airlines only allow a max of 50lb on each and 25 on the carry-ons. If worst has to come, I will simply wear an extra layer of pants and shirts.Trying my best to simplify the things I have to take, nothing but clothes, medicine, and my laptop + video equipment. Some books too.

Warning! *Possibly Inflammatory Remarks*

Not too long ago there were a series of posts concerning Tiger Moms and Paper Tigers about Asian American students and studies. There was also one article titled What happens to all the Asian American Overachievers When the Test Taking Ends? I won’t address the main point of the article but it does mention this near the beginning:

And so there is an additional concern accompanying the rise of the Tiger Children, one focused more on the narrowness of the educational experience a non-Asian child might receive in the company of fanatically preprofessional Asian students. Jenny Tsai, a student who was elected president of her class at the equally competitive New York public school Hunter College High School, remembers frequently hearing that “the school was becoming too Asian, that they would be the downfall of our school.” A couple of years ago, she revisited this issue in her senior thesis at Harvard, where she interviewed graduates of elite public schools and found that the white students regarded the Asians students with wariness. (She quotes a music teacher at Stuyvesant describing the dominance of Asians: “They were mediocre kids, but they got in because they were coached.”) In 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported on “white flight” from a high school in Cupertino, California, that began soon after the children of Asian software engineers had made the place so brutally competitive that a B average could place you in the bottom third of the class.

Colleges have a way of correcting for this imbalance: The Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade has calculated that an Asian applicant must, in practice, score 140 points higher on the SAT than a comparable white applicant to have the same chance of admission. This is obviously unfair to the many qualified Asian individuals who are punished for the success of others with similar faces. Upper-middle-class white kids, after all, have their own elite private schools, and their own private tutors, far more expensive than the cram schools, to help them game the education system.

Paper Tigers:What happens to all the test taking overachievers when the tests end?

I came across this very interesting article (however positive or negative people may interpret it such as Ask A Korean), it basically talks about  what is referred to as the “bamboo ceiling.” By now it is really no secret that Asian students excel at scholastic but this article wants to look at life after all the tests are over. So what happens after school? You’ve spent your whole life studying and taking tests, now what?  Perhaps it is because I am not Asian that I feel as though I am not qualified enough to talk about this, after all my upbringing was totally different. But it does point out something rather interesting regarding “Leadership and Following.”