Interview: David Mason about Teaching & Working in Korea

 

 
 

David Mason is more than an expert about Korean mountains and shamanism. Working with the Korean Ministry of Tourism, teaching English and tourism at a university… Here he shares with us his experiences working in Korea for the past 27 years and what are some of the challenges faced by foreigners in The Land of the Morning Calm.

Also see: Words of Wisdom from a Long Time Expat in Korea
David Mason & the Korean Mountain Spirit 

ME: When you first moved to Korea, you started by teaching English and traveled around the country. What was working in Korea like back in the 80s’?

DM: In my first year here, I was just teaching in Seoul and travelling on the week-ends. That’s when I started my fascination for the mountains and temples in Gyeongju city. Teaching in Seoul was really wild wide-west in those days. The owners were tremendously dishonest and would fly-by-night. Those jobs were very unstable and often would not pay. It was pretty wild in those days but I was just a free-lance backpacker and just rolled with it. Then reading the newspaper an add came-up for a job in Gyeongju the ancient capital, and I said “that’s my job”! That was kind of a paradise, being in the country side and being in the most interesting part of Korea with ancient ruins everywhere. It was very isolated, there were only three foreigners in all of Gyeongju and a few more in Pohang city and Busan with only a couple dozen foreigners were further away. We had no internet in those days, something today’s generation would not even comprehend, telephone was expensive and you had to write letters to friends back home and wait months for a reply.

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Appointment as Public-Relations Ambassador of the Baekdu-daegan by Minister Chung of the Korea Forest Service

ME: Last January, you were appointed ambassador of the Baekdu-daegan mountain trail. For a foreigner that’s pretty amazing, how did it come about?

DM: Well, a good story of serendipity! When I first was employed as professor here [Kyung Hee University], 6 years ago, after 5 years working for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, I decided to do research about Korea’s Baekdu-daegan. Something I had heard of, but there was absolutely nothing available in English. Koreans knew about it but there was just starting to have some interest for it with new publications and people wanting to hike it. I had all I could find translated and set up the very first English web-site about the Baekdu-daegan. Then two young men from New Zealand, Roger and Andrew, were interested in finding the trail and really hiking it and they are young and strong, which I no longer am sadly [laugh]. They wanted to do the trail but didn’t know anything about it. They found my web-site and called me up. They had the idea of writing a hiking guidebook and I had the idea of writing a more academic review with lots of colour photos about the Baekdu-daegan so we joined forces in a very lucky way. The Baekdu-daegan trail guidebook came out about a year ago and is very successful. So far there has been a lot of interest from the government and a lot of hikers, foreigners and Koreans alike using it to go on this trail which they had never even heard of before. This is 735km of trail which takes at least 6 weeks. There are only 14-15 of these long distance hiking trails in the whole world and we are one of them. And I would emphasize we did all this independently. We asked for government support and didn’t get it, they were not interested and didn’t think any foreigners would be interested in this aspect of Korea and they were really wrong about that. As a result of all this, the Korea Forest Ministry appointed me as the Baekdu-daegan honorary ambassador, as a recognition for everything I have done so far.

ME: In your collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism you have developed many projects to increase Korea’s renown in the world. What are strategies to appeal to eco-tourists?

DM: They have done very little to promote ecological, adventure and religious-tourism [...] that are really fascinating to westerners. We have a wonderful temple stay program, of which I was one of the progenitors when working for the government 10 years ago. I really believe in that program and I think that it is excellent. But the whole thing of promoting that combination tourism to Korea’s mountains, they don’t put much energy and effort into that. It is something that is very low cost for Korea and it is sustainable, green and very good for Korea’s reputation. They tend to promote tourism about shopping and food, you know, big city culture. Which is necessary for Seoul city and the hallyu wave, it is easy money and easy to control so they push that stuff in my opinion way too much. We keep worrying about the brand image of Korea, which is too much about North Korea, threat of war, and Korea’s reputation as an industrial country. As a result, the image that most countries seemed to have about Korea is that it’s a whole country of military and factories. The wonderful stuff that they have in the mountains and religious culture is unknown still and should be promoted much more.

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David Mason in action teaching tourism students from KyungHee University

ME: Korean Universities are increasingly hiring foreign professors in their efforts to become more international. What is the work environment like?

DM: Korean professors have all their networks, with their seniors and juniors relationships. Foreign teachers are completely outside of that. We are outsiders, so we don’t get a lot of communication, we often don’t know what is going on. We are on the sidelines of any decision making processes. That can be good in getting a little freedom and independence in a sense, but you also feel a little bit isolated. When they hired me at Kyung Hee, as a full track tenure professor six years ago, I was the only foreigner. Now there is more than 30, but we still don’t get official documents in English. Also the student body is very much globalized. When I started here, we had one or two foreign students in each class, now almost 50% of my students are not Korean.

ME: So Korean universities are succeeding in becoming more globalized. What is it that attracts foreign university students?

DM: Well they come here to Kyung Hee University, because we are the oldest and biggest tourism college in Korea, with the highest reputation. Students come here in general because Korea is very popular in Asia, it is China and Japan’s next door neighbour and they really love Korean pop-culture and movies, which lends Korea a glamourous image. We are also getting Europeans, Americans, and occasionally Latin Americans or Central Asians; it makes the classes way different too. When I am teaching a class that is half non-Korean about Korean cultural subjects, some of these students really know less than the Korean students and have a different perspective. While some of the Europeans know more about Buddhism than Koreans do. So it is all different and mixed up now and is really quite a challenge to teach to a globalized audience.

Thank you to David Mason for his insight about life and work in Korea. To know more about mountains spirits and Korean culture, pick-up a copy of David’s book,Spirit of the Mountains: Korea’s San-shin and Traditions of Mountain -Worship, and hike with the Baekdu-daegan Trail: Hiking Korea’s Mountain Spine, by Roger Shepherd and Andrew Douch. David’s websites: www.san-shin.org and www.baekdu-daegan.com.

Pictures courtesy of David Mason