I think so.  I was a somewhat active member of Gangwon’s KOTESOL group for many years.  I am currently involved with the Busan chapter and assisting, in the most limited way, with a mini-conference they are hosting in late Spring. Oh, wait.  KOTESOL is the acronym for Teachers of ESL in Korea group, usually written this way to emphasize it can be Foreign and Korean teachers, not exclusively Korean teachers, as it may read if Korea is at the front of the phrase. Alright, you now know what KOTESOL is and that I am satisfied with being a member.  Why do I think others wouldn’t be? Well, particularly in Gangwondo, the meetings were interesting but frequently focused on issues that didn’t affect me.  Sokcho and surrounding area had a large EPIK group and many speakers gave talks on their specific issues.  There was a talk on teaching at ESL camps, but the speaker and the examples were all concerned with the mandatory camps the EPIK teachers had.  They had reasonable and clear concerns, but mine were different.  For example, EPIK camp teachers have specific teaching schedules they have to follow that don’t allow as much individual input at they would like.  Budgets are set and spent before the foreign teacher knows they exist…  Anyway, the camps I frequently work at, by choice, do allow, or require, personal initiative, are longer in duration and have different goals than the EPIK camps.  Attending that meeting was by no means a total waste, but it wasn’t as satisfying as I had hope. In short, university teachers were a minority at those meetings and their interests were not met.  Which is the chicken and which the egg, I cannot say. Perhaps Scholarly Societies are on their way out as like-minded groups can increasingly refine their specific likes and needs and meet those needs online.John Dupuis, at Confessions of a Science Librarian has examined the issue closely and discusses an article at The Scientist.com on the subject.  This article is about scientific societies, but clear parellels can be found. WordPress is not allowing me to have nested quotes – that is, the first quote indented and the second quote (inside the first), double indented – so I will not indent Dupuis but will indent the stuff he quotes. The thrust of the article is that scholarly societies are having trouble offering true value to their members in the Internet age, that their business models and even their raisons d’etreare being disrupted.

In years past, the answer was easy because being a member came with tangible benefits, such as inexpensive journals and the ability to submit abstracts to annual meetings. Nowadays, these perks don’t seem very important. Most society journals are freely available online [1], and the proliferation of scientific meetings has made it easier to find venues to present my current research. Thus, the frequency with which I ask that question–”should I bother?”–has steadily increased. …

Clearly, I am not the only scientist who is ambivalent about societies. Judging from their newsletters, many of the larger societies are struggling with stagnant or declining memberships, especially among young scientists. Although it is the youngest scientists who potentially have the most to gain from a scientific society because of networking opportunities, they are the ones who usually are most poorly served by those societies. This is because scientific societies generally cater to the status quo, not to the new and emerging elements of a field.

Both the The Scientist.com article and Dupuis’ comments on it are worth reading.  Dupuis also links to several of his previous posts on the subject and asks these questions (and is waiting for answers): Questions for scholarly societies:

• Does your society subsidize member programs with profits from it’s publications program
• What kind of outreach do you do to the next generation of scholars?
• What do you tell them is the “value proposition” for joining your society?
• Do you facilitate your members online networking and professional development?
• What are your thoughts on an Open Access business model for scholarly society publishing?
• Do your members often mumble your name under their breath with the words to the effect of “just don’t get it” or “waste of money?”

Added later: Jason Renshaw, who once was president of the Busan/Gyeongnam chapter of KOTESOL, discusses problems with the small meetings and local conferences given by various chapters of KOTESOL.  The problem, apparently, is us!

( Source )

Quick question: for want of a better word, what vibe do you get from the above image? How does it make you feel?

Part of this Korean Air advertisement, how about with the caption:

From departure to arrival, only dignified services for our dignified guests.

Or with the fine print:

When you land, you should be in the same delicate condition as you were during take-off. That’s why our delicate service with a smile remains constant throughout the flight until you reach your destination.

In particular, do you find it demeaning to the steward in any way, or women in general?

Does the fact that only 11% of Korean Air stewards are men influence you in any way, Korean Air only hiring men from within its own ground staff since 1997, but women also from the general public?

And finally, do you get the same vibe from this Gucci advertisement? Why or why not?

( Source: the Fashion Spot {NSFW})

Alas, I have no information about the Gucci advertisement unfortunately (I would be grateful if any readers could enlighten me), but the Korean Air advertisement at least ran in magazines and newspapers worldwide in March 2008, and I recall finding it vaguely disturbing when I saw it in the Asian edition of The Economist at the time, but not quite being able to put my finger on why exactly.

And as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one, commentators from Singapore to London either baffled by it, finding it “hilarious that Korean Air published it in a Western magazine,” thinking it demeaning to women, and/or hoping that in Korea itself “it’s some kind of image of empowerment.” But I didn’t personally see anything sexual in it however, and so – forgive my naivety – originally didn’t quite get this unspecified newspaper author who commented that they were “glad that she is wearing a scarf, which is part of her uniform, and not something else.” Moreover, I certainly didn’t think it looked like she was about to perform fellatio either, unlike the author of Copyranter:

KOREAN AIR: How May We Service You?

Korean Air: You think our turbines have suction power…

The ad copy (click image) reads, in part: “That’s why our delicate service (no teeth!) with a smile remains constant throughout the flight…” Now, the ad was scanned from the March 31st Asian edition of Newsweek. And as tipster Juditha wrote, there certainly is a cultural difference with how female flight attendants (and really, all females) are perceived in Asian culture. But. Still. If the airline keeps running ads in this vein (sorry!), their male passengers are not going to stop at unbuckling just their seat belts.

But hey, we all make mistakes, and it’s not like there weren’t some distinctly sexual overtones to the advertising campaign as a whole; with thanks to fellow blogger Logan Row for pointing it out, note the symbolism at 0:19 in the commercial below for instance (and quite a common theme in wine advertisements!):

What is the logic of the Korean Air advertisement then? Well, as commentators in those above links pointed out, what Korean Air is trying to say in it is:

…that their attendants will go the extra mile for their guests. The pose that the flight attendant is striking is how traditional Korean hostesses would serve guests in their own homes. It is a traditional Korean (and to an extent Japanese) form of humility and hospitality

And that it’s a reference to the:

…Korean (and Asian) custom of bowing in front of your elders, parents, to people you respect, or in general to show deference to someone and submission. (ie students serve their teachers drinks/food on their knees) Its a position of servitude not necessarily the same ‘on your knees’ sexual connotation we have in the US. Obviously all of this still is problematic as far as the the female subjugation at the will of the Korean Air clients and basically almost just as offensive. But I thought that cultural reference was probably really important as well, as Korean, and other Asian cultures would read it with that in mind.

And finally that:

it conjures up being treated like royalty – in the old days the servants of royalty had to kneel and bow at all times when presenting the king with food/drinks/documents and then scoot out the door, never showing their backs. it is a sign of respect. with that said, this should not run anywhere outside East Asia as it can be misconstrued by everyone else.

( Source: the Fashion Spot {NSFW})

However, unfortunately it was. And unlike in Korea where cultural factors mean that the advertisement is not necessarily demeaning to women, a person’s social status usually trumping factors like how (literally) highly they are placed in an advertisement (see here, here, and here), having any group regularly placed lower than another in advertisements tends to be problematic in Western culture, for reasons the late sociologist Erving Goffman outlined in Gender Advertisements (1979):

Although less so than in some, elevation seems to be employed indicatively in our society, high physical place symbolizing high social place. (Courtrooms provide an example) In contrived scenes in advertisements, men tend to be located higher than women, this allowing elevation to be exploited as a delineative resources. A certain amount of contortion may be required. Note, this arrangement is supported by the understanding in our society that courtesy obliges men to favor women with first claim on whatever is available by way of a seat. (p. 43)

And also:

Beds and floors provide places in social situations where incumbent persons will be lower than anyone sitting on a chair or standing. Floors are also associated with the less clean, less pure, less exalted parts of the room – for example, the place to keep dogs, baskets of soiled clothes, street footwear, and the like. And a recumbent position is one from which physical defense of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders very dependent on the benignness of the surround. (Of course, lying on the floor or on a sofa or bed seems also to be a conventionalized expression of sexual availability) The point here is that it appears that children and women are pictured on floors and beds more than men. (p. 41)

Granted, the Gucci and Calvin Klein examples of this above are particularly provocative, but you can see more normal ones in this “Ritualization of Subordination” category of Goffman’s framework at The Gender Ads Project if you’re interested. Moreover, in light of those, I’m no longer entirely convinced that the Korean Air advertisement isn’t still problematic despite its cultural context: after all, with the proviso that men usually look rather awkward in poses that are sexually appealing on women (as hilariously demonstrated here), I personally find it very difficult to imagine a man in place of a woman in the Korean Air advertisement, although I fully concede that that may be due to my own socialization process leading me to believe that it is more “natural” with a woman, or even simply my familiarity with the advertisement, that happened to feature a woman rather than a man. Or is it not just me?

( Source: WallyWorld )

Regardless, this is by no means the first time that Korean advertisers or advertising agencies have produced advertisements that are appropriate for and/or logical to Koreans, but completely confusing and even offensive overseas. Not that only Korean companies are guilty of doing so of course, but they are the focus here, so let me leave you with 2 examples, the most notorious of which is probably Korean cosmetic maker Coreana’s (코리아나) use of Nazi imagery in 2008, about which you can read more at Brian in Jeollanam-do here, here, and then here (and the video is still available at Adland.TV).

Next, slightly more benign, there is that for the Samsung Sens notebook computer from September last year:

The logic of those with other, non-Sens notebooks having pig noses is that Korean 2-plug electrical sockets do indeed look a little similar, and I’ve heard that that’s traditionally what they were called too (but perhaps only by children?).  Regardless however, one wonders why they act like bafoons, and particularly why they’re all Caucasian when the commercial was filmed in a city as racially diverse as Sydney?

But a crucial difference between those and the Korean Air advertisement was that only the latter was intended for a global audience, and so the advertiser or advertising agency responsible should really should have known better. And now I’m curious: can anyone think of other cases where Korean advertisers or advertising agencies have made similar mistakes overseas? Alas, given the insular nature of the Korean advertising industry, probably not!

(For more posts in the “Gender Advertisements in the Korean Context” series, see here, here, here, here, and here)

Compare:

Korean universities are handing out a greater number of high grades to their students. The trend suggests that gaining admission to a school is increasingly guaranteeing a degree for many college students here.

According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Wednesday, nearly 36 percent of graduates last year gained an A-level grade point average (GPA) and some 56 percent received one in the B range, while only 0.1 percent flunked. Last year, some 292,000 students received bachelors’ degrees. …

By department, education majors topped the list of graduates with A averages at 55 percent. Medical students came next at 39 percent followed by liberal arts majors at 38 percent, social studies majors at 37 percent, and natural science majors at 34 percent.

Education experts say grade inflation could hamper the quality of university-level education. Some others say that this trend is in line with a growing number of “CEO-style” university presidents who put the first priority on satisfying their students.

From the Korea Times.  Ah, satisfying their students… and parents and administrations.  Meanwhile, in the US:

The biology professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge gives brief quizzes at the beginning of every class, to assure attendance and to make sure students are doing the reading. On her tests, she doesn’t use a curve, as she believes that students must achieve mastery of the subject matter, not just achieve more mastery than the worst students in the course. For multiple choice questions, she gives 10 possible answers, not the expected 4, as she doesn’t want students to get very far with guessing.

Students in introductory biology don’t need to worry about meeting her standards anymore. LSU removed her from teaching, mid-semester, and raised the grades of students in the class. In so doing, the university’s administration has set off a debate about grade inflation, due process and a professor’s right to set standards in her own course. …

Even for those who, like Homberger, are tenured, there is a risk of losing the ability to stick to your standards, he said. Teaching geology, he said, he has found that there are students who get upset when he talks about the actual age of the earth and about evolution. “Now students can complain to a dean” and have him removed, Ellwood said. “I worry that my ability to teach in the classroom has been diminished.” …

[Says Dean of the College of Basic Science, Kevin Carman] “The class in question is an entry-level biology class for non-science majors, and, at mid-term, more than 90 percent of the students in Dr. Homberger’s class were failing or had dropped the class. The extreme nature of the grading raised a concern, and we felt it was important to take some action to ensure that our students receive a rigorous, but fair, education. Professor Homberger is not being penalized in any way; her salary has not been decreased nor has any aspect of her appointment been changed.”

From Inside Higher Ed.

I teach a mandatory, but non-major class.  My students want to be engineers or work in tourism.  English would be helpful but is not completely mandatory to perform those jobs – I do think a tourism employee with strong English skills would be more employable and have other benefits, but it is not required.  Engineers would likewise benefit from being able to read technical papers and discuss their work in the international arena, but their store of personal creativity and ingenuity would not be affected by their level of English.

Thus, I am torn.  My university does encourage high grades and my previous one did too.  Indeed, at that university, it was explicitly stated. “Korea’s population is dropping.  Every year there are fewer students available to go to university and every university is struggling to enroll those students.  We have to do things to entice students and keep them when they arrive.”  Well, that is not an exact quote, but it is close.

I am new to my current job.  I am not likely to rock the boat this year at least.