The Somali Pirates have indeed struck again, this time on a South Korean cargo vessel carrying 21 crewmembers.
The 11,500 ton Samho Jewelry freighter, carrying eight South Korean workers, was seized on January 15 in the Arabian Sea between Oman and India. It was en route to Sri Lanka from the United Arab Emirates.
The Seoul government has been under pressure not to negotiate with the pirates and pay the large ransom after copping some bad criticism for paying .5 million on a South Korean oil tanker what was seized in April last year. The Samho Dream was taken and then released 217 days later after the government agreed to the largest known payment following negotiations with the pirates.
Critics said the pirates were now more likely to target South Korean vessels again, thinking they may be successful in negotiations.
The Samho Jewelry is the eighth vessel carrying South Koreans since a fishing vessel was seized in April 2006. All of the ships have been released with ransom payments except the Geummi 305, a fishing vessel seize don October 9.
According to piracy experts, the Somali pirates are using their ransom money to fund better equipment, and are becoming increasingly smarter toward employing clever hijacking methods. It is believed they have new speed boats, GPS-equipped phones, and a variety of other weapons including rockets and anti-tank rockets.
We will have an outing over the holidays. Please join the group for open skate at Capital Ice Arena in Middleton Thursday, December 30th. We will start at 10:00 a.m.
Capital Ice Arena is located at 2616 Pleasant View Rd., Middleton. There is an all day open skate that day (9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.), admission, hot dog and beverage included. for skate rentals. Bring a bike helmet if your child (children) do not skate well. Dress warmly, the ice rinks are cold.
Families should feel free to bring along extended family and friends, since so many will likely be visiting over the holiday season.
Please expect our annual newsletter and dues form to be electronic this year. We will send this in early January.
A.K.A: Oldeuboi Year: 2008 Runtime: 1hr 59min Country: South Korea Language: Korean Subtitles: English, French, Portuguese-BR, Portuguese-PT, and Spanish Genre: Drama | Mystery | Thriller Director: Chan-wook Park Cast: Min-sik Choi-Ji-tae Yu-Hye-jeong Kang-Dae-han Ji-Dal-su Oh Plot/Sypnosis:
On the day of his daughter’s birthday, Ho Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) gets completely drunk and is arrested. His best friend No Joo-hwan (Dae-han Ji) releases him from the police station, and while calling home from a phone booth, Dae-su vanishes. Indeed he has been abducted and imprisoned in a room for fifteen years. One day, he is suddenly released, receives clothes, money and a cellular and meets the Japanese chef Mido (Hye-jeong Kang), and they feel a great attraction for each other. However, Dae-su seeks for his captor and the reason of his long imprisonment. While looking for revenge, Dae-su discloses deep secrets from the past.
Apparently the Will Smith movie, I-Robot, is becoming more of a reality in Korea. The latest is that robotics will soon be in most homes and offices.
Already the presidential office in Seoul has taken a hold of this technology, and installed at Sarangchae, the presidential museum, a robot names Tiro, who has been greeting guests since September 2010. Part of Tiro’s job includes introducing Korean culture, giving directions and answering questions in four different languages, selected from his LED screen. But this isn’t all he can do. Outside of work, he is also a public speaker, emceeing at a company engineer’s wedding. Also at Sarangchae are dancing robots called Metal Fighters, and robotic dogs, all of which are called Genibo.
On average, 70,000 people visit the museum to see the robot, and the Korean government see it as a great move to attract more visitors, save costs on manpower and advertise Korea’s cutting-edge technologies, which also include chips, mobile phones, TV’s, display panels, and now robotics.
Right now Korea ranks fourth in robot production, behind Japan, Germany and the U.S., controlling about 10 per cent of global sales in 2009. Since the turn of the century the Korean government has been pumping large sums of money into the development of the technology, which in the end may be a real threat to most jobs including those of teachers, surgeons, secretaries and personal assistants.
Last month, 30 billion won (.7 million) in spending for the industry was announced by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. This money will go towards their development, commercialization, standardization, and marketing over seven years.
In June, six month pilot programs were held by 11 groups of robot manufacturers and research institutions which include Samsung Techwin, Nautilus Hyosund and Future Robot, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and Kwangwoon University. Into this the government put forward more than 2.1 billion won.
Threat to employment
The robots are being designed typically to assist humans with dirty, dangerous and repetitive tasks, though this could pose a threat to many jobs in the medical, educational, cleaning, farming, tourism and military fields. Already robots like vacuum cleaners that use sensors to clean, pool cleaners, robo-bars that mix your drinks and even robot ice-cream scoopers, mowers, toilet seats and mops are taking over the need for a maid. Similarly, a secretarial robot called HRP-4, which also doubles as a mail deliverer/ coffee pourer, has already been put on the market by Japanese makers Kawada Industries.
About 8.7 million service robots were sold globally in 2009, up from 7 million year-on-year, according to the International Federation of Robotics. With the workforce aging and labor costs rising, it is expected the sale of robots across the globe will jump 26-fold to .5 billion in 2018 from .2 billion in 2008. Economy ministry data also predicts the market could reach 0 billion in 2020.
The money, however, is in household robots, which account for almost 64 per cent of these predicted costs. Entertainment and teaching robots account for 35 per cent.
It may be that people are worrying over nothing, but with the decline in the global market and unemployment skyrocketing, the last thing people need are robots who don’t take lunch breaks, check the sports stats, or surf Facebook, taking human positions.
What do you think? Are robots good for economic growth, or do they only pose a threat to increasing already long lines of unemployment?
2NE1’s Sandara Park revealed an incident with G-dragon.
On an episode of KBS2TV’s “Entertainment Relay” airing January 28th, Sandara Park revealed “Looking at G-dragon, I once thought I could date a man like this.”
She continued, “Not too long ago, I went to go skiing with G-dragon. Usually he is very shy so he doesn’t even talk much, but he carried my snowboard for me without saying anything.”
G-dragon responded, “When Sandara was walking down with her snowboard, she looked like she was carrying two people. It looked like she was having trouble so I helped her. I’m rather thankful that she viewed me in a good way.”
Aw, YG-Family love. Fans sure do love seeing artists from the same company maintaining good relationships with each other. Or does Dara-gon exist after all?
Source: Newsen via Nate, thanks to Gelic + Napoleona for the tip!
North Korea and South Korean governments have finally agreed to host much needed military talks. The Seoul government has taken up on the North’s offer only a day after the U.S. and China called on the North to end provocations.
During the meeting the North has said it will speak out about its position on the sinking of the Chonan in March last year, and the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island in November. The communist neighbour has even suggested discussions on how to ease military tensions.
“Under the name of Kim Yong-chun, minister of the People’s Armed Forces, North Korea sent a faxed message at around 11:46 a.m., proposing high-level military talks to address pending bilateral military issues,” said Chang Gwang-il, deputy minister for policy at the Ministry of National Defense.
The Unification Ministry will come on board to propose a separate talk concerning denuclearization.
They are yet to discuss agenda, venue and the date of the talks.
Previous defense talks were held in Jeju in September 2000 and in Pyongyand in November 2007.
I am only taking three classes this term and looking forward to having more time to concentrate on my classes. Last semester I felt that there were times that I was only doing what was required and didn’t have the time to do extra research. I am also looking forward to having more time to devote to studying Korean. This will be my second semester in the Masters of Teaching Languages (TESOL) program at the University of Southern Mississippi, and I have been pleased with the program so far.
This semester I am taking:
Second Language Acquisition
Sociolinguistics
Options in Teaching Grammar
Sociolinguistics is the only class that meets on campus. The other two classes are both online, and I am fairly sure that they will be simliar to the online classes that I have taken in the past. They will probably consist of weekly papers and a large project at the end of the term. I am looking forward to all of the classes, but I am most excited about learning more about the acquisition of second languages. I have a friend that has already taken this class, and he told me that there was a ton of work but that he got a lot out of it.
I just received the last shipment of my textbooks that I ordered from Amazon and was pleased that I saved a bunch by using them instead of going though the school. The textbook markup is outrageous.
I also received my work schedule today. I do have two early tutor sessions on Monday and Tuesday, but I am pleased that most of schedule is earlier in the day which means that I won’t be at the school past 6PM. This is a huge change from last semester when I was at the school till 9 nearly every night.
Erased Names on the Tutor Sessions
I have twenty hours of tutoring a week this term. I try not to think about this in terms of how much money I was making for my tutoring in Korea. Let’s just say that the 0 a month I get for my assistantship could be made in less than a week if I was doing this amount of private tutoring in Korea. I am also happy that my schedule should be more stable since most of my students will not have many extracurricular activities in the spring.
As you can see from the schedule, I am going to be hitting the gym three days a week and have already budgeted time for Korean studies as well. Hopefully, I will have more time to devote to studying Korean, so at a minimum it will be 5 hours a week. Maybe I will have extra time on the weekends to get another workout in and to get a few more hours of Korean study done, but I will have to wait and see how much work my courses require.
Overall, I am pleased with my new schedule and excited to see what the new semester will bring.
In a recent email exchange with Kevin from Big Hominids Hairy Chasms, I was reminded of my adventures with three different private schools, aka hagwons (or hakwon, or hakweon, or even hagweon), in Korea. I don’t believe that I ever blogged about my experiences at the time because I was too fueled with anger and mistrust.
To protect the innocent and the guilty, I will refer to the three English academies as Academy A, Academy B, and Academy C.
I arrived at Academy A not knowing what to expect. It was a larger sized academy that had brought in over 20 foreign English teachers. It was a part of a much larger franchise that has academies all over Korea. When I arrived in Korea, I had little knowledge of what would be expected of me as a teacher. The administrator of my school had briefly explained what was expected of me, but I really did not know what I would actually be doing. I was given a brief three day training period, and then was set loose into the classroom. My three day orientation was basically held to allow me to find about the school regulations. Even though I had been a teacher in the states, I really had no idea of how to teach English. I taught 30 hours per week, and I saw each class of students for three hours each week. The class periods were split in half with half being “grammar time” and the other half was set aside for “reading time.” I taught every level from basic phonics to the most advanced students, who were almost fluent. This school was great about paying on time and fulfilling their end of our contract. We were paid on time and the Korean staff at the school was great with assisting new teachers with their adjustment to Korean life. I learned a lot about Korean culture, teaching English, and living in Korea while employed here. It was a great stepping stone to my other schools in Korea.
Besides differences in pedagogical approaches( Academy A required students to learn huge lists of vocabulary words out of context. This is probably typical of many private schools in Korea), the real problem began with this school when I was recruited to be the foreign teacher manager/head teacher for another school. Three months into my second contract with Academy A, a former manager of Academy A decided that he was going to open his own school. He got word to me that he would like to meet for lunch and offered me a position with his yet to be developed school. The salary increase was huge, and he offered a much larger apartment. I was concerned that I would have problems being released from my contract with Academy A, but my soon to be new boss assured me that if we did every thing properly, I would be released with no problem. I put in my two month notice and was assured by Academy A that they would release me and everything would be fine. They were happy with my work and wished me good luck in the future. I worked my two months and never got the release on paper. They told me that the release was coming from the home office and that I should pick it up on the day following my last day of work. I showed up that day to be greeted by a coworker who brought me into an office and broke the news that they were not going to release me from my contract and that the higher-ups of Academy A felt that I should not be able to switch schools. The reason for their reversal was that they had no idea that I was going to work for a former employee of theirs, and they were not thrilled about it. Academy B’s manager still assured me that there would be no problem with my visa and that I should just wait, be patient, and get my visa later.
More Money Does Not Equal a Better School
I moved in to the apartment provided by Academy B and began to prepare for the upcoming influx of new students. The hagwon was starting from the ground-up, and there was a lot of work to be done. I mainly worked from home since I was not officially allowed to work for Academy B. During this time, I made tests, chose books, recorded audio guides, and many other administrative duties. The manager of Academy B had also poached a couple of Korean employees from Academy A. This infuriated Academy A, and all hope was lost for acquiring my release. My wife (at the time my girlfriend) even visited Academy A with me to plead my case in Korean, but it was useless. They had made up their mind that I was not going to be released. I visited immigration numerous times, and although they felt sorry for me, they advised that all I could do was stay in the country on a tourist visa, and then when my original contract was up with Academy A, apply for a new visa. I will say that Academy B’s manager was shocked and stressed by all that was going on, but he did continue to pay me (in cash). I stayed in Korea until my tourist visa was up, and then took a short (less than 24 hours) trip to Japan to get another 90 days in country. Academy B had already hired a teacher to start teaching a few classes even though the academy had not officially opened yet. The plan was for me to hangout until I could apply for a visa and start teaching legally. JJ and I had already offered to go to America for November and December so that he could save some money on my salary since I wasn’t teaching. The owner/manager was slowly losing all of his money and was having trouble getting new students to enroll into his academy. The location was very good, and a few huge apartments were being built very close to the school. He was trying to scrape by until the beginning of 2008. Around August/September of 2007 his key investor pulled out, and myself and the Korean staff were fairly sure that the school was closing. When our paychecks were cut and we were given a mandatory unpaid vacation, we were almost positive that the school was going down in flames. It wasn’t long until our predictions came true. The school closed, and JJ and I went to America for a three month vacation/escape from Korea.
Choices, Choices, and More Choices
Academy C was absolute bliss compared to the first two schools. It was also owned by a former manager of Academy A, but he had left many years ago and his school was already established and had about 7 other foreign teachers. JJ and I had flown back to Korea with me being unemployed but with the hope that I would work for Academy C. I was also in contact with other schools, but after interviewing with the Academy C owner, I knew that I wanted to live and work in Dongtan. Once again I was introduced to the owner/manager by a Korean friend that had worked with me at Academy A, B, and now C. The owner of Academy C and I both took a chance on each other. I moved into our new apartment without having visa or a contract, but JJ and I were already engaged, and we had already discussed getting legally married so that I could stay in the country. I started work again without a visa, but this time the school quickly applied for the visa, and in the end I was cleared for a teaching visa with Academy C and spent two years here teaching later becoming head teacher. Leaving Academy C was tough. Not only did we love the area that we were living in, but we were treated like family by the school and were always fully paid and on time too. The owner also actively asked for input from the foreign teachers and for the most part, he really wanted to hire experienced teachers. If it wasn’t for the need to come back to the states for graduate school, I would have liked to have stayed at Academy C for a few more years.
I really don’t know what I would have done during my visa troubles if I had not being dating JJ. The thought of leaving the country would have probably been more of an option. My experiences with the hagwons really don’t define my experience in Korea. Although many of my memories of Korea are about the job and my school, the memories that I hold onto are from outside of the school. I made a ton of great friends, both native speakers and Koreans, got to visit a bunch of great places, was introduced to different exciting culture, and met my wife while living in Korea.
My advice for future teachers in Korea is simple. Be prepared and research. I truly hope that I don’t ever have to work for a hagwon in Korea again, but if I do, I know that I will research the school before I sign a contract, and I will also have a large amount of savings/emergency fund to help us over any unforeseen hurdles. If JJ and I wouldn’t have had an emergency fund in place, we would have been in a bit of trouble. I don’t know if a new school would be a good match for a new teacher. Although the working hours of some of the established hagwons are greater, I think that the stability that they provide are needed for a teacher who is new to Korea. Saying that, smaller schools often pay more than the larger chains but without the stability that the larger schools provide. The competition for students is so great and in many areas the market is so saturated with English academies that many schools close quickly. New teachers would be wise to weigh all their options before signing with the first school that offers them a contract.
I hope to come up with a few playdates soon for January and February. Does anyone want to host at their house otherwise I can plan something public. Please e-mail me at amkm1.1@frontier.net if you would like to host. I will keep you posted.
The results of the survery for Friday at noodles is that there is not a day we can all come in agreement. I will probably look at summer to bring this or something similar back.
The Somali Pirates have indeed struck again, this time on a South Korean cargo vessel carrying 21 crewmembers.
