::A Geek in Korea::

I teach one of the most infamous students in the school. He’s a complete misogynist and picks fights with everyone in the class. He’s the smallest student in his grade, smaller than most of the kindergarten students, despite being four years older than them. What he lacks in stature, he more than makes up for in cruelty and a wicked tongue.

The boy cackles, actually CACKLES LIKE A WITCH, when he makes a classmate cry. He has his own little henchman that laughs at everything he says too. The girls in the class have banded together to stop his abuse. They complained so much to teachers that he’s moved onto the biggest boy in the entire class.

When I say “biggest”, the boy is twice the bad mouth boy’s size, but he’s also a little fatter. The mean students constantly knock down the bigger boy’s confidence by calling him a pig in Korean between classes. Sometimes they even mock him in front of me. Here is an exchange I heard today:

Me: “I need to check your homework please.”

Mean boy: “Yeah pig, let him see how many you got wrong, you stupid pig.”

Henchman: “Heh heh heh. Stupid pig. Hah!”

Me: “What did you just say? Give me your rewards papers! I’m punishing you!”

It’s ridiculous. Completely inappropriate for class. It doesn’t matter how many times you yell at the student for being a total ass, the simple fact he made someone upset is what gives him pleasure.

I tried to explain to him, once, that the fact that he hits girls means he lost, not matter what she did, or how angry he got. He can never “win” a fight with anyone by hitting. He said that as long as the girl was upset, he had won. I told him that the only thing that stops the tiny boy from getting his ass kicked every single day was that THEIR parents had taught them how to behave, and that if he ever really picks on someone bad, he’s going to get slaughtered. He didn’t understand.

The large boy in class would absolutely destroy him in a fight, but never lifts a finger. The bigger student yells, and cries, but he never tried to actually fight. The little boy knows taekwondo, but really, at that age it’s just punching and kicking anyway. Plenty of students have a reason to beat the little jerk up, but he’s escaped a major pummeling somehow.

Today, while the small boy was berating the secretary of the school for not letting him cheat on his vocabulary test, I saw another boy running around with the exact same clothing on. Smaller, younger, but positively the same clothes. The director was locked away behind closed doors with a parent. It turns out the bad boy has a younger brother. THERE IS ANOTHER ONE! HE MIGHT ATTEND THE SCHOOL TOO!

My mind boggles at the possibility of seeing multiple members of this family on a weekly basis. If this boy is bad after a few years of studying English, I can’t imagine his lawless, uncivilized brother in a class full of first grade students. He might be feral, although he seemed used to the idea of wearing clothing when I observed him in the school.

I suppose I am doing the community a service. If the kids are in school with me, they can’t be on the streets torturing animals or burning down houses. I think they let their child fail the vocabulary test so that it takes him an extra few hours to get home while he is retested every day. I know I would be happy to see him supervisedyet out of the house.