::A Geek in Korea::

I’m a long standing open source advocate, and I love all things Firefox. Well, MOST things Firefox. I’ve been using Mozilla’s products back when there was still a Mozilla branded browser, and I was quick to adopt Firefox 3 like everyone else when it came out this week.

However, with less fanfare, another browser had been released in the past week that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Opera 9.5 is continuing the tradition of being a great browser that almost no one knows of, and fewer people use, those that do use it however, love it.

Opera and I have a history going pretty far back for a piece of software. It’s the only piece of software I’ve consistently used for eight or nine years. I’ve been using it longer than Firefox, which is probably a close second considering my migration to Linux at home. I first got started using Opera as a browser when they released a version with gestures. I think I might have even been using a version BEFORE gestures got added.

I know I was using Opera when it was still shareware, before it went adware, before it went freeware (free as in beer). The key feature when I first started using Opera was tabbed browsing and the fact that it would fit on a 3.5′ floppy drive. (This was pre-USB key making transporting an entire OS easy.)

The thing that slowed Opera down besides a shareware purchase model and being ad supported was a radical adherence to the .html standards. The browser was so good at rendering pages correctly that it actually did itself a disservce because no website ever followed the standards correctly. Having a website choke because it wants to render crappy pages in IE sucks. With Opera’s browser share hovering around 1% on a good day, no website will ever go out of it’s way to support it with correct web scripting either.

Opera consistently adds features that get ripped off by other browsers. Mouse Gestures and Tabbed browsing were standard in Opera before Firefox took them mainstream. Opera has voice navigation, a speed dial, and all sorts of other nifty features that other browsers will eventually integrate. Firefox’s extensible nature make it very difficult to prevent any feature Opera invents from staying unique to Opera for long.

This makes Firefox a constant competitor for Opera’s users. Why switch to a different browser of Firefox can do everything Opera can with extensions? While Firefox can always gain features, add-ons can sometimes be resource hogs that slow down systems.

Opera comes built with the features at the beginning, and the browser never gets as bogged down with too many add-ons. The “widget” feature of Opera allows you to add web services as stand alone applications, but they are a different beast compared to the numerous Firefox extensions. Firefox is more adaptable, but Opera is usually quicker rendering pages whenever I use it. It’s not a huge difference either way though, a few milliseconds at most.

Where Opera really shines is the embedded market. My Wii runs Opera’s browser and my DS could too.  I desperately wish my phone did as well. An embedded device with Opera will make the best use of the screen space of any web enabled device with it’s unique rendering system. Opera will also allow you to sync your bookmarks, speed dail, and notes between different platforms by signing up for a free my.opera account.

I’ve started using Opera at work. I can sync my browser bookmarks between work and home. I could theoretically do this via delicious, but I use that service as a repository and global storehouse that I want to keep separate. It’s also fun to play around with the different features.

Opera isn’t perfect, despite the speed, and there are a few things I hope they can fix. I’ll continue to use Opera as a secondary browser until they fix some of the following issues:

Opera’s adblock via css is fine, but it takes a little more work than Firefox’s extension that does the same work to set up. Opera’s spell checker needs some work, and posting from wordpress in Opera is a pain because the text field gets mangled when you switch views from Visual to HTML. Also, Opera in Linux occasionally chokes with SCIM, which is the imput method I use to switch from English to Korean.

With the combination of more rain, less walks with the dog, and my wife needing to use the computer for preparing materials for her school, I hadn’t gotten any exercise in the past few days. I was feeling a little lazy just sitting around, so I popped Wii Sports back into the console to see if I could pick up where I left off.

We have been using the Wii since we got our WiFi router, but not as a game only device. While we do have the occasional rounds of Dr. Mario Rx, I also use the Internet Channel while my wife is working to check out Youtube and read the news. I hadn’t played any of Wii Sports since Super Smash Brothers Brawl came out, but Brawl isn’t exercise. Wii Sports can get me moving, and that’s what I was looking for after being trapped in the house all day.

I had been hovering around Pro Rankings when I stopped playing Wii Sports every day. I had crossed the pro threshold for Bowling, but for everything else I am just under the skill level required to beat the pro level challenges. I think the tougher games are more annoying.

Baseball, in particular, is not fun at the pro ranking, since pitching seems random. I never feel like the pitch I choose affects the outcome of the game, yet the computer player’s pitches leave me completely scoreless most games. Why do they hit sliders and sinkers, but I NEVER can. I liked when it was a bunch of fastballs down the middle, and I could hit a few home runs in a game. I might go to a new character just to play low level baseball again. I love baseball modes in training, but I hate pitching.

I appreciate the slightly higher level tennis, and I would play to reach pro status. 90% of the time, the reason why the other team gets an advantage in a game of tennis is because I’ll swing while trying to control the front court player, miss, and have my back court player in the middle of his animation trying to recover his swing from the same motion as the ball goes by. If I don’t control both players, my computer controlled team mate does absolutely nothing, and losing a game because that moron refuses to swing at a ball I am out of position to hit is more infuriating than missing because I was swinging too early and can’t hit with my back court player due to controlling them both with the same action.

Bowling just gets harder and harder to maintain a positive score. I now have to score really high and have multiple strikes or even a turkey to keep from losing points. I can score over my real life average considerably and still lose points. I’m a pro, so I guess strikes are expected, but it’s hard to keep ahead. I’d almost not want to play bowling, because if I mess up I’ll keep dropping for a while before I can regain my scores and skills. I guess I need to go back to training mode for this.

Boxing I still win in the second round. It’s usually just flailing around till I knock out the other player. The only thing that annoys me about Wii Boxing is that I can throw a punch and have it not register, then I can do the same motion again and have it throw a knock out jab. It’s weird. I like the training mode for the best work out.

Golf is still broken and won’t read on my Wii. I got a badly pressed version of Wii Sports and have no way to replace it. Golf looks fun too. (Shrug)

If I keep up my Wii Exercise routine before bed, I might eventually even convince myself that Wii Fit will be a good purchase despite the shipping costs. I really want to give that experience a try, but I’m not able to purchase it from Play-Asia, my normal source for expensive import games delivered to my home.

Once the weather clears up, I’ll probably drop Wii Sports again like I normally do. Walking the dog is usually all the exercise I have time for before work, and the Television is usually tied up during the evening anyway. Seeing as I detest real sports, and I would never go out of my way to do anything but go bowling, me returning to Wii Sports shows that it is a quality game package that is one of the best games on the system.

The “new computer at work” thing isn’t working out for me at all. I’ve started imputting my homework and classwork into the computer before I ever teach, just so I can get out early from work. However, I’ve been forced to use the Korean version of the program for the last two weeks to import all of my attendence and homework.

There are, literally, DOZENS of buttons on EVERY single menu of this program all labeled in Korean I have no idea how to use. I recognize the imput from the shoddy English version, but it’s clear that the Korean version is still in active development while the English version lags far behind. I can’t even DO the work I need to do on the English version anymore.

Since I need to move over to the Korean version to do my work, I’ve had to bother coworkers to find out which of the THIRTY menus I need to use to get my work done. I’ve got notes scattered around my desk with all the various steps for entering grades, updating my class work, entering test scores, grading homework, and everything else I’ve got to do each day.

My director approached me yesterday and asked why I don’t send daily status reports anymore. I replied, “I don’t know how to do that, no one has trained me or told me how. I can’t find the menu, and I don’t know what I should do. You tell me how, and I will.”

She was surprised I didn’t know how to find one of the menu I needed, but when I’ve been briefed on other parts of this database program, I’ve had the secretary say, “Never push THIS button, it will erase EVERYTHING.” This sort of discouraged trial and error and basically put everything on a need to know, need to do basis.

I was also entering all my grading incorrectly, but not one had TOLD me this. I had been giving them a score based on a numerical system in the program, but I was supposed to know the click another checkbox, imput the scores manually, and ALWAYS use a 100 point metric. Again, no one tells me, and I don’t know these things empathically. How was I supposed to know?

No one is angry at me, and I don’t have to do anything about the two weeks of data I had been working on since I switched over to the Korean program. Or, at least I’m NOT GOING to be doing anything about it. I’m a hostile user that has absolutely NO desire to increase my workload on a poorly designed product that makes my life much more difficult.

All my coworkers hate the program as much as I do, but it’s not something you can easily replace by hand. If it does any work to benefit the students or parents, it’s now deemed “the minimal amount you must do from now on.” It’s this creep of duties that always starts to suck the fun out of jobs.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve gotten into D&D for the first time with a group of frineds. With casual gaming sessions where the game is more of a story than an actual tabletop game, we hadn’t used much in the way of maps or tabletop grids to plan out how we were navigating our adventure.

However, when one of the other players ran the game for a session, he produced a series of maps that we used to plot and plan our battle strategy. This was a good aid to supliment our adventure, as he could talk about the architecture in detail and have a way to keep it relevant to the game.

I was looking at ways that we could play games that used a map that wouldn’t take much time to set up, or would be possible to do from a distance. I stumbled upon maptool, which seems like the perfect tool for playing D&D over the Internet.

Basically, with maptool, you make a map, drop some tokens onto the field, and use it like a virtual whiteboard. It’s pretty straightforward and very easy to do. I was able to make a map representing one of our adventures in a few hours learning the ropes as I went.I just grabbed some art from rpgmapshare and followed the tutorials.

The cool thing is that the DM can control what the other players sees using layers, so as the players move their tokens down a path, the DM could spring an ambush by revealing some monster tokens that had been hiding behind trees. You can set visibility, so if your characters aren’t looking in the right direction, they won’t be able to see everything. There are all sorts of tools that make the game authentic.With the other tools included, you can roll dice, manage encounters, and do all the other mechanical things required to run a game of D&D over the Internet.

If we were going to play, we’d probably connect to maptool, run Skype or Ventrillo for voice chat, then play by moving tokens around in maptool. There are macros built in to automate all the major feats we’d be required to do.

This would pale to any live game session where we all meet, but this has the advantage of being availble to people that live anywhere in the world. There was already talk of inviting someone to play in our game that lives somewhere else. It would also be easy to keep up with our gaming session if someone moved. I think it’s a tad more work when someone is used to just talking about what happens, but if we ever shift to D&D 4.0 edition rules, where tactical placement of units is built into the game more, it might be important to have as a backup.

I had promised my friends a game of Magic the Gathering today because a friend was leaving for a job in China soon. I needed to run out and buy some index cards to substitute for real cards. I had to run out to two different shops to find the index study cards I needed. When I was returning home, I rode up in the elevator with one of the new security guards.

The guy looked at me suspiciously. That’s the job of security guards, but the other parts of their jobs involve doing nothing, watching television, and sleeping. This is the first time any security guard paid any attention to me after two years of living here.

“You live here? What floor,” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, I’ve got my keys right here.”

He gave a sort of shrug and a, “Huh”, as if he didn’t have a clue about me living here. Whatever, I’ll be living at the apartment across the street in a month’s time anyway, and I had been there longer.

*      *       *

I was walking Yoshi on our route around the apartment when I spotted a fire. The apartment complex I live in had a large brush pile secured behind a gate. This is from all the trimmings around the apartment. I thought that they were doing a controlled burn to dispose of the brush. I wouldn’t past the elderly security guards to burn trash despite the pollution, but it seemed odd that the fire would be that big. I could feel the heat and had to leave the walking trail for fear of being burned.

It’s only when I got closer that I realized that there were spectators, the fire was large, and it was feeding on the wind and catching nearby trees on fire. This was NOT a controlled burn. I called my friend that I was going to meet after the walk, then completed my lap around the apartment. I expected it to be out before I returned, but secretly wanted to catch what was going on.

When I arrived behind my apartment, the fire was still out of control. It was two stories tall, and there was a small hose from one of the apartments trying to contain the fire.

There was a crowd gathering, and I was late to meet my friends due to all the picture snapping, so I decided to head up to my apartment for a better view. When I was leaving, a firefighter hopped a fence in dramatic fashion and started battling the blaze close range with a hose.

I got this shot right before I went into my apartment of fire fighters on the small building’s room fighting the fire. It was easily under control at this point.

When I returned home from playing cards with my friends, this was what was left of the fire.

I’m just waiting for a “wanted” picture with my picture on it to start circling around. “Suspicious foreigner sighted in neighborhood for the first time on the same day as the fire. Claims to live in building, never seen before. Possible arsonist.”

Continuing the theme of Post Apocalyptic scenarios that I’ve read or seen are:

Natural Environment in Revolt

The Day After Tommorow, Waterworld, Them!, Night of the Lepus or any other movie based on the premise nature getting revenge. It could also be from a movie that features “Giant Creatures” attacking mankind after any sort of intrusion into their territory, domain, lair, domicile, and or living environment.

Why is it disturbing: It’s nature out of control! Any animal made gigantic and rampaging through a city is supposed to be scary. Also, duh, weather! Oh no!

Would I like to live in this one? I tend to take a detached look at these movies. A lot of this genre is anti-progress, anti-science, and overly alarmist. I don’t find this sort of horror compelling most of the time. As long as the military is still around to take on the rampaging beasts, it wouldn’t be too bad to avoid monster attacks. Just avoid hot spots like Tokyo and New York

Space Aliens

War of the Worlds, V, Kang and Kodos enslaving the human race, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Space Children, Aliens, X-Files, This Island Earth

Why is it disturbing: Things truly alien to us are always scary.

Would I like to live in this one? I’ll explain my answer by explaining the life cycle of an “Alien” from the movie series. An egg is excreted from a queen alien. The vaginal like egg, upon disturbance, peels back and a face hugger is released. The face hugger latches onto it’s prey, who was captured by adult aliens alive, but was then encased in the lair of the queen waiting for a slow painful deal. The face hugger inpregnates the victim by wrapping it’s tail around the creature’s throat and implanting an alien fetus inside the prey’s chest. The fetus eats the inside of the prey, using it’s internal body temperature to grow, taking on it’s DNA. It then burrows it’s way out of the soon to be dead husk, usually by the chest. This new alien quickly begins attacking and capturing victims to be impregnated by more face huggers. It also protects the queen from attack. As an adult alien it is fearless, has acid blood, is cunning and very agile.

So, would I like to live in a world with face hugger aliens? (Shudder) No. Shoot me out the airlock first, I’d rather not have to deal with that idea at all.

Wars with, for, or involving Machines

Whether it’s Terminators, and The Matrix, or Mad Max, and Cylons, machines are going to be at the center of the new world that arises.

Why is it disturbing? The things we create can turn on us.

Would I like to live in this one? I’m computer friendly, but machine incompetent. I’d be the guy who’s car wouldn’t start and would be pillaged and looted by roving bands of fuel pirates in no time.

End of Time

Heat death of the universe, dying stars, and entropy the end of the universe as we know it.

Why is it disturbing: Everything, literally EVERYTHING, is gone.

Would I live to live in this one? By definition, you can’t. This is post-everything.

My Choice

I guess if I had to take my choice of post-apocalyptic world, the “Natural Environment in Revolt” choice seems like the most probable to survive. I’m doing it already. Seeing as climate change is one of the key issues of my generation, there is a possibility that the prospect of living in a world radically altered by weather and forces of nature seems to be something I’m going to have to deal with anyway. Why add any more of a challenge than I already face.

Still, a zombie plague from time to time would make for some interesting stories.

The post-apocalyptic genre is a well-trodden bit of trope for a science fiction fan. Whether the reason for the end of the world is man-made, natural, external, or a result of time, there are plenty of “worlds” that have been explored. I decided to make a list of the Post-Apocalyptic Worlds and rate them, as well as how much I’d like to live in them.

Nuclear Annihilation

Growing up near a nuclear processing facility, the prospect of a apocalypse destroying everything I knew was something never far from my mind as a child. I was paid by the government after a lawsuit for drinking contaminated drinking water as a result of living near a nuclear processing plant. This sort of paranoia about when the bomb is going to fall still casts shadows on my life today living next to North Korea, never knowing when someone is going to throw a rock at that political hornet nest.

I’d say that of any of the ways that the world was going to end, this one was the one was I feared most. The most outstanding work in this sub-genre would have to be Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb.

Why is it disturbing: Powers beyond your control destroy the world, yet the people that make the decision think it is the best for everyone involved because of some weird rationale.

Would I like to live in this one? One childhood spent thinking about nuclear annihilation was enough. I don’t need to spend the rest of my mutated life worrying about another.

Zombie or Unnatural death like Plague

Rage Virus Fast Zombies? Slow walking Undead? Vampire like creatures? Zombies that explode with contact to pungent kimchi? Non-Zombies from Spain that have kidnapped the president’s daughter? The Evil Dead? The Walking Dead? The Dancing Dead? Shaun of the Dead? Marvel Zombies?

Of course the Zombie meme is something I find interesting. There is no way I would have written a twenty page epic, utterly ridiculous short story about it otherwise. Anyway, growing up in an NRA member’s household, the ONLY way I ever imagined myself in a situation where I would ever want to fire a gun was when I was dropped into a zombie apocalypse and needed to for my survival. Hell, remember how excited I got when I discovered Urban Dead?

Why it is disturbing: Imagine putting a bullet in everyone you know. Then they get back up and keep walking towards you intent on eating you alive.

Would I like to live in this one? Well, blasting zombies and being the last guy on Earth would be fun, for a while, as long as I didn’t know them. I guess if I was given enough time to prepare and could live out my life as a hermit somewhere remote I could learn to enjoy SPAM enough.Still, it’d be very lonely.

Man-made plague

I loved the movie 12 Monkeys. The Andromeda Strain, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth and I am Legend/Omega Man (too bad, it’s in the zombie list too, deal with it) are also honorable mentions. The book that took this premise to “HOLY SHIT” mode was actually not even fiction. The Hot Zone, about the outbreak of an air-born ape species version of the Ebola virus that happened in the United States is absolutely one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read.

The Stand is the book I remember encapsulating this world for me. The entire spread of the virus, the march of the survivors, the ways that the world changes to the more immediate surroundings and desperate struggle for survival.

Why it is disturbing: The entire world stands still and everyone you know gets sick and dies. Survivors scrabble to pick up the pieces of a civilization that is literally decaying in front of their eyes. This is one of the saddest worlds to imagine, as people would hold out hope to the bitter end that they could be saved and the disease could be beaten back.

Would I like to live in this one? If I had viral immunity, I’d spend the rest of my life burying the dead. How is that a reward for being a genetic freak of nature?

PART 2: Tomorrow…if the world doesn’t end.

(How awkward must that guy walking into the middle of this taping feel?)

Pygmalion was a man so in love with a statue he made that he prayed to Venus to have his creation turn to life. Venus granted his prayer and he married his creation and had children.

The creators of the documentary “A Perfect Fake” tries to explore modern day Pygmalion in Japan that are trying to create their own representation of modern beauty in various forms. I ran into the Youtube clip above and was absolutely blown away. The man was describing his weird devices as if it was a totally normal thing. They meet people that create virtual 3-D pornography and love dolls to try to explain why an image, or idea of a person can be sought out for as much as a real person.

How is it that an inanimate object begins to hold the feelings of love and companionship these people seek? The people in this movie genuinely have feelings for these dolls. They describe their personalities in human terms, and speak about a doll as if it was a person, even while they pop off the head and package it before going to a photo shoot. One scene had a person comparing the different personalities of his dolls.

“Oh, she’s very expressive. She always has a happy look on her face when we go outside to beautiful places. She looks sad when I take pictures of her in abandoned buildings.”

They show the pictures, and the dolls expression never changes. The man simply projects his feelings of what he thinks she should feel, and this is how he’s constructed this entire relationship with this doll. It’s sad that this man is so intensely lonely that he comes home early from work to spend time with a life size doll. He’s made an entire world where she is the center of his attention.

What kind of person avoids normal relationships for that of a doll or a virtual sex partner? Most of the people said they liked the idea of having a partner that would never age, but also was perfectly submissive. Someone they could “possess” completely. Someone that would never say “no”. Some of the people expressed regret that they were shut-ins that would rather deal with a doll than a real person, but others embarrassed their new found freedom to show their relationships as what they could now consider “normal”.

Why do people willing to love inanimate objects still seek something resembling the female form? Most of the people said that the form itself wasn’t that important. A designer said that the dolls, if real, would be grotesque, but that there is something in their look, or their design, that allowed the owners to explore a feeling they couldn’t otherwise express. They know how they are, but wish to remain as pure and be as unchanged by time as the doll. They look to the doll as a anchor that will always support them and never leave.

The documentary is full of naked non-human forms, and isn’t safe for work. This movie has one of the highest ratios of WTF?! scenes ever. It was rather awkward walking down the street with it loaded on my Cowon D2 trying to make sure no one saw me watching a movie with Japanese guys talking about making penistron devices for virtual sex over the Internet. I recommend it, but it’s really weird.

I have a low level class of pre-readers that don’t have a large vocabulary. One of the annoying things about teaching children with smaller vocabularies is that when they want to get your attention, they usually get up, grab your shirt, and yank you over to their desk pointing and grunting. This is not conductive to a class.

Before class even started today I was being touched, despite my numerous warnings. The boy in the class snuck up behind me while I was filling my mug with hot water. He gave me a big hug squeezing my middle and nearly got his hands burned off. This no touching ban works both ways. I don’t touch them, and they don’t get burned. It’s a win win.

All through class students were grunting and pointing, spelling out words in the air, and trying to get my attention through any non-verbal means possible. Since I’m trying to get them to SPEAK ENGLISH, part of my job is to act daft, even when I know what they want exactly, so that they challenge themselves to learn the vocabulary necessary. If you let students get away with poking and grunting, that’s all they will ever do.

I had turned around, writing something on the board. I heard the students talking to each other in Korean. One student said, “I’m going to poke his butt.”

The other one said, “Poke it HARD!”

Apparently playing daft for a long enough time had made the students think I was actually dumb not know about the butt-hole stab game. I turned around just in time, as a boy was staring at my ass with malicious intent, hand clapped and ready to stab his arms up to the wrists. Since this was the same boy hugging me and grabbing my shirt all day, I had enough. I had warned all five of the students in class multiple times about their behavior, and I had enough.

I sat him down, and got in his face.

“DO NOT TOUCH ME.”

Once in English, once more in Korean. “DO NOT, EVER, TOUCH ME. DO NOT TOUCH ME, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

One student whispered to the other, “I think he doesn’t want us to poke his ass anymore.”

Yeah, you THINK? It went a little past cute on the first day. This is two months into studying and you STILL don’t know how to act? Certainly the Korean teachers aren’t getting their clothes tugged on in class are they?

After the bell rang, I escorted the whole class to my director and explained the situation. She was aghast that I had to deal with children poking and grabbing me. I told her I thought it was because they had a low vocabulary and didn’t know how to get my attention. She laid into them pretty hard and let them know that this school was NOT a petting zoo. If I told the students “hands off”, that’s how it goes. No touching.

I’ll probably spend a few classes with some rules about classroom behavior being adjusted to before I get them to remember the lesson. Next time I’ll probably just start tossing students outside.

My wife teaches storybooks and songs to students at elementary schools around the city. She had a contract with the school and visits the same to elementary schools. She works in this program as an alternative to the private academy system I work in. These cheaper after school public programs were supposed to replace the expensive English education programs that are a huge part of the private education system in Korea, but like most things in Korea, they were set up with little foresight or planning.

The classes are for students that need a little help, or want to try English before investing fully in a private academy. Students that don’t want extra pressure studying, or that can’t afford more classes also enroll. It has a very different feel than the classes I teach that are all about results on tests. This is more of a “feel comfortable in an English speaking environment” sort of attitude.

I accidentally called during a meeting my wife had set up with a parent that wanted to enroll their children. I later heard about the story.

A woman with kids wanted to enroll her kids into the program. The women’s children can’t speak ANY Korean, as they were raised in the United States. She lives in South Carolina, but they are in Korea for summer vacation living with family. The parents were planning to move back to Korea in a few years, and they were worried that their children couldn’t make any friends since they don’t know any Korean. The kids were born in the United States, and are American citizens.

My wife said, “Yeah, sure, add them to my class. No problem. We can read some stories together, they can meet students in my class, and we can have some fun. It will be good for them to make some friends and be comfortable around Korean speakers.” Ironic, as that’s the opposite of the class was designed to do.

The woman was greatly relieved. She said that she had tried to enroll her children into the proper all day Korean classroom for two months while they were in Korea, but the school principal and the head English teacher had denied her children enrollment. She was really worried she was going to be denied by this after school program too. They had brought the children back to Korea so they could enroll in Korean school and the kids were just sitting around all day bored for the past two weeks.

Why would the teachers tell two students that they couldn’t come to class?

The students are completely fluent in English. They know their names in Korean, and nothing else. The head English teacher had denied them access to the rest of classes because there was a fear that having these students in the class would make the Korean teachers that taught English would be embarrassed.

Korean elementary school teachers don’t do a good job teaching English (which explains the private academy and after school programs). Imagine if these two students came to class and spoke better English than their TEACHERS! This would be a “face losing” gesture, and would make the teacher feel ashamed. This is one of the worst things you can do in Korean culture, and is inexcusable. 50% of work decisions in Korea are lying or trying to avoid embarrassing coworkers. No head teacher would allow their teachers to be put in such a position.

My wife shares the class with the new students. She called the other teacher to explain the situation. The other teacher was shocked that she would agree. My wife isn’t embarrased about talking to the kids. She thinks it’s cool to meet kids that can speak English well, and she wants them to have a good time. She’s comfortable to be around native speakers because of me and my friends. It’s great to see her take on challenges because of her confidence in English.