History: We started
An American Teaching English in South Korea
(ATESK) around May of 2000. Today I guess you'd say ATESK was a blog, but back then, who had heard of such a thing? Livejournal was barely a year old, and Peter Merholz had first split the term "weblog" into "we blog" on his website about a year earlier. As far as we were (and are) concerned, ATESK was a website with a journal, a photo section, and (later) a FAQ. The journal stops at 16 February 2001, the night before Margaret left for the airport to fly home. So today, I'd say it's more history than blog. But if you want to call it a blog, that's fine with us. Anyway, Margaret had been writing home since she'd arrived in Korea in February of 2000. Not email, not yet -- she didn't have a computer or internet access until May, and she wasn't too keen on the idea of using a PC-Bang. So for those first months she was sending real handwritten letters by snail mail, sometimes enclosing her film camera snapshots. I'd type the letters into the computer and email them to her friends. Then one day I thought it'd be nice to share the pictures, too. So, why not make a website? That'd be easier than attaching them all and emailing them, right? (Ha!) But I'm getting ahead of myself. In 1999 Margaret was unhappy in her job here at home, and she started looking for something better. "Don't settle for just anything," I said. "Keep looking. Eventually you'll something you'd really like to do." She did. One night I was working at the computer and she sat down next to me with a newspaper clipping. (Back in 1999 it still made sense to look for work in the classified ads.) It said:
Margaret had studied Korean in college, 20 years before, and even had a Korean pen pal for a while. But this still came as a surprise. Since I was on the computer I ran a web search with the keywords "English Teaching Korea." What came back was mostly slick recruiting jabber and not-so-slick personal websites on Geocities and the like. I skipped right over the recruiters. What I read in the personal websites was not very encouraging. So I tried to talk Margaret out of going. But it was too late. Twenty years' worth of interest in Korea kicked in, and she sent the letter and resume. Weeks went by. Just about when I thought it had all blown over, Margaret got a phone call from Mrs. Lee's brother. He lives about an hour from us -- he's the one who had placed the newspaper ad. Margaret met him at a nearby chain restaurant. A few days later she had a phone interview with BLI's director. The phone rang a few more times, fax machines hummed, pens scratched on paper, and it was a done deal. I was still pretty rattled by all the horror stories of broken promises, run-down housing, unheated classrooms, loony directors, and unpaid salaries. But Margaret's intuition told her that BLI would be a good place to work. She was right. I was wrong. So I had a couple more reasons to put up this website -- as penance for trying to talk Margaret out of what turned out to be a great experience for both of us, and as a counterbalance for all the negative Korea teaching pages on the web. Why are there so many doom and gloom stories about teaching English in Korea? We think there are three reasons.
So should you teach there? The only way you can decide that is by learning as much as you can about what Korea and ESL teaching are like. We've tried to present both the good and the bad here on ATESK. It's up to you to figure out which way it balances for you. I will tell you this: Margaret says that teaching in Korea is the best job she's ever had. She loves Korea -- she considers it her second home. She still has good friends among Koreans. She probably would have stayed if she hadn't had such strong connections to the US (fortunately she says I'm still one of them, even though I did try to talk her out of going to Korea). Margaret and I think that if you have the right kind of attitude, teaching English in Korea might be a job you can enjoy too. So, what kind of attitude do you need?
It's not for everyone, but it might be for you. Who we are: Margaret and I both grew up in the 1960s and 70s, with all that implies, so we're almost a full generation older than most people who now teach overseas. We travel when we can and think of ourselves as citizens of the world, but in all honesty we're very much products of our US upbringing. No doubt that affects what we write about here, and how we write it. If you're from Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand or some other English-speaking country, I hope some of this information helps you anyway. Oh yeah, in case you hadn't noticed, we also talk a lot. If you disagree with something we've written, please let us know. Say it nicely, and we'll probably write back. Romanization: Korean is written in an alphabet called Hangul. It looks like nothing else in the world. Romanization is the process of approximating (usually not all that well) the sounds of Korean words with the Western alphabet. Most of the Romanization we do here is more or less based on the venerable McCune-Reischauer system, with, shall we say, some creativity. When she was writing in the journal, Margaret tended to just write what she'd heard. Who takes time to look things up when the words are tumbling out? For example, you'll probably find the Korean term for Karaoke room spelled as norae-bang, noray-bang, and nolay-bang. Korea officially adopted a new Romanization system in 2000, while Margaret was there. We've mostly ignored it, but it's been (ahem) quite a while since then, so maybe one of these days we'll have to get with the system and change Kangnung to Gangneung and Pusan to Busan. Privacy: Somebody told me that every website should have a privacy statement. I have no idea why, but just for the record, here it is: Privacy is a good thing. This site doesn't use cookies, doesn't know or care what other websites you've been viewing, and doesn't collect any personal information. What the heck would we need that for anyway? Our search engine is provided by Atomz. They seem to be OK sorts. On the rare occasions when someone actually searches for something, they send us a nice little report listing the keywords, but nothing about whom or when. Maybe if we saw a lot of requests for something we don't have on ATESK, we'd think about adding it, but generally we just file these reports away. You're welcome to read the Atomz privacy policy if you want, but it really only applies to us. Sponsorship: I personally pay all the hosting costs. ATESK has no commercial relationship with anybody, including recruiters, and never will. It doesn't carry any advertising, and never will. The only exception is the Atomz search engine, which sometimes returns keyword ads with the results. Sorry about that. Reproduction Rights: No, this is not something you'd discuss with Planned Parenthood. If you were just about to right-click on a photo, we're talking to you, leechee guy. ;-) I think that most copyright statements on websites are kind of pretentious. Too many authors make a huge fuss about Their Ownership of stuff that no one else would want anyway. Thing is, I've put a lot of work into this website over the years. I've written about a novel's worth of text. So has Margaret. I've also made dozens of audio recordings and shot thousands of pictures (only a fraction of which I've actually posted). From time to time I run across one of our photos on somebody else's website, without any credit, as if he'd shot the pic himself. Now and then I find my own words or Margaret's, copied and pasted into somebody's blog. When I see such things I'm not sure whether I should be flattered that the other person thinks our stuff is good, or annoyed that he or she leeched it. I used to have a copyright statement here, but I was never entirely comfortable with it. Then I discovered something I like better. The original material on this website (ATESK) is protected by Creative Commons BY/NC/SA licensing terms. If you're grabbing it strictly for personal use, that's fine with us. Go for it. However, if you want to use it for any kind of publication whatsoever, graphic, text, audio, or video; in print, on the web, or in a podcast, you have our permission if you follow these simple rules:
You have a use in mind that doesn't fall under those terms? Let's talk. Contact me. You're welcome to link to these pages for nonprofit, noncommercial, public information purposes. I'll try not to change their location unless I have to, which should help prevent broken links. If you do link to a page, I'd appreciate it if you would also link to the homepage. Technical: I've tried to design ATESK to look good and load quickly. I'm also a long time supporter of the Viewable With Any Browser Campaign. This is a polite way of saying I think "Web 2.0" is mostly heavy on the style and light on the content (and often agonizingly slow). I use a bit of CSS where it makes sense, but if your browser supports HTML 3.2 and graphics, which is basically any browser released since about 1997, ATESK should look OK to you. If you hate my frames, well, I hate CSS floating menus, so we're even. Just navigate from the site map. You don't need Java, Javascript, or browser plugins for ATESK. However, the Flash plugin is kind of nice for playing embedded sound and video clips. Version 7 should be plenty. If you don't want to bother, I provide simple download links too so you can skip it entirely. You can even skip all the graphics and multimedia stuff, and read the text alone with Lynx. It isn't pretty, but it works. I've tried it. ATESK is currently hosted by Hostgator. Their service has been pretty good so far. In case you care, I use these tools:
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