Progress Report 28.1

Anyong hasseyo, nonce-features.

What up, yeah?

Me, yeah? Yeah, not bad, yeah?

Yeah, not bad. But there have been certain changes of late that have sullied the shine on my sixpence. I'm hoping that through sharing them with you in this sovereign forum, I might vaguely dispel them.

In the process, I shall broach subjects that are contemporaneously familiar to us both.

That'll be a turn-up, won't it? It's not often that I'm granted the opportunity to be relevant to events of international news-worthiness – speaking about Korea will have that effect – but Gawd love us if that's not the condition that we find me to be in right now. Relevance, I mean. I am relevant. Relevant I am.

How so?

Well, it comes to me by the gracious virtue of a swirly-faced paedophile. That's right – him. Christopher Paul Neil, the de-masked botherer of Vietnamese children and until his becoming the subject of an international manhunt made his position untenable, a fellow teacher of English in the Republic of Korea. You saw the news, you read the pictures, you joshed about it over drinks at the gentlemen's club. It is he who has made me so marvellously relevant. Children have suffered for my words to matter.

But before we reflect so long on the post-ironic irony of that fact that it prevents us achieving the detachment required to crack wise about it, I want you to quickly think back two reports, when the chum for my tiresome wordiness was Korea's latent and blatant xenophobia. Remember that? Korea's proud racial homogeneity? The pure bloodline? The excessive national pride? The blindness to shortcomings? The arm's-length, pinched-nose distaste for foreign workers? Remember? Well take it and buffer it for easy retrieval – you'll need it at points throughout.

These two strands, along with a disappointment over pasta that I share will with you later (the disappointment, that is - not the pasta), have contributed to a slight but perceptible change in the weather; a light melancholia that settled like an autumn mist, as gently as the shortening of the days.

Before I go into further detail on that though, let's spend some time with the paedophile...

He's this season's star of the internet – the failed priest and fan of Photoshop with a penchant for sating his lusts in tourist South East Asia, who shot to fame when German nonce-boffins unswirled his Canadian features in his holiday snaps to unmistakably incriminating effect. It's an image that we shan't soon forget – his melting, vertiginous physiognomy atop a pale, damp chest, and a look that suggested his attention was on something that had just slightly bottomed out of the shot. “Stinger for his head,” I thought to myself when first the story broke (I always think in late 80's Hull teen slang, you see), and then moved nonchalantly along to the next item of news. Little did I know that the image was going to become the the centrepiece of the most interesting thing to happen to the English teaching community in all the time that I've been part of it.

The de-filtered subject of the photograph reacted a little differently than I to the story's initial appearance. He packed a bag, shaved his head and doubled-timed it to the airport, from where he flew to Thailand and then headed to the coast, where he holed up with a ladyboy acquaintance. In the meantime, the details of his life were snowballing into the consciousness of the public, and nowhere more so than here in Korea, that had for eighteen months been his home.

It began slowly. The initial shock expressed in online forums that he was 'one of us' gradually gave way to communal tutting and clucking. Those with experience of past scandals knew full well how predictably the Korean public react to reported improprieties with foreign protagonists: like morons. The last collective outpouring of rage had occurred a few years prior, when an unwise contributor to an internet message board for English teachers decided to test its professed 'no censorship' policy with a post that went into unfortunate detail about how best to molest one's students. This came to the attention of a rabble-rousing netizen who didn't hesitate to use it as ammo to angry up the Korean online community into getting the site shut down. ('Netizen', by the way, is a peculiar Konglish term used by the press to refer to the eternally enraged and unfalteringly irrational members of the nebulous, numerous group of Koreans who form and express their opinions entirely in cyberspace, most commonly in the manner of a dehydrated drunk. Their volatile wrath is the stuff of nightmares for politicians, who do anything they can to appease them.)

In the consequent brouhaha, there were reports of assaults and random public slander and a generalized air of undisguised hostility against anyone who looked like they might be here to teach. The profession's reputation (I use both terms loosely) was permanently damaged and its social cachet subsequently reduced. The breaking scandal of Christopher Neil now looked set to further its downfall.

Online comments on the inevitability of a stinging backlash were soon joined by more fascinating and salacious contributions from those who knew him. “He taught with me last year”; “I went to his birthday party”; “He's not been into work” - a picture began to form of someone who'd quickly cut and run, much to his colleagues' surprise. The details that were emerging suggested that no-one had suspected a thing. We saw pictures of him singing in a norae-bang. We discovered his online identity. We went through his old posts (one dodgy one about how best to clear your hard drive, otherwise nothing too suspect). We dredged up his asinine poetry from MySpace. He was, apparently, a reasonably normal guy - a bit of a loser, shy around hot girls, dreadful at writing, but absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

But his seeming normality didn't stop the wave of outpouring that followed - which was one of white-hot paedo-rage.

The online teaching community confirmed its intellectual pedigree with an unfettered, free-for-all round of 'who-can-be-the-most-irrationally-furious?'. He was condemned as a hellish monster; a grotesque, uncontrollable assemblage of murderous urges; a filthy, godless defiler of human dignity, the very nadir of civilization to date – but entirely in words of one syllable. Fitting punishments for his transgressions were dreamed up, mostly the products of limited - but possibly psychopathic - imaginations. “Id like to see him raped inside out in a Thai prison!!1!” said user CanadianFuckwit001. “I wanna cut his dick off and feed it to Vietnameze children in front of him and then laff at the dumbass sick fukkin douchebag!!!” said CanadianFuckwit002. “If I see him I will stomp on his sick-fuck pedarass fucking head and so will all my fukkin buddies too” commented poster YankHalfwit83. Appeals for calm and clear thinking were met with angry accusations of deviance - “You dont want to beat him down and laff at him get raped in prison, so you must be a sick fuck paedo too!!!1!” If self-righteous indignation gave off a faint phosphorescent glow, then Korea would have been visible from space.

This continued during the days that followed, while the path of Christopher Neil's absconding began to become clear. Vague details of his crimes and past emerged and clashed. Journalists surfaced, trolling for titbits. Reports of his wayward peccadilloes formed and vanished like mephitic vapours: he's into little boys, he's into little girls, he's into prostitutes, he's into ladyboys, he likes to fellate, he likes to be fellated, he gives it, he takes it - from the surfeit of anecdotal evidence, you would be forgiven for thinking that he spent his entire post-pubertal existence at the epicentre of a messy explosion of semen.

The keenness of the hunger for details began to border on unhealthy. The ex-pat websites began to resemble forums for comparing outrage. A resolution was needed and quickly, before the indignation went supernova.

Fortunately, it came. Neil was picked up by the Thai plod hiding out with his ladyboy love-interest in a village by the coast, in an appositely Hollywood conclusion to the tale. “Bingo!” said the chief of police, showing a keen sense for the quotable sound-bite. “We got him.”

To prove it, they paraded him in front of the cameras in a loose-fitting t-shirt and sunglasses (“Id like to punch the fukkin sunglasses of his sick fukkin face,” CanadianFuckwit001 sagely remarked at the time), and gave a press conference with him plonked uncomfortably amongst a clamour of uniformed cops. Someone remarked – not me, though I wish I had the neck to claim this observation as my own – that he looked like a time-traveller who had beamed himself into the scene by mistake.

And then it was all over. We were safe from the international paedophile menace once again, and all that was left was to reminisce about the excitement, talk up our part in his downfall, and wait for the backlash to strike.

That period of dreadful anticipation would have been the ideal time to take a step back from the case and ask a few prescient questions. It might have been a good idea to ask why there was an international manhunt for a paedophile who, as far as there is a hierarchy in these matters, would not exactly rank as the worst ever sex offender in history. Then one might discern certain qualities of the case that make it unique: The German police develop a brand-new, top secret technique for un-swirling swirly faces, they pursue one perpetrator throughout the world via Interpol with much whooping and hoopla, and he's arrested with the full attention of the whole world. Hooray for the German police.

But the perp was Canadian, the crimes took place in Vietnam and Cambodia, and he was arrested in Thailand. Why was it Germany's problem?

Well, because the photos were discovered downloaded onto a hard-drive there – their jurisdiction, their problem. So they un-swirled the perp's hidden face and had Interpol put the world on full alert. They were saying: “You can't hide on the internet anymore, paedoes, so stop uploading your pictures.” What they were effectively implying was: “By all means go and fuck children in Thailand – that way it's Thailand's problem, not ours. But don't put your photos online afterwards, because then it is our problem.” Despite the obvious difficulties you might have in conjuring sympathy for someone who is both a child abuser and a Canadian, it's hard not to feel that CPN was, to some extent, thrown to the wolves for the sake of making a point.

But let's not let such cynicism about motives cloud the excitement of the stage-managed manhunt. A paedophile was weeded out from already suspect English teaching community, so we should take our backlash like men. (And women.) But here's the thing – from the press, at least, it never really came. The Korean media, usually only too happy to scapegoat an entire community for an individual's misdemeanours, couldn't summon up sufficient froth to make a story. It might even be optimistically ventured that the press had concluded that heaping scorn onto the foreign teacher community (perennially the whipping-boy of outraged public morals) for the past actions of one deviant member would be too cheap a shot even for them - especially seeing as the victims in the case weren't even Korean. (Believe me, this is how they think it here.)

That didn't mean, however, that teachers were off the hook. Just because a backlash was too tacky for the press to touch it, that doesn't mean that the government aren't willing to give it a shot...

It was heralded with an announcement about new regulations on the issuance of visas. From December onwards, anyone wishing to be permitted a visa to teach English in Korea will have to submit to a criminal background check, a medical check and an interview with a consular official, said the immigration office. This comes on top of the current requirement to submit original copies of degree certificates and sealed university transcripts. All this despite the fact that Christopher Paul Neil had no criminal record and had no complaints made against him in Korea.

You would be forgiven for thinking that such steps are perhaps symptomatic of a deep fear and distrust of foreign workers on the part of the Korean Immigration Service, wouldn't you?

Well, you're dead wrong, and in order to banish such perfidious inklings, the Commissioner of Immigration himself has spoken out. In a article entitled “Korea As the Leader of Embracing Foreigners”, he nailed his enlightened colours to the mast. He assured Koreans that they actually had nothing to fear from the growing numbers of foreigners entering the country. They were not here to “damage our homogeneity or... leech off our wealth,” he soothingly averred, and so Koreans should “actively embrace foreigners who choose to live, work or study here.”

Why the hell should they? Well, apparently there are “economic and moral reasons to do so.”

The economics? Because workers from South East Asia will work for less than their Korean counterparts, Korean firms can “therefore restore their price competitiveness”.

The morality? “Korea traces its homogeneous lineage to the legendary demigod Dangun, who founded Ancient Korea with the vision of Hongik Ingan, i.e. bringing good for all humankind. It's Korea's founding ideology to reach out to foreigners.” (I wish I was making this up, but you'll find the full article here: http://www.immigration.go.kr/HP/IMM80/index.do)

Unfortunately, the Commissioner doesn't see the matter from an entirely sunny perspective. “There will be issues to be addressed,” he warns. “Some foreign brides married to Korean farmers are having difficulty adjusting to a new life in an unfamiliar county,” he plainly states, referring to the increasing numbers of South East Asian women being imported as spouses-stroke-punch-bags by Korean yokels in lieu of home-grown females with sufficiently low standards to take them. And, most appropriately to the topic at hand, the Commissioner gravely portends that “many young men who come to teach English... have questionable qualifications and background [sic].”

Let me just restate that just so that we're in no doubt about what is being said and by whom. The Commissioner of the Korean Immigration Service has stated, in a piece aimed at convincing entrenchedly xenophobic Koreans of the manifold benefits of increased immigration, that many of the male university graduates who have come here to teach English (being a graduate is a prerequisite for a visa) have questionable qualifications and backgrounds. Not the females, you understand – just the guys. Many of them. So says the Commissioner of the Korean Immigration Service, an organ of government whose stated mission is the attainment of “Integrity, Dignity, Excellence and Accountability”.

A more easily-insulted individual would survey those words and make a haughty beeline for the next flight out of the country, perhaps slowing briefly to spit at the immigration officer at the exit desk.. Even someone with a level of self-esteem close to zero would raise his sorry head to meet your gaze if you said such a thing to his face. To hear such pronouncements from on high beggars belief. To hear such pronouncements from the very man tasked with assuring the humane and dignified treatment of people coming here in the service of Koreans beggars belief up the arse with a crowbar.

Elsewhere in his piece, he derides low income immigrant workers (many of whom earn around UKP400 a month) for living in poorer areas, thus “raising the prospect of ghettoes”, and criticises those denied legal status by their employers, as they cannot “receive due protection of their basic rights.” Not once does he suggest that Korean employers might be directly responsible for most of the problems that he mentions, apparently believing that immigrant workers choose to violate their rights themselves. Nowhere does he allude to the inherently racist attitudes at work in Korean society, perhaps because he verbalises them so cogently himself.

I could tolerate such ignorance if it were belched up by some soju-sodden halfwit on the street, but for it to come from the mouth of the man at the top effortlessly dispossesses me of the formerly-held illusion that Korea is in good hands. I had previously believed that such idiocy was a symptom of being a regular schmo. Now I see that there is a rich vein of stupidity and delusion running right up to the pinnacles.

It's enough to make me want to tell the whole nation to get to fuck.

As much as I like the Koreans that I know personally, it's hard to buttress against such institutional antipathy. Why make oneself a subject of an agency that changes its visa policy on the whims of an ignorant commissioner? Why put yourself in the service of a nation that seems to be backward beyond salvation? Why live in a country where the crimes of foreigners generate national outrage while the wrongdoings of natives are instantly forgiven and forgotten? (Item: Several years ago, a US tank accidentally killing two schoolgirls caused nationwide demonstrations against America; last month, a Korean drunk driver killed three high school girls on a pedestrian crossing ten minutes from where I live and it barely even made the news.) Any extended period of reflection on these things would lead to extraordinary difficulties in squaring these matters away.

It's better to try and sustain the notion that the government are not the people, and that the recent developments are nothing new. The government of Korea has long distinguished itself as a hive of fecklessness, corruption and flimflam – why expect anything different now? If you were to take affront at every stupid or scandalous action, your daily life would be reduced to a permanent St Vitus' dance of disgusted umbrage. However, while It may be easy to shrug off each insult as and when it happens, the cumulative effect slowly wears one's patience to the nub.

And hence my sense that the weather is changing, and that maybe it's time for a change. I've had a good run here, but perhaps it's time to move on to more sophisticated shores. Or at the very least, take a holiday. It's been an education, and most pleasant in its way. But I tell you, there's little more of what follows hereafter that I can stand in good humour...

A new restaurant opened last week adjacent to my school. It's speciality? Pasta and pizza. It's name? Casa, from the Italian. Hooray, I thought - a new Italian restaurant! I hope it's a good one.

The signs were indeed promising: minimalist decor, tasteful lighting and an original choice of face for the storefront sign. I was mad-keen to sample their menu. My first attempt was thwarted by their not yet having opened, but Friday last I unfortunately met with success.

Despite the evidence accrued from a wealth of bitter postprandial disappointment elsewhere in this nation, I naively hoped that this experience would be different. (Such child-like innocence as this seems somehow inevitability fated to be lost in the most brutal of circumstances.) Maybe this Italian restaurant would serve real Italian food, I ventured. Maybe the chef will be trained. Maybe they'll not serve pickles with the main course. Maybe someone somehow connected to the venture might have actually been to Italy, or at least to an Italian restaurant run by Italians, or might have read a book on Italian food or looked it up on the internet. Maybe this Korean Italian restaurant will be the one that bucks the criminally abysmal trend set by its competitors.

It was sadly, predictably, not to be.

The garlic bread was sweet, hard and half a day old. The pizza was limp, thin and raw, and completely unable to support the thumb-thick depth of industrial 'mozzarella' that topped it. The seafood pasta was an unholy conflation of disparate elements that clearly illustrated that the chef's only qualification was the willingness to try. They didn't serve alcohol. They didn't have any black pepper. They presented a bowl of pickles with pomp and ceremony. It was, in short, incredibly fucking Korean, and the straw that brought the dromedary to its knees. I'm afraid to say that I criticised the food to my Korean co-diners with lustful savagery, irrationally demanding explanations for the food-crimes of their countrymen. It was not particularly becoming of me, and somewhat hypocritical, given the circumstances.

But this is to what I find myself reduced. After all the patience, and all the understanding, and all the excuses made and misgivings quieted, I'm starting to think that the country is beyond help. It stubbornly sticks to its faulty ways. It doesn't want to change. It will have to hit rock-bottom before it can turn its life around, but I don't think I want to be here when it happens.

So that's where I find myself: The relationship's starting to lose its sparkle and I think I want out. I haven't made any decisions, but it'll probably be for the best if I move on. I'll let you know when I've made up my mind.

Just time to quickly fill you on some other developments:

• I've started eating Kellogg's All-Bran Flakes for breakfast every morning and last week I did a poo as big as my forearm. I strongly recommend that you give them a try.

• I have eaten 1kg of pistachios in the past seven days.

• It's getting very wintry here.

• I'm writing this on my laptop in Starbucks and I don't feel ashamed. This is just how it is for me now.

• Thank you to Paul 'Now Australia's Problem' Beckett for the two James Ellroy books and the one Robert Crais one.

• Anything questions you might have that you want answering before I probably leave should be sent to StephenJBeckett@gmail.com

That's is all.

I bid you a hearty

Anyonghi kaeseyo,

S