I’m a swine flu target.

My hagwon has a reputation of having a lot of meetings, so when the head teacher called us for a meeting an hour before work yesterday, we didn’t think a great deal about it. They’re usually nothing more than a general update of what’s going on, any feedback the head teacher has regarding the way we teach, or how the hagwon would like us to teach certain classes. For the most part the meetings are unnecessary, but they are appreciated seeing as I used to bitch in my last hagwon for having no meetings whatsoever (and finding out when our students told us).

Going to back to the meeting, we were called in and I noticed initially on the whiteboard the numbers and letters; ‘H1N1‘ written in big writing. That is of course swine flu which has recently hit Korea, and in particular eight foreign teachers who recently entered into the country.

John, Kris, Miranda, and I all looked at each other and we straight away knew where this was going to be heading. Without being able to remember word for word what our head teacher said, let me paraphrase;

‘There has been a lot of talk of H1V1 in Korea, especially about all the foreign teachers getting it…

A lot of the parents have been asking if their children are in danger of receiving it because they are being taught by foreigners here at the academy’.

Well, I’m not going to say this is a stupid and ignorant enquiry, I suppose if I was a parent and my son and/or daughter was at a hagwon, perhaps it may cross my mind, too. The response wasn’t a harsh ‘No‘, which it should have been, but more along the lines that…

‘…our teachers are unlikely to have the flu virus.’

One must remember that neither myself, nor my co-workers, have left the country in the last 6 months, before swine flu became an issue. We’re just as likely to have swine flu as any of the Korean teachers, or to say that if we did have swine flu now, there would be a good chance we’d have shared the lovely disease with all the other Korean teachers, who would have passed it on exponentially faster to the students, whom we all know (both the Korean teachers and students) are happy to cough all over each other without placing their hands over their mouths (one of the real treats of Korean culture).

This was not the end of the meeting. Our head teacher went on…

‘…because of this, we’re asking you not to interact and meet with any other foreigners for the unforeseeable future as they could be carriers of the disease…”

Smooth… Basically, we can’t meet up with anyone else who is a foreigner in fear of getting swine flu. Geez, my girlfriend will be devastated!

We all kind of chuckled, actually we all burst out laughing, and told the head teacher that was an unrealistic, not to mention somewhat of a draconian restriction to place upon us, and that simply was not going to happen. The head teacher, realizing just how absurd the request was, had a laugh too. It was fairly obvious that one of the ’suits’ had made the head teacher call the meeting and relay his concerns through her, suffice to say none of us were annoyed in the slightest with poor Grace teacher (head teachers name).

The idea that we are indeed more capable of getting swine flu than a Korean only goes to prove that Korean’s do believe that us foreigners are, hmm,… dirty. I use that statement cautiously because I’ve met more than my fair share of foreigners in Korea who are some of the filthiest people I’ve ever come across. One can only imagine what must be going through the mind of some of these poor Koreans who have to clean up after a foreigner teacher moves out from their apartment when their contract finishes. These foreigners do us no justice and only help to reinforce one of the stigmas attached to being a foreigner here in Korea.

To say I felt a little annoyed would be spot on, although I really put it down to ignorance on behalf of whichever manager chose to call this meeting. Would it have been better to have included the Korean teachers in the meeting? Probably not, the presumption alone would have more than likely made it that much worse.

But of course there are foreign teachers in Korea who do have suspected cases of swine flu, as reported by the Chosun Ilbo. In fact on the foreigners, currently in quarantine, is keeping us up to date on his blog (and we wish him, and the others there, our best wishes).  And Kimchi Icecream has a lot of valuable information about the swine flu on his blog, that’s well worth a look, too.

So my 목표* for today is: Find a suit to cough all over. Share the love.

* Goal.

2 Comments

Other Links to this Post

1. More Swine Related Questions » The Hub of Sparkle! — 26/5/2009 - Tuesday @ 12:15 pm

2. Staypuff.net » PART II: I’m a swine flu target. — 26/5/2009 - Tuesday @ 11:20 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment