During my scouring of the Internet, I unfortunately stumbled on this darling little article from the GlobalPost about the use of language exchanges in Korea — where an English speaker and a Korean speaker work as conversation partners in order to learn the other’s language — as a means of getting tail.
I once put up an ad on Craig’s List seeking a Korean language partner. The results were either people trying to clean out my pockets for their hangul services or they were creepers who weren’t even fluent in the language. After I put an amended ad explicitly saying that this was strictly for language learning and not for salacious activity, I got a notice from Craig’s List that it had been removed for “offensiveness.” Go freakin’ figure.
But according to this GlobalPost article, language exchange is made out to be the new speed dating and is just a front for hooking up. My favorite quote:
An American English-teacher recruiter here who asked to go by just “Lee” due to the sensitivity of the subject (many Korean men begrudge cross-national romance) described a similar experience.
He has engaged in five different language exchanges, and like Kim, they have all been with young, attractive Korean women, he said.
“It’s a good way to meet girls. I wasn’t too worried about learning Korean,” Lee said, adding that he doesn’t “even really know Hangul [the easy-to-learn Korean alphabet],” despite his year-long stay here.”
Lovely.
First of all, way to generalize what Korean men “begrudge.” Second, is this not gross? If you want to hook up with an American or Korean, just do it. Why turn an educational activity into a sex exchange?
I know, I know, people use many non-sexual activities as a means of getting busy: Volunteering, church…uh, farmers markets? Lots of stuff.
But something about the encompassing of language and culture in this particular hook-up method troubles me. What are people going to Korea for? What does Korea stand for in the Western imaginary? The naïve part of me wants to believe that the phenomenon of Western folks (okay: men) humping their way through Korea isn’t as rampant as I’ve been told.
Then I see this:
And then my mouth clenches in that way when I’m trying really hard not to vomit.
I lose readership when I get all scholarly, so I’ll just throw out some buzzwords: Privilege! Orientalism! Imperialism! Hegemonic ideals of attractiveness! Whew, I feel better.
I realize it takes two to tango, that there are plenty of Korean gals participating in “language exchanges” (wink wink, nudge nudge), and that is their prerogative. Maybe I just believe in a little transparency. If I’m supposed to meet up with a language partner to go over how to count in Korean (for reals, I get my native and Sino-Korean numbers totally mixed up), I expect just that. If I want pants to be undone, why go out of my way to put it under the guise of being into Korean culture?
