South Korea Truckers May Add to President's Anguish
Filed at 3:50 a.m. ET
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean truckers voted on Monday whether to strike over high oil prices, a move that could choke transport and pile more woes on a president whose policies have already sparked mass street protests.
Lee Myung-bak, who in December scored the biggest landslide in an open presidential election in South Korea, has seen his support nosedive after only 100 days in office due to anger over a U.S. beef import deal, jeopardizing his business-friendly economic reform plans.
Lee is bracing for one of his toughest weeks in office with the possible transport strike and a major street protest planned for Tuesday.
He is expected to announce within days a cabinet reshuffle aimed at showing the public his government has learned from its mistakes and will take a new path.
"This is a critical juncture," said Lee Nae-young, a professor of political science at Korea University.
During the race for the presidency, Lee's strength was his can-do image, first fostered when he ran Hyundai Construction and later enhanced when he transformed Seoul as its mayor.
Now, it has become a weakness, with analysts saying the public sees him as an arrogant CEO trying to force through change instead of listening to the concerns of the people.
"I hope the current crisis can be a wake-up call for his presidency," the political science professor said.
At the weekend, Lee's government tried to win back support by unveiling a plan to hand-out $10.2 billion to its lowest income citizens over the next year to offset the skyrocketing price of oil -- taking a page from Asian neighbors in targeting subsidies at the poor.
The leader of the union representing about 13,000 truckers and transport workers said that may not be enough and his members could strike later this week.
"MEANINGLESS MEASURES"
"The government measures are meaningless if they can't solve the loss we are suffering," said Kim Dal-shi. Results of the vote area expected late on Monday or on Tuesday.
Protests against Lee began in April, with thousands taking to the streets and charging him with ignoring safety concerns over U.S. beef by striking what they saw as a bad deal.
Many South Koreans worry U.S. beef could carry
U.S. and South Korean officials said U.S. beef is safe while analysts said dangers from the imports are being exaggerated by groups that would oppose Lee's government regardless.
U.S. Congressional leaders say a separate two-way free trade deal would be dashed unless South Korea opens its markets to U.S. beef.
The protests have grown in size and changed in focus as labor groups and other left-leaning activists have used them to criticize the economic reform plans of Lee, the first conservative leader of South Korea in 10 years.
"The beef issue has become a catalyst to mobilize these anti-reform activists," said political science professor Lee.
Lee was hoping to push through a new conservative-led parliament a reform agenda that includes tax cuts across the economy, privatizing public firms and making the country more friendly to foreign investors.
Left-leaning opposition parties scuttled last week's opening session for the new National Assembly with a boycott and said they will not return until Lee renegotiates the beef deal.
Analysts said Lee, who has a five-year term, and the conservative-led parliament, which sits for four years, still have plenty of time to win back support but bold steps are needed in the coming days to turn the tide.
"The government is going to struggle to move forward its pro-business and economic rationalization policies," said Yun Chang-hyun, a professor of finance at University of Seoul.
(Additional reporting by Angela Moon and Park Ju-min; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and Jerry Norton)
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為讓子女接受英文教育，南韓現在也有不少家庭現在是「內在美」、「內在紐」，亦即妻子在美國或是紐西蘭，丈夫在南韓繼續打拚賺錢的家庭。南韓稱這種家庭為「野雁」，野雁爸爸與野雁媽媽分兩國居住，野雁爸爸可能一年飛兩次到外國探視妻小。 紐約時報報導，紐西蘭奧克蘭富人區「雷穆拉」的一所公立小學，每天都有六位南韓野雁媽媽到校接子女下課，彼此碰面會熱情招呼。她們六人也是這所小學最大外國人團體的成員。 南韓人形容他們嚴苛的教育制度，比壓力鍋有過之而無不及。有些父母，為不想讓子女遭受太大升學壓力，以及讓他們從小學好英文，即由妻子帶著子女投奔美澳。 目前南韓至少有四萬名學童為外國小留學生。專家認為，這是全球化教育新時代的必然結果。不過，這是南韓第一次出現為了子女教育，妻子帶著子女離開的現象。傳統上，南韓人均由男性離鄉背井。 「南韓教育發展中心」統計，南韓的小學到高中生，2006年在外成為小留學生者，共有2萬9511人，為2004年的近兩倍，2000年的近七倍。這些數字不包括陪同出國的父母或親人。 在美國的外國學生，目前以南韓為最大宗，人數逾10萬3000人。在紐西蘭，南韓學生也占留學生第二，僅次於中國大陸。南韓與其他國家的最大不同處，在於小留學生多數從小學上起，認為這種年紀語言吸收能力比較強。 |
For English Studies, Koreans Say Goodbye to Dad
To allow Amy Park, a Korean, to study English in New Zealand, her parents decided to live apart. More Photos >
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — On a sunny afternoon recently, half a dozen South Korean mothers came to pick up their children at the Remuera Primary School here, greeting one another warmly in a schoolyard filled with New Zealanders.
Multimedia
Park Jun-woo, 8, right, attends a school in Auckland, New Zealand, where he lives with his mother and older brother. His father stayed behind in South Korea. More Photos »
Amy Park’s father, Kevin Park, agreed that she should leave South Korea to study abroad. But, he said, “I miss my family.” More Photos >
The mothers, members of the largest group of foreigners at the public school, were part of what are known in South Korea as “wild geese,” families living separately, sometimes for years, to school their children in English-speaking countries like New Zealand and the United States. The mothers and children live overseas while the fathers live and work in South Korea, flying over to visit a couple of times a year.
Driven by a shared dissatisfaction with South Korea’s rigid educational system, parents in rapidly expanding numbers are seeking to give their children an edge by helping them become fluent in English while sparing them, and themselves, the stress of South Korea’s notorious educational pressure cooker.
More than 40,000 South Korean schoolchildren are believed to be living outside South Korea with their mothers in what experts say is an outgrowth of a new era of globalized education.
The phenomenon is the first time that South Korean parents’ famous focus on education has split wives from husbands and children from fathers. It has also upended traditional migration patterns by which men went overseas temporarily while their wives and children stayed home, straining marriages and the Confucian ideal of the traditional Korean family. The cost of maintaining two households has stretched family budgets since most wives cannot work outside South Korea because of visa restrictions.
In 2006, 29,511 children from elementary through high school level left South Korea, nearly double the number in 2004 and almost seven times the figure in 2000, according to the Korean Educational Development Institute, a research group that tracks the figures for the Ministry of Education. The figures, the latest available, did not include children accompanying parents who left South Korea to work or emigrate, and who could also be partly motivated by educational goals.
South Koreans now make up the largest group of foreign students in the United States (more than 103,000) and the second largest in New Zealand after Chinese students, according to American and New Zealand government statistics. Yet, unlike other foreign students, South Koreans tend to go overseas starting in elementary school — in the belief that they will absorb English more easily at that age.
In New Zealand, there were 6,579 South Koreans in the country’s elementary and secondary schools in 2007, accounting for 38 percent of all foreign students.
“We talked about coming here for two years before we finally did it,” said Kim Soo-in, 39, who landed here 16 months ago with her two sons. “It was never a question of whether to do it, but when. We knew we had to do it at some point.”
Wild geese fathers were initially relatively wealthy and tended to send their families to the United States. But in the last few years, more middle-class families have been heading to less expensive destinations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Now, there are also “eagle fathers,” who visit their families several times a year because they have the time and money. Those with neither, who are stuck in South Korea, are known as “penguin fathers.”
The national experience is considered enough of a social problem that an aide to South Korea’s president recently singled out the plight of the penguin fathers.
President Lee Myung-bak said he would start to address the problem by hiring 10,000 English teachers. “This is unprecedented,” he said. “Korea is actually the only country in the world undergoing such a phenomenon, which is very unfortunate.”
South Korean students routinely score at the top in international academic tests. But unhappiness over education’s financial and psychological costs is so widespread that it is often cited as a reason for the country’s low birthrate, which, at 1.26 in 2007, was one of the world’s lowest.
South Korean parents say that the schools are failing to teach not only English but also other skills crucial in an era of globalization, like creative thinking. That resonates among South Koreans, whose economy has slowed after decades of high growth and who believe they are increasingly being squeezed between the larger economies of Japan and China.
It could take years to see how well this wave of children will fare back in South Korea, especially since they are now going overseas at the elementary level. But earlier this decade, when the wild geese children tended to be high school students, many succeeded in plying their improved English scores to get into colleges in the United States or other English-speaking countries, education experts said. For others, their years overseas was a roundabout way to get into top South Korean colleges, like Yonsei University in Seoul, which increasingly offer courses or entire programs in English.
For New Zealand’s public schools, which charge foreign students annual tuition of $8,700, South Koreans provide an important source of revenue. The economic benefits have helped offset resentment toward an Asian influx that has remade many schools in Auckland, the country’s largest city, lending an Asian character to the business district and raising home prices in the wealthier suburbs.
At Remuera Primary, Ms. Kim said she believed that English fluency would increase her sons’ chances of gaining admission to selective secondary schools in South Korea and ultimately to a leading university in Seoul. Her husband, Park Il-ryang, 43, graduated from a little-known Korean university, and he said that the resulting lack of connections had hampered his own career.
Before coming here, the parents had sent one son, Jun-sung, now 10, to evening cram schools and their other son, Jun-woo, now 8, to an English preschool. Parents in their apartment building talked incessantly about their children’s education.
Even so, the sons were not making sufficient progress in English, the parents said. They hired a private English tutor to supplement the supplementary cram schools. “We didn’t think the cram schools were doing any good, but we were too insecure to stop sending them, because the other parents were sending their children,” Ms. Kim said.
At their house recently, the sons peeked through the living-room blinds to see whether their neighbor, Charles Price, was free to play. In no time, the boys were coming and going, barefoot, between the houses, carrying “Bionicle” action figures.
The parents were pleased that their sons had integrated well into the neighborhood and school, and were now even speaking English to each other. But Ms. Kim was worried that her younger son was making shockingly simple mistakes in his spoken Korean and might not form a solid “Korean identity.”
Striking the right balance would be critical to the brothers’ re-entry into South Korea, with its fierce competition to get into the best schools.
South Korean women’s rising social status and growing economic power have fueled the wild geese migration, according to education experts like Oh Ook-whan, a professor at Ehwa Womans University who has studied the separated families. Conservatives have criticized the wild geese mothers for being obsessed about their children’s education at the risk of destroying their marriages. The women’s real intention, they say, is to get as far away as possible from their mothers-in-law.
The mothers say they are the modern-day successors to one of the most famous mothers in East Asia: the mother of Mencius, the fourth-century Chinese Confucian philosopher. In a story known in South Korea, as well as China and Japan, Mencius’s mother moved to three neighborhoods before finding the environment most favorable to her son’s education.
“I don’t know why Mencius’s mother is so revered and why we wild geese mothers are so criticized,” said Chang Soo-jin, 37, who moved here with her two children nearly two years ago. “Our coming out here is exactly the same as what she did.”
Here, the English skills of her 6-year-old daughter, Amy, have improved so much that she now has the reading abilities of an 8-year-old, said her teacher at Sunderland, a small private school where all 16 foreign students come from South Korea.
Yet Amy’s father, Kevin Park, 41, was not totally convinced that the benefits had been worth splitting up the family. He had reluctantly agreed with his wife’s decision to come here with the children and then extend their stay, twice.
After his family left Seoul, Mr. Park, an engineer, moved into what South Koreans call an “officetel,” a building with small units that can be used as apartments or offices. Hearing about wild geese fathers becoming dissolute living by themselves, he stopped drinking at home.
“I’m alone, I miss my family,” Mr. Park said grimly in an interview in Seoul. “Families should live together.”
Living apart for years strains marriages and undermines the role of a father, traditionally the center of the family in South Korea’s Confucian culture, education experts and psychologists said. Some spouses have affairs; some marriages end in divorce.
“Even if there are problems, some couples choose to ignore them for the sake of their children’s education,” said Choi Yang-suk, a psychologist at Yonsei who has studied wild geese families in the United States and Canada.
Here, Park Jeong-won, 40, and her husband, Kim Yoon-seok, 45, an ophthalmologist who was here on a visit, said their marriage had grown stronger despite living apart for four and a half years. Every reunion, they said, was like a honeymoon.
But while Ms. Park said she talked to her husband a couple of hours daily by phone, she said her son and daughter never asked to talk to their father. He, in turn, never asked to talk to his children, the couple said.
“We may be a strange family,” Ms. Park said.
Dr. Kim said his own father had always been too busy with work to spend much time with the family, and on weekends woke up at 4 a.m. to play golf.
“Maybe that’s why, now that I’m a father, I have a similar relationship with my son,” he said.
Asked whether she missed her father, Ellin, 11, said: “I don’t miss him that much. I see him every year.”
“Do you think that’s enough?” her mother asked, a little surprised.
Ellin corrected herself and said she saw him twice a year.
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