An English Village in Name Only - This One Uses Korean
KBS has just aired a report from one of their reporters that went to the Paju English Village to see just how much English is being used there over a year after commencement, and it’s not a pretty picture.
One odd thing I found about the report is his claim that an entrance fee of 6000 won for adults is a high price. 6000 won isn’t even enough to get you a bagel on top of a macchiato at Starbucks. Why so cheap?
Original report - video embedded on page
Anchor: In the Paju English Village, opened under the banner of giving people the experience of using English, English is disappearing.
An English village where you can’t use nor hear English - our reporter Jeong Changhwa finds out exactly what’s going on from the scene.
Reporter: Last year after opening its doors, the Paju English Village claimed that English was used there from the moment you buy the tickets.
Ticket counter employee: (In response to “do you use English here?) “Yes, we carry out all the classes in English.”
Reporter: However, right from the beginning, the village guides themselves talked not in English but Korean.
Guide: (in Korean) “You have to run to get to the 2:10 class.” (Where is it?) “It’s not far…”
Reporter: Here we have ten exotic-looking shops inside the village.
Every one you go to is supposed to have at least one foreigner or a Korean that speaks English well, but the rules are hardly enforced at all.
In one place there’s a sign asking people to please use English, but this didn’t seem to help at all.
Shop employee: (In response to “do you have to only use English here?”) “Uh, no, well it doesn’t matter…here, take a look at this to order.”
Reporter: It’s no small price to get in here, costing 6000 won for adults and 5000 won for children. However, there was almost no place to actually use or hear English inside the village.
It was next to impossible to find people getting used to English in a natural way while purchasing goods.
Why has this happened? Last year when it was opened each shop had two foreigners for a total of 26 people, but now after the year-long contracts have ended, there is only a total of about two foreign employees in the shops.
You have to pay extra to get into a real English program here.
Interview with customer: “People should be coming here with the goal to speak and experience English, but there really isn’t a chance to do so here.”
Reporter: Last year the English village here had a loss of 20 billion won (20 million dollars), and left the hiring up to the shop proprietors.
Phone interview with person from the English village: “When we first started the English village itself hired the foreign employees but now that the contracts have ended it’s changed over so that each store owner has to do the hiring by themselves.”
Reporter: In an educational project where making a profit should not be the goal, having to match revenues and expenditures is what has given rise to this problem.
Interview with Professor Han Munseop from Hanyang University: “Don’t just look at this from the point of view of profit, you need to think about how to run this from an educational point of view, that’s what will bring in more profits in the long run..”
Reporter: A high-quality English village with 85 billion won (85 million dollars) poured into it - this place is becoming a ridiculous English village, where English isn’t even used.
These things have been such a scam from the start. Maybe worse, they perpetuate the idea that English can only be spoken in certain environments and with a native speaker present.
Comment by Korea Beat — June 6, 2007 @ 10:58 am
lol
I knew this thing would crash, but after only one year and all the publicity?!? Come on… Didn’t they plan at all for this thing? Also, why would they leave the hiring up to the shops? That’s like asking your local GS25 to hire a foreigner. They have no idea how to, and could never afford it.
And what foreigner would want to work there on a convenience store wage?
Hilarious!
Comment by denis — June 6, 2007 @ 11:18 am
point number 1
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I find it difficult to mourn the demise of English Village. I visited that place when it had 26 happy smiling faces. I wasn’t very impressed even then. The children were spectators, the 26 gringos were performers, and there was no interaction.
On the other hand, I attended a very good children’s festival in Janghoweon. They had arts and crafts activity centers, gross motor activity centers, and various other activity centers where the childres were free to come and go at any time. Translate everything in that festival into English, and you would have a perfect English Village.
point number 2
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I share Korea Beat’s disfavor with the myth that Koreans can’t speak English with Koreans. I have an Internet friend with whom I regularly converse in Korean through Yahoo Messenger. If Indonesians can speak Korean with Americans, why can’t Koreans speak English with Koreans?
Comment by Thomas Robertson — June 6, 2007 @ 2:44 pm
[...] An English Village in Name Only - This One Uses Korean KBS has just aired a report from one of their reporters that went to the Paju English Village to see just how much […] [...]
Pingback by Top Posts « WordPress.com — June 7, 2007 @ 9:02 am
This was not a news report, but an editoral. Very one sided. They did not cover any of the high quality, 100% english entertainment options throughout the village. There are four different english children’s productions performed in the village. All are free with admission price & include heaps of interaction with the audience. There is ample opportunity to practice your english at these performances. In terms of foreigners working in the shops, thats a tough one. Very few native english speakers, are going to come to Korea to work in a fast food restaurant. Especially for very little pay. In addition, English Village treats their employees horribly, people dont want to work here. We are lied too & manipulated constantly. There needs to be a MAJOR overhaul in administrations attitude toward the foreigners working at English Village. We need to stop being treated like “monkeys.” Instead we NEED to be treated with the basic respect & dignity that all human beings deserve, regardless of race or employment.
Comment by Ann — June 11, 2007 @ 11:46 pm
I want to make the point that the reason there aren’t any more eastern europeans at the shops in the village is because when the hiring was switched to the shops by English Village, many of these girls (of whom many speak several languages including English AND Korean, retain several degrees, some multiple Masters, others PhDs all of whom had been lured to EV under the pretense of actually being teachers…
were offered roughly half their original pay with less benefits. They had to fight with EV to get their contractually mandated vacation. It was a source of constant frustration for many North American/Western Europeans who worked there as teachers that because many of these girls were from Russia or Romania they were considered as less than human at times.
I want to tell all of you out there who may find that EV is a ridiculous place—it can be–that all the foreigners who DO work there are often attempting to create a better experience for the students that go there, and oftentimes the foreign teachers are simply told “This is our plan, we will follow it. When there’s a problem, then we will think about changing it”. We want to make this a better place however it is obviously difficult within the current structure of Administration to get anything done. There are even Korean administrators who work hard toward supporting the foreign initiative within the dark recesses of EV Administrative “logic” however, as they are not the top head honcho, not much gets done.
Yes there are problems with EV, but I maintain that the place has tons of potential if the right initiative were taken.
Comment by shannon — June 12, 2007 @ 8:01 am
That’s a good point, and it’s kind of the whole problem with the ESL industry in Korea — the right initiative is not often taken. But when it is, magic really happens, and it’s so great to be a part of it.
Comment by Korea Beat — June 12, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
Surprise surprise, the White-Monkey Zoo (aka English Village) is a failure. I remember hearing about this when I worked in Korea, and right from the beginning knew this half-assed attempt would flounder.
Why would Koreans go to an ‘English Village’ to speak English? I’m down in Australia now (a lot bigger than a make-shift village) where we speak English, but guess what the Koreans down here are speaking. It sure as hell isn’t English! Go to any English-speaking country and take note of what language the Koreans are speaking.
Seriously, ESL-based projects are a joke in South Korea. Better to spend the money on more soju.
Comment by antiVank — June 15, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
[...] Filed under: Korea — Mithridates aka 데이빛 @ 1:20 am A few posts back we featured a report from KBS on the English village in Paju and the lack of English a Korean reporter found during his visit [...]
Pingback by Korean professors chime in on English village issue « Korea Beat — June 19, 2007 @ 1:20 am
Here is a description of what is, I guess, the theory behind the English Village concept:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_village
And here is the info on the coming Jeju incarnation:
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/178459.html
Comment by What Did I Do? — June 19, 2007 @ 11:07 am
[...] Original post 2007.06.06 [...]
Pingback by An English Village in Name Only - This One Uses Korean : koreabeat.com — June 29, 2007 @ 12:22 am
[...] few posts back we featured a report from KBS on the English village in Paju and the lack of English a Korean reporter found during his visit [...]
Pingback by Korean professors chime in on English village issue : Korea Beat — July 2, 2007 @ 5:10 am