{"id":244,"date":"2014-10-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2014\/10\/10\/post-237-scene-from-korean-class-famous-person-from-kenya-obama\/"},"modified":"2014-10-10T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T00:00:00","slug":"post-237-scene-from-korean-class-famous-person-from-kenya-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2014\/10\/10\/post-237-scene-from-korean-class-famous-person-from-kenya-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-237: [Scene from Korean Class] Famous Person from Kenya: Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"paragraph\" style=\"text-align:left;\"> <span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\">The tedium of our Korean reading class was broken for a spell on Tuesday September 30th.<br \/><span><br \/><span>I will, below, do my utmost to reliably<\/span><\/span> re-create (in translation) the dialogue, as it happened:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n<div>\n<div style=\"height: 20px; overflow: hidden; width: 100%;\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"styled-hr\" style=\"width:100%;\">\n<div style=\"height: 20px; overflow: hidden; width: 100%;\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"paragraph\" style=\"text-align:left;\"> <span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><font size=\"4\"><strong>Cast of Characters<\/strong><\/font><br \/><strong style=\"\">Nine Students<\/strong> <strong>Present<\/strong> (born between 1985 and 1994): Seven Chinese [two absent during the below episode], one Singaporean, one Russian (Siberian ancestry) [absent], three White-Americans. (Those absent this lesson have a habit of disappearing during reading class.) <span><span><\/span><\/span>Two of the present Chinese and one American (not me) are featured in this episode.<br \/><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>  <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<em>[Featured Students]<\/em>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<strong>D.D.<\/strong> : Chinese Female (from somewhere around Shanghai) born circa 1992\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<strong>J.R.<\/strong> : Chinese Female (from near Xian) born circa 1991\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<strong>L.A.<\/strong> : American Male (from Texas) born 1985\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span><span><span><strong>One Korean Teacher<\/strong> (born 1987, I&#8217;m told): She is from<\/span> Gyeongsang Province, the region that produced the generals who ruled South Korea from 1961 through the early 1990s. (Sidebar: I am proud to say that I was the one who figured out her region of origin. It so happened that her Seoul Accent veneer at times slipped away when she got annoyed at students<\/span><\/span>, and Gyeongsang shone through. I later asked her if she was from that province, and she confirmed it). A graduate of Ewha University, the number-one women&#8217;s university in South Korea. She teaches our class reading.<\/p>\n<p> We sat in a kind of modified semi-circle, with the teacher at the center, and the white board behind her.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"4\"><strong><span>Episode 1: In Which the &#8220;Obama Origin&#8221; Question is Discussed (Yet Again)<\/span><\/strong><\/font><br \/> One of our reading passages dealt with Kenya. It talked about safaris; wild animals; coffee. The main comprehension questions were knocked out without much difficulty. Then this:\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div id=\"176614083282531702\" align=\"left\" style=\"width: 100%; overflow-y: hidden;\" class=\"wcustomhtml\"> <a name=\"continue\" id=\"continue\"><font color=\"white\">.<\/font><\/a> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"paragraph\" style=\"text-align:center;\"> <span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><strong><font size=\"4\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.yuletyde.com\/a-blog\/post-237-scene-from-korean-class-famous-person-from-kenya-obama#continue\"><font color=\"#1600FF\"><strong>Read More<\/strong><\/font><\/a><br \/><\/span><\/font><\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n<div> <!--BLOG_SUMMARY_END--> <\/div>\n<div class=\"paragraph\" style=\"text-align:left;\"> <span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span><span><span><span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span><span><span><span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span><span><span><span><span><span><strong><em>Translated from Korean by me. Transcribed from my memory shortly after it happened. Grammar mistakes by students omitted.<\/em><br \/><span><\/span><br \/><span><\/span>Teacher:<\/strong><\/span><\/span> Alright, class. How about famous people from Kenya? Do we know anyone famous from Kenya?<br \/><span><strong>D.D. (Chinese):<\/strong><\/span> Obama! Obama is, uhh &#8212;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/><strong style=\"\">Teacher:<\/strong> Ah, Obama. [quizzically] Was he born in Kenya? [Pause] Where was Obama born?<br \/><font size=\"2\"><span>[Indistinct noises as people whisper things or make inaudible comments]<\/span><\/font><br \/><strong style=\"\"><span><strong>D.D. (Chinese)<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><span style=\"\"><span><strong>:<\/strong> Isn&#8217;t he from Kenya?<\/span><\/span><strong style=\"\"><br \/><span><\/span>J.R. (Chinese)<\/strong><strong>:<\/strong> [eagerly] No, it&#8217;s Indonesia! He has&#8211;<br \/><strong>Others:<\/strong> Huh? \/ Yes! \/ No, no. \/ What? \/ But&#8230;! \/ [etc.]<br \/><span><strong>Teacher:<\/strong> Let&#8217;s ask the American students.<\/span> How about you, L: Where is Obama from?<br \/><span><strong>L. (American)<\/strong>:<\/span> He was born in the USA.<span><\/span><br \/><span><strong>Teacher:<\/strong> Right, okay, but Obama&#8217;s <em>parents<\/em> were born in Kenya, right?<br \/><strong><span>L.<\/span>:<\/strong> Actually, his mother was born in the USA and his father was born in Kenya.<span><\/span><br \/><span><strong>Teacher:<\/strong> Oh, is that right?<\/span> [Wide eyed]. Really? So it&#8217;s not both parents.<\/span> Huh.<br \/><font size=\"2\"><span>[Murmurs of agreement from others]<\/span><\/font><br \/><strong style=\"\">L.<\/strong>: [Chuckling] Some Americans who don&#8217;t like Obama <em>say<\/em> that he was born in Kenya.<br \/><span><strong>Teacher:<\/strong> I see.<\/span>..<br \/> [Silence]<br \/><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n<div>\n<div style=\"height: 20px; overflow: hidden; width: 100%;\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"styled-hr\" style=\"width:100%;\">\n<div style=\"height: 20px; overflow: hidden; width: 100%;\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"paragraph\" style=\"text-align:left;\"> <span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"text-decoration:none; font-style:normal; font-weight:400; color:rgb(62, 62, 62);\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\">And so it happened. Our prestigious-university-educated teacher apparently believed that Obama was the son of two Kenyans. As\u00a0 I told L. later, this was remarkable: She is highly intelligent, as she was accepted to Ewha (requiring test scores in the top 5% or so) but intellectual curiosity is something else all together. All these years of Obama in the news, and our teacher has apparently been under a misapprehension about this most basic of facts. This means that (1) our teacher is either particularly intellectually incurious [from her unimaginative teaching style, I&#8217;d say &#8220;yes&#8221; to this] or (2) &#8220;Obama as the son of two Kenyans&#8221; is a widespread belief among Koreans even at this late date.<br \/><span style=\"\"><br \/><span style=\"\"><\/span><\/span><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\">Obama, in his heyday, was hugely popular across the world, both in 2008 and to a lesser extent in 2012, and<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\">South Korean was on board too. They were polled about their own preference in 2012, and South Koreans favored<\/span><\/span> <span style=\"\">Obama over Romney by 7-to-1 according to a <a style=\"\" title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-20008687\">BBC poll<\/a> in October 2012 (of those with any opinion. (Specifically: 57% Obama, 8% Romney, 35% No Preference.)<\/p>\n<p> The experience I relate above leads me to wonder, tangentially:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> How much have Obama&#8217;s many fans across the world ever really known about him? I don&#8217;t know.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\">I&#8217;m not foolish enough to try to draw any conclusions from one incident but a<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>necdotally, I can expand it to<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\"><span style=\"\">all the Asian students in the class on that day. My impression is that five of the six East-Asians present in our class that day were at least a bit mixed up about it. Only the Singaporean, P.G., born 1988, seemed to know about Obama&#8217;s origin correctly. (There are a few Singaporeans who study here, and I am impressed by them. There is also currently one Chinese-Malaysian I know of.)<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tedium of our Korean reading class was broken for a spell on Tuesday September 30th.I will, below, do my utmost to reliably re-create (in translation) the dialogue, as it happened: Cast of CharactersNine Students Present (born between 1985 and 1994): Seven Chinese [two absent during the below episode], one Singaporean, one Russian (Siberian ancestry) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}