The Midas Tongue

As I sit in Starbucks, happily sipping my Caramel Frappucino, yet simultaneously lamenting the early and unexpected departure of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, I quietly survey the boisterous crowd gathered. In it are scenes typical to life in Korea. A couple gazes across the table at one another, sharing their cake, talking quietly, dressed identically in matching shirts, pants, and shoes. A group of girl friends seated in the comfortable arm chairs laughs and talks noisily while several members of the group pull out their cameras or cell phones to snap individual pictures of themselves. Meanwhile a gathering of mothers behind me ignore their small children who run in circles or gape with near horror at me, the white, blond foreigner smiling at them. And immediately to my left sits a girl buried by English books, an electronic Korean-English dictionary, a number of pens, and reams of paper. She leans deeply over the paragraph, brow furrowed, face intent as she struggles to translate the content of this dominating foreign language.

It is this last scene that gives me a moment's pause. After all, it is this Korean desire manifested in my Starbucks neighbor that currently affords me the opportunity to work overseas. The study of English is big business in Korea. Haegwons, the private academies, run rampant across the country. All bookstores have an English section, preferring to stock English tutorial books over English novels of substance. Most shop signs are written in English, buying into the belief that an English name is more fashionable. And I am constantly hit up for private tutoring, something for which one can earn 40 or 50 dollars per hour. English is lucrative.

Western Asia altogether has a desperate quest to master English. My ability to speak it, along with being white, make me a desirable commodity here. It's not just one's ability to speak the language; allow me to stress that. An Asian-looking teacher generally has a harder time procuring work as a teacher than a very Anglo-Saxon teacher. I'm white. I'm tall. I have blond hair. To them, I embody what a foreign English speaker looks like. I'm a desirable commodity here.

When I reflect on how my work here has so little to do with any of my accomplishments or talents and is related so much to factors I have had no control over, it is slightly staggering. It's a type of reverse racism, being afforded a certain degree of respect and honor for being a foreigner.

Is there a purpose in it? Am I actually contributing anything of value to this society? Or am I merely perpetuating a sort of colonialism wrapped in the culture of a language? Mastering English is necessary to their economic growth, because business is done in English. They have to cater to the dominating economic force and petty politics of my inexorable home country. Thus comes the need for my Midas tongue.

Sometimes I get tired of always being reminded that I'm so different.