Things My Students Draw (Part II)

My apologies for my long absence. One of my good friends from college came to visit for a week, and most of my time was spent doing what friends do best. Namely, shopping, seeing the sights, eating, and generally enjoying the many possibilities offered by Seoul night-life. For example, it is perfectly acceptable to drink outside of a convenience store for many hours. As my friend quickly realized, Korea is one of those countries that really doesn't care about a lot of things.

But I digress! I was going to show you some more things my students have drawn. Ah, such talented and sweet children...

Note that it says hitting, but clearing shows stabbing.

Well, that was just the kid who likes to blow up tomatoes. Let's see about some other kids.

Violence!

Perhaps I should explain what's going on here. The prompt for this presentation involved relationship problems. The Canadian, Steve, had just started dating the Korean, Sun-hee. Well, Steve doesn't realize that kissing in public isn't considered appropriate, so he keeps trying to kiss Sun-hee. The students were asked to give advice that would help resolve the situation...

I don't know what this is, but it has something to do with Steve shooting off guns in public and getting arrested. Stupid Steve.

Okay, so Steve is really stupid. Having grown up with someone named Steve, I am well aware of this fact. Let's see what the group came up with for advice.

Man, relationships are so easy!

The lesson to be learned here is simple. Never get relationship advice from your students.

For our next class, we talked about Tibet and China. At first, they didn't care. Then, one of the brighter students brought up China's involvement in the Korean War, and they became a seething mass of fury. Here's a propaganda poster one student made.

Mostly, he was excited that he got to draw a gun.

That brings me to something I've been wanting to talk about for awhile now. Namely, reunification. In America, we call the Koreas "South Korea" and "North Korea". Here, if you call the country South Korea, people look at you funny. It's Korea. That's it. As far as my students are concerned, there is only one Korea. Any map of Korea shows both North and South with no dividing line in between. All of my students want Korea to be unified because they believe it will make their country stronger. I'm really glad that I studied the Cold War during college because even the little bit that I know about Korean history has awed my students. Yay, knowledge!