Caveat: The Beef

There have been massive and ongoing protests here in Korea over the government's efforts to comply with what should have been a rather routine resumption of imports of U.S. beef.  Most international analyses of this situation that I have seen focus on the fact that it is about more than beef, but that it's not necessarily simple anti-Americanism either.  Something in-between:  it's about authority and control – meaning, whether or not South Korea can or should yield to American pressure to resume imports, or whether it should stand on its own authority and resist.

I find this intriguing, given my own neverending saga over the question of authority and how to deploy it successfully in my current work environment.  This evening, I became frustrated because I felt that one of my coworkers had undercut my authority by telling me, in front of a student, that maybe I shouldn't make them stay late to finish homework (a fairly common form of mild discipline for students who don't complete their work).  This set me up, since to make the student stay at that point I was not only being "unfair" to the student but also ignoring the plea for compassion from one of the student's other teachers.

When I complained about this, the response was: oh, we're not undercutting your authority.  And a demand for concrete examples of other times I felt this occurred, since I had worded my complaint rather broadly, and said that I felt my authority was "frequently undercut."  This wasn't wise of me, as arguments with my one supervisor always seem to devolve into arguments of the factuality of my complaints – a good strategy on his part, since the burden of proof is on the complainer.

Regardless of the wisdom my complaint, I found myself feeling especially put off by a suggestion that somehow the only reason I lacked authority with my students is because I somehow don't have the creativity or force of personality to make that authority for myself.  And coming home and looking at the news, I started to think about the radically different relationships American and Korean cultures cultivate with respect to the concept and practice of authority.  All of which is to say, I'm aware that there's a cultural gap underlying the communication gap, which is brought to the fore by the "authority" gap that I'm experiencing everyday.  And I have no idea how to proceed.

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