Monday, March 07, 2011

Troublemaking vagabond foreigner story finally airs

The French foreign language teacher scandal of 1984

[Update at bottom]

Prelude 1: The 1983 Law "Limiting Aliens' Residence Period" and banning "unqualified" foreigners from working.

Part 1: Le Monde and what came before
Part 2: Korea is "Ali Baba's" Cave
Part 3: Seoul Should not be a Workplace for Parisians
Part 4: In private foreign language classes, there are a lot of ‘fraud teachers’
Part 5: Jibberish
Part 6: 'I Want to Strike it Rich in Seoul Too' - Continuous Job Inquiries by the French
Part 7: Foreigners Enjoy Better Life With Mother Tongues
Part 8: Foreigners and Foreign Languages
Part 9: Sickening Face

Part 10: Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Part 11: The First Sanctions on Foreigners Working Illegally
Part 12: All Private Lessons by Foreigners Prohibited
Part 13: Institutes Asked to Hire Eligible Foreign Teachers
Part 14: "Seoul Wind"
Part 15: Foreign Language Teacher Shortage
Part 16: Troublemaking vagabond foreigner story finally airs

Part 16: Troublemaking vagabond foreigner story finally airs

As noted in part 15, On September 27, 1984, MBC was to air an episode of Susa Banjang titled "Seoul Wind" about a young French vagabond who cons his way into teaching in Korea and ends up beaten in an alley. After protests by the French Cultural Center , however, the episode was postponed, to "be released after a preview." On October 11, 1984, the Joongang Ilbo published the following article:
Troublemaking vagabond foreigner story

The episode "Seoul Wind," which dealt with the vagabond foreigner problem and was abruptly canceled on the day of its broadcast on September 27 after pressure and complaints by the French Alliance, is coming out.

The French youth 'Pierre' enters the country on a tourist visa and uses fake documents to con his way into working as an instructor at a private school. One night he suffers an attack in an alley...
Unfortunately, it seems only a handful of Susa Banjang episodes have survived, and this (as well as the December 1983 episode where an American teacher was beaten to death in an alley) was not one of them.

Update:

In answer to a question below, here is the TV listing on page twelve of the Maeil Gyeongje the same day. At 10:15 is the listing for Susa Banjang:


It reads, "The drama which recently brought on criticism for its subject material, about a foreigner living in Korea who finds work illegally."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did the show ever actually air in some form?

matt said...

You prompted me to look through the other papers to see what their TV listings said. I added an update at the bottom of the post which indicates it was on MBC's schedule that night. I doubt it would have gotten pulled suddenly a second time.