Getting to Know Your International Contacts

I got in contact with a teacher that is orginally from the US but is currently working in Korea.  She comes back home from time to time and she was willing to discuss with me some of their living situations.  I know that this doesn't discuss school issues directly but it does discuss their living conditions as well as some health issues.  This will definitley affect how they learn.  This is what she emailed me:

 

 

To be honest, I live in an affluent area and poverty really isn't a major issue in this area. Most of the students that I teach are middle and upper-class. I have worked with some North Korean defectors living on their own in South Korea who have very little support because their family members are in North Korea (which is a closed, communist state). These North Korean students escaped with basically nothing and have been supported by churches and receive a monthly stipend from the South Korean government for support. In the South Korean countryside, poverty may be more of an issue but even poor South Koreans get help from their families even if they are struggling. There is poverty in Seoul as well and the major cities and this is probably comparable to American cities in terms of percentages. In communist North Korea, poverty is a huge issue. The average North Korean child is several inches shorter than the average South Korean who is the same age. North Korean children generally experience a wide range of developmental problems due to malnutition. Famines have swept across North Korea over the years and some people were forced to eat tree bark and grass in order to survive.

Anyway, if you want to write about poverty in Korea, I would focus on North Korea or refugees and defectors who have escaped from the communist state. I hope this helped. If you have any additional questions or need more specific information, please let me know.

 

Sincerely,

Andrea