1994-1995Michelle Hlubinka

Michelle Hlubinka

ETA :: 1994-1995

Kangwon National University Affiliated High School

Spring 1994. Dark stories peppering the news dampened my excitement for a year in Korea. Kim Il-Sung was “negotiating” by wiggling the North’s missiles towards the South. I must admit (with all due shame) I had little awareness of the political climate until the question of whether I should embark on this wonderful adventure before me. Was war imminent? I shared my concerns with the KAEC office in Seoul. They reassured me I shouldn’t worry, this was business as usual. Before I knew it, I ran out of time to chicken out, and I found myself in the middle a thickly wet summer in the heart of Seoul.

Barely a week after our arrival, Kim Il-Sung suddenly died. The dramatic news astonished us all. The entire political landscape shifted. We knew little about his successor. Although we’d heard bizarre descriptions about the reclusive son, we had no sense what an international comedy staple Kim Jong-Il would become. I rejoiced as peninsular tension eased, and to know I’d made the right choice in coming. North Korea was in mourning---just as it is again in 2012. (Wow, we arrived two regimes ago.)

I chuckle at how totally preposterous the premise was of my year in the classroom: teach about 1,000 students conversational English, seeing them 40 at a time every other week for an hour! My sense of futility led to a small epiphany. Realizing that the United States Information Agency housed Fulbright, I decided my role was some kind of educational diplomat, introducing my favorite hands-on, minds-on approaches to learning to a room full of kids. Since I saw every student in the school, some of those kids,

undoubtedly, would go on to become teachers. Could some of them, someday, be preparing their lesson plans and think, “Hey, instead of just being the sage on the stage, cramming my kids’ brains with facts I read out of a book, maybe I’ll try an activity like that weird American teacher did with us. Maybe I’ll try to make school fun.” If just one or two of them would think that, then my year was really worth it.

We practiced diplomacy in a more obvious way, as a bunch of smart, friendly young Americans defending, for example, why the U.S. had, and still has, bases scattered all over the country. Once, I asked about a picture of a lake hanging on a classroom’s rear wall. A student who’d never said a word in any of my visits to his class suddenly grew agitated. He rose to deliver an impassioned speech, all in Korean, explaining that it lay on a northern border of North Korea, and that the lake symbolized hopes for reunification. Six or seven classmates got involved with translating the parts of his speech I didn’t understand. Others murmured in excited agreement and disagreement. A few jumped out of their seats to join his pronouncements or to tackle him and make him stop. I lost control of the class, sure, but I sat at the front in sheer wonderment, realizing how little I knew and how much these kids could teach me.

As I arrived, it seemed so momentous that the missiles stop twitching. As I left, the depth of the rift was far more real to me. We had years to go.

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Baekdu Mountain surrounding Heaven Lake : this site has been a long-time symbol for the hope of reunification for both the Korean North and South; Michelle learned this from her students