A practicalities and experiences of being non-native english teachers in korea by sardor akramov. A student of

Discussion
On the question of what benefits a foreign teacher may acquire 
by learning Korean, participants' stories clearly suggest that 
learning allowed them to add to themselves the (Foucault, 1985) 

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of cultural open-mindedness and respectability. Many 
participants their Korean skill was valued as a sign of their interest 
in Korean culture, a fact which in opposition to pre-conceptions 
about the behavior of foreign teachers (Killick, 1995). If one 
wishes to be respected, including by oneself, it is understandable 
that one might seek to distance oneself from the negative 
stereotypes associated with one's group, as Appleby (2013) 
observed in the behavior of foreign teachers in Japan. Likewise, as 
foreign teachers in Korea may not be expected to learn Korean, 
learning was a clear way for participants to distinguish 
themselves. The benefits of the value (Foucault, 1985) 
participants acquired along with knowledge of Korean took the 
form of facilitated and diverse social interactions with Korean 
people and greater access to Korean culture. 
As to whether learning Korean might have been an act of 
resistance against external forces of control, participants' stories 
again suggest that this was the case to some extent. Phrases some 
participants used, such as ‘battle the stereotypes,’ hint at a 
resistant and combative underlying mode of thought. The degree 
to which this was in evidence varied between participants. All 
were, to some degree, subject to positioning, essentializing, and
Othering (Said, 1978) by some Koreans, and this evoked 
pronounced displeasure and frustration in some. This 
essentializing was tied to a facet of White privilege (McIntosh,
1990; Willinsky, 1998); not to be obligated/expected to explore 
other languages and cultures (McIntosh, 1990). Thus, participants 
chose to learn Korean in the absence of obligation, and in spite of 
arguments declaring learning unnecessary (Gordon, 2012), and
in some cases this seems to have been an act of resistance against 
undesirable facets oftheir own privilege. In this can be seen an 
aspect of participants' self-formation (Foucault,
1985); through learning Korean, participants sought to create 
themselves in the Korean context as sincere, open-minded 
people, and resist the idea held not only by Korean

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people but also in global discourses of ethnicity that, as White 
people, they were culturally closed-minded and content in their 
ignorance.However, some participants were explicit in stating that 
they did not totally disapprove of their privilege, because they 
could identify advantages to their position relative to all others, 
and the desire to move still closer to the position of 'Korean' and 
still further away from the position of 'foreign teacher' than had 
been achieved through learning Korean was not in evidence, as to 
do so was not apparently profitable. Thus, the position of Other 
was not only imposed from without, but chosen and embraced by