Asia Foundation’s English teachers program in the 1950s

American Frederic Dustin, center, teaches students at Chungang University in Seoul in 1958.

/ Robert Neff collection

By Robert Neff

English education has a long history in Korea and stretches back over a hundred years. The first English school was opened in the early 1880s primarily for government employees. This school was followed by others mainly established by missionaries to teach the general public.

By the early 20th century there were many schools teaching English. However, during the Japanese occupation English lost its prominence and was replaced with the mandatory study of Japanese.

Despite the fact that there were two English-language newspapers circulating in Seoul in the days immediately following Japan’s surrender to the Allies in 1945, there were relatively few people who could speak English.

Viewed as a hindrance to Korea’s further development, the U.S. Information Service (USIS) in Korea attempted to establish a large English Teaching Institute (ETI) in Seoul in the late 1940s. According to John C. Caldwell, the deputy director of USIS at the time, this was USIS’s number one project and it promptly hired eight “high-salaried” American teachers to teach Korean students using phonemics.

Unfortunately the program was doomed from the beginning. While preparing to come to Korea, the professor hired to run the program was arrested in Washington D.C. for larceny. Despite this initial set-back, the institute was set up in the newly-built four-story USIS building which was staffed with more than 100 Korean employees and equipped with a large library filled with American magazines and books.

Shortly after the arrival of the English teachers the Korean War broke out and the building destroyed. The teachers were evacuated to Japan to wait for the cessation of hostilities but once the Chinese entered the war the project was scrapped.

After the Korean War ended the “development of English language proficiency among the general population” was recognized as “one of Korea’s most acute needs.” To help meet this need, a small group of Korean teachers was chosen to attend language school in the United States but this proved insufficient.

According to the Asia Foundation’s publication “Partner For Change” in 1959, the Asia Foundation organized “the first-ever English teachers program in Korea” which became “the forerunner of many later English teaching programs through the Peace Corps, the Fulbright Commission and various missionary activities.” All six young men were handpicked, graduates of leading universities, and posted to teach at select universities in Korea.

In actuality the program started much earlier, in 1955, and initially involved three American teachers: Frederic Dustin, George Buffington and John Lewis. Earlier that year, the Asia Foundation notified several universities in the United States that it was seeking people interested in Asia to come to Korea and teach English for two years.

At the time, Dustin was studying for his MA in Far East Languages with a specialty in Korean Literature at the University of Washington. His mentor, Dr. Suh Doo-soo, suggested that it would be more beneficial to spend two years living in Korea, learning about its culture rather than in the classroom at Washington State University. Dustin, taking his mentor’s advice, applied and was readily accepted. He was joined by Buffington and Lewis.

As part of their contract, the three men were sent to the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where they studied under Dr. Robert Lado, a leading educator of teaching English as a second language.

Upon completion the three men arrived in Korea in August and assigned to their respective schools: Buffington at Korea University, Lewis at Seoul National University and Dustin at Yonhi University (now Yonsei).

Dustin, because his housing was not immediately available (the building had been badly damaged during the Korean War), stayed a couple of weeks at the Bando Hotel in Seoul.

According to Andrew Salmon’s “American Business and the Korean Miracle,” the eight-story Bando Hotel was the tallest building in Seoul and the center of sophistication in the war-torn city. Even the prime minister maintained an office there. It was a popular haunt not only for Westerners but also Koreans who wanted to practice their English. In a recent interview Dustin recalled:

“It was almost impossible to sit down for a cup of coffee or a meal, especially when alone, without having an elderly Korean gentleman suddenly materialize seemingly from out of nowhere saying ‘May I introduce myself? I'm Mr. XX, the Minister of so-and-so government office.’ Many of the elderly, if not educated abroad, had learned their English from U.S. or Commonwealth missionaries in Bible classes in Korea.”

In early September he was informed that his housing was ready and moved from the social center of the city to the relatively desolate area near the present Yonsei campus. Dustin’s memories of the area contrast sharply with what is presently one of Seoul’s most vibrant communities.

“My ‘housing’ was a Western-style, two-story building called ‘the White Russian House.’ It was west of the university and on down the hill toward the village of Yonhi-dong, some 80 meters from the Underwood home. At that time, ‘Yonhi-dong' was not the ‘upbeat’ residential area as it has become today but was nothing but rice paddies full of pheasants and all sorts of migratory fowl in season.”

Although the building was structurally ready it was without the creature comforts _ including furniture. Despite the Asia Foundation providing the bare essentials, such as space heaters and a bed, it was, according to Dustin, “a cold two winters.”

Conditions at the school were equally trying:

“The school had returned from Busan a year or so before and there was so much damage. That first fall of ’55 was difficult. Many of the classrooms still had no windows and some were missing doors so it was terribly drafty.”

In addition to the lack of heat, there was also a dearth of education material.

“A suitable textbook was simply not available at that time. The Robert Lado series developed at the University of Michigan was mainly for Spanish speakers and certainly not for 30 or more students in a class!”

So, borrowing from the early missionaries, Dustin used a story-telling system and, instead of the Bible, utilized “a little book of Aesop's Fables” as his text book. Pantomiming the actions of the main characters of the stories, 25-year-old Dustin was able to convey to his not-much-younger students the gist of the story. It was entertaining as well as very successful.

Even though the conditions at the school were somewhat Spartan, there were few absentees.

“I often thought it a real personal credit to those students who would arrive in the ubiquitous ‘black jeeps’ of the day at the front gate and then sit bundled up in those frozen classrooms.” The students had, Dustin described, “a real fervor for education.”

The teachers, too, had “a real fervor for education.” The Asia Foundation was unable to provide any information as to the wages these teachers received but, according to Dustin, “it was certainly not much ― which we knew before we came and which we were perfectly happy with.”

Although Dustin did not have PX (post exchanges) privileges on the American military bases, he did have access to American food. Black market goods were peddled by a local entrepreneur on his bicycle to Dustin and other PX-deprived foreigners _ generally missionaries. The prices were competitive if not better than those on base.

Dustin, a Korean War veteran was the only one of the three teachers who had, prior to his contract, been to Korea, but even he, at least in the beginning, was unaccustomed to the smell of kimchi.

“As fall progressed and the weather grew colder, I found that the lack of windows was a blessing: enough ventilation to keep the smell of kimchi in continuous agitation!”

Horace G. Underwood, whose missionary family had lived in Korea since the mid-1880s, later suggested to Dustin that he eat kimchi in order to dispel his aversion to its smell. And, much to his surprise, it worked.

Dustin finished his two-year contract and then returned to the United States to complete his MA, which upon finishing, promptly returned to Korea to begin another stint as a teacher at another university. Dustin never left and now resides on Jeju Island where he founded the Gimnyeong Maze Park and, although he is no longer a teacher, continues to aid Korea’s education efforts through his philanthropy.

How successful was the Asia Foundation’s program? Many of the first students went on to hold positions of great trust and responsibility within the Korean government and various organizations. Not surprisingly, many of them remember their first English teachers.

Not too long ago, a former high-ranking Korean official approached Dustin and asked him if he could remember who he was. When Dustin was unable to answer, the gentleman “launched into Aesop’s Fable about the ungrateful serpent … and, word perfect, from memory, went right to the end with even my hand actions of the ungrateful snake springing at the farmer.”

He had been one of Dustin’s first students from over a half century ago and still felt a great deal of gratitude for the efforts of his “English teacher of a period in Korean history long gone.”

According to Dustin, “The classroom teacher must often abide for many years to see results, positive or negative, of early endeavors.” Judging from his experience and those of the other early teachers, the Asia Foundation’s English teaching program was a great success.