Lead by Morgan Waugh // Drinking Solo Episode 2 & 3
Episode 2 Synopsis:
Ha-na is trying to stay confident in Noryangjin but constantly receives criticism about her appearance and credentials. Critical background information about the characters are revealed, setting up character relationships to be developed later.
Episode 3 Synopsis:
Ha-na tries to advertise herself by handing out free wet wipes, and Jung-suk continues to criticize her. His opinions are starting to change by the end of the episode.
Discussion Post:
A teacher’s role is to educate their students. Personal advertising* is required for new teachers (like Ha-na) to attract students to register in their class. I find the idea of personal advertising portrayed in the drama to be problematic.
Personal posters and incentives encourage biased registration. This results in appearance being a crucial factor for success in the job (it’s implied more students registered means more success as a teacher). Appearance is important to characters like Director Kim (episode 13), and Ki-bum, who criticized Ha-na. Appearance should not contribute to the teacher’s enrolment rate, nor should it matter to the students who are relying on teachers to pass no matter their appearance.
Ha-na has contradicting opinions on the matter, shown in episode 2:
Ha-na: Student. You really hate my looks that much? Enough to drop my class?
Ki-bum: Well, to be frank, they Photoshopped you way too much.
Ha-na: That’s not Photoshop. I overslept today, so…so I couldn’t put on makeup or do my hair properly. I look just like that when I’ve had time to prepare!
Ki-bum and Dong-young snicker
Ha-na: But what’s so important about your instructor’s looks, anyway? All a lecturer has to do is teach well! Isn’t that right?
[…]
Ha-na: I’ll become prettier. […] Just trust in me!
She knows what her role is as a teacher, but justifies the claims against her, ultimately contradicting herself. Her response bothers me, but when personal advertising and appearance is correlated with success, it makes me feel somewhat empathetic (but still annoyed). My claim remains the same: appearance is irrelevant to education.
This biased means of registration provides the following questions to consider:
- Why is the institute driven to such ‘individual’ ways of advertising?
- Why did this standard of appearance occur in setting where it’s irrelevant?
- Do you think this standard will change?
*Examples of personal advertising:
Side Thoughts:
How much of this advertising method is exaggerated for the sake of a drama? I’ve never been to South Korea nor attended after-school tutoring. From simple observation, places like Kumon and Sylvan are advertising their reputation rather than their teachers. I’m aware that appearance is important in South Korea, but to this extent? If a Ha-na must advertise to get students, why did Noryangjin hire her in the first place? It doesn’t seem that large classes are a worry, seeing that Jung-suk’s class size.
Drinking Solo 
I think the reason hagwons (Korean academy) are obsessed with personal advertising is largely due to the difference between public school and hagwon. Once teachers work under public school, they are guaranteed their job until retirement (government employee), which is apparently not the case for hagwon teachers. They are responsible for securing their job, making them trying to gain more students by competing with fellow teachers. Having a fine degree from prestigious university could make you look credible, but you also have to teach well to make students take your class. I think that is why teachers advertise as much as they can in even irrelevant areas like appearance, so they can always have something that sets them apart from others. Since hagwon industry has been so vast and inseparable from Korean students’ life, I think this kind of situation is going to continue. This is interesting (and also scary…) as we would hardly encounter something like this in here Canada…
Note: The reason the hagwon hired Ha-na was because while they were recruiting teachers, they spent so much on bringing Jung-suk that they had to hire Ha-na (the cheap one) to fill the rest of the job position. I think this was vaguely mentioned around ep.1-2?
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Interesting information you brought up about job security.
After posting, I considered personal advertising of a way to beat the other schools. There’s high competition in this saturated field, and personal advertisement could just be another method to boost enrollment. It’s a business after all.
Response to your note about hiring Ha-na:
I remember the reason for hiring her, but I was looking at it from a different view:
1. Ha-na was hired to teach Korean>she has to attract her own students
There are other Korean subject teachers
2. Jung-suk was hired to teach>his reputation brings in a full-house including online lectures>class size doesn’t seem to matter
Why don’t they fill up the other Korean subject teachers’ classes instead? Doesn’t seem that class size matters (seeing Jung-suk’s large classes) and they’d save money too by maximizing the use of their current (experienced, credible) staff.
Might just be overthinking it though, if Ha-na wasn’t hired, Drinking Solo would never have happened.
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Even though everyone is working under the same company, it’s sad to say that individual competition amongst coworkers is a tough struggle. I don’t remember what episode it was but there is a scene where we get a flashback of Jung-suk’s memories, where one of his fellow classmates (who didn’t work as hard as he did) lands a teaching position because he kissed up to the professor. I guess in Korea there’s competition everywhere, but I agree that the poster ordeal and using the wet wipes is a bit of a stretch; it wouldn’t be a drama if there was no over exaggeration.
I think this all boils down to how status is so important in the Korean culture. I’ve learned in the past that historically, blood-related family was the main determining factor or what kind of life you would live. If you’ve every watched a historical drama, it’s obvious that just by being blood related to the royal family means a life of comfort that someone from a commoners family line could never imagine of having. I can assume that this could be a part of why Korean culture puts so much importance into status and looks. Where you stand in society is so influential. I think this is evident in the fact that Korea is known for their heavy use of plastic surgery. That people need to look a certain to conform to the beauty standards of Korea. This being said, appearance is so influential in just any culture and each one has their own standards.
Interestingly, there is no mention of Jung-suk’s looks since the first episode. Instead the drama portrays Jung-suk through his skill and ability to teach exactly what will be on the exam, instead of his looks like what Ha-na experienced. I think this reflects the male female differences in Korea’s culture as well. That women are more prized for their looks and superficial aspects whereas men are known for their skills and credentials.
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Morgan, I think you brought up a really good point about the importance of appearance in this drama (and in particular, this episode), and I completely agree with Yein in that job security is probably a portion of the reason. Perhaps another aspect to consider is that something as abstract as teaching ability, which can hardly be demonstrated without statistics (which people may or may not even believe the credibility of) is difficult to express in an advertisement— especially for an advertisement that is printed on a tissue package, which doesn’t move or say anything to add to its persuasiveness. This may be why looks factor in as part of the equation; research has shown that good-looking people can sometimes appear more trustworthy. To tie this in with the job security point, with there being so many hagwons in Korea, I suppose personal advertising and the resulting creation of a personal tie between teacher and student could be advantageous in luring in students.
I would say that there are definitely elements of exaggeration in the tissue/poster scene, and I agree with you in that, to someone less familiar with Korean culture than most of my peers in this class, Ha-na’s response was completely and utterly ridiculous. Why should you need to assure anyone that you will become prettier, particularly in the context of education? A reasonable, logical response would have been something along the lines of “I will show you how great of a teacher I can be.” Michelle’s point about how women are valued more for their looks than skills is probably directly tied in with the reasoning behind Ha-na’s response; perhaps some would see her improving her appearance as just as important as the improvement of her skills.
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While it is unfortunate that appearance is a factor that determines likability, Korean culture oftentimes promotes an ideal image of what a man and a woman should look like. Even in a setting where the main objective is to educate students, Korean professors sometimes must initially resort to advertising methods that are ‘individual’ or perhaps superficial in order to bring students to their courses. Perhaps these ‘individual’ ways of advertisement reflect Korea’s individualistic culture as many people will often solely look after themselves in order to climb the social ladder. Even when people do promise to help others, such as Jin-yi who promised to help Ha-na, they still put their own interests before the ones they decide to help whether it is intentional or unintentional.
It is unclear whether this standard will change in the near future. Perhaps one way is to work and advertise the academy collectively rather than advertise individual professors. The joint classes in the drama are one of the ways that the academy tries to promote those who wouldn’t receive the recognition in the first place. However, even with the addition of the joint lecture, more subtle, individualistic methods of advertising exist amongst the professors in the joint class to boost their own individual popularity.
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Michelle, I appreciate your observation that 3 cases of drinking emerge out of different contexts in this episode, and your discussion
Morgan, your observation is great, and your discussion questions are also intriguing and engaging (especially no. 2, you put is nicely).
No doubt do I agree with your argument that ideally, appearance is irrelevant to education. But realistically, in the context where “education” itself has become a “commodity,” hagwon teachers have to sell themselves through advertising, and good appearance is what sells (especially when there are so many teachers with similar teaching ability). It is very sad and never ideal, but I’d say it’s very realistic.
Ye In’s comment helps understand the situation of hagwon teachers (job insecurity), and I really liked the last paragraph of Michelle’s comment where she brings up the gender difference. Winnie, you made a really good point (that it’s hard to translate one’s teaching ability). Peter, I agree with you that the individualistic methods of advertising won’t go away that easily.
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