or story ideas to Matthew Lamers at

mattlamers@heraldm.com
Submissions may be edited for length or clarity.

18 community TUESDAY APRIL 20, 2010

Expat Living is a section dedicated to the daily

living of expatriates.
It is printed on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
To share stories about your life abroad, send stories
or story ideas to Matthew Lamers at
mattlamers@heraldm.com
Submissions may be edited for length or clarity.

Expat Living is a section dedicated to the daily

living of expatriates.
It is printed on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
To share stories about your life abroad, send stories
or story ideas to Matthew Lamers at
mattlamers@heraldm.com
Submissions may be edited for length or clarity.

Inmates dress in hanbok as part of a New Year celebration at Inmates at Cheonan Foreigner Prison take part in the “Good morning Korea” program that is run in collaboration with Dankook University. The program is aimed at enhancing
Cheonan Foreigner Prison. communication and improving the prison’s environment.  Courtesy Cheonan Foreigner Prison

Inside Cheonan’s foreigner only prison

By Adam Walsh
A class of 25 sings along to a K-pop
song by Ahn Chi-hwan, aided by a
little ball that bounces from word to
word on a big screen at the head of
the class.
The teacher motions her hand to
her ear, inviting the convicts to sing
louder. They enthusiastically oblige.
Some clap their hands; everyone
moves rhythmically in their chairs.
If it weren’t for the prison-issued
navy-blue jumpsuits, it would be hard
to tell them apart from any other
tourists in the country. The class is
part of Cheonan Foreigner Prison’s
“Good Morning Korea” program. The
students are all foreign convicts at
what the Ministry of Justice touts as
the sole foreigner-only prison in the
world.
Leading the song today is professor
Jung Yoon-ja.
“This program’s goal is to help
foreign prisoners better understand
Korea and adjust to living in Ko-
rea. We hope that foreign prisoners
spread the good image of Korea
when they get back to their coun-
try,” Jung said after the class. “We
also hope that foreign prisoners will
open their minds and have smiles
on their faces while taking this pro-
gram.”
Good Morning Korea is a big part
of each weekday morning here. Run
in collaboration with Dankook Uni-
versity, instructors from the univer-
sity come in to teach prisoners the
Korean language and culture through
song and stories.
Officials feel that communication is
very important and focus on teaching
to improve the prison’s environment.
The main morning teaching point is
“We are one family.”
Jung also said the prisoners are
adapting well to the classes and
seem to be enjoying them more now
than they had been in the beginning.
She feels it is effective to teach the
Korean language and culture using
fairy tales, K-pop songs, and arts and
crafts.
On Feb. 23 the Ministry of Justice
held a tree planting ceremony for the
opening of Cheonan Foreigner Prison.
It has long been pushed by the minis-
try as a proper response to the rising
incidences of crime committed by for-
eigners in Korea.
A press release sent out by the
ministry after the opening high-
lighted the rise in crime, pointing out
that since 2006, foreign crime has
risen by 250 percent in Korea, though
the Korean Institute of Criminology
reported in 2007 that the foreigner
crime rate in Korea was 1.4 percent,
compared with the 3.5 percent rate
among Korean citizens.
Minister of Justice Lee Kwi-nam
gave the opening address. “The Cheo-
nan foreigner-only prison is opened
to give foreign prisoners specialized
treatment. In light of the fact that
foreign prisoners have different lan-
guages, customs, cultures and reli-
gions, we will give them humanitar-
ian treatment according to universal
values,” he said.
The minister of justice’s senti-
ments were repeated, more or less,
in point form by the director of the
International Affairs Division, Ha
Young-hoon, while on the tour of the
prison. Adding to the list of reasons,
however, was the rationalization that
if prisoners from abroad are treated
better in Korea, Korean prisoners in
other countries may be treated better
as well.
Inmates
Within Korea, there are 1,504 for-
eign prisoners from 42 countries. Of
the total, the Cheonan prison holds
587 from 27 countries. On paper it
sounds like a cultural mosaic of law-
breakers, but in reality the inmates
are 74 percent Chinese — including
Taiwanese. At the time of the tour,
there were 20 Americans and one
Canadian. Of the approximately 200
Korean prisoners housed here, guards
said that 100 are awaiting trial and
another 100 serve as kitchen and
cleaning staff.
The prison seems focused on
keeping the inmates busy through
different activities and programs.
Throughout a typical week, the
schedule starts at 8 a.m. and ends
at 5 p.m. Inmates spend weekends
and holidays within their cells. Dur-
ing the tour, prisoners were playing
sports, learning gardening and how
to cut hair, in addition to the Dank-
ook University program.
Besides exercise, Cheonan breaks
its work into vocational skill train-
ing and factory work production. The
hope for the numerous vocational
training programs is to prepare pris-
oners to re-enter society, said Ha. The
challenge, he said, is to provide pris-
oners with training that is useful in
their home countries.
“Different work situations in in-
mates’ home countries have led some
to complain about the usefulness of
our programs,” said Ha.
Factory work is another option
in the prison. At Cheonan, inmates
make both contractible beds and fish
noodles, “odeng.”
Facilities
Walking around the prison grounds
feels surprisingly relaxed given the
reality of the location. Because Cheo-
nan was a juvenile correctional facil-
ity before the foreigners were moved
in, it has more of a school-like feel
to it. This was emphasized by the
guards during the tour. Are the mu-
rals depicting nature scenes remnants
from the juvenile prison? No, said
the guards. University art professors
were brought in to paint them.
Pasted on each stairway and above
many of the doors are slogans: “The
past can’t be change but the future
can always be altered,” and, “A clear
conscience is a good pillow.” The mes-
sages are in English and Chinese.
The cell blocks are painted in pas-
tel colors with clouds on them. With
the exception of the large walls and
jumpsuits, everything seems to be
painted in light tones. The cells them-
selves are 6.48 square meters for one
person and 15.48 square meters for
five. Each cell has a TV with pre-ap-
proved programming for the inmates’
home countries and snacks such as
apples and ramen are permitted to be
kept in the assigned individual cubby
holes. Each cell has the ability to be
monitored electronically, but permis-
sion has to be obtained from the
warden and a valid reason has to be
provided.
Overseeing the prison is a group of
200 guards. Some of the guards speak
foreign languages such as English,
Spanish, Chinese and Russian. They
don’t carry weapons, but they say
that if trouble were to break out, they
are close at hand.
“The foreign inmates are actually
easier to handle than Korean in-
mates. They listen more,” said Ha.
When asked if there are cultural
difficulties between the guards and
the prisoners, Ha said that there
were fears initially. He said that
some guards hesitated to work at a
foreigner-only prison because of that
question. That being said, things have
gone relatively smoothly since the
opening.
Different view
Though the Ministry of Justice,
the guards and the instructors at the
prison all seem happy with the new
arrangement, former Daejon Prison
inmate and current author Cullen
Thomas has a different take.
Thomas feels that segregating for-
eigners from Korean convicts is coun-
terintuitive and causes the cultural
learning that the prison is trying to
foster to be replaced by something
artificial. Thomas served three and a
half years in prison during the mid-
’90s for mailing himself hash from
the Philippines. He has since gone on
to become a writer, penning the book
“Brother One Cell,” an account of his
time behind bars.
“I always felt that so much of the
true value, both in terms of challenge
and reward, of my Korean prison
experience rested in living in that
extreme and most basic way with Ko-
reans, learning and speaking Korean,
sharing bowls of kimchi and rice,
and ramen with them, hearing their
stories, seeing a picture of Korean
society, even Korean history, through
them,” said Thomas. “And beyond
that, suffering with them — whether
we deserved it or not, and most of us
did — which remains, I believe, part
of the core of the Korean national
character, that sense of shared suffer-
ing.”
As for the programs offered at the
prison, Thomas said they don’t ring
true to him. He feels that most ac-
tivities are just frivolities to pass the
time. However, he said that for the
guards, harmless ways of engaging
inmates always have some value.
Delving further into his thoughts,
Thomas said that “at work are some
powerful forces; national pride, not
wanting to reveal the native under-
belly to foreigners, wanting to treat
foreigners — even law-breaking ones
— with some privilege or at least
with separate consideration, to treat
them somehow — even in prison —
as guests in Korea.
“During my time I often felt that
the authorities, from individual
guards all the way up to the justice
ministry itself, didn’t quite know
what to do with us. I get the feeling
that this is still the case.”
To comment, e-mail mattlamers@
heraldm.com; to contact the author,
e-mail adamwalsh@heraldm.com —
Ed.
Additional reporting by Chu Ji-
hyeong.

In focus: At the heart of it all

By Aaron Raisey
The Photo Challenge is sponsored by
Hyosung Camera (English: (010) 7203-
9599) and Babo Shirts (www.baboshirts.
com). Winners of the weekly competition
receive a 50,000 won store credit at Hyo-
PHOTO CHALLENGE — weekly winner April 11 — Just after sung Camera and a Babo Shirt. To take
sunrise, a man of the Seoul Hiking group is caught in an im- part in the competition, simply upload
pressive vista on April 2.  Photo by Brijesh Bolar your photo at www.flickr.com/groups/
seoulphotoclub — Ed.
Cameras these days are smart. Very
smart. Actually, cameras have been
getting smarter
for a long time.
It was back in
the 1960s when
cameras first
sported the abil-
ity to measure
light, removing the need for the photog-
rapher to have to use a separate light
meter, and 50 years on this is trivial for
PHOTO CHALLENGE — weekly winner April 4 — At a bullfight- any modern camera. Light can be meas-
ing tournament in Uiryeong, the classic “side striking” impact ured at single or multiple points in the
decided this fight on March 27.  Photo by Dirk Schlottmann frame with a high degree of accuracy
— the modern photography enthusiast
has been relieved of the necessity to
be mindful of the subject at the core of
photography.
This is all very convenient and pho-
tography is faster and more accurate
than ever from a technical point of
view. There is no doubt, though, that
we have become spoiled and it is a sad
fact that many of the people that put
these marvels of modern engineering
and technology to use don’t understand
what the camera is actually doing. For
some, something like manual mode can
assume the proportions of a scary mon-
ster.
We all start off fearful of taking
responsibility for our images and this
is not surprising. Almost everyone
these days begins his or her journey
through photography with a small
point-and-shoot digital with which
almost no meaningful user-control is
possible. When we graduate to higher
levels of photographic technology (ac-
quire a DSLR, for example), we take
this fear with us and are often very
reluctant to get out of the coddled
comfort zone that encompasses the
various program modes on that new
camera.
If you are one of those for whom the
manual modes are unfathomable terri-
tory (and there’s no shame in it, every
photographer was once), take a step
into the unknown. Once you click out
of the program modes, you are clicking
into the essence of photography, for no
matter how simple or advanced your
camera is, there is only one thing that
really matters, one thing that is at the
heart of all cameras, the prime function
for which all the surrounding bells and
whistles are but incidental — shutter
speed and aperture value. Hang on,
that’s two things. But those two things
do come together to give us that one
thing: exposure.
Understanding exposure — the rela-
tionship between the aperture and the
shutter — will enable you to be much
more creative with your images. Now
you can intentionally create those ef-
fects you sometimes get by accident and
wish you could duplicate.
Did you ever take a portrait and
wonder how the subject was nice and
sharp, yet the background was beauti-
fully blurred? Open up the aperture
and raise the shutter speed. How about
at night when you got some wonderful
long-rayed stars on point light sources?
Close the aperture and slow the shutter
down.
Appreciating the intimate relation-
ship between the shutter and aperture
will do much more to further your pho-
tography than any amount of poring
over that manual trying to memorize
all those quirky functions the modern
camera has. I really recommend you
knuckle down and make the effort.
Indeed, once you get a real handle on
exposure, everything else becomes much
easier to get your head around. Get out
there and give your creativity a fair go.
To comment, e-mail mattlamers@her-
aldm.com; to contact the author, e-mail
raisey@hanmail.net — Ed.