Wednesday, April 20, 2016

EPIK fail

Update:

Over at 10원 Tips, Sam Nordberg has found the source of this photo and reveals the extent to which it was photoshopped.

While I think of it, it might be worth revisiting the photo contest winner posted here, and this post as well.

Original Post:

A few weeks ago I posted about how female E-2 visa-holders now outnumbered males, and also posted images showing how female foreign teachers have been depicted in promotional material for SMOE, EPIK, and hagwons. And then I stumbled across this EPIK page:


If you click to enlarge it to full size, as it appears on the webpage, it's clear enough that... well, that the photographer and whoever designed the web page were male. Needless to say, I can't imagine EPIK depicting a female Korean teacher this way.

The sample contracts on that page declare that the "Employee shall not behave in any manner that may damage or tarnish the reputation of the teaching profession in general or of the S.M.O.E. program and the undersigned Employer in particular during the Term of Employment" and
the "Employee shall not be involved in any activities that may cause harm to the students or be of detriment to the reputation of the school, District Office of Education, and Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education." Perhaps it should add in a clause stating that the "Employer shall not depict Employees in promotional material in a way that tarnishes their image"?

Perhaps that could be said of the contract itself:
"The Employer will immediately report the Employee to the appropriate agencies once the Employer becomes aware of any illegal action (Narcotics, etc.) by the Employee and the Employee shall be subject to prosecution and punishment according to Korean Law." 

Perhaps I'm overstating things, but still, there's legally covering all the bases and then there's acting like you're expecting certain illegal behavior from your employees.

5 comments:

Sam Nordberg said...

I did a little digging and found what looks like the original of that image, sans the Koreans. http://10wontips.blogspot.com/2016/04/epik-fail-part-deux-photoshopped-white.html

matt said...

Great detective work! Quite a bit of effort to cut her out, mirror her arm, etc, etc. But I imagine that's quite a bit cheaper/ less time consuming than an actual photo shoot.

Your blog looks great, by the way - I've added it to my sidebar and will update this post.

Sam Nordberg said...

Hey thanks. I'll give you the same treatment. By the way, it gets better. I just updated the post to include the other original image that had a white guy teacher. Classy.

matt said...

Nice! The fact they photoshopped him out and her in is a great find.

Stephanie said...

The really funny part to me (female, SMOE teacher from '08-'11) is that if a female teacher had shown up wearing that shirt in most elementary/middle schools, she would have gotten in a bit of trouble for showing so much skin. I mostly wore crewnecks or very shallow v-necks, so I never had any issues, but I knew someone who lost a few points on her contract-renewal teaching observation because she was wearing a shirt that showed about a quarter of an inch of cleavage. That shirt... yeah, at the very least I would have gotten pulled aside and asked to wear a scarf or jacket over it.