S.Korea Races to Erase Web Worm Ahead of Work Week

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean systems engineers raced on Sunday to repair Internet networks ahead of the start of the working week, after the country was hit hard during a global attack by a fast-spreading computer worm.

In what experts called the most damaging attack on the Internet in 18 months, the worm known as "SQL" ("sequel") Slammer targeted a known weakness in Microsoft Corp's software to shut down powerful server computers -- clogging the pipelines of the worldwide network.

South Korea, the world's most wired country, said its Internet companies would boost security spending to try to prevent a repeat of the outage that paralyzed broadband and mobile services on Saturday afternoon.

"It's not clear why Korea was targeted but the damage was huge -- partly because Korea has a huge Internet population and this helped the rapid spread of the worm," said an official at KT Corp, Korea's largest Internet service provider.

(By Kim Miyoung, Sunday, January 26, 2003, 02:14 AM ET )

Hence the bruises on my forehead: I spent Saturday afternoon and evening banging my head against the wall trying in vain to get online. If only my internet provider, KT, had been kind enough to call me and tell me about the problem, I might have avoided having a near-meltdown!

December pose

Taken December 23rd, the day of the Christmas party at the hagwon. The director appears with his arms folded. Aside from one Korean teacher, I, as the photographer, am the only one missing from the picture.

Respect breeds respect

An brief encounter last night changed my philosophy of the role that should exist between the teachers of children and their parents. First the experience, then the epiphany.

I teach an intermediate writing class for Korean students with advanced English language skills. The class is small (four students, two girls and two boys, 11-15 years old) and they've each lived for an extended period in Canada or the United States. We meet twice a week for two hours. I learned earlier in the day that the father of a 15 year old boy in the class had expressed a desire to meet me. This particular student possesses great speaking skills and has always been eager and well-behaved in class so I was more than anxious to meet his father.

As it happened, he was waiting at the front desk to meet me after the writing class last night. Apparently he is an English teacher himeself at a high school in Chunchon so we had no trouble communicating. He did nothing more than bow courteously, shake my hand, thank me for teaching his son, and express a desire for me to join his family for dinner in the near future.

Dinner with one's family is not to be casually dismissed but it was this man's other actions that I found so deferential. This isn't the first time I've found respect as a simple teacher but it reinforced the personal satisfaction I already take in being a teacher. Upon further reflection, I recognized the wisdom of a parent taking the initiative to establish a cordial relationship with his child's teacher early, before problems can or do arise.

Without uttering the words, the parent's plea is, "Please teach my child well." And a responsible teacher will, in the course of teaching, heed that plea by focusing on that child. A student may act as if he or she doesn't care about learning but if a teacher knows the parent of such a child cares, that teacher can more easily fight the discouragement and despair even the best of us often feel.

I feel bound now to work harder to fulfill what I view as my duties as a teacher. It's a great feeling.

tick, tock, tick, tock

Less than two months left in land of the land of the morning calm. Two words sum up my emotional state these past few weeks: HOME and SICK.

The "famous" Haeundae Beach

From my visit to Busan in December. It may have been a cold, blustery day, fit for "neither fish nor fowl," but the crashing waves and the flocks of seagulls had a charm all their own.

Wait a minute. By their presence, it must have been fit enough for the fowls and since they're cold-blooded and aquatic, it's hard to believe the fish were all that put out. On second thought, it must have been a sunny, pleasant day.

Happy New Year!