In my previous posts, Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Kelly Teacher - Part One) and Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Kelly Teacher - Part Two), I introduced you to Kelly teacher whom I worked with when I first arrived at Daechi Wonderland in 2001 and how he had enjoyed admiting that while working with children, he let them touch him inappropriately and repeatedly. Here is the conclusion, if you wan’t to call it that…

After work on the day of Kelly’s admission a few of the teachers, Korean and foreign, went out for drinks. Of course we went without Kelly, Dave R., or the boss. The other teacher, that I had been with during Kelly’s admission, and I told everyone else what had happened that day. Of course everyone was sickened, but not really shocked. Remember, Kelly always acted strangely. We exchanged stories about other weird and inappropriate things Kelly had done. We also discussed what we should do. We decided to inform the boss, and owner, of Daechi Wonderland about the incident because we did not feel comfortable working around him and we did not trust him around children.

We found a time when Kelly was not around and several teachers including myself had a talk with the boss. We told him exactly what Kelly had told Dave R., the other teacher, and I. He was not shocked. He expressed very little emotion at all. We told him about other incidents and how we didn’t feel comfortable working around him. The boss mearly said that he could have been joking and since there was no proof he couldn’t fire him. He also mentioned that the parents liked Kelly. So we all left the bosses office very down and feeling hopeless. However, our talk must have had some impact and the news of the discussion spread quickly. Also, I assume that the boss must have had his own talk with Kelly.

A day or two after the talk, Kelly did not show up for work. Someone from the school went to his apartment to look for him and all of his things were gone. This was the first time I had seen a teacher do a “midnight run” and I was surprised. Dave R. became furious and pouted for a couple days at home because we had “made his friend runaway.” All the other teachers were glad that Kelly had gone and we quickly moved on. The rumour was that Kelly returned to Prague to teach English there. I just wish we could have done more to prevent him from working with kids again.

That was the biggest event during my first two months of work at Daechi Wonderland in 2001. I continued to work at Daechi Wonderland until the end of my contract when I chose to leave. It was a fair place to work at and I met many great people there.

Note: I refer to Daechi Wonderland and it’s staff in 2001. The current staff is completely different.

Some CLASSIC Canadian hip-hop right here. This is yet another example of a great song and a perfectly fitting video that was made in very little time, for very little money.

I can’t believe that I slept on this video for nearly 5 months… damn.

The more I examine the progression of my musical interests, the more I realize that I may be becoming the dreaded “hip-hop hipster”. I especially realize this after I think to myself that N.E.R.D.’s video for Everybody Nose is genius. Ugh.

In my previous post, Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Kelly Teacher - Part One), I introduced you to Kelly teacher whom I worked with when I first arrived at Daechi Wonderland in 2001. However, the best (worst) part of the story is still to come…

One Monday my perception of Kelly changed dramatically. It was either first thing in the morning before classes started or maybe it was returning from lunch. As I was approaching the institute with another teacher we saw Dave R., the head teacher in 2001, and Kelly talking outside the building. Being friendly, we stopped to chat with them a bit before we headed into the office to prepare for classes.

Kelly was in a different mood. He was excited about something and much more talkative than usual. He was telling Dave R. a story and did not slow down or hesitate when we arrived and I will never understand why he chose to tell us what he was about to say.

For some reason, Kelly had volunteered at a hospital over the weekend. He had volunteered to be a clown for disabled kids. This is when I knew that something was very strange about this man, but I digress. As I recall, most of the children were blind, maybe all even all of them were blind so I’m not sure why they needed a foreigner dressed up as a clown to entertain them. Regardless, for some reason, some person and/or organization had allowed this creepy man to dress up as a clown for entertaining kids.

Kelly continued with this story, apparently equally baffled by the circumstances but still elated. He started to talk about how the blind kids behaved and he said that as blind kids, they had to rely on their sense of touch. So the kids were touching his face and realized that he was a foreigner because his facial structure was much different from that of a Koreans’. The kids also touched his clothes and his hair to determine he was a clown. However, the touching continued after these discoveries.

I can still remember Kelly saying, while looking right at me, “They were touching me, so I let them.” He had one of the creepiest grins I can recall and his facial expression was not what you would want to see from a responsible person who works with kids. He had enjoyed it and he was enjoying telling the story. He continued to describe where the kids had “touched him” and how he “let them.” I will not go into detail about how he described it because I do not recall the exact words he used and I don’t care to think too much about the details. However, please understand that the touching had become inappropriate and Kelly was proclaiming how much fun it was. The other teacher I was with and I were stunned; we just stood in shock unsure how to respond as Kelly stood grinning and Dave R. chuckled.

Part Three

Note: I refer to Daechi Wonderland and it’s staff in 2001. The current staff is completely different.