EDiS KNC 2015

15/11/2015

14/11/2015

12/11/2015

10/11/2015

We have one correction to make regarding the rookie speaker awards of this KNC, as Seou Choi (YUU 2) was left out in the process of awarding rookie best speakers.

As a result, the correct results for the top rookie speakers is as follows:
1st best rookie speaker: Wonjune Lee (SNUDA 5)
2nd best rookie speaker: Seou Choi (YUU 2)
3rd best rookie speaker: Hyunseung Lee (SNUDA 5)
4th best rookie speaker: Minwoo Lee (HDS 1)

Although we only award top three rookie speakers, because this error happened due to our negligence, we would like to give honorary recognition to the 4th ranking speaker as well.

The conveners will be collecting the certificates through the society heads at KCM and printing new certificates for Seou Choi, Hyunseung Lee, and Minwoo Lee.

We have already personally contacted the three individuals and asked for their understanding, but we would like to once more sincerely apologize.

Thank you.

09/11/2015

[FULL RESULTS]

Quarter Finalists:
SDS 1
KU 2
YUU 7
SNUDA 4
HYDS 2
ADS 3
SKEDA 2
KU 4

Semi Finalists:
EDIS 1
CUDS 1
ADS 2
HDS 2

Rookie Best Speakers:
1. Wonjune Lee
- SNUDA
2. Seou Choi
- YUU 2
3. Hyunseung Lee
- SNUDA
(4. Minwoo Lee
- HDS)

EFL Best Speakers:
1. Joon Woo Kim
- ADS
2. Hyunji Kim
- SNUDA
2. Yubin Hong
- YUU
2. Sungyoon Lee
- YUU
2. Meesong Kim
- SNUDA

Open Best Speakers:
1. Sungryul Park
2. Chan Keun Kim
3. Jaedong Jeong
3. Tae Yeong Kim
5. Minjung Yoon
5. Kyungmi Lee
5. Abhisheka Dubey
5. Hye Yeon John
9. Harah Jeon
9. Keunyoung Heo

Best Adjudicators:
1. Joshua Park
2. Dohhee Roh
3. Eui Joon Kim
4. Daeun Lee
5. Geewon Jung
6. Seulchan Yun
7. Jungmin Yoo
8. Peter Kipp
9. Sophia Kim
10. Emma Hartholt

Rookie Grand Finalists:
HDS 1
CUDS 4
SKEDA 1

Rookie Champion:
SNUDA 5

EFL Grand Finalists:
ADS 5
MODS 1
SDS 4

EFL Champion:
CUDS 3

Open Grand Finalists:
SNUDA 1
HYDS 1
YUU 6

Open Grand Champion:
YUU 1

09/11/2015

[TABS]

Kudos once more for the amazing tab team (Hyewon Rho & Seunghyun Lee) for their fantastic work as well as our superb conveners and the orgcom!

Shared with Dropbox

08/11/2015

Grand Final Motion De-Briefing

Theme: “History is not was, it is.”

BGM: 우리 역사를 빛낸 100명의 위인

In countries with a history of colonialism, TH regrets the criminal punishment of those who collaborated with the colonial powers.

Since the issue of history textbooks is undeniably the hottest potato of the country at this time, we felt this was the best time to run a finals debate about history so that both the debaters and the crowd can enjoy the motion. We also felt that for the finals, the motion should be as balanced for all four sides as possible, making this motion a particularly fair motion for finals. Inspired by the recent movie 암살 (Assassination) and based on an issue that has always been a center of controversy within Korea, even recently with 김무성’s father receiving allegations to his collaboration to the Japanese colonial powers, this motion asks a value judgment about the following questions:

1) Do people have the liberty to associate themselves with values that may go against the sustenance and well-being of the state? What is the extent to which the state can take an active stance upon this issue?

2) Do individuals have the duty to be patriotic toward a nation that has failed in protecting the rights of its own citizens?

3) What is the utility that arises from the criminalization of collaborators and other policies and phenomena that follow as an extension, such as the protection, benefits, and compensation provided to the descendants of 국가유공자, the confiscation of land and property of collaborators, or 일제식민지배 옹호행위자 처벌 법률 which was tabled last year in congress?

4) How does the criminalization of collaborators shape national discourse in the modern era? Is the social sanction toward public figures who are related to collaborators fair? What about divisions that may exist and further arise between groups and among people?

5) What is the relationship between a historical event and the current generation? How much responsibility should the current generation have toward a past event? Can the current generation or cabinet judge the actions of the people of a time and hardship that they never experienced?

While we anticipate teams to focus mainly on Korea as the context, any country/region with a history of colonialism is a part of the debate (collaborators of slavery during the West’s colonization of Africa or collaborators with the N**i imperialism is also possible) making room for rich discussion.

08/11/2015

EFL Final Motion De-briefing

Theme: “Slavery has evolved. It’s called unpaid internships.”

BGM: 장미여관- 로망

THW disallow companies from hiring individuals for “Passion Pay (열정페이).”
(“Passion Pay,” or “열정페이” refers to the provision of work experience opportunities with little or no wage.)

Since most EFL speakers have spent most of their, if not their entire life studying in Korea, we wanted to set a motion where they could directly relate to, and felt that a discussion about 열정페이 is extremely relevant for Korean university students of the current time.

The debate itself is quite similar to a classic debate on unpaid internships, looking into 1) the idea of voluntariness versus coerciveness of circumstance in reaching the choice to opt into such a system of labor, 2) whether the transaction (give and take) that happens is one that is balanced in nature or a fundamentally unfair one, 3) to what degree the private sector is responsible in shaping and reforming labor welfare conditions, and 4) whether the policy will lead to a better off or a worse off circumstance for the youths and job-seekers involved.

While proposition may characterize how innately exploitive the current labor market is to the extent of breaching fundamental labor rights and how the policy will lead to some type of structural change, opposition may give analysis on what economic tradeoffs look like, along with why it will only lead to worse off situations for the youth if career-experience opportunities are taken away. (For instance, when over 80% of Korean students graduate university, perhaps the eradication of opportunities to build work experience before graduation albeit paid little will only result in the further over-education of students, where graduation school becomes a somewhat “necessity” to be distinguished from other competitors in the job market. This will only create further abnormalities in the Korean labor market.)

On top of this we anticipate debaters to ground the debate in the unique Korean context of requiring a somewhat unconditional sacrifice and passion from the youth, with the “it hurts because we are young” culture, and what that broad culture implies in the current labor market, with companies often using students under the fancy title of “recruiting supporters” and the like to “build up spec.” We believe different spectrums of youth may also be analyzed, as the policy will have the most effect on the youth who are from economically not well off families. We also hope to hear much direct and indirect experiences from the speakers to give life to the debate.

08/11/2015

Rookie Final Motion De-briefing

Theme: “Every teacher wants to write a report card comment that goes like this… I cannot give your child what God did not.”

BGM: Pink Floyd- We Don’t Need No Education

THBT in public secondary education institutions (middle & high schools), student evaluation should be the main factor in determining the wage, promotion, and firing of teachers.

We set this motion for the Rookie Finals because we wanted to give rookie debates a chance to talk passionately about a topic they directly experienced and thus could relate to- their secondary education experiences. We anticipate many personal accounts of our rookie debaters and their experience with bad or good teachers to properly ground the debate.

We thought this debate may cover the following numerous questions:

1) Are students the proper actors and are teenagers mature enough? What is the nature of the decisions they will make?

2) Is there check and balance? (For prop, will there be mechanisms to ensure that students do not abuse the system into a mere popularity vote? For opp, are there mechanisms in the SQ to ensure the filtering of underperforming or bad teachers?)

3) How will the policy effect the student-teachers relations and the classroom dynamics? What will happen to communication, trust, authority, etc of the teachers?

4) A principled discussion of what the role of education is, in particular public education is anticipated. A discussion about the failure of public education and the need to raise the quality, marketization of public education just like private education, and educational populism, politicization of education can all be discussed.

5) Others related stakeholders that may appear in the debate is teachers unions, the school administrative, aspiring teachers, and parents. Discussions as to how the teachers unions will react to the policy, how the hiring process or the calculus of the school administrative will change, how the calculus of aspiring teachers will change, and how the dynamics of teachers and parents will change may be relevant.