Join The Melamine Girl's Choir!

Teaching phonics to 5-15 years is a fairly easy job - its a lot easier than tree planting! - and it has its benefits: The Melamine Girl's Choir.

On Tuesday, I was preparing for my 4th class of the day. My classes are a half an hour long, with one fifteen minute break in between. The Power Puff girls came in as usual, all smilies and positive energy. On that particular day they were all laughing about some joke one of them had told on the bus just before they got my classroom.

There are two types of groups of girls: The Collectives and The Power Puff Girls (PPG). The PPG are groups of girls who work together positively in pursuit of a common goal. They are sugar and spice and everything nice. The Collective (TC) is their polar opposite. TCs work together negatively in opposition to something. They are salt and pepper and everything not nice.

Anyway, as I said, I was getting ready for the PPG class, organizing the chairs and getting rid of garbage, getting my books ready, writing the page I was going to cover with them on the whiteboard, when I heard the choir sing, "Melamine! Melamine! Melamine!.

I usally carry my backpack with me when I go to school. I keep my pens, books, IPOD, and camera in it and usually set it down next to the whiteboard where students can see it, up against my dvd player stand. That day I had snacked on half a packaged of ZEC crackers (there are two packages in each box), which are South Korea's cheap copy of Nabisco Ritz crackers, and had shoved it in the side pocket of my packet after snacking.

Children are much more susceptible to the effects of toxins parts per million. A little bit of melamine for an adult might be a lot of melamine for an 8 year old or 11 year old. These five girls' parents had obviously taught them well, because once Mary had identified the package of ZEC crackers, the five of them sang to me almost in unison, "Melamine! Melamine! Melamine!". They were warning me not to eat the crackers.

Now, you must understand that my ability to communicate with these girls is limited. And their ability to communicate with me is limited They just started to learn English at a hagwon three months ago, so our only avenue for conversation is the exchange of one-word sentences. My response to their warning was "Yes, yes, yes, I know". But when I hadn't thrown the ZEC box in the garbage after a couple of minutes, the choir warned me again, "Melamine! Melamine! Melamine!"

By then I was getting a bit spooked. I had bought the crackers at one of Gumi's thousands of mom and pop convenience stores and was starting to wonder if they would pull tainted products of the shelf if there was a national recall of melamine tainted products. I told myself, yes, yes they would, because the threat of being sued would be too great for a business of that size.

After the Power Puff Girls had left, I decided that I would ask my advanced 7th class to tell me if there was any milk in the ingredients. Matthew, who is in grade school, but who speaks the best English in my school, told me that there was only butter in the package, but no milk, and Paul, the middle schooler, said there was no melamine in it because there was no milk in it. I agreed.

The melamine crisis has not gained my interest beyond highlighting the inherent stupidity and danger of an unregulated market, of market evangelism itself. When I hear of the tained product scares, I basically assume the government agencies responsible for catching the monsters of deregulation will do their jobs, or face severe political backlash. Which means, the most interesting part of the melamine scam is not the scam itself, but the Melamine Girls Choir that it created.