Dear HAFS Community, In the past few months I have received many inquiries concerning debate events, qualification for attending those events, and who is responsible for sending student to those events. A good beginning for addressing those thoughtful concerns would be to first introduce the Korea Forensics League, followed by describing We Debate and then concluding with announcing the opening of our website, Parlidebaters.org. The Korea Forensics League (KFL) consists of 2 Conferences, one representing the foreign language schools and the other representing the international schools. Each conference has an elected commissioner that is responsible for co-ordinating initiatives by our membership or processing offers by international organisations wishing Korea’s participation in their events. The Commissioners at this time are Mr. Roger Hatridge of Seoul Foreign School, representing the international schools conference, and Mr. Justin Reznick of Daewon Foreign Language School, representing the foreign language school conference. In the past each school was represented by one faculty Liaison that would be responsible for processing their school’s registrations for such events as the national tournament as well as being able to cast a single vote on league related issues such as the modification of the rules for our national tournament. Our school’s first Liaison was Ha Eun Min, followed by Kim Kyung Hoon, and now I have been given the honour of being the third person to represent HAFS in the KFL. This year the KFL will form a Student Council that will mirror the Liaison’s role at each school with the exception, at this time, of being able to vote on league issues. Further information about the KFL can be obtained on their new website at www.koreaforensicsleague.org but please keep in mind that this website was created last weekend and many parts of it are still under-construction because some content still needs to be approved by the Liaisons before being published. In early January 2007 I created www.wedebate.org, currently with more that 150 members, as an English language on-line message portal for middle and high school debaters in Korea because it was impossible for the global debating community to communicate with us using one of the many Cyworld websites. This initiative was modelled after a similar message board for the university community, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/koreadebatelist/ that was established Mr. Jason Jarvis, Assistant Dean and Lecturer at the Korea Development Institute Graduate School of Public Policy and Management in February 2005 (120 members currently). WeDebate has been recognised by the KFL as a message board service that will continue until such services can be established on a dedicated KFL website. At this time the best features of WeDebate are the ‘Links’ page and the ‘Files’ page because they provide access to resources that may be of interest to KFL members and their families. However there are some resources that WeDebate cannot provide, such as videos, and that is why Parlidebaters was created. Last month I created www.parlidebaters.org as a members-only website for debate related activities at our school because so many of our students were requesting debate-videos and teaching materials that could not be placed on WeDebate. Access to Parlidebaters is restricted to the HAFS Community only. This was done to ensure that only our students, staff and parents had access to the site even though there is a feature that allows anyone already a member to invite others to join the group. So if you would like to join then please send me an e-mail (parlidebatecoach@mac.com) with the subject: Invite;thengiveyourname(Hangul,English),eitheryourHAFSstudentID,orHAFSteacher’sID,orNationalIDnumber,yourbirth-date(students),yourhand-phonenumber(optional),yourdepartment(teachers)oryourrelationshiptothestudent(parent).RequestsreceivedbeforeThursdaywillbeprocessedonFriday. In the coming weeks I will post notices concerning such events as the IDEA Youth Forum, World Schools Debating Championship, Asia Debate Institute, Korea High School Debating Championship, and the EBS TV program “Debate Survival”. Ian M Yovdoshuk Debate Teacher Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies Office: +82-31-324-0122 E-Mail: parlidebatecoach@mac.com