michael has no idea what's going on in our class, unfortunately. i'm not sure if he doesn't pay attention because he doesn't know any english, or if he doesn't know any english because he doesn't pay attention. either way it's a downward spiral. dahee's got her own difficulties with english so i'm not sure how successful this cheating attempt was anyway.

cunning refers to the konglish word for cheating. in korean there are certain words that are borrowed from english and that sometimes koreans think are english words, but they're either not really pronounced the same or they use it in a different context. those words then fall somewhere between korean and english and are known as konglish. another good example of this is the word for apartment in korean, 아파트 (apateu). it's almost apartment, but it sounds more like apart.

what's funny is a lot of times my students think the word is english so they'll say it excitedly thinking i'll understand and i'll be like, i think i know what word you're talking about but it doesn't make sense in this context.

here's a really thorough discussion into konglish, in case you're interested.