Well, the other shoe has finally dropped after the big fallout of the sex offender scandal. If you haven’t heard it turns out that early this month Interpol arrested Canadian Christopher Paul Neal on sex abuse charges. Mr. Neal had been abusing kids in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. His base of operations to conduct these criminal acts? The Korean ESL industry. Yes, he was working at a school in Gwangju at the time of his arrest.
In Korea, whenever a foreigner does anything it not only reflects on him, but also all foreigners in the country. This especially applies to the esl community. Now, because of the scumbag the pitchforks and flaming torches and angry mobs are out on the hunt to scapegoat everyone in the esl community. Of course it doesn’t help that this is also an election year.
According to the Korea Herald:
Starting in December, foreign English teachers coming to Korea will be required
to submit their criminal and health records when applying for their visas, the
Justice Ministry said on Saturday. The measure has been implemented
following a series of incidents in which a number of foreign English teachers
were allegedly caught with drugs, or had purportedly sexually harassed children
and women, according to ministry officials.
To be honest I don’t find the criminal check to be at all unreseaonable. It seems as if they should’ve been doing checks like this long before. It’s a great idea and hopefully this tactic will weed out potential teachers who have a documented history of sexual misconduct, drug abuse, or violent behavior.
Sounds great on paper, but I would like to know how this new law will go down in practice. Just how strict will this criminal check be? Some are already saying that only a spotless no records found on the check will suffice for a Visa. Does this mean a stack of unpaid parking tickets will keep teachers from getting their Visas? And what about misdemeanor infractions committed while the teacher was young and impressionable? Will the follies of youth like underage drinking or getting busted smoking a little reefer going to come back and haunt them? It hardly seems fair that a regrettable mistake which may have happened years before should bar someone from an E-2 visa.
Hopefully the language of the new law will be clear and the implementation fair. There is nothing worse than the bad execution of a good idea. Except, perhaps, the bad execution of a bad idea. Which brings up the second part of the new law: the health check.
I find it to be both unneccessary and highly invasive. A person’s health record’s should be their own private affair. If you are able to show up and do your job then it should hardly matter what the state of your health is. I can already picture teachers being blacklisted for everything from acne to overactive sweaty arm pits. Can you imagine if someone had diabetes, asthma, or high bood pressure? It wouldn’t matter that such conditions are manageable and needn’t interfere with work; the big glaring red defective stamp would already be applied to their freshly sent photo.
Of course this may all turn out be moot. If you look at how the already established degree check is handled in Korea then you know what a joke the process is. It hardly matters if you require each teacher to submit a degree and university transcripts if you do not have anyone verifying the authenticity of those records. You just have to think that they don’t really care if there are thousands of illegal teachers scurrying about Korea and that all of this is just lip service.
I guess we will find out soon enough if this latest effort to impove standards within the esl community is a serious step or just another rabble rousing dog and pony show to generate positive poll points in the next election.
