Partner-swapping meth-heads and Canadian pothead with 4 plants caught; Guess who gets more coverage?

Today the Korea Herald published the following article, "Canadian caught in South Korea growing marijuana in apartment":

A 47-year-old Canadian was caught growing cannabis in his residence and habitually smoking it, South Korean police said Monday. [...]

The man allegedly set up facilities like a ventilator, electronic heater and reflecting plate on the balcony to grow the weed for years.

He reportedly lost his job as a university lecturer as allegations about him smoking cannabis surfaced at his workplace.

The Busan Police Agency booked a total of 42 people on charges of possessing or taking illegal drugs in violation of the act on the control of narcotics. Among them, 15 were booked and 27 were taken into custody.

Police seized 59.31 grams of methamphetamine and 7.59 grams of marijuana from them worth 200 million won ($162,000).

While they don't make it very clear, the amount of pot seized was, at most, 7.59 grams from, at most, 4 plants - hardly a huge haul. It certainly doesn't compare to the money to be earned from the 59 grams of meth seized. 11 out of 25 of the articles mention the foreign professor in the headlines, but  the 41 other people barely register, and only 7 articles mention this fact in their headline, as KNN does.

From marijuana-growing professors to a swapping married couple... various drug crimes

Foreign professor's apartment "marijuana farm"

A foreign university professor who even set up a marijuana farm in his apartment and smoked it was caught by police..

Sexually promiscuous acts were committed while high by astounding drug users who were also arrested.

I had to twist that last sentence a little to capture the way that the Korean sentence "환각상태에서 성적으로 문란한 짓까지 저지른 기막힌 마약사범들도 체포됐습니다" gives sordid details before revealing it is referring to someone else (as in, not the teacher); this blurring also occurs later in the report.

As for the swapping couple and their sexually promiscuous acts, No Cut News fills in the details:

Among [those arrested for meth], it was revealed that Mr. Kim (55) and Mrs. Lee (43), who are in a common law marriage, would engage in swapping with other men and women while high on meth.

Police said that they confessed that when they were swapping, in order to forget their shame and increase their sexual pleasure, they took meth with men and women [or perhaps, a man and a woman] they met through a chatting app and swapped several times. 

Really though, choosing to highlight the foreign teacher with his four pot plants over the above story? Korean media, you just.... you disappoint me.

Oh wait - no you don't, since MBN managed to turn out something I haven't seen in awhile:

Endless native speaking-instructor drug criminals... worry over secondary crimes

Anchor:
A Canadian who grew marijuana on his apartment balcony and even smoked marijuana was arrested. When he was caught it was discovered he had been a native-speaking professor at a university; drug crimes by native speaking instructors placed in educational facilities are never ending.
This is reporter Park Sang-ho.

Reporter:
Police storm into an apartment where a native speaking professor lives.

Upon going to the veranda, they discovered a greenhouse had been set up, with even a heater, reflectors, and a ventilator.

The man, a Canadian national, secretly bought marijuana seeds from Thailand in 2010 and grew them himself and for years made and smoked marijuana.

Interview: Kim Chang-rip, head of the Busan Police Drug Investigation Unit -
"I understand that if the conditions are right within three months of growing the the leaves can be picked, dried and smoked."

Two years ago a kindergarten foreign instructor was caught in Yongin when he smoked marijuana and taught class while high.

In the last three years 1000 or more foreign drug criminals have been caught by police and [the number] is steadily increasing every year.

Drug enforcement by customs also [found that] 20% of the total [caught] is smuggling by foreigners.

As the popularity of native speaking instructors accompanying [Korea's] English fever rises. their crimes tend to rise as well.

In fact, in 2014 it came out that one in five drug smugglers were native speaking instructors.

Much concern is being voiced that there may be so-called secondary crimes due to students learning English from native speaking instructors being exposed to drugs.

Yes, because people who pay inflated prices for pot are going to share it with their students, the same way Korean teachers hand out their imported scotch to students under their care. Ridiculous, as always.

If we look at Immigration statistics from December 2015 (download #3), we see that the number of E-2 visa holders has dropped to 16,144, down from the all-time high of 24,107 in February 2011 (when incoming and outgoing public school teachers overlapped), suggesting rather strongly that the "popularity of native speaking instructors" is not rising at all.

You do have to love the images in the report, however; scaremongering at its best!

Treadmill! 

"My teacher is blurry and made of syringes!" 

The above image purports to show the increase in foreign drug criminals. The problem is, they don't relate at all to the Supreme Prosecutor's Office's statistics, which are higher. I've posted about Supreme Prosecutor's Office reports on annual drug arrests in the past, such as in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The Office publishes statistics monthly here; the year end report for 2013 is here, for 2014, here, and for 2015, here.

To add to this chart, the total number of arrests for foreigners for drug crimes in 2014 was 551, and in 2015, 640. The total number of people arrested in Korea was 9,984 in 2014 and 11,916 in 2015.

Here is a breakdown of arrests by nationality for 2015:

China, 314
Thailand, 122
USA, 53
Uzbekistan, 17
Vietnam, 23
Sri Lanka 13
Canada, 11
Kazakhstan, 8
Philippines, 8
Russia, 7
India, 7
Taiwan, 6

While we're on the topic of these busts in Busan, there was another pot bust there reported on January 19 which involved smuggling pot inside "popular foreign chocolate" by mailing it from New York, where a Korean guy in his mid 20s had bought 20 grams for $200 from a Mexican and mailed a gram each sealed inside the chocolate, selling 10 of them for 100,000 won a piece before being busted.

Perhaps the dog found them.

CERD rules that HIV tests for foreign teachers in Korea are discriminatory

In late 2009 I posted here about a foreign teacher who was refusing to take second HIV test in order to renew her teaching contract at an elementary school in Ulsan. As a result she lost her job and left Korea, and with Benjamin Wagner representing her, complaints were filed with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (which rejected it) and Korean Commercial Arbitration Board (which ruled against her. Then in July 2012 it was announced that the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had agreed to hear the case, though not a single Korean media outlet chose to report on this despite receiving a press release from a PR firm. Given 90 days to reply, the ROK instead took 9 months to reply, stating that "since 2010, its guidelines on the employment of foreign teachers do not specify that [foreign teachers] have to submit results of HIV/AIDS and drugs tests to have their contracts renewed," an assertion which I knew personally was not true (and which the Korea Herald looked at here). In 2010 the ROK had in fact officially removed all HIV tests for those registering for residency except for the E-2 visa tests.

In a journal article coauthored by Benjamin Wagner and myself, we asked in the title whether HIV tests were a proxy for racial discrimination, and this week the CERD answered that question: Yes.

As Benjamin Wagner wrote this week,

On May 18, 2015, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination decided the case of a former native English teacher from New Zealand. Ms. “L.G” lost her job and work visa in 2009 after she refused to take a second round of in-country drug and HIV tests demanded by the Education Ministry just months after submitting to identical tests for the purposes of immigration. Korean citizen teachers and even ethnic Korean noncitizen teachers are able to avoid such tests. Ms. L.G. correctly regarded the government’s demands as based on unfounded stereotypes of foreigners as drug users and sexual deviants. While immigration has required a single negative test result for HIV and drugs for prospective foreign teachers since 2007, the Education Ministry began demanding their own tests, meaning that many teachers are tested multiple times during their time in the country.

In 2012, the Committee accepted L.G’s petition after she had exhausted all possible solutions in Korea (a prerequisite for bringing complaints under the CERD) including filing unsuccessful complaints with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea and Korean Commercial Arbitration Board.

An official summary of the decision is here, while the full decision can be downloaded as a .doc here. As can be seen here, of four cases considered this session by CERD, only this case was considered to be in violation of the Convention for Eradication of Racial Discrmination; the summary points out which articles of the convention the ROK was found to be violating in this case.

The summary makes public the justification the UMOE offered for the tests - something that many people taking these tests have known for years, but never admitted by the government:

[D]uring arbitration proceedings, L.G.’s employers, the Ulsan Metropolitan Office of Education (UMOE), said that HIV/AIDS tests were viewed as a means to check the values and morality of foreign English teachers.

One of the Committee's recommendations isn't very surprising:

The Committee recommends that the State party grant the petitioner adequate compensation for the moral and material damages caused by the above-mentioned violations of the Convention, including compensation for the lost wages during the one year she was prevented from working.

It continues with much more sweeping recommendations, however:

It also recommends that the State Party takes the appropriate means to review regulations and policies enacted at the State or local level related to employment of foreigners and abolish, both in law and practice, any piece of legislation, regulation, policy or measure which has the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination. The Committee recommends the State party to counter any manifestations of xenophobia, through stereotyping or stigmatizing, of foreigners by public officials, the media and the public at large, including, as appropriate, public campaigns, official statements and codes of conduct for politicians and the media. The State party is also requested to give wide publicity to the Committee’s Opinion, including among prosecutors and judicial bodies, and to translate it into the official language of the State party.

This doesn't just refer to English teachers, but to regulations for all foreign workers. And as I've covered here, the references to the conduct of the media and politicians is very pertinent, considering the 'Citizens Group for Upright English Education' (also known as Anti English Spectrum) worked closely with the media and had access to politicians when pushing for the creation of the HIV testing policy (among others) in the first place.

As well, national assembly representatives have said a number of negative things about foreign teachers over the year. In June of 2009 Rep Choi Young-hee submitted 3 bills regarding native English teachers to the national assembly which called for drug tests for foreign teachers, with the bills stating that "the crime rate among native-speaking English teachers is getting higher" without offering any proof of such an increase, She also stated that immigration had lost 22,000 E-2 visa holders, but as it turns out, she used the wrong statistics. A few months later, Rep. Lee Gun-hyeon stated that foreign teacher crime was 'serious,' but released statistics showing it to be 5 times less than the Korean crime rate. Rep. Park Min-sik would chime in a month later on the "flood of unqualified native speaking teachers", while National Assembly Rep Lee Ju-yeong stated that "Of foreigners, native speaking teachers are especially potential child molesters" who may have many 'undisclosed crimes' and who may fake their backgrounds. None of this quite compares to the racially charged statements made by Kim Han-gil, who was recently the leader of the opposition party, back in 1997 about the "white good-for-nothings" flocking to Korea to teach English, and despairing that the "low culture of English speaking countries is penetrating into living rooms." He also proved to be ten years ahead of the curve by complaining that foreign teachers "they don't even have to take drug or AIDS tests."

As for the media, this decision is being widely reported. For example:

Source - UN
Republic of Korea’s foreigners-only HIV tests violated New Zealand teacher’s rights — UN experts (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva; 20 May 2015)
Republic of Korea’s foreigners-only HIV test violated New Zealand teacher’s rights — UN experts (UN News Center; 20 May 2015)
Korea’s foreigner-only HIV tests violate NZ teacher’s rights (Scoop, New Zealand; 21 May 2015)
HIV tests for E-2 visas discrimination, U.N. Finds (Korea Herald, 20 May 2015)
UN Experts Urge S Korea To Compensate New Zealander Who Lost Job Over HIV Test (RTT News; 20 May 2015)
Korea’s foreigners-only HIV test violated New Zealand teacher’s rights: UN experts (NewKerala.com, Kerala, India; 21 May 2015)
Korea’s foreigners-only HIV test violated New Zealand teacher’s rights: UN experts (IndiaBlooms.com, India; 21 May 2015)

I really like the headlines of the first two articles here, and am glad the CERD chose to make UMOE's justification for the tests public:

Source - AFP
South Korea criticised for demanding expat teacher take AIDS test to check ‘values and morality’ (Radio Australia, ABC; 20 May 2015)
South Korea criticised for demanding expat teacher take AIDS test to check ‘values and morality’ (ABC News, Australia; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S.Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (Yahoo! News, Australia; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (Economic Times, India; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S.Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (Business Standard; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap South Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (Zee News, India; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S.Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (NGR News, Nigeria; 20 May 2015)
SK demanded Aids test for expat teacher (IOL News, South Africa; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S.Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (Global Post; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S.Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (Bangkok Post; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S. Korea over AIDS test for expat teachers (The Straits Times, Asia; 20 May 2015)
UN experts rap S.Korea over AIDS test for teachers (Press Trust of India; 20 May 2015)

Source - NZN
UN says Kiwi kicked out of South Korea for refusing AIDS test should be compensated (TVNZ; 21 May 2015)
UN backs Kiwi teacher kicked out of Korea (NZCity, New Zealand; 20 May 2015)
Kiwi teacher asked to take AIDS test (3 News, New Zealand; 20 May 2015)

As well, unlike how the Korean media was able to ignore the case when it was accepted, it is being reported here in a limited manner (ten articles), with the Korea Herald first breaking the story, followed by Yonhap:

UN CERD "Korea should abolish HIV tests for foreign instructors" (Yonhap; 20 May 2015)
UN CERD: "Korea, testing only foreign instructors for HIV is a violation of human rights" (KBS; 20 May 2015)
U.N. urges S. Korea to abolish HIV testing of foreign teachers (Yonhap English; 20 May 2015)
UN CERD: "Korea, compensate foreigner who refused HIV test" (Money Today; 20 May 2015)
UN: "Korea’s testing of foreign instructors for HIV is a violation of human rights" (; 21 May 2015)
UN CERD "Korea, abolish HIV testing of foreign teachers" (SBS; 21 May 2015)
UN CERD: "Korea, compensate foreigner who refused HIV test" (News1; 20 May 2015)
UN: "Foreign instructor HIV tests are character defamation" (MBN; 21 May 2015)
UN CERD: "Korea, compensate foreigner who refused HIV test for human rights violations" (Le Monde Diplomatic; 21 May 2015)
UN racism ruling piques government (Korea Times; 22 May 2015)

Since Yonhap English news articles tend to be truncated after a few days, here's their English translation of the story:

U.N. urges S. Korea to abolish HIV testing of foreign teachers (Yonhap; 20 May 2015)

GENEVA, May 20 (Yonhap) -- A United Nations committee on Wednesday reprimanded South Korea's mandatory HIV testing of native English teachers as discrimination against foreigners, urging the country to abolish the policy.

Foreigners who come to South Korea to teach English are required to have a criminal background check and tests for illegal drugs and the HIV virus, while Korean nationals in equivalent jobs are not required to go through such scrutiny.

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has deliberated the policy after Lisa Griffin, a former English teacher from New Zealand, filed a complaint when her contract with a local education office was not renewed in 2009 over HIV testing.

Griffin, who had received a negative result on the first test, refused to undergo a second, arguing it could stigmatize foreigners as people who have a higher risk of AIDS and could spread a negative sentiment against them.

The Geneva-based committee said the foreigner-only HIV test was "discriminatory and an affront to her dignity," urging the South Korean government to compensate for "moral and material damages" she suffered.

The mandatory testing "does not appear to be justified on public health grounds or any other ground, and is a breach of the right to work without distinction to race, color, national or ethnic origin," the committee said in a release.

The U.N. committee urged Korean authorities to take steps to revise the policies that stereotype or stigmatize foreigners, giving them 90 days to report back on the process.

As someone who contributed research to the CERD petition, I'm really happy with the results. What happens next is up to the Korean government.

Elementary school native speaking teacher makes students taste dish soap

According to a Yonhap report from late last night:

Private elementary school native-speaking teacher's corporal punishment of students: "Eat dish soap."

Controversy has arisen after it became known that a native-speaking teacher at a private elementary school in Seoul made students taste dishwashing detergent as a punishment during class.

According to authorities such as the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education yesterday, on March 12 at a private elementary school in northern Seoul, 'A,' an English teacher from South Africa used corporal punishment on grade six students who broke the rule against using Korean in class.

'A' told the students to choose between tasting dishwashing detergent and bitter medicine as punishment, and some students chose the former, and some the latter.

Once parents found out about this, the school was inundated with complaints and the next day the school dismissed 'A'. On the 18th the school's homepage announced that the native speaking teacher had been changed and carried an apology by the principal.

An official from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said, "Because a private elementary school takes it upon itself to hire a native speaking teacher, the responsibility for the teacher's management is also the school's." "If a problem arises, at the level of Office of Education Support, schools are being guided in order to strengthen the management of native speaking teachers and prevent a recurrence."

The story was actually broken as an exclusive early yesterday evening by KBS, who initially reported that the school was trying to keep things quiet and fired the teacher so as to put an end to the problem. They followed up with a TV news report which included the facts that the bitter tasting medicine was a medicine meant to prevent the biting of fingernails (?), and that there were five students who were punished; three chose the soap, and two chose the medicine. It also included a cartoon illustrating what happened:

Since problem English teachers are almost invariably depicted to be male teachers, one assumes the teacher was indeed female. We're also shown a shot of her apology letter.

It would be interesting to read the entire thing; one wonders what was going through the teacher's head. It was certainly a bad decision (taste dish soap or fingernail-biting-prevention medicine?). I imagine "washing kids mouths out with soap" (which I assume was the intended effect?) would meet a similar reaction in North America. Perhaps - this being near the beginning of a new school year - the teacher was new to Korea. Anyone who has taught grade 6 students can understand how unruly they can be, though usually really bad behaviour would start later in the semester once the students have gotten to know each other.

As of last night, the two reports at KBS were the first and seventh-most viewed articles at KBS News' website.

As of noon today, the TV news report is the third-most-viewed news article and the most-viewed video at KBS, so the story is currently popular. KBS also followed up with a news article last night and a new TV news report this morning, so it's certainly running with the story - as are about two dozen other news outlets so far.

Update: The Chosun Ilbo posted an English language article about this titled "English Teacher Forced Students to Drink Detergent."

Lawmaker criticizes textbooks for correctly describing the violence of the Samil protests

An article in today's Joongang Daily declares in its headline that "Textbooks do disservice to March 1 movement."

Rep. Han Sun-kyo, a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party, told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday that he analyzed Korean and Japanese history textbooks he received from the Seoul-based think tank Northeast Asian History Foundation and Korea’s Ministry of Education and found the results troubling.

He said a “considerable number of Japanese history textbooks are distorting the facts or minimizing the significance of the March 1 Independence Movement.”

March 1, 1919, remains a touchstone of Korean nationalism as the day when activists declared Korea’s independence and triggered large-scale peaceful demonstrations against Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945).

One Japanese middle school history textbook published by Jiyusa says the March 1 independence movement in Seoul “initially was planned as a non-violent rally but gradually became a large-scale movement,” and that “the army was mobilized and because of a clash on both sides, there were many casualties.” [...]

But Han added that Korean history textbooks also have inaccuracies, and there are many cases where they “describe the non-violent March 1 movement as violent” or do not mention key events or figures such as Yoo Gwan-soon’s martyrdom. [...]

According to Han’s study, half of the eight Korean high school history textbooks inaccurately described the independence movement as being “violent.” Three other textbooks failed to describe the movement adequately.

He found that only one publisher, Chunjae Education, explained the movement accurately and in detail. “As time passed, the protests grew more intense and military and police fired at people during the demonstrations, leading to deaths,” it said. The text emphasized, “The demonstrations were highly regarded internationally for holding to the principle of non-violence while trying to express resistance to Japanese imperialism.”

The problem is, the textbooks describing the independence movement as being "violent" are being accurate. While some of the Japanese dispatches during the Samil Uprising reported in the New York Times described violence on the part of demonstrators, I didn't realize just how violent the protests were until I read Frank Baldwin's "Participatory Anti-Imperalism:The 1919 Independence Movement" (Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 1, 1979, pp. 123-162). One assumes this contains some of the material in his dissertation, "The March First Movement: Korean Challenge, Japanese Response" (Columbia University, 1969). In his article, he notes that between March 1 and April 10, 1919, there were "approximately 667 peaceful demonstrations" as compared with "approximately 460 violent incidents." Here is his description of the nature of the protests:

Initially the demonstrations were nonviolent, partly to enhance the moral appeal of the protest and partly because of the vastly superior Japanese police and army forces. The usual pattern of demonstrations was that activists assembled a crowd and a local leader read the declaration of independence. The crowd roared its approval and then marched around the area shouting for Korean liberty.

As the independence movement spread and intensified, however, its character changed into often violent confrontation. This was a response to the severe, frequently brutal suppression of the protest by the Government General, which included firing on unarmed crowds and torture of prisoners. In many areas, a peaceful demonstration was suppressed by the authorities with force, and resulted in violent counterattacks on police and gendarmes. In other areas, frustrations, anger, and pent-up grievances turned peaceful demonstrations violent even without official provocation. In still other cases, tension from sustained demonstrations and confrontations, probably exacerbated by official violence, erupted into assaults on Government General personnel and facilities. In late March and early April, parts of Korea were in open, bloody rebellion. Governor General Hasegawa Yoshimichi requested troop reinforcements

During March and April the first stage of the 1919 movement occurred—the overt and violent period. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans engaged in open political actions ranging from lusty shouts for freedom to intrepid assaults on Government General outposts and vengeful mutilation of unlucky Kenpeitai, the Japanese gendarmerie. The second stage of the movement began in May and lasted until about April, 1920. During this stage, the independence activists changed their form of political activity from overt protest to covert planning and organizing, mostly in support of the Korean provisional government formed in Shanghai on April 10, 1919. The presence of additional troops from Japan, mass-arrest tactics, and stringent security measures made open protest activity unfeasible if not impossible.

Before those additional troops arrived, however, the Government General was hard pressed to maintain control and protect its staff, settlers, and infrastructure:

The Government General juggled the available troops, withdrawing some from North and South P'yöng'an and Hwanghae, now regarded as safe, and assigned them to southern Korea, where the violence was rapidly spreading. On March 25 eight infantry companies were spread thinly over five southern provinces—North and South Kyöngsang, North and South Cholla, and South Ch'ungch'öng. The assignment was made with the hope that they would only be needed until March 30. But the Koreans kept up their attacks. Crowds formed everywhere in Seoul, stoning police stations and trolley cars. In five villages near Seoul, myön chiefs were threatened and myön offices attacked. In many places Koreans armed themselves with clubs and stones and attacked the closest police station or my on office. March 27 and 28 were frantic, tragic days as Koreans attacked in many localities only to be beaten off by troops and suffer heavy casualties. Thirty nine Koreans were killed in a single incident in Kyönggi Province. The governor general authorized new troop assignments on the 28th but the attacks continued. On March 31 Koreans armed with clubs, sickles, and other improvised weapons stormed gendarmerie units and police stations at several places in Kyönggi Province. They attempted, sometimes successfully, to burn the local public buildings—myön offices, post offices, police stations—and cut telephone lines. In one place the crowd tried to burn the stores of Japanese merchants. Many Koreans were killed and wounded in the assaults. Despite heavy casualties and against seemingly hopeless Koreans continued the fight. [...] April 2 was perhaps the bloodiest single day of the independence movement as Koreans continued their attacks on gendarmerie units, police stations, myön offices and school buildings. Demonstration marches were a thing of the past: these crowds were prepared to fight.

Below is a list of casualties on the Japanese side:

In a lengthy recounting of a violent protest in Sacheon, Pyeongannam-do on March 4, which Baldwin describes as a "typical demonstration that began peacefully and ended in violence," three Korean police officers are reported as being killed in addition to a Japanese police officer, which makes clear that the numbers above do not include Korean Government General employees, suggesting that more people died than are listed. Most ironic in the assertion that the Samil Protests were peaceful is this statement by Baldwin:

Because of continued Korean violence, the Government General requested troops from Japan, which served to further discredit Japanese rule in the colony and provided additional incentive for the Hara administration in Tokyo to make reforms. Violent forms of participation appear to have been most important in changing Japanese policy.

Additionally, the Jeam-ri massacre (looked at here) is better explained as the culmination of escalating violence on both sides rather than an out-of-the-blue mass killing by the (evil) Japanese.

The tale of "peaceful Samil demonstrations" serves the cause of depicting Koreans as a peaceful people beset upon by marauding outsiders; that is to say, victims with no responsibility for their actions. What better way to depict this fairy tale than a children's book about Yu Gwan-sun from the 한국 위인 전집 (Great people of Korea Collection) published by 노벨과 개미(looked at in more detail here):

Evil Japanese:



Peaceful, victimized Koreans:




Returning to the Joongang Daily article:

Han also found that only one publisher, Jihak Publishing, described the patriot [Yoo Gwan-sun] in its text. In contrast, four out of seven Japanese contemporary history textbooks included Yoo.

The omission of Yu Gwan-sun from Korean textbooks is rather interesting. She's become an icon of the independence movement, much as Sin Mi-seon and Sim Hyo-sun became icons for those protesting the presence of USFK in Korea. Here is a poster which was once on the wall of the Yu Gwan-sun Underground Cell building at Seodaemun Prison:



Can you imagine any of the male icons of the Korean independence movement being depicted in this way? Besides being the oddly cheerful face of the fight for independence, she's often depicted as the embodiment of victimization (and thus embodies Korea throughout its entire history, according to some nationalist takes on Korean history). Here she is in the 'Great people of Korea Collection' book about her:



She also helps sell chicken, apparently (from 2005):

"Eat Ddorae Orae Chicken and protect our land, Dokdo!"

The final paragraph of the Joongang Daily article offers this short biography of Yu:

Yoo (1902-1920) was a prominent independence movement activist who was one of the organizers of the March 1 movement. She eventually faced torture at the hands of Japanese officers and died in prison in September 1920. When her family asked for her body to be returned to them, Yoo’s body was returned cut into pieces.

In truth, most of the "organizers" of the movement offered themselves up for arrest after reading the declaration on March 1, essentially robbing the movement of its most respected leaders at its very inception. Yoo certainly organized protests in Cheonan after leaving the Ehwa school girl for girls, but is more likely remembered because she was a student at a prominent missionary school, and because she is the perfect symbol of innocence brutally snuffed out by the brutal Japanese. The main problem I have with the paragraph above, however, is that she was certainly not "cut into pieces." As is described by Jeannette Walter, an English teacher at Ehwa, in Donald Clark's "Living Dangerously in Korea (The Western Experience 1900-1950),"

Yu Kwansoon, a little sixteen-year-old girl, died in prison. We had her body brought back to the school, and the girls prepared cotton garments for her burial. [...] However, when I was in Korea in 1959, I was interviewed by a group from Kwansoon's school, and I assured them on tape that her body was not mutilated. I had dressed her for burial.

One wonders if it is Rep. Han Sun-kyo or the Joongang Daily that is responsible for that canard once again being trotted out. A disservice may be have been done to the memory of the Samil Movement, but I'm not convinced its the textbook makers who are responsible.

Stigma prevents hero's welcome for Ebola medics

A column in the Chosun Ilbo criticized the lack of hero's welcome given to the first group of nine Korean medical workers who returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone for the last month. This is contrasted with America's response, where such workers were lauded as heroes by President Obama and selected as Person of the Year 2014 by Time Magazine. As is pointed out in the column, however,

Korea's medical workers were not just denied a hero's welcome -- they had to return home quietly due to fears that they and their family members would be treated as pariahs, shunned by a panic-stricken public, and asked for their identities not to be disclosed.

In fact, photos in articles about the doctors leaving for Africa in mid-December only show the doctors from behind. At first thought, this is very reminiscent of Korean attitudes towards people living with HIV/AIDS - see here, for example. But the more I think about it, I can think of other such examples, such as the way in which the children of people who were pro-North Korea were denied government jobs and other opportunities before the 1990s, or the way in which no student in school wants to associate with a child targeted as a "wangtta," fearing being tainted by the association, often leading to total isolation*, or - in a more humorous instance - the blogger Lost Nomad years ago wrote about how he could always get a great parking spot in his apartment building because no one wanted to park next to a particular, "dirty" car. Such stigma, and fear of "guilt by association," is troubling, to be sure.



* Years ago a student I got along well with one year became a wangtta the next year for several months, and though I talked to her previous and current home room teachers about the situation, and they knew who was responsible, they didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. It was heartbreaking to see the way in which she changed from a bubbly and outgoing to withdrawn and sullen.

News on cuts to public school native speaking teachers

The Seoul Sinmun reported November 13 on budget cuts to native-speaking teachers in public schools in an article titled "[Controversy over welfare] Because of daycare, native speaking teachers are saying 'Oh my God!'" The article opens by asserting that, "One local government after another is expanding the budget for free day care programs and reducing native speaking instructors."

According to the budget submitted by the Incheon Office of Education to the Incheon City Government, this year's native speaking teacher budget will be cut from 14,494,000,000 won to 9,076,000,000 won, a reduction of 5,418,000,000 won. There are currently 202 native speaking teachers (180 English teachers and 22 Chinese teachers), and these will be reduced by 76 to 126 teachers next year. The Daegu Office of Education will reduce its budget by 8.8 billion won, reducing its teachers from 443 this year to 323 next year. The Chungcheongnam-do Office of Education will reduce its current 438 teachers by 71 to 367, cutting 42 from elementary schools, 13 from middle schools and 16 from high schools. The Chungcheongbuk-do Office of Education will cut Local Education Subsidies and cut 113 out of 306 native speaking teachers. To make up for this video lessons will be increased and teachers will travel from school to school.

Offices of education are saying that native speaking budgets are getting the most cuts since there is less urgent need for native speakers compared to day care, but parents are complaining, saying that both are important. Incheon's placement rate for foreign teachers is already only 55%, compared to the national average of 81.4% of schools, and the placement rate will only drop.

As well, TBC reports that for next year Daegu has cut the native speaking teacher budget in half, from 18.2 billion won this year. Above, in the Seoul Sinmun article, we see 8.8 billion won has been cut, which accords with 'half the budget' being cut, though it's odd that only 120 out of 443 teachers will be cut. While the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education isn't talking too openly about it, there may be cuts in Seoul as well. Offers to renew contracts were delayed two weeks until mid-November, though it seems teachers currently working should be able to keep their jobs. Below is a chart from the Kyunghyang Sinmun showing public middle schools in Seoul with native speaking teachers. While SMOE has cut funding to NSETs for middle schools, the district offices can use their own budgets to pay NSETs. Most don't have the resources, but Gangnam and Seocho districts have a 100% NSET placement rate in their public middle schools, while most districts have no teachers at all, leading to fears of this contributing to the gaps between rich and poor neighbourhoods.

(At bottom are the number of public middle schools per district.)

One thing worth noting is that while it's often said that Korean teachers will replace NSETs, it seems hiring Korean English language instructors may also fall by the wayside. A friend of mine in this teaching position in Gangseo-gu in Seoul is about to lose his job due to budget cuts.

According to the Gukje Sinmun, in Busan, the budget has gradually shrunk from 17.6 billion won in 2011, to 13.7 billion won in 2012, to 16.2 billion won in 2013, to 12.4 billion won in 2014, to 6.9 billion won for 2015. The number of native speaking teachers during that time has gradually shrunk from 522 in 2011, to 528 in 2012, to 399 in 2013, to 304 in 2014, to 170 for 2015. The teachers taught at all levels of public school until 2014, after which only elementary school teachers remained. As of next year, teachers at small schools will travel and teach at several elementary schools.

As reported by Yonhap back in late October, Saenuri Representative Yun Jae-ok pointed out then that the native speaking teacher placement rate in schools nationwide has decreased from 81.9% in 2012 to 65.1% in 2014.

According to Rep. Yun, in 2012 there were native speaking teachers placed at 9,315 schools out of a total of 11,368 schools nationwide, making for a placement rate of 81.9%, and this fell to 81.4% in 2013 and 65.1% in 2014. As well, the number of students of per native speaking teacher has increased. In 2012 there were 8,529 NSETs teaching 6,807,637 students nationwide, making for one NSET per 799 students. In 2013 this increased to one NSET per 821.1 students, and in 2014 this increased to one NSET per 947.2 students.

In looking at the history of the EPIK program before, I posted this chart made in 2010 by the Seoul Sinmun showing the number of native speaking teachers placed in public schools between 1995 and 2010, which reveals the hit the program took in 1997 after the financial crisis (it took 7 years to recover the numbers it had then).

(At top are the number of teachers by year, followed by a breakdown by nationality of teachers currently working, and at bottom are the percentages of teachers with qualifications.)

That graph is a bit compressed, height-wise, however, so I made a new one using data from this Korea Observer article which notes that 2,500 native speaking teachers have been cut over the past three years, dropping to 6,785 as of April this year from the high point of 9,320 in 2011.

The number of native speaking teachers in Korean public schools made an incredible jump between 2005 and 2009, from 1,017 to 7,997 before making a smaller increase to 9,320 over the next two years and has seen, as the Korea Observer reported, a decrease of around 2,500 teachers since 2011. Adding up the cuts announced above, at least another 500 teachers will be cut next year.


(Also worth reading on this topic is Akli Hadid's article in The Diplomat which argues that "Government attempts to undercut English have not slowed corporate language demands.")

To finish with a bit of happier news, the Yeongnam Ilbo reported on November 17 that foreign teachers in Daegu had organized a give a gift appeal for children in childcare facilities called Daegu's Time to Give, which has also been reported on by the Korea Herald, and can be found on Facebook here.

Teachers busted for growing pot, mailing self designer drug

Perhaps the 'crime prevention education' I recently posted about is needed after all. KNN (via SBS) reported on November 18 that a 43 year old American who is a 'visiting professor' who teaches English at a national university in Busan had been arrested for growing marijuana. Among many plants on his balcony were three pot plants, seen below. He's heard in the report saying, "I wasn't trying to grow marijuana."

Whoops. These things happen accidentally, I guess. The old 'he taught while high' accusation is made once again by a police officer: "Because it's come to light that he would smoke in the evening after classes finished at clubs or bars, it seems during the semester he often smoked and taught class." So he smoked after classes finished but he was high in class? Okay then.

The only other mention of this case outside KNN was NoCut News, who reported on two busts in Busan, one of a meth bust involving 42 people (23 arrested and detained), and this one. It mentions that he'd he'd brought pot back from California in 2012, started growing the plants late last year, and had been smoking the plant since March. I couldn't help but chuckle at the way NoCut News reported what police seized in these two busts: 178g of meth (worth 590,000,000 won), 0.33g of marijuana, three marijuana plants, and disposable syringes. The order might make one think the syringes were for the marijuana, while the amount of pot seized (0.33 grams) certainly isn't much to write home about. That said, growing is always going to get serious attention from the police, and likely from the media as well, though this bust really wasn't reported much. The KNN report states that the university will decide what to do with him after it receives the results of the police investigation.

In other news, as Asia Gyeongje reported on October 28, it turns out there was another foreign teacher busted for drugs, a foreign hagwon instructor arrested by Suwon prosecutor's office after Incheon customs intercepted mail which contained either blotter paper containing with the psychedelic drug 2C-C-NBOME or another package with pentedrone at the end of September (a Korean male was also arrested and it's not made clear the connection - if they each are responsible for one, or together responsible for both; one assumes the former).

In both cases it's the first time such drugs have been found by the Korea Customs Service.

Native speaking instructor crime prevention education

[Update]

It turns out the Gyeongsangnamdo Police Agency already carried out the same crime prevention education for about 370 native speaking public school teachers on October 23.

[Original Post]

This was published in The Gyeongnam Domin Ilbo on November 17:

Gyeongsangnamdo Police Agency carried out crime prevention education for native speaking instructors. At Jindong Elementary School in Changwon on the 13th Sergeant Kim Jong-hwa of the Agency’s foreign affairs section spoke to around 50 elementary, middle and high school native speaking instructors in English and explained, on a case by case basis, how crimes arise due to cultural differences.

This sounds like a good idea, but isn't there a better name than "native speaking instructor crime prevention education"?

"The truth and falsity of native speaking instructors"

On November 1, the Segye Ilbo published the following article at its website:

[Kim Hyun-ju's everyday talk talk] Do you know 'Quincy Black'?
The truth and falsity of native speaking instructors

The foreign English instructor who spread a video of sex with a Korean high school girl known in online communities and social networking services as 'Quincy Black' was sentenced to jail. According to police, English instructor C (29, American) was arrested and prosecuted for videoing sex with A (then 15), who he met on the internet, in his lodgings at the education center he worked at and distributing the video.

C used three cameras that he had installed in his lodgings in advance as well as a handheld camera to record the sexual activity from various angles and afterwards saved the file on his computer and a memory stick.

He had entered Korea in May of 2009 on an E2 conversation instruction visa and worked as an English instructor at an education center in Daejeon before leaving for China in October of 2010. After this he was put on Interpol's wanted list and last October he was arrested by police in Armenia.

Immediately after being informed of his arrest, the Ministry of Justice began the extradition process and he was extradited to Korea in January of this year.

◆ Incidents due to cultural differences occur repeatedly

Recently universities which have hired native speaking instructors to take charge of foreign language education, such as English conversation, have had deep worries. It's not just the difficulties that come with looking for dozens of native speaking instructors to hire each semester, it's also that it's not easy to strictly screen their qualifications. As well, the fact is that every year incidents caused by cultural differences occur repeatedly.

According to a business in the relevant industry, native speaking instructors are hired in the short term for one semester, or in the longer term on a one-year contract in the position of 'instructor.' Because the contract should be for one year, there are also not a few instructors who suddenly return to their home countries in the middle of the semester or who finish teaching and then from the next day leave for a vacation. Because of this there are almost no native speaking teachers who give their students time to appeal their marks or consult with them.

'August 3, 10:00 - My sex toy.'

Not only this, but disputes over qualifications are endless. At a university in Busan an English instructor who entered the country on a tourist visa was caught teaching. At that time, following the disturbance, the local immigration office carried out an investigation into local universities.

As well, it's not just university instructors, but there was also an incident involving a native speaking instructor affiliated with a hagwon who was booked without detention by police for chasing after women and videoing them, focusing on their legs and buttocks. Videoing in public places such as subways, over a period of two weeks he took a staggering 306 videos of the lower halves of women's bodies.

An expert pointed out that, "Because English conversation instructors who teach in hagwons could also apply to work at universities at any time, there is a need for a management system to verify their qualifications."

◆ Verifying native speaking teacher's morality isn't easy

Despite such disputes over qualifications that are occurring both in and out of universities, for universities a personnel management system that can verify their qualifications and guarantee the quality of education is almost non-existent. Most universities hire by placing ads on native speaking instructor hiring websites or through introductions from friends. Depending on the situation, they will try to scout people who have a good reputation in area elementary or middle schools or hagwons. At that time, more than experience, 'verification of qualifications' such as the instructor's morality or job performance is given more weight.

An official from a national university outside Seoul said, "By choosing people with a good reputation among foreigners who are already teaching in another place, you can reduce the risk." "Choose someone with at least a Bachelors Degree and TESOL (English teacher certificate)." He added, "To prevent scandalous incidents with female students, choose female instructors."

However universities are frustrated because they have no other method than to use a passport in place of a background check into native speaking instructors' degree, qualifications or criminal record. It's no different with instructors who have been confirmed to have taught at schools or hagwons. This is because there is no way to confirm via their passport whether they have committed crimes in their home country.

◆ Things to consider when hiring native speaking instructors

Representatives of regular schools or hagwons perceive two categories of foreign instructors. There are those whose priority is earning money to travel, and a great many of the foreign instructors outside Seoul belong in this category. It is hard to find instructors who find teaching meaningful, as well as those with ability to teach.

To young people from Canada and the US, particularly those without jobs, Korea is a very attractive country.  With the rapid increase in English hagwons and the sharp rise in demand for native speaking instructors, the knowledge that they can easily earn money while lacking qualifications has spread.

A representative from the business advised, "You must look at things like what qualifications they have, what their character is like, and what their attitude toward work is." "What and how they teach is good to inquire after as well."

Reporter Kim Hyun-ju  hjk@segye.com

If you think this article is written by someone who needed to fill some space online who dug up a four-month-old story ('Quincy Black' being sentenced to prison) and decided to write a 'foreign teachers are bad' article based on her own faulty knowledge and tried to hide this by citing unnamed sources, you're probably right. Just how lazy was our author? She couldn't even spell 'Quincy Black's name correctly in the title, writing '흑퀀시' (instead of heuk [black] kuinsi, the headline says heuk kwonsi), which is just plain lazy. Plus, she writes in the third-last paragraph that "Representatives of regular schools or hagwons perceive two categories of foreign instructors," but then only describes one such category. She also writes some howlers, such as saying that universities scout talent from area elementary schools and hagwons, or that "universities are frustrated because they have no other method than to use a passport in place of a background check." She also, in that sentence (in the original article), mistranslates 여권 as 'visa' rather than passport.

The final photo is recycled from a July 9, 2006 Segye Ilbo article written by a reader (who lived not far from me, and who claimed native speaking teachers usually make 4-5 million won per month) titled "It’s urgent that measures be prepared for unqualified native speaking English teachers." I have no idea where the other photos come from, but judging from the collection of either screen shots from the videos or photos from his room seen in the photo below, they may not be from 'Quincy Black's videos at all. (The photo is from the Daejeon city journal, and shows Daejeon Dong-gu council's probe into the videos in November 2010.)



It's 'nice' to see that the 'foreign English teachers are a problem' trope is still an attractive one for journalists in a hurry.

(Thanks to Ami for help with the translation.)

BBC: Irish woman not hired as teacher due to "alcoholism nature of your kind"

Currently the second most shared and seventh most read story at BBC News is "'Irish alcoholism nature' reason for job rejection for Irish teacher in South Korea":

The teacher had emailed the application when a job was advertised on listings website Craigslist in September.

She told the agency that she had been teaching English for over three years, in Barcelona, Oxford and Abu Dhabi as well as South Korea.

Last week, she received a reply that said: "I am sorry to inform you that my client does not hire Irish people due to the alcoholism nature of your kind".

Ms Mulrennan said she did not know who the recruiter was as their details were not listed on the site.

She's since found a job and has laughed it off, saying, "I still love the country and being in Seoul." She also said, "A friend saw it and encouraged me to post it online as it might go viral." And so it has. The article notes that "The 26-year-old told the BBC that she could not believe the email was real at first." One hopes the BBC has done its due diligence here, because it's almost a little too perfect; but then sometimes these things happen (I remember the first hagwon owner I worked for complaining about the lack of housekeeping of former teachers, saying they were "like animals" (though not one of them had a housewife like he did to keep their domiciles spotless)). If the email is real, well, being the center of attention and being ridiculed is just what it deserves.

(Hat tip to Ryan.)

Giving a presentation on the history of English teachers in Korea this Saturday

This Saturday, October 25, at 4pm, I will be giving a presentation titled ‘From Explorers and Missionaries to Vagabonds and Potential Criminals: Two Hundred Years of Teaching English in Korea’ for the 10 Magazine Book Club at the Seoul Global Cultural Center in Myeong-dong. The hour-long presentation will be followed by a question and answer period. Admission is 5,000 won, but is free for Members of RAS-KB and KOTESOL as well as SMOE teachers. For more information see the event page on Facebook, which also includes a map.

In the presentation I'll look at the first encounters with English explorers, early attempts by the Korean government to hire English teachers in the 1880s, missionary schools, experiences of WWII Australian and British POWs held in Seoul, post Korean-war attempts by the Korean government to establish an English teaching program, the Peace Corps experience teaching English, the language boom of the 1980s and the early days of hagwon English teachers, and the expansion of this in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the reactions against this (in 1984 and 2005) and the reasons why English teachers quickly became negatively portrayed in the media and by politicians. The cast of characters will include future independence fighters and presidents, journalists, soldiers, smugglers, a former US state senator and many others. Feel free to join us!

Being wary of foreign men - since 1876!

(Photos from here and here.)

As covered over at the Marmot's Hole, the Donga Ilbo published an article warning women to be wary of foreigners offering them drinks. As the headline and subheadline put it: "Beware of foreign men who offer you drinks in clubs," and "A rise in sex crimes abusing 'curiosity about the exotic.'" The article offers examples of what is purported to be a trend of foreigners sexually assaulting women in clubs, especially by drugging them. A favourite quote:

In Konkuk University police science professor Lee Ung-hyeok's analysis, "Women who see foreigners who appear in overseas movies and develop romantic ideas about foreigners or a curiosity about the exotic may let their guard down easily, putting them in great danger of being exposed to sex crimes."

Hmmm. It would appear, as the Donga Ilbo reported in 1984, "Koreans have a weakness for foreigners." More than the trope of the well-treated white male, this article is more the latest in a series of articles and TV programs from over the years warning Korean women about the dangers of foreign, particularly white, men. It should be noted that the photos accompanying the online article either feature file photos of drugs (scourge of the white man) or statistics showing how many repeat offenders who've committed one of the four great crimes haven't yet been found (nothing about foreigners at all). The other photos, meanwhile, are... interesting:

That's right: Little girls being victimized. Not grown women, but little girls with teddy bears who must be protected from from big bad foreign wolves. I was reminded of a display I saw at the Korean Literature Museum in Incheon back in April about the comfort women, in this case comic strips showing their victimization:

Papers can be (and have been) written about the role of the suffering, sexually exploited, female as the symbol of the nation victimized by the 20th century. While the photos in the Donga Ilbo article were likely not chosen with much care, it's still an interesting juxtaposition.

Of course, warning against the dangers posed by (male) Westerners in Korea has quite a pedigree. For example, Choe Ik-hyeon opposed King Gojong's plans to negotiate what would be known as the Ganghwa Treaty with the Japanese in early 1876 and (as translated in this book) wrote that "Although they call themselves Japanese, they are really Western bandits," and he feared that Korea would be "defiled" and "reduced to the level of wild animals" by their presence, which would be allowed by the treaty and would permit them to "build dwellings and reside within our borders." Due to the agreement, he said, the Korean government would have "no grounds to stop them," and so they would be able to "plunder our property and violate women at will, and no one will be able to restrain them.[...] There will be countless cases of this nature."

In 1946 a book written by the wife of an American officer serving in the US Military Government in Korea described the "warnings," "beatings" and "scorn" that awaited Korean women seen with foreign men, and stated that at least 52 babies were born from unions that occurred during the first 3 months of the US occupation. A look at articles from Stars and Stripes (and other sources) from 1948 and 1949 looking at relations between Korean women and US soldiers uncover a distinct dislike for these relations in some quarters. Ann Chai-hong [안재홍], a member of the government and future presidential candidate, said "the fact that there are too many Korean women married to foreigners shows their adoration of the foreigners," and that these women "had better keep their self-respect since we cannot prohibit their marriages." A secretary working for the US military received a pamphlet warning that "any one of you who shows the following scandalous actions beware that you will be insulted right in front of public."

Moving ahead a few decades (past a catastrophic war which led to bases and camp towns filled with prostitutes dotted across the peninsula, most obviously in Itaewon), in July of 1984, a lengthy Kyunghyang Sinmun article on foreigners in Itaewon looks at shopping, nightlife, foreigner only clubs, population stats, illegal overstayers, foreign crime, vagabonds who teach English, and shook its finger at girls who pay for everything for foreign men and who have 'no self respect.' The next year, after a Le Monde article on young French men teaching languages in Seoul - one of whom married a Korean women (gasp!) - led to a media uproar and new visa regulations for foreign teachers (as well as a TV show in which a French teacher  is beaten in an alley), the film Queen Bee depicted foreigners in Itaewon as rapists...



...who force others to watch...



... but one of the foreigners is murdered in revenge, so it all works out well enough.

In 1988 fear of contact between foreigners and Korean women during the Olympics led to a great deal of hand wringing and calls for HIV testing all visitors; unable to do this, as this post explains,

the government focused its efforts on discouraging sex between Koreans and foreigners. A special police force was to be set up to stand guard at tourist hotels throughout the city in order to prevent foreign guests from entering with Korean sex workers, and even pornographic magazines were removed from hotel bookstores. Olympic hostesses acting as interpreters and assistants for foreign delegates were warned not to have sex with them or risk contracting AIDS. On the eve of the Olympics, the city of Seoul distributed pamphlets to “all households in the city” which stated that "It's a horrible disease that cannot be stopped by any method except preventative measures," warned citizens to take every precaution against it, mentioned that the first diagnosed AIDS case in Korea was an American, and stressed the high number of AIDS cases overseas. 

Another result of the Olympics was heightened anti-Americanism due to US media coverage and highlighted cases of disrespectful male athletes (particularly in Itaewon). Soon the media began to focus on GI crime, with the 1995 subway incident - caused by a young Korean man taking offense at a GI touching his wife's behind on the subway - becoming one focal point of anti-US protests and calls for SOFA to be changed. The incident was reported with headlines like "Sexual harassment by drunken U.S. soldiers on subway; group assault of passenger who protested," and "U.S. army molesters are barbarians," an early example of an article based entirely on netizen opinion, Below is part of a now-faded anti-American mural painted onto the pavement of a traffic roundabout at Chung-ang University in 1999. Note that the woman being dragged by her hair by the GI is wearing a hanbok, pointing to it likely being somewhat symbolic as well of America dominating Korea geopolitically, in addition to it depicting sexual victimization:

Moving into the late 1990s and early 2000s, foreign English teachers began to appear in Korea in greater numbers, and their dalliances with the local ladies were not always appreciated, as the New York Times noted. Rep. Kim Han-gil (very recently leader of the opposition) wrote in a column in 1997 (after discussing a Korean American Playboy model who was "proud of herself for being found sexy by tall white men who speak English well") that it was a 'big deal' that foreign teachers were "personally penetrating each home of our society's middle class under the pretext of English conversation study," especially since "the reason white men really like Korea is to chase after Korean women."

The rest of the media, and society, caught up with Rep. Kim in 2005 during the English Spectrum Incident, after photos of a 'sexy costume party' involving foreign teachers and Korean women became the focus of netizen and media attention (and resulted in the founding of Anti-English Spectrum), causing enough of a furor that the US embassy warned its citizens of "potential threats" in the Hongdae area, and an SBS report made foreign teachers look like drug-using child molesters.

Hongdae was soon painted as a 'haven of desire,' full of temptation for one night stands with foreigners, with the Herald Gyeongje lamenting that "The clubs in front of the Hongik University, known as the birthplace of Korea’s indie culture, are transforming in a foreigner's 'paradise for hunting women.'" The Chosun Ilbo complained about "Rumors about Hongdae by Foreigners [as a] 'Street of pleasures,'" calling it "a bitter distortion" (and featuring one of my favourite cartoons).

"The Girls of Hongdae..."

Anti-English Spectrum teamed up with several media outlets to smear foreign teachers, such as Break News in 2006 (resulting in articles such as "Affairs with High School Students, Spreading Nude Photos on the Internet", as well as another titled "Tracking [down] blacklisted foreign teachers suspected of having AIDS," which links foreign teachers to AIDS for the first time, calls for HIV tests for E-2 visa holders, and is cited in petitions to the Ministry of Justice by AES members. Following up on the AIDS link, they would get the Chosun Ilbo in mid-2007 to publish articles such as "From molestation to AIDS threats - Shocking perversion of some English teachers; Beware the 'Ugly White Teacher.'" [in the Sports Chosun] and "White English Teacher Threatens Korean Woman with AIDS."[in Korean and English].

On TV, a 2007 episode of Pandora's Box (which thanks AES for providing tips) made some fun claims:

"Illegal foreign instructors are violating Korean women!!!"

Anti-English Spectrum's success in getting HIV and drug testing included in new E-2 visa regulations in late 2007 led to a year of relative quiet, but in the summer of 2009 things really began to pick up again, with five negative articles about foreign teachers published at Chosun.com with some help from AES (Korea Beat translated them all: 1 2 3 4 5 ) which featured this lovely quote from AES leader Lee Eun-ung:

"Foreign instructors of low character frequently toss women away without compunction after attaining their goal of meeting them for money and sexual relations, so many of the women have their lives ruined by abortion or, of course, sexually transmitted diseases."

KBS followed up with lengthy news report titled "'Out of Control Foreign English Teacher' Teaches Class while High and Commits Sexual Molestation," another AES-influenced report (which truly is awesome!). By 2010 a former member of AES would contribute to a New Daily article which painted Itaewon as a 'Paradise for losers', but by early 2011 AES would cease to exist following the exit of its leader, Lee Eun-ung, making it clear he'd pretty much single-handedly run a campaign in the media and through petitioning lawmakers to get articles demonizing (white, male) foreign teachers published and get E-2 regulations passed, That he was so successful probably says a lot of unpleasant things about how acceptable such demonization of westerners is, to say noting of the acceptability of misogyny directed toward their Korean partners.

That AES wasn't needed for this was made clear by MBC's May, 2012 broadcast of a xenophobic "news" report warning Korean women of the dangers of relationships with white males. When confronted about anger among foreigners about this, MBC retorted by suggesting that these people have a guilty conscience, among other things. (On the other hand, the responses of some foreigners weren't exactly helpful either.)

Not to be outdone by this, in July 2012 NoCut News published 12 articles criticizing first a foreign instructor who allegedly secretly videoed sex with Korean women, and then, with its series, "The Reality and Twisted Values of Some White Men," white men and foreign instructors in general:

Prologue:
Part A: Foreign instructor lives a double life… Caught red-handed with dozens of ‘Hidden Camera Sex’ tapes
Part B: Yongsan police begin investigation of 'Foreign instructor who secretly filmed sex'
Part C: 'Foreign instructor who secretly filmed sex' 'expelled' from his university

"The Reality and Twisted Values of Some White Men" Series:
Part 1: 'Chris who appeared on Superstar K'... inquiring into what happened [Korean]
Part 2: Internet awash with 'ways to seduce Korean women'
Part 3: What is the reason elementary school native speaking instructors get their hands on drugs?
Part 4: 'Korean women are beautiful, have a drink with me" - the night streets of Itaewon (scroll down)
Part 5: 'Unqualified foreign instructors' can't help but abound.
Part 6: "Charged with a crime, but whatever"... If they look white, it's OK?
Part 7: A foreign English instructor: "Secretly recorded sex? That's really disgusting."
Part 8: After the 'hidden camera sex' report... victim hurt again through 'comment terror'
Part 9: The 'Hidden camera sex video' could spread... anxious police, idle university

A month or so later Ilyo Sisa published a report titled "'Tips for targeting Korean women' spread by foreign English instructor spreads quickly." It featured the helpful subtitle "Treat them as 'sex toys' and throw them away when they're finished," and rehashes (or 'reinvents') scandals going all they way back to 2005 as if they happened yesterday.

Last year, after the Korean Institute of Criminology incorrectly calculated crime statistics, JTBC looked at foreign crime on one of its TV shows:

Part 1: Incorrect statistics portray Americans and Canadians as more prone to criminality
Part 2: Yonhap reports on the KIC foreign crime study
Part 3: Joongang Ilbo: "Get a Korean woman pregnant": Shock over manual for foreign men
Part 4: JTBC's "We are Detectives" looks at foreign crime using the KIC report
Part 5: JTBC's "We are Detectives" looks at xenophobia and foreign crime
Part 6: For JTBC, consensual sex between white men and Korean women is a "sex crime"

That last link features this clip from Youtube:



And this pretty much brings us up to date. It's nice to see the Donga Ilbo has contributed to the greater good of keeping the race pure this season, and we probably won't have to wait long to see the next installment.

(Thanks to Ben and Ami.)