Lowering academic standards to lure teachers to the boonies?

I can't see how this can be considered a good idea at all. Especially since one of the favorite complaints made of foreign teachers here is that we're underqualified and overpaid, I don't see how hiring white people with two-year degrees makes any sense. The article is shit, and I'm sure nothing will come of the policies other than to provide weeks of sky-is-falling editorials from crusty, out-of-touch Korean teachers in the KT Opinion section. Nevertheless, here's an excerpt:

The government is considering loosening academic requirements for native-English speaking teachers as a means to meet growing demand in rural areas that are shunned by foreign teachers.

Currently, the jobs are only open to those with bachelor degrees at four-year universities. As education authorities in rural areas have had difficulty hiring native-English speaking teachers, they are now calling on the central government to ease the qualifications for English-teaching or E-2 visas to those who have completed 2-year courses at universities or colleges.

In response, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and other government agencies said they are positively considering accepting the demand for the relaxation of the academic requirements. The ministry has already asked the Korean Immigration Service to ease the English-teaching or E-2 visa.

Top educators in 15 cities and provinces recently asked the ministry to accept two demands regarding foreign English teachers ― lowering academic criteria and allowing the hiring of those from countries where English is spoken as one of the official languages.

I'm sure the real story is in the last paragraph there, and in parts of the article I didn't include here.

Anyway, a few days ago The Marmot posted a story which said overseas Koreans and Korean Studies students were being sought after for volunteer jobs in rural Korea. (HAHAHAHA.) As I said in response, I'm not convinced there actually is a dearth of foreign teachers that can practically be filled. I heard Korean English teachers make that complaint many times, but I figured that was, in part, projection and an inability to believe that some foreigners actually like living in the sticks. Every single Korean teacher I met in Gangjin last year told me that they didn't like it, that it was too small, that it was boring, and that the students performed very low academically. Few of them chose to go to Gangjin, but because Korean teachers are rotated every four years, they didn't have much choice. One of my coteachers took the position because he was desperate for a job just out of college, and another coteacher took the job thinking she'd work at the English Village, and thus earn more promotion points.

But anyway, there's a steady stream of replacement teachers to Jeollanam-do every year, and even the hagwon somehow get teachers too dumb to do their homework. As I mentioned on that Marmot's Hole post, which was actually talking about using volunteers to staff after-school programs, the problem with rural areas is that the schools are often too small and too far apart to have a foreign teacher visit. Rougly 75% of the elementary schools in Gangjin, for example, didn't have a foreign teacher visit during my last semester there (and I suspect that's down to 0% now). It's not uncommon to have rural schools with 200, 100, 50, (or 15) students, meaning there are too few classes to warrant having a native speaker there full-time. Four of the fifteen elementary in Gangjin have fewer than 40 students, nine have fewer than 100 students, and only two schools have more than 150. (Imagine trying to teach a class of four.) Teachers must travel to that school once or twice a week, then. Based on the stats I just linked, and based on my experiences there of teachers working at one large school and two smaller schools, at least four foreign teachers would be needed to staff every school in a county of Gangjin's size. That would mean, though, that at least two teachers would be at a different school every day, which may or may not be desirable. Looking at the small size of Gangjin's high schools and middle schools, it'd take probably another four native speakers to staff those. But that could be a moot point anyway since foreign teachers in a lot of rural areas are being phased out of the individual schools and are instead funnelled into English Towns.

Just seems a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. While foreigners are being pushed out of some areas---I taught 9 classes a week my first semester, in spite of so many schools needing and wanting a foreign teacher---others are apparently clamoring for them. Gangjin, and I presume other areas of Jeollanam-do, uses Filipino teachers for some of the after-school programs. They have advantages over other native speakers in that they usually have some Korean skills, they have their own homes, and they command less money. But they clearly aren't a preferred choice, given prevailing opinions of what an English speaker is imagined to look and sound like, and I must admit that given their often difficult accents and their awkward grammar, I usually don't find them much of an upgrade over Korean teachers (at least when dealing with rural elementary school students).