More foreigners busted for posing as native English speakers.

* Update: Story in English now here via the KT.

Thanks to a friend for passing this story along. The Munhwa Ilbo tells us today that six foreigners---four Iranians, one Libyan, one Moroccan---were busted by Seoul Immigration for forging credentials and illegally posing as native English speakers. Immigration also busted the recruiter who farmed these teachers out to local hagwon owners. The article says that one of the men, "G"씨 of Iran, first arrived in Korea in July, 2006 on a forged Portugese passport and used an entertainer's visa to get bit parts on famous television programs. 쿠키뉴스 has the story, too, and tells us that "G" appeared on the MBC show "Surprise," the program that routinely---knowingly or not---uses Eastern Europeans and Africans in English-speaking roles, whether they are at all plausible or intelligible. These foreigners were, according to the first article, working among young learners in elementary schools in order to disguise their bad pronunciation and overall poor English skills. This case raises, according to a woman quoted in the second article, concerns about who is being entrusted to teach children, especially as they are being exposed to English at earlier and earlier ages.

Stories like this show that for all the moral panics about unqualified teachers and for all the red tape that gets imposed every now and again to punish us, for some the appearance of foreignness is all that matters to undiscerning, English-greedy customers. But deep down I have sympathy for the parents and students who are duped by these frauds and the unscrupulous recruiters and principals who trade in them. In spite of all the borderline-abusive parents I've come across and all of the slimy Korean English pushers I've met, my heart isn't completely cold to the plight of those families who have no choice but to pump tons of time and money into Big English, and who don't know enough about the language or the business to detect a scam. I'm encouraged to see immigration going after the traders behind this, as they're the ones doing the most damage to consumer confidence and to the education of this nation's children.

I'd hate to see this reflect poorly on the rest of us teachers, though, as it usually does, since this was first and foremost a case of immigration again failing to do its job, as well as a case of domestic brokers and employers taking advantage of their consumers. But what normally happens when people editorialize in the papers about stuff like this is that we hear more about quote-unquote unqualified teachers, the lengths they go to take advantage of Koreans, and the dangers they pose to society. That forgets to mention, of course, that many of us are ultimately powerless and held captive by our employers, the ones with the real power and the ones committing the real crimes.