A temporary teacher at a middle school in North Chungcheong Province was arrested for raping and molesting female teenagers, police said Wednesday. He had previously been convicted on seven counts of sexual assault and other crimes.
Police said the contract-based teacher, identified as Min, sexually assaulted an unidentified middle school student in February at a motel in the province. Police said the student was a runaway at the time and the 31-year-old approached her, saying he would rent a motel room to be used as a temporary ``shelter.''
He is also accused of molesting another teenage girl at a karaoke bar the following month, police said.
Police are widening their investigation to find out whether he committed other crimes.
Currently, criminal records of those sentenced to less than three years in prison are removed after five years. As such, schools can't always ascertain the criminal record of would-be teachers.
I'll reiterate that few if any current or prospective native speaker teachers object to the principle of submitting criminal background checks. But if the records of Koreans are wiped clean after five years, why all the moral panic about the foreign menace, and why is nobody questioning the "ethical qualifications" of that much larger demographic? After all, how many cases of sexual misconduct by foreign teachers have you read about? Abuse? Corruption? This case could throw a monkey wrench into the machinery that would bring thousands of Korean "lecturers" in to, as some education officials spin it, eventually replace us.
The article comes to us via Gusts of Popular Feeling. If it wouldn't take so long, I think I would create an updated list of teachers behaving badly.
* Update: Korea Beat has a translation of a lengthier article.
8 comments:
Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? People are biologically programmed to protect their own and be afraid of the other. We look different, we talk different, we act different--to the uncivilized eye, we're a threat.
The real question is: why is Korea so uncivilized?
Stephannie, I took down the comment here because it was off-topic. It might fit better on the previous post.
Xenophobia is alive & strong in Korea, no matter what Jon Huer says, but I'm really starting to believe that the continual tarnishing of foreign English teachers as "unqualified drug users and sex perverts" serves a purpose to benefit the powers that keep perpetuating these campaigns to smear us.
1) Politicians & educational administrators continue to scapegoat us as "the problem" to keep attention away from the fact that these numerous, expensive English programs that they poorly plan and occasionally monitor are, on the whole, failures. Korean English abilities are still very low even though they seem to spend the most on it. They don't want parents to start asking "Why does the government spend so much to bolster English education and my kids still can't speak it?".
They are too busy with the sensationalist "sex pervert" stories and the continual blaming of all of us as "unqualified".
2) The teacher's unions like to smear us any chance they get because our being here serves as a reminder that their English teachers are inadequate. Better to smear us than for people to think that their teachers still can’t do the job.
3) The media loves to smear us because it's great for ratings. The public loves to read/hear about it, audience is increased. We complain about the bottom of the barrel, racist, stereotyping "journalism", but it's a win-win for them. Even when they smear us in the media, it guarantees that many of us will read/watch it. They win!
Over at the ROKDrop(GI Korea), there's a great analysis about how foreigner & GI crime is, per capita, far less than the Korean population crime statistics. However, the "conventional wisdom" in the public is that we are far more prone to crime and deviant behavior because of these smear campaigns.
The politicians, educational administrators, teacher's unions, and media all benefit from smearing us as a "danger to Korean society" and they will continue to do so because, for the most part, we are powerless to do anything about it.
I'm a little confused by the two articles I've read on this subject. The Korea Times says he had a record of 7 sexual assaults but they were too old to come up. But unless I've misread it, Yonhap News says his record consisted only of assaults, which didn't come up because the school was only allowed to learn of sex offenses involving minors.
Absolutely horrible news to hear.
Coincidentally, earlier today a (female) Korean friend sent me the following 'comic':
link
What odd timing.
This really saddens me. I've been reading your blog and a handful of other expat blogs for sometime. My wife (from SK) and I live in New York City, but have been considering moving to Seoul. I had been considering teaching, but everything I read concerning the xenophobia in these blogs has turned me off the idea (that and the staggering turn around rate for english speaking teachers over there).
someone ought to write an editorial comparing the % of assault cases per population for Korean v. English speaking teachers. I'd be interested to know the numbers (and whether the editorial actually got published).
Post a Comment