Anti-English Spectrum makes Canadian news.

I should preface this, a few hours after it was initially posted, by picking up on something my commenters have said. Though I have objections to the way this article was written, credit must be given to the paper for picking up the story. I wish they would have done a little more homework, but now, thanks to them plenty of Canadians will learn about Anti-English Spectrum for the first time, and who knows, maybe other papers will have a look at the little Naver online cafe that, well, isn't so little anymore.

A reader tells me the Naver online cafe Anti-English Spectrum has attracted the attention of Canada's National Post; an excerpt from an article on the 6th:

A group in Korea is taking aim at Canadians and other foreigners teaching English in the country, claiming a high percentage of them have no morals, abuse drugs, rape Korean girls, molest children and spread AIDS.

Robert Brydon, a former Port Moody, B.C., resident who is married to a Korean and has taught in the country since 2005, said he's been stunned by the rhetoric coming from the Anti-English Spectrum Group that targets the 2,000 foreign English teachers in the country.

"I think a lot of Canadians do come to Korea and don't have any idea about the level of influence this group has in Korea," Mr. Brydon, 33, said in a phone interview.

And there isn't much the teachers can do about it: The claims aren't being challenged by the Korean government.

As much as I despite the group and what they do, this article is, unfortunately, another example of how incomplete or just plain wrong people can be when writing about South Korea from overseas. In fact, a little bit of time in front of Google will tell you more about the club and it's activities than two Canadian journalists, a random teacher in Korea, and an ATEK guy can. Just as Kang Shin-who, the worst journalist in Korea's English-language press, was wrong two weeks ago when he wrote there are 43,000 teachers with E-2 visas this year, so too are these journalists wrong when they write there are 2,000 foreign English teachers in the country.

It continues:

In fact, the Korean government recently imposed drug testing and criminal-record checks of foreign English teachers, including those who have lived in Korea for years.

The Korea Times reported that prosecutors are launching a special unit staffed by immigration officials and police detectives, which will specialize in foreigners' crimes.

Those measures started in late-2007, so perhaps recent for foreign observers, but not knew for "generations," so to speak, of teachers coming here. The National Post article doesn't make clear which Korea Times article it's talking about, though presumably it's this one from October 27th; an excerpt:

The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said Tuesday it has launched a new investigation unit specializing in organized crime committed by foreign gangs.

The unit is to collect intelligence on ethnic gangs and other organized foreigners engaged in illegal activities, that have sprouted up around the country in recent years, and take countermeasures in cooperation with the police, tax agency and immigration office, it said in a statement.

The unit had its first meeting at the prosecution headquarters in Seoul, Tuesday morning, with senior officers from the Ministry of Justice, National Police Agency, Tax Agency and provincial prosecutors’ offices participating.

“This is a response to growing calls to make a unit against foreign offenders whose number is on the rise,” said Cho Young-gon, the senior prosecutor commanding the unit.

The Korea Times has essentially become a tabloid with noticably poor standards of journalism and editing, but it's worth nothing that while articles often take the opportunity to bash foreign teachers when crime comes up, this one doesn't. In fact the article was pretty clear it's not looking at teachers:

A source from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said those from Nigeria, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Bangladesh account for the majority of foreign criminal groups. The source added they collect funds by running illegal casinos and brothels, and by engaging in the drug trade and loan sharking.

The article continues:

The group's members recently started making death threats to teachers; he said he went to the police earlier this week to report a threat.

"It's getting a little ridiculous," Mr. Wurth said. "They're giving out a lot of bad information about foreign teachers. It's going to be a long fight."

It hasn't been made clear, however, that the death threats came from a member of Anti-English Spectrum. The group denies it, of course, and the original email refers to the group "Kill White in Korea." I'm not disputing that ATEK members actually received them, but I do question whether they actually came from a Korean or from another foreigner upset with both groups.

The Anti-English Spectrum is driven by hate and xenophobia, and is clearly not committed to raising the quality of education in South Korea. I don't follow the Canadian media and don't know what kind of reputation or influence the National Post has (Wikipedia makes it seem not much better than a tabloid). It's just a shame such an opportunity to introduce this group to Western media was hampered by lazy reporting in an article that doesn't even say what "the level of influence this group has in Korea" actually is.

I'll recommend these posts from the blog Gusts of Popular Feeling for background:

* "The achievements of Anti-English Spectrum"
* "How to make foreign English teachers an AIDS threat in 5 easy steps"
* "The 'undisclosed crimes' of potential child molesting foreign English teachers"
* "Puff piece about Anti-English Spectrum"

I provided my own summary in September. Here's another piece from Gusts of Popular Feeling providing supplemental information to the piece he wrote in the Korea Herald last month. Both that article and Adam Walsh's "Blurring line between hate, free speech," which ran in the Herald on the same day, would be good places to start for any overseas journalist looking for some background.