These days award-winning reporter Kang Shin-who is writing a series about illegal foreign English tutors. Part two, titled "Crackdown on Illegal Tutoring Ineffective," is typical of the biased reporting and bad journalism that earned him the nickname on this site "the worst journalist in Korea's English-language media." As you read the article, which I'll paste below, see how many cases of illegal foreign English teachers you find.
Many students take private English lessons for writing and speaking to prepare for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and TOEFL test for admission to U.S. universities. But many of those teaching are doing so illegally.
The education authorities have no immediate measures planned to crack down on illegal private tutoring by foreigners.
"It is hard to control tutoring due to privacy matters, especially when it comes to foreigners. Moreover, many of those who seek out such tutoring are well connected, leaving little room for authorities to uncover their illegal transactions," said Kim Chul-woon, director of the Private Institute Monitoring Team at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
Kim lamented, "We can't just barge into every house, without a warrant, where foreigners are suspected of giving lessons."
About 1,720 suspected illegal tutoring cases have been reported to the authorities. Only 368 cases were subject to punishment, all of which involved Korean tutors.
No foreign tutors have been caught by the authorities for violation of the Private Education Law, the ministry said.
More than 15,000 tutors have registered their activities to the appropriate education office since the government introduced programs to reward informants on illegal tutoring last July.
In Seoul alone, 11,967 cases of private tutoring have been registered with education offices in the city. Among them, 76 have been made by foreigners holding F-series visas such as the F-2 (spouses of Koreans), F-4 (ethnic Koreans) and F-5 (permanent residence). Most of them are teaching English.
Under the Immigration Law, foreigners with other visa types are not allowed to offer private tutoring to make money, except for those with student status, who can do so with restricted hours upon approval from their professors. Otherwise, foreign nationals are subject to fines and deportation.
In the meantime, the ministry has delivered official documents to public and private universities as well as elementary and secondary schools, requesting them to ensure their native English-speaking teachers are not involved in illegal tutoring.
Now, go back through and see how Kang tries to make the tenuous connection. Basically, "many" Koreans getting private English lessons---pretty much every Korean teacher I've ever met was doing it themselves or putting their children through it---and "many" are getting them illegally. In the article he first demonstrates that most of the offenders were Koreans, and later writes that all the cases subject to punishment involved Koreans, yet he remains focused on foreign tutors without the proper visa. I'm not going to pretend there aren't E-2 visa holders teaching on the side, but not only is the "crackdown on illegal tutoring ineffective," apparently so are the articles trying to demonstrate its frequency or its relative harm.
In part one of the series, Kang wrote that "Korea Is 'Heaven' for Illegal Private English Tutoring":
Many foreigners are unaware that private tutoring is illegal. Under the Immigration Law, E-2 visa holders and foreigners on tourist visas are banned from making money through giving private lessons.
In the case of F-visa holders such as F-2 (spouses of Koreans) and F-4 (ethnic Koreans), the holders are permitted to offer private lessons for money, but are required to report them to city or provincial education offices.
In reality, however, a large number of foreigners are giving private English lessons, with many of them already fulltime English teachers at schools or private language institutes. Often, they meet up with parents and students through online communities or are introduced by their friends.
Illegal is illegal, and foreign teachers earning money illegally are perhaps newsworthy, even though this "problem" is widespread among Korean teachers and, especially, Korean parents. Nonetheless throwing around "many" and "often" in lieu of facts and objectivity is irrersponsible, and we ought to expect more from "An Influential English Daily in South Kroea," even if we don't expect anything else from the notorious Kang Shin-who.
22 comments:
His favourite word is certainly "many." It seems to make it completely unnecessary to have facts supporting is ludicrous arguments.
I sometimes wonder about this poor guy. Why does he have such an irrational fear of foreigners?
For a long, long time, I've wanted to do a "Ask Kang Shin-who" installation in my "Ask A ___" series at Dokdo Is Ours... but every time I try, it sounds too sensible, reasonable, or factual, and I have to throw it out.
Influential Daily in [sic] Kroea.
(I learnt what [sic] means today!
verification word: smater as in a smatering of Kang Shin WHo is enough thanks
Let's just be clear on exactly what depraved and nefarious activity these foreigners are indulging in here - they are teaching English to students who are willing to pay for their services. The dastards! Whatever depth will they stoop to next! Don't they realise that their hagwon owns them lock and stock, and that they're endangering their owners' livelihood by partaking in the very market that brought them to be in Korea in the first place?! I personally can think of no greater evil than for some foreign ingrate selling his skills and time for money, and I have absolutely no issue with the basic human rights of such individuals being aggressively curtailed and their vilification in the national press (who should, without a doubt, never question the existence of the laws that make these tutors 'illegal' in the first place and should absolutely go along with whatever is best for Korean businessmen). I mean, who exactly do they think they are? They're guests, for Dokdo's sake! They should show a bit more bloody respect!
this just makes me think about how funny it would be if housewives giving piano lessons became illegal in the states. That there might be some office of piano education somewhere, where some middle aged public official with more authority than education is wringing his hands together trying figure out how to weed out unqualified piano teachers. and how some plucky young writer at the dingleberry telegraph and intelligencer gets on to a hot scoop about how a nest of these fuckers breeding in a single level ranch down on high street is gonna bring the whole neighborhood to its knees through an inability to play Pachelbel's canon. If only he could get J Jonah Jameson to believe!!!!
and how nobody, for whatever reason, has stopped to say 'does this witch hunt make any farking sense at all?'
thats what comes to my mind....
Well said Nik
One thing about old Mrs. Muchie the piano teacher. The reason there's no crackdown back home is she won't sleep with "Our" women. Which is basically what it's all about. Koreans men will prod us with all kinds af regulations in all forms anyway they can because they don't want us foreign guys sleeping with their women...quite sad really
I love the title "Korea Is 'Heaven' for Illegal Private English Tutoring," as it's reminiscent of a
NoCutNews article titled "To foreign English teachers, Korea is a depraved heaven," or of SBS’s 그것이 알고 싶다 [I Want To Know That] 2005 hate-inducing "Is Korea their Heaven? Report on the Real Conditions of Blond-haired, Blue-eyed Teachers." It's nice to see Kang alluding to such fine examples of journalism - they're clearly influences.
I'm still waiting for this interview:
[인터뷰: 저질 한국인 기자]
"저는 한국 출신이고 한국에서는 '사실'에 대한 개념이 서양와는 다릅니다."
@Stevie Bee
Making tax-free money under the table is a "basic human right"? Sure, Kang's an asshole and his logic makes my head hurt, but Korea is hardly the only country with laws against undeclared income.
You know you have a squeaky clean (or majorly messed up) society when you consider TEACHING one of the greatest public threats.
No crack gangs. No drive by shootings. No meth labs.
Just teachers.
Sounds like a spoiled child who thinks the world is falling apart because he's not allowed to play WoW.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc
To again paraphrase Thom Hartmann, it's not an illegal immigrant problem. It's an illegal employer problem.
@Peter - No, but the right to work and the free choice of employment is a basic human right. See here (article 22): http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Hmm, it's illegal to give private English lessons.
I've seen lots of women walking around my neighborhood delivering coffee, maybe I teach business English and wear a miniskirt while carrying a thermos wrapped in a pink cloth.
If anyone asks why I'm visiting houses, I'll just say I'm a coffee deliverer.
@Stevie Bee
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here, as I don't see how a person's right to work is violated by not being allowed to legally teach privates in addition to the job they already have a work visa for (a job which pays more than enough to live on). Every country is entitled to define what foreign residents can and can't do while they're in that country.
To my mind, the issue here is not Korea's laws, but the fact that Kang is again trying to take something that's not a big deal and turn it into a case against NSETs in general, in spite of the fact that HIS OWN STATISTICS seem to refute his point.
Look, illegal is illegal, you do it and get caught you pay the price. I can't feel sorry for people that get nailed.
It seems that Korean nationals never get nailed for this kind of thing. In my office about 80% of the Koreans who worked there taught private lessons. I know they told me and when I told them they had to report it as income or it was illegal, they just laughed and dismissed the notion altogether.
I find it funny and hypocritcal how you can mention the hundreds of thousands of illegal Koreans living in the US and other countries who are working illegally and most Koreans basically dismiss it as no big deal, that it's virtually their right to do so, but the white foreign, Korean girl stealing English teacher is a scourge to Korean society.
So why doesn't the AES track down gyopos and Korean nationals who teach private lessons? I think everyone knows the answer.
And why doesn't Kang write about gyopos and Korean nationals not reporting their income from private lesson as illegal? The ones I talked to were/are not getting special permits to do so. Again, I think we all know the answer to the question.
@Peter
It's not only that you are not allowed to teach private lessons - you are not allowed to do anything beyond what is decreed by the owner of your visa, which seriously curtails your freedom to work how and were you choose. Whether or not your job pays you enough to live on is absolutely irrelevant.
I can think of no other country (though perhaps someone can help me out here) where you must seek the permission of both your employer and the immigration authorities in order to take on extra work or unpaid voluntary activities. The rule exists only to protect the investment of the employer who has bought you for a year. The situation is utterly ludicrous, but we seem to accept it as a natural and understandable condition of our tenure as 'guests'.
What is even more ludicrous is the fact that firstly, the Korean press accepts such serf-like conditions of employment as rational and irreproachable, and secondly, leads the charge against the group thus restricted for contributing so little to Korean society beyond working and being paid for it - and contemns them for doing even that!
No teacher who has given the matter more than two minutes' thought should ever speak up for the restrictions placed on E2 and E1 workers. It is legislated serfdom, regardless of the 'living wage' it provides.
"foreigners with other visa types are not allowed to offer private tutoring to make money, except for those with student status, who can do so with restricted hours upon approval from their professors."
BS. Approval from their professors and then immigration needs to approve it, which is completely up to the whim of the immigration officer and just for the hell of it they probably wont approve you.
We've had premission from a professor for over a year still waiting for immigration. First they said no. Then they said bring your professor in. Then they said wait 6 months. Then they said wait a year etc etc etc.
@Stevie Bee
I understand your frustration with the way NSETs are perceived in Korea; I've felt that frustration too. And just to be clear, I'm not speaking up for the restrictions placed on E-1 or E-2 Visa holders. What I'm saying is, like it or not, those restrictions were not imposed on any of us against our will; they are part of the law in a country we CHOSE to come to, and they're part of a contract we CHOSE to sign. If an NSET feels that those rules are unjust, they can quit their job, and they can leave Korea. Beyond that, I agree with Chris: "illegal is illegal".
Again, I respect your opinion, but I don't think either of us is changing the other's mind here, so I won't comment again on this thread.
I don't know how I feel about the 'If you don't like it, you can leave' line of thinking. On the one hand, yeah. thats a perfectly logical way to look at it. There are other places and we chose to be here, etc. On the other hand, We are here, this is the situation we're dealing with and a stupid law is a stupid law.
My personal situation is probably different from you guys though. I'm not allowed to work at all because of the scholarship I'm on. Sure, I get free schooling, and a monthly stipend. I also don't own a bed and sleep on my floor. I get to make a choice each month between eating well and paying my bills or buying simple things that would make my lifestyle more than sub-human. And it's not just me. In my same program, you have other people, in their late 20s and 30s, with masters degrees or entering a masters program, who have to live in dorms with 19 year old korean kids and can't really change that situation unless they either work illegally or have a source of income outside the country.
Naturally, this situation wasn't made clear to us until we arrived. So yeah, I'd consider leaving if I had enough to buy a plane ticket. But I don't. So I'm gonna stay here, study as I planned to, and piss and moan about how f#$&ing stupid it is that I can't have an income like any normal human being.
On another note, I seriously doubt this has anything to do with foreigners sleeping with Korean women. I would suspect it has much to do with Korea attempting to keep control of the mode and speed of change coming from the outside. Generally speaking, that means being pretty nit-picky about money flows. That's fine. But, like I said, I'm gonna continue pissing and moaning about it. I'm also going to continue thinking that somewhere, up high, things are being controlled by a bunch of dim-witted small-pricked jack-asses. As is my god given right.
Also, got to add, I really feel bad for the Chinese kids here. Seems that most of them are working in bars or Chinese restaurants for about 4 bucks an hour. Of course, if they can get permission to do so, they're sweet. If they don't, it's a hefty fine, greatly disproportionate to the "benefits" of their illegal work. It's a good reminder though that the government is not out specifically to screw the cracker community.
Sort of like how some Americans think that Mexicans are stealing good jobs from hard working Americans. thats a good one.
Word verification: wompers
My situation is quite similar. I'm doing a PhD, and the tuition fee is quite prohibitively expensive. Being a foreigner, I don't qualify for any substantial scholarship and I can't get a tuition loan like Koreans can, so I have no choice but to take on extra work. I could do this illegally, but being a law-abiding type and not being willing to risk my livelihood, I have to take the legal route, meaning that I have seek permission from my employer and from immigration, and then risk either of them saying no (which they have, on various occasions). Even when they say yes, the process is time-consuming, stressful and costs me money. It's very well to say that I should pick up and leave if I don't like it, but I live here now, and I have done for some time, and I shouldn't have to tolerate being treated like I belong to some dangerous or risky category of individual. Yes, I knew the restrictions before I came here, but I didn't foresee my life taking the turn it did. When I wanted only to teach, the visa restrictions didn't bother me too much. But when one tries to move beyond working and sleeping, they prove to be very limiting.
Nik - your comments above are spot on.
When I applied for my MBA here I had to ask my employer for permission to study. Yea that's right my employer! That's Korean law; without permission from your employer you cannot enrol in classes here at a bonified educational institution. Ofcourse my employer refused despite the fact that it wouldn't interfere with my job. Lucky I was only a few days away from the end of my contract and I told my employer to stick it! I then signed on as a full-time student(D2), legally worked part-time, jumping through all the hoops ofcourse, and the rest is history. Now I am working in a bank in Seoul and have left teaching behind.
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