A Canadian English teacher convicted of teaching with a fake degree has been sentenced to 6 months in the sin bin. [Korea Times]
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A Canadian English teacher convicted of teaching with a fake degree has been sentenced to 6 months in the sin bin. [Korea Times]
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30 Comments
Good. Maybe that will give other would-be unqualified people pause before trying to take jobs here. Perhaps those of us who are legit and choose to teach here, for the love of teaching, can eventually rebuild the tainted reputation of our profession without these dregs screwing everything up.
Golly, almost a long as teenaged rapist-killers.
And not surprisingly…considerably longer than the time “Chairman Kim” will actually serve out on his sentence.
Maybe if this guy starts to foam at the mouth and hand out Chon wons they will take him to the pajama party with “Chairman Kim.”
To quote Paris Hilton…”Don’t do the time, let the time do you!”
The verdict in this case is clear, so I guess the only question is - will Korean justice make use of the Shin bin too? I mean, forged credentials are forged credentials, right? Regardless of the citizenship of the individual trying to pass them off as legitimate, right?
#1 - Unfortunately, it’s not up to the legit or non-legit foreigners in Korea to rebuild their reputation. It’s up to Koreans when they want to stop looking for screw-ups to justify their generalization of foreign English teachers. Even if 99% of all teachers were legit and wonderful teachers, Koreans would always be able to find the 1% and paint them as representative as long as they so wish.
On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with punishing the offender, although I’m not sure if six months is appropriate. As others have mentioned, it seems unlikely that a Korean would face six months for a forged degree. Does anyone know “forged degree” in Korean so I can do a news search to see what sentences Koreans got in such instances?
Search for “Dongguk assistant professor Shin Jeong-ah.” I am sure you will find plenty about forged degrees in regards to her. Curious to see if she will get a 6 month sentence. Since she has already been allowed to re enter Korea from Europe and depart for the US to pursue the “conspiracy” against her I doubt it.
#6: She’s going to hire O.J. to help look for the conspirators in the U.S. Check back in ten years.
What Koreans got in such instances? Hmmm. Typically it’s a “Ssshh, keep your mouth shut about the rest of us and we’ll hook you up later.”
Lots of government and business officials with legit advanced degrees (MBA’s, Econometrics) from the States, and all they really did was work on their golf game.
@ wedge, LOL.
Yup, there are plenty of phony degrees out there. During some research I found that the owner of a Korean shipping university had listed a PhD from “Golden State University” in his resume. It turns out it’s not in California, but a diploma mill on the internet. Six months seems way over the top - why don’t they just ban the guy from Korea, isn’t that the normal punishment? Let’s be honest, too about teaching English in a Korean Hakwon. The main skills you need are not a degree but 1) the ability to speak English and 2) some charisma perhaps and 3) mental endurance to withstand the same lesson all day long. And you really don’t need #1 - I knew a Finnish guy with an Arnold Schwartzenheiger accent who was pretty busy teaching English, pretty much because he was Causasian and many Koreans couldn’t tell the difference in his English. And the Canadian guy forged his degree to earn a whopping 2 million Won a month to teach in a hakwon all day long - what a crime! Ridiculous!
woops, meant to write “shipping firm” not “university”
#7
“OJ is searching for the murder one golf course at a time.”
Jay Leno
How much prison time did Wang Yoo Suk do for forging his research?
When you consider the amount of time Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo Hwan spent in prison, 6 months does seem a bit steep.
This Canadian English teacher has 3 strikes against him:
1. He’s a foreigner
2. He’s apparently not connected
3. He’s a member of the “let’s pick on them this month” club
In Korea, justice is only for the connected local. Everybody else gets shafted.
*knock on wood* I haven’t had a run-in with the law. *knock on wood* I hope I never do.
I would think a week in jail followed by deportation would have been more than enough, but 6 months - damn. I wonder if the Hagwon owner got any punishment or was even asked the simple question - “Did you know the person you hired forged their diploma ?”
Well, don’t know if the teacher will wind up serving the full six months, but Koreans who aren’t connected/important/wealthy tend not to get sprung on Buddha’s Birthday or August 18.
The diploma-forging cases for foreigners involve an additional legal wrinkle that is not applicable to Koreans. When applying for the E-2 visa, the foreigner submits the diploma to the Ministry of Justice, together with an affidavit (sworn statement) that “This is a real document and these statements I’ve made are true.” And they’re not. That’s the crime of “False Official Statement”. Koreans don’t have to apply for visas, so they don’t commit that crime of False Official Statement.
But a few years ago I was involved in an English-teacher visa-fraud case. Every once in a while there is a “Throw the book at ‘em!” spirit that takes hold, and you get a prosecutor who wants to claim that if not for the fraudulent “diploma”, the teacher would not have obtained employment, and that the employment under those pretenses constitutes multiple counts of (one for each student) fraud and embezzlement of teaching fees. As if the teacher were Al Capone or something. Those sentences — in theory at least, if not always in practice — can be quite substantial.
If the hakwon owner(s) got a six-month sentence this kind of fraud would end overnight.
Fraud and embezzlement can lead to lengthy sentences, except for every Korean corporate executive I’ve ever heard of.
#14
Could that explain why Dongguk is only ‘considering’ firing their Korean teacher that was caught with a forged Yale diploma?
#15…Makes me wonder…Do hagwon owners get 6 months prison when they knowingly hire people–in my experience they are usually Koreans and sometimes foreigners–who don’t have a diploma?
Note that the report give no hint of how the dude was detected and busted.
> I wonder if the Hagwon owner got any punishment
> or was even asked the simple question -
> “Did you know the person you hired forged their diploma?”
I’ll betcha dollars to doughnuts that the Hagwon Owner knew-in-advance or learned later that the diploma was forged, then used that as leverage to screw the dude on pay/hours/housing/etc. And when the dude “rudely” rebelled against this, the Hagwon Owner turned him in during month 11 — knowing he’ll face no sanction himself, and can get out of paying the final month’s salary plus the Severance Pay…
Or have I become too cynical?
Probably not. Getting hired based on forged credentials is “just cause” for termination under the Labor Standards Act, but an employer cannot simply can someone the minute it is discovered there is substantive just cause. The employer is also required to follow its own regulations and procedures in respect of disciplinary action — to follow so-called procedural just cause as well.
So they give her a few weeks to run around with OJ and the Clue Crew looking for the real forgers, then summon her before the university’s disciplinary committee to explain herself and to provide evidence supporting her version of events. Then they fire her.
#17
“Could that explain why Dongguk is only ‘considering’ firing their Korean teacher that was caught with a forged Yale diploma?”
That article was poorly written. Read it again closely. It says the University will “withdraw” their employment of her. This means she will be cleaned off the records as if she had never taught there. It also states her students will not receive credit for courses they took with her.
Crazy lady gets nailed, innocent students suffer, lax Korean University walks away totally unscathed. Isn’t that convenient?
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ww....._6648.html
Brendon,
I wonder if the hagwon owners could be held accountable in the same ‘Al Capone” sort of way if it can be proven he/she knew about the forged degree (of course they could always say they didn’t know)?
Also, the signing of the ‘verification of degree’ paper is fairly new. Maybe its good if the courts start issuing more strict penalties for those caught. Eventually, maybe people will get the idea. Just think about what kind of penalties that fraud and misrepresentation of documents carry under the current patriot act in the US. 6 months is a cake walk comparatively.
#20 and #21,
Thanks. That’s what I figured was going on, but since the article was so poorly written, I had to ask.
“I wonder if the hagwon owners could be held accountable in the same ‘Al Capone” sort of way if it can be proven he/she knew about the forged degree (of course they could always say they didn’t know)?”
Koreans are reported to the Korean Ministry of labor for breach of contract (in regards to English instructors) on a weekly, if not daily, basis. This has been going on for decades now.
How often have you read about a Korean language institute owner being held accountable in any way, shape or form. Yes, this is a civil law matter, but still you don’t see the government taking much action to correct the situation.
However, the government seems more than willing to deport or imprison English instructors who don’t follow the rules. The contribution an English instructor makes to Korean society must not be considered the same as that of the many “Chairmen” that have been able to avoid justice in the past few years on these grounds.
Don’t worry too much about the Dongguk students, Creo. I’m fairly certain that the university will create an administrative waive for these students; if necessary, they can create a program for them, waive fees, claim that they completed all requirements for receipt of credit, and call it a day. The students will really be okay.
Actually, civil law is useless in hagwon-teacher disputes. This means stop calling me! Enforcement of Korean labor law is undertaken by district labor offices of the National Labor Relations Commission — which offices have quasi-police power to undertake investigations, refer matters to the labor tribunal for “adjudication”, and to transfer matters to the public prosecutors for criminal charges. It’s the criminal charges — and only the criminal charges — that hagwon owners fear.
As for why you don’t read about it, in general most criminal matters are secret. Only the really sensational and salacious ones get leaked to the press. Ordinarily, though, one cannot discover the criminal background of a private individual under any circumstances.
Dizzying hypocrisy.
In all honesty I wish the government would get a bit more strict on the illegals pushing English, but the hogwon industry fundamentally needs these elements to keep the costs down and to legitimizes the ’special circumstances’ of their (the hogwons) breaking contracts. It is a self licking ice cream cone. Both needed to be cleaned up for any real change.
As for OJ Simpson, if you consider that witnesses placed a six-foot tall black man at the scene, and that he’s spent all his time since the verdict scouring the golf courses of America looking for the “Real Killer”, one must ask why the police haven’t yet questioned Tiger Woods.
Because, as a dark-skinned man who, as Wikipedia describes him, ‘is known for his meticulous preparation’, Vijay Singh has made pinning this on Tiger somewhat more difficult.
This uncertainty must explain why it’s been so long and OJ is still looking…
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