Police have busted a number of foreign English teachers for pot smoking — 22 of ‘em, to be exact.
According to NoCut News, the star suspect is a 24-year-old Canadian identified as Mr. S, who came to Korea in 2004. Since 2006, he has allegedly been buying pot off a Ghanaian drug dealer — police say he even taught his students while stoned.
The cops note he wasn’t the only one teaching English by day, and toking up at night.
An official with the foreign affairs department of Seoul Metropolitan Police told NoCut News, “American and Canadian English teachers think of Korea as the Land of Opportunity.”
He said they believe that they can make millions of won a month teaching not only in hagwon, but also privates.
The official also added — sit down for this — that in most cases, these teachers easily seduce Korean women looking to learn English, and end up doing drugs together.
Scoundrels!
NoCut News said Korea, the “Land of Opportunity” for foreign English teachers, is more like a “depraved paradise.”
A “representative example,” said NoCut News, is the case of 24-year-old American teacher Mr. R, who was busted for smoking pot with his Korean girlfriend.
Mr. R, who lived with a 20-something Korean woman who worked for a foreign bank (say no more!), is suspected of taking his woman to the bars of Hongdae and Itaewon, where they would regularly smoke pot.
Police said the teachers they’ve busted were almost all local college teachers or hagwon teachers in Gangnam, Seocho-gu, Yangcheon-gu, Bupyeong and Gwangmyeong.
Police complain that to stop these teachers from coming into the country, they’d need to see their rap sheets beforehand.
On a positive note, the teachers’ degrees seem to have been legitimate.
Luckily, there will be more on all this tonight when KBS’s “In Depth 60 Minutes” dives into the sordid world of the foreign English teacher (HT to reader). Here’s a highlight:
Lee Eun-ju (assumed name), who lived with an American English teacher on the premise of getting married. She has informed our production team of some shocking information about her ex-boyfriend. She said he regularly hung out with other foreign English teachers smoking pot.
Lovely.
UPDATE: This story is the #1 looked-at story at Naver.com’s “Society” section, and as always, the comment section over there is, ahem, enlightening.
UPDATE 2: Here’s video of one foreigner getting busted by the KNP. You need to use IE to see it, though.
UPDATE 3: OK, I watched it, and frankly, it wasn’t that bad. Boring, actually. OK, there are pot-smoking teachers, teachers with fake degrees, teachers without any degrees at all, nobody takes responsibility… and yeah, Itaewon’s a hole. Tell us something we didn’t already know. At least they stayed away from sex, thank God.
61 Comments
“American and Canadian English teachers think of Korea as the Land of Opportunity.”
God forbid. Who needs opportunities?
On a more serious note: I wonder what’s become of the Ghanaian dealer.
Kevin
They might as well say these monsters force young innocent girls to do drugs, and then take advantage of them…
And I’m sure if they look hard enough they can connect these guys to some murders or kidnappings as well…
Looks like they finally caught on to Railwaycharm.
LOL. Can it top the SBS show “I want to know that” episode about English teachers? I mean that one was comedy gold!
This is just more attempts to blame foreigners for a problem that Korea does not want to own up to.
I remember like a year ago when several Korean celebrities were linked to drugs and it was in the news a few days and gone.
Do Koreans think they are the only country where people come to teach English oh and by the way meet local women who are pretty much throwing themselves at you?????
Poor Koreans being taken advantage of by the bad foreign guys!!!
I wonder when they will conduct an undercover documentary about all the bad foreign women who come here and seduce poor little Korean guys!
Funny how they never complain about female English teachers seducing unsuspecting Korean men looking to learn English.
# 3. Guilty as charged. I bribed my way out of the monkey house and back into the hagwon to carry out my lothario ways.
It’s always some f-wad who thinks it’s clever to toke up in a public place in Korea, isn’t it? Either that, or someone who decides it might be a nice ice-breaker to light up a joint in front of a new Korean friend…
I’m more concerned over the teachers in Korea who don’t teach their students while stoned. After all, if you’re stoned, you’re probably going to be less likely to hit your students or throw projectiles at them… Oh wait… I suppose those two actions would probably come under the heading of ‘maintaining discipline’.
All this makes me think that someone in SK should do a remake of Reefer Madness with all the drug dealers/gangsters being played by white guys. Oh wait… that’s what they’re doing with these ‘news reports.’ Fun fun.
It’s a shame it’s so easy to sell press on the negative stories of English teachers. The story of the average, law-abiding, generally rule-abiding English teachers rarely if ever makes the press (because it would make for a boring story). Yet, it is the respectable English teacher which is in the majority.
However, you would think from the broad brush strokes the Korean press paints English teachers with that the majority or least a very sizable minority of English teachers are a bunch of jerks with ill designs on Korea culture and especially Korean women.
A while back, Prof. Bryan Meyers gave a lecture at RAS entitled: Child-Race in an Evil World: Understanding North Korea Through its Propaganda. It seems that this “child-race” concept is not limited to North Korea, but extends south as well.
The assertion that these women only smoked pot because they were coerced by their evil foreign boyfriends is absurd. There’s no consideration of the possibility that the women were using the guys for pot or that they “hooked up” because of a mutual passion for the ganja.
OK, so 22 foreign English instructors were arrested for smoking pot. For the sake of fun, let’s assume that this represents 10% of the total number of offenders. (Like I said, this is just for fun, I have no idea – and other than the dealers I doubt anyone else does either – how many foreign pot heads there really are here.) So, 220 pot smokers out of 22,000 English teachers = 1%.
Yup, I say send ‘em all packing.
I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think this topic has been convered by the media before.
covered
Seems like a lot of racist nonsense to my ears. I really think we should start filling complaints in mass with the Human Rights Commission.
“depraved paradise” Isn’t that Thailand???
I think the K-police need to first step up public lectures on the evils of herojuana. But their idea to study rap sheets may not work as well as they hope. What about all the English teachers and pot smokers who don’t have a rap sheet? In some foreign hometowns smoking pot may only be a misdemeanor. The police need to aim more at regular urine testing if they want to thwart this foreign problem.
At this moment I’m getting high and seducing a Korean female co-worker — here in the office! In your face, coppers.
I’m meeting her younger sister, a high school student, tonight. I intend to turn her on to weed as well.
The three of us are going to watch “Sex and the City” together. I’ll show them what some of that interesting slang means.
Soon I’ll be opening a gambling operation. Those innocent Koreans who fall into debt in my gaming den of iniquity will do anything — I mean ANYTHING — to get me to forgive their debts.
For my final trick I’m going to buy a Korean company and make money!
BTW, the University of Toronto has at least two professors that I know of who use medicinal marijuana to treat their illnesses. I wonder how they would explain how they can smoke pot on a daily basis, probably several times a day, and it doesn’t affect their capacity to teach at a university that ranks higher than any Korean university…but that’s for another debate.
Don’t bring drugs, don’t do drugs.
Follow these 2 rules alone and you’ll be fine in Korea.
I believe the drug laws across East Asia stem from bad feelings dating back to the Opium Wars.
Be a nice guy with the girls, not a drunken sailor.
I once smoked some cheeba with my Korean girlfriend in Vietnam. My front door is one inch thick steel with a Samsung combo lock, and a security bar to boot! I’ve got enough garbanzo beans to stay locked up for weeks! Bring it on KNP!
lol @ commenters freaking about how this is getting disproportionate amount of press attention when in reality this story is nowhere to be found in most major Korean portal websites.
Oh, and those poor ESL teachers!
It’s currently #3 overall at Naver.com (#1 in society).
And at Daum:
http://media.tab.search.daum.n.....38;type=MD
Nowhere to be found, indeed!
Why would anyone here bother with pot with the hallucinatory and mind-warping properties of soju available?
At 1500 won a bottle,
1 bottle - I’m feeling it.
2 bottles - I’m solidly drunk!
3 bottles - I’m making a racket and blathering nonsense!
4 bottles - cut ze film!
Hat tip to whitey’s comment :
“For my final trick I’m going to buy a Korean company and make money!”
Hilarious! I choked on my coffee laughing so hard!
In addition to the minute fraction of the expat population that these miscreants represent, it’s interesting to note that expat white-collar types are never found by the Korean media to be participating in these sorts of base crimes. Oddly, despite patterns of drug abuse and moral turpitude being found in all segments of society outside of Korea, white-collar expats seem only ever to be guilty of raping the country financially.
English teacher=pothead; soldier=taxi-basher; businessman=financial hitman - wow, that’s pretty damn simple. I wish they’d be as helpful in stereotyping Koreans.
And a fine example of division of labor, too!
I admit.. I laughed my ass off when I watched the video… 33 seconds in you can hear one of these guys comment, “Dude, this is serious.”
I’m sorry… the camera and the introduction of themselves as the “KNP” didn’t clue them in. We’re not talking about the swiftest individuals around me thinks.
At least these teachers weren’t caught with drugs in South-East Asia.
Plus, if they broke the law, they should be punished. What’s wrong with that? I know that the media in Korea sensationalizes nearly everything about foreigners but still, you’re forgetting that these people allegedly BROKE THE LAW.
Just say no to drugs.
Well at least they didn’t say we gang rape them and let them die of hypothermia. Granted I doubt Westerners would be given only 2-3 years like those Korean boys are getting. The one I hope someone can link to is when someone in the in the town (government official I believe) said after another girl was raped that “she ruined the boys’ lives.”
Keep blaming westerners and then in 2010 when the yanks leave and your economy goes down another year — it’s been four years so far and it doesn’t look to be going anywhere but down — no one will come to Korea (save the desperate) and then you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves.
Hey KBS, how about an expose about how the UN slapped you with the racial discrimination card, or one on all the Koreans who forged their diplomas. Korea — divert the public attention elsewh…urrrrr I mean “SPARKLING!” Polishing a turd is more like it.
What kills me is go out into the country and look into the court yards of old ajjushi’s and ajjuma’s and you’ll find a LOT grow poppy’s for…ahem… medicine. When if ever is the KNP’s going to get a grip on the general korean population of old farts toking up on Opium?
#18,
Actually, pot was legal and readily availably in Korea up until the mid-70s.
…Park Jung Hee was killing two birds with one stone by making it illegal: was sweeping under the rug the fact that his son was a drug addict and had one more pretext to arrest musicians and writers.
Maybe this explains part of the spin to the story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63bWYFGBTuE
I remember finding two kilos of hashish in my first Seoul apartment when the previous tenants did a runner. I wonder who they were selling to - in 1997 I didn’t see very much of it around in the foreign community except for the Reggae Pub in Itaewon. Anyway, it’s pretty widely known that if you smoke up here you face losing your visa, job, and all your cash so I have no sympathy whatsoever for these fools. Sure, hagwon teaching=easy money and Korean women are just as friendly as any other country where circs are similar, but the place ain’t PERFECT. When I lived here the rule was “If you smoke up with a Korean national be prepared to pay the price.”
#15 Uri Onara,
I’d be willing to piss in a cup every day of the week at my place of employment; just so long as my Korean male coworkers have their pubes combed for traces of hooker minge or extra-marital affairs.
And a special guest appearance by John Mark Karr on “In Depth 60 Minutes” too.
The only thing that was missing was a rehash of the English Spectrum “scandal”.
I hate to mention this but I have smelled what smells very much like hashish around a one-room apartment building, next door to where I live and I do not think there are English teachers living there.
I would not report this either because I am completely convinced that my nice enough local police officers would not know what hash smells or looks like and if *I* reported this, they would probably be more curious how I know what it smells like.
I guess someone is trying to use us foreigners to erase the ‘low-quality fake diploma Koreans’ from the collective consciousness.
PS. You wouldn’t want people to start asking questions about politician’s credentials in an election year, now would you?
For #36 R.Elgin:
I smelled and thought the same thing for a while years ago, but there’s an innocent explanation (probably).
There’s a kind of Korean cigarette or cigarillo that tries to be different or healthy or something and adds herbs (no, not THAT herb). The result smells amazingly like pot or hash. It’s not very popular and I’m told the Koreans who like it have to search around for shops that bother stocking it.
I found out when a Korean business dude I knew lit one up at the end of a night of drinking. I bought a pack later (feeling hopeful) but… nothing. The smell is the only resemblance.
You probably have an afficionado of the stuff living near you.
It’s interesting seeing the perspective of people a couple generations removed from pot and their ideas about it. Certainly, mother’s milk leads to heroin addiction.
So much of Korea is similar to the US in the fifties. Despite rampant corruption from people in the upper tiers people still buy into so much of what they’re fed. As if they’d commit themselves to criminality except when it comes to media integrity.
@ 36, moxi (mugwort, I recall) also smells like dope.
They stayed away from sex? What incredible restraint. I mean surely some of these dope smoking unqualified foreign English teachers must have been banging Korean girls.
Yes, Hugh and Soldout, I know about the sook (mugwort) but I doubt that I was smelling that because this stuff had that hash stink and it was different from sook, which does smell much like pot.
#35 seouldot
English Spectrum was mentioned.
otoritakeo,
Re #27
I don’t think anyone is arguing these slackers broke the law(s) and shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences.
However, it’s the massive media frenzy these kind of stories draw that we find offense with.
English teachers with fake degrees, abusing substances, and insinuatively banging Korean girls - BAD !
Korean teachers with fake degrees, abusing substances (alcohol), and insinuatively banging Korean girls - ACCEPTABLE ?
More whining, moaning and bellyaching.
Your collective hypochondria is annoying. Don’t you guys ever get tired of complaining?
1. Follow the laws and you won’t have this problem.
2. It’s not Korean media bias that’s skewing your perspective. It’s your own. You guys are foreigners, so you’re far more sensitive to news about foreigner infractions than you are to other news.
3. Do any of you have objective proof that news of crimes committed by foreigners receive more coverage that similar crimes committed by Koreans? If not, then stop making stuff up.
4. Grow some sac.
YoungRocco, tell me when network TV in the west ran hour-long ‘exposes’ specifically smearing one visible minority and loading it with fear-inducing innuendo about murky ’sexual deviancy’ and ’stealing our money’.
Let’s compromise: I’ll complain anytime I want, and if you don’t like it you can f**k off. Ok?
1. The dudes who got busted were idiots… We know this
2. I wonder if the North-American media tried to pull off something like this… (granted I understand some of the Korean new outlets running this crap are lower tier)… But what would be the reaction to this kind of profiling in America (i.e. Korean Murder Suicides on The Increase.)
Add that with Virginia Tech… and it’s a trend. Just like the 6 foreigners getting busted for drugs.
Well, when in Rome…
Agreed.
Did any of the foreigners above say that Korean media bias was skewing their perspective? I think they were complaining that media bias was skewing the public’s perspective.
I don’t think people were necessarily arguing that foreigner crimes were receiving MORE coverage, and if they were, they’re wrong. At the same time, Korean media reports on foreigner crime do often border on hate mongering, and you’re either a) ignorant (either willfully or otherwise) or b) blowing smoke up our ass if you say otherwise. If the US press regularly reported on Koreans in the States in the manner in the manner of the Korean press, you’d be livid.
Yes, Rocco.
We should behave with the same kind of poise as Korea:
http://freekorea.us/2007/04/17.....rom-korea/
I’ll get on the horn with Ambassador Vershbow so he can issue a public apology on the behalf of the American community while I talk with some of my Western media contacts to get them to write some pieces on the imminent backlash. I might dash out a piece faulting the media for using these teachers’ Christian names first to highlight their “foreignesss.” And I’m still waiting for my email from the embassy telling me to stock up on water and ramyeon and not leave the house, too. Very disappointing on the embassy’s part, I should say.
#47, #48, probably done ubiquitously in Europe and America before 1945, even involving the governments, and even some before 1964, and more subtle after that until very recent times, and going even more under the radar after that, with periodic purging of people who were blunt and dumb enough to do it on the air, with Don Imus being the latest to eat asphalt for it.
@ Hugh
Cops (on their double-feature nights.. one hour :-P), any Fox News Channel show (TV & Radio) ever created/envisioned, Scarborough Country, Lou Dobbs Tonight, and The O’Reilly Factor (I know it’s FNC, but he really deserves another mention)
Sorry, Hugh. I think Korean media can be xenophobic too (though intentionality I must question), but your question there was just begging for it ^^. It was just… too perfect not to comment on it.
Fox TV are idiots, and I don’t watch it, but are you telling me they run documentaries about “Koreans: the Menace Within” or “Blacks are stealing your women!” etc?? Come on.
I don’t like O’reilly or Fox, but to even compare what I suppose on those shows is an occassional veiled racial comment with a full-frontal hour long slam is disingenous on your part.
Entire network departments would be fired for the smear-umentaries KBS and MBC proudly strut two or three times a year. They would never even make it on the air, or past an amazed silence in the meeting room when it was pitched.
Hugh:
BumfromKorea pretty much stole my thunder.
Robert said:
“We should behave with the same kind of poise as Korea:
http://freekorea.us/2007/04/17…..rom-korea/”
What point are you trying to make here, Robert?
Thank God, Have any of you guys seen any Koreans battering blacks and whites on the Seoul streets with baseball bats and sticks just because of their races? Well, it happened in Saint John in Canada.
http://www.canada.com/topics/n.....mp;k=80416
What is so wrong about sorting bad apples among qualified foreign English teachers out of this country? It is against the law in Korea to smoke Marijuana and hashish. Period. Poor Korean guys, whining online about foreigners humping Korean girls. It is time to take action!!!!
Whoa now, let’s not sugarcoat the “western” media I’ve listed up there.
Let’s not forget “Mexicans bring leprosy”, “Blacks are hopeless criminals”, “Arabs are all Islamic fascists, and deserves to be killed”, etc. antics. Rather than 1-hour documentary, it’s quite literally a daily dose of Vitamin Bullsh!t. Not that this somehow validates Korean media’s xenophobia, but vice versa doesn’t work either.
P.S. - I really like that phrase… ‘daily dose of Vitamin Bullsh!t’. Maybe I’ll use it to label my “National Security, Intelligence, and Terrorism” professor’s assertion in class discussion next time he tries to use Ann Coulter as a reliable source of information.
Ann Coulter IS a reliable source of information.
You liberals make me sick to my gut.
Can the following not be agreed upon by evenhanded, openminded souls here:
1) That KBS’s fear-mongering, sensational expose’ on the idiotic foreigners smoking pot in public and having forged credentials is xenophobic, juvenile. and, er, idiotic?
2) That any other Korean network’s hysterical and, er, fear-mongering documentaries on foreigners’ “Fornicating Korean Women” or “Stealing the Wages of Honest, Hard-working Koreans” or “Creating a Race of Unpure, Half-breed People because of Their Copulative Liasions with Koreans” or any other similar shitclap is even more juvenile, race-baiting, and ludicrous?
3) That Fox, CNN, Scarborough County, Lou Dobbs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Bill O’Reilly, among many other media in the U.S., are guilty of routinely putting out xenophobic, juvenile, race-baiting, ludicrous, and, yes, idiotic documentaries and/or written trash such as “Latinos Bring Leprosy across Our Borders” or “Be Wary of All Muslims and Those Who Resemble Them” or “Seung-hee Cho Represents the Rage and Absence of Sense of Humour That All Orientals Share” or any other like-minded shitshtick?
4) That people who defend/subscribe to/believe in/really care about/put much credence in such articles or shows (in either country) are shitshtick shitclappers who aren’t worth the energy it takes to criticise them (even though it admittedly feels to good to do so)?
5) That if your race, religion, skin colour, shit consistency, smoking habits, fornicating proclivities, surgically-repaired imperfections and/or other such insecurities/hobbies are exposed in these productions, it is a natural inclination to overreact (even if you yourself are not the target)?
6) That a tolerance to the these natural inclinations by others to overreact is suggested?
7) That we’ve had enough rain here on the peninsula in the last two months?
9) That Michigan is now going to be even MORE the butt of every joke conceived in Ohio for the rest of ‘07 (if not beyond)?
10) That not everyone reading this list is going to agree with all ten of them?
“Don’t bring drugs, don’t do drugs.
Follow these 2 rules alone and you’ll be fine in Korea.
I believe the drug laws across East Asia stem from bad feelings dating back to the Opium Wars.
Be a nice guy with the girls, not a drunken sailor.”
I wholeheartedly agree with these statement’s of WJK’s.
As I said before, he is one of the moderate Gyopo commenters, not a fanatic at all. Nor should he be villified as one such…
“Don’t bring drugs, don’t do drugs.”
Pretty much says it all.
Comparing producers of commentary and opinion journalism (such as Dobbs and Coulter) of any ideological stripe with mainstream news broadcasts, like the Korean ones in question here, is simply not a valid approach. That said, COPS is low-brow entertainment, and comparing KBS to that is, sadly, not unfair.
There’s a place for both in a free society, but the lines need to be drawn more brightly — or drawn to begin with — in the Korean media.
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