The Maeil Sinmun reports that schools — particularly regional colleges — and private academies are up in arms about the Ministry of Justice’s new visa requirements for foreigners looking to teach English in Korea.
More specifically, they say the new regulations — including the requirement to submit a criminal background check, which would require the nationals of nations not party to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents (read: Canadians) to return to their homeland once a year — are turning potential teachers off to Korea and making it difficult for schools to fill their staff requirements.
Moreover, the measures are driving up salaries for foreign teachers and finding fees to recruiting agencies.
Schools acknowledge the need to filter foreign teachers looking to come to Korea, but claim the new regulations — which treat all foreign teachers like criminals (their words, not mine) — are insufficient and will bring only ill side-effects.
The Ministry of Justice, however, is having none of it. The ministry said (or the Maeil Sinmun said it said) public insecurity about foreign language education has skyrocketed due to recent problems, including foreign teachers’ fake degrees, pot smoking and news that a serial child molester had taught in Korea. Accordingly, its new regulations would go into effect from Dec 15. A ministry official noted that nationals of Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents member nations could get their criminal records in Korea, and that it was studying measures so that instructors with experience teaching in Korea would not have to go through unnecessary measures.
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Well… yeah.
And considering that Neil WASN’T even on an E-2 is adding more fuel to the angry Canucks fire. Not to mention all of those other visas dirty pedos can use to get around kids.
Canadians make up about half of the EFL teachers here. The rules as they currently stand seem geared towards driving us all out.
And maybe that’s the plan.
As I’ve been saying, for those who can jump over or run around this new hurdle: CHA-CHING!
#2: I have no doubt the pedos and pot-heads on the F series visas feel the same way
Makes me wonder if this might have something to do with the Canada-Korea FTA negotiations.
There’s no overlap, someguy. Trade balance isn’t the same as balance of payments, and while I don’t know for sure, I’d bet the repatriated earnings of the 3D workers far outweigh whatever Cdn teachers wire out of the country (cash carried on SE Asian holidays also isn’t counted). FTAs with America are about trade and politics, all other FTAs are just about trade, and the new E2 regulations are just about politics.
With all this going on I just may go back and do the university thing.
#5,
I was only being half serious.
@6: I feel the same way.
I’ve had a great time teaching here, I’ve never had a bad experience with a cantankerous local, and I love all of my students, but I always fail at red tape. Remember those old rusty pliers with delusions of grandeur that your grandmother used to trim the hollyhocks? That’s the set I got for important documents. Without fail I always manage to make some unpardonable blunder and wind up costing myself or my employer a few extra dollars. And apart from my “Traveling Abroad” class I was a pretty decent teacher.
The MOJ’s statement on this issue, entitled ‘원어민 회화지도 (E-2) 사증제도 개선 안내’ (2007.11), starts by describing its motivation for enacting this policy change:
So, please don’t think that the actions of a single miscreant were the sole reason for change – the MOJ was also motivated to change the law because they watched a TV show which told them things were bad.
so then it was not a single miscreant, but a handful of them, right?
too bad there will never be a TV show extolling the hardworking virtues and almost endless compassion of the majority of foreign teachers here.
Isn’t KBS the government owned broadcaster?
If it’s on TV, it must be true.
perhaps i ought to just get trolley and pull myself along on the ground with a radio so racist policy makers, drunk ajoshis, and the MOJ can have an easier time trying to shit on me.
Contra #5, if this were just about (domestic) politics, they would both open the market and hold both domestic and foreign operators financially responsible for hiring unqualified and/or disqualified miscreants and for the latter’s defalcations – although, it must be said, that the reason that they don’t already place the onus on the primary beneficiaries of he current system – the domestic employers – and don’t open the market to foreign operators are also in part about domestic politics. The problem in Korea is that there is almost no economic issue that is not both inescapably domestic, since protectionism is such a crucial building block in the Korean edifice.
So who wants to bet that 6 months from now, the regulations will be quietly dropped, 2 months after the MOJ sends out a press release declaring victory in the war against English teachers with rap sheets? Sheesh, if you’re Canadian, your tourist visa won’t even run out before you can be teaching English, and neither your boss nor the gubment will know about your little run in with the law over that dime bag you scored for the Phish concert.
I’ve got a link to a pdf of the Korean document on my site here.
Contra contra, I’d say it is just domestic politics, and the new reg’s prove it. Faced with a public that is angry over an artificial media frenzy about misbehaving English teachers, a populist government would come down hard and publicly on the systems that let such people enter and stay in the country. Whether all this bluster actually gets implemented is another story – the main point is that the policies are proclaimed loudly. The current gov’t is populist, the policies are populist. It is just and only politics.
I know you were kidding, Someguy. I just felt like waxing something-or-other.
According to information released by both MOJ and MOI, this is being implimented and will go into effect December 15.
Any Canadians who need to renew E-2 visas for currently-held positions and who do not wish to travel to Canada this winter would be wise to visit their Immigration offices this week in order to get that done without having to provide a criminal record check. Although their local Immigration office may not want to handle the visa renewal at this time, those who have all documents required for visa renewal may press their case. Also, it is advised that they get their employer to contact their local Immigration office beforehand to plead on their behalf. This will allow them a one-year grace period; they will have to obtain the record for their next visa renewal in one year’s time, or new E-2 visa at any time.
Ugh, gbnhj, that’s just hateful. It’s really going to happen. All my airy political diatribing aside, it’s just hateful. What a lousy way to treat people.
Yes, it is lousy, Linkd. As others have noted, it may give the appearance of forcing the reduction violent and/or more serious types of crime, but will not actually do so.
First, the criminal record check, as currently described, is not sufficiently thorough enough as to uncover any and all crimes for which a person has been found guilty. It is possible for persons to establish residence in new locations, and then have record checks performed in these new locations, without their criminal pasts appearing.
Second, simply because an individual has not been arrested for a crime does not mean that she has never committed a crime. The Neil example unfortunately demonstrates this well.
Third, simply because an individual has not committed or been arrested for a crime in the past does not mean that she will never do so in future. The Pre-Crimes Division in Minority Report notwithstanding, no one can know what anyone will or will not do in the future, so policing against the possibility of future transgressions is simply hoping for an intended result.
Fourth, E-2 visa-holders may be the majority of non-Korean educators on work visas here, but they are surely not the largest group of non-Korean educators – those teaching here illegally far outnumber those teaching here legally, according to government estimate. And, widening it further, E-2’s are but one band in the visa spectrum, with hundreds of thousands of persons working here on visas of all types. And all these people, irrespective of their visa type, may or may not commit some crime, so toughening policies for E-2’s only will not stop crime.
Stopping crime is laudible, and I support increased inspection. But a policiy which falls well short of its intended goal, yet seems likely to generate an increase in animosity and economic expense, should be reworked or discarded.
Not surprised that schools are pissed off about this. It doesn’t apply to me – I’m one of those untouchable F-visa diddler/junkie/infectious types – but this will scare off a lot of otherwise decent teachers and see them replaced in many cases with people on tourist visas, who – rumor has it – aren’t as easy to keep tabs on as legal teachers with working visas.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, as Zonath mentioned, regulations are relaxed once it becomes obvious how impractical it is. (Impractical for Korean schools trying to do business, that is. Screw the foreign teachers!)
I think that a few people, including the guy getting jerked around for having a degree written in Latin (the nerve of the guy!) have suggested better coordination between the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education. (Plus, I would presume, provincial education authorities.) Sounds nice in principle, but I’d almost rather have to deal with my inept bureaucracies one at a time than to contend with them en masse and incapable of/unwilling to cooperate with one another. (Plus, I’d like to keep the tax fellers somewhat out of the picture…)
This should come as no surprise, Korean ESL teachers have been pressuring the MOJ to do this for many years. With an election coming up, the hate big nose campaign will run into high gear.
That said, any foreigner wanting to work in Canada must submit to a criminal records check. I was actually surprised that Korea did not do the same, given the “quality” of a good part of the ESL “teachers” I saw in Korea.
However, with present exchange rates, I can’t really understand why any Canadian would work in Korea. If one wants to do the ESL thing heading to China would be much more of a rewarding experience at the moment.
“So who wants to bet that 6 months from now, the regulations will be quietly dropped”
Kind of like comment moderation at the Marmot’s Hole?
#21,
Oh, god. Yeah. Well, Grammar Translation is still the cornerstone of Korean English education. Let’s just say that I’m not impressed with how and why some of them are implementing the use of chants and hand movements in their classroom (and I won’t even go into grammaticality and whether the utterances are meaningful or not). The way I see it, music or not, it’s still rote repetition when it’s overused–rote repetition being the favored crutch of lazy teachers who would rather hide their inability to communicate in the target language than teach according to their students’ needs. One way to describe what they are doing would be to say that it’s grammar translation repackaged as edutainment for the purpose of impressing parents. Yeah, from Grammar Translation to Grammar Translation. That’s what I call progress!
Instead, they should concentrate on classroom research, look at what they are doing and see how it affects the language acquisition process. But, hey, that’s too difficult, right?
@23– In fact, if you take any TESOL or TEFL course, you will find that by necessity, repetition is not a “crutch of lazy teachers”, but a necessary part of teaching beginning students. There is also the whole issue of being stuck with substandard texts that are either required by the franchise, or chosen by the hagwon director without any input from those who have to use them.
If you are referring to Korean ESL teachers, I think that their greatest faults (in general) are:
a.) inability to communicate in English themselves— I have met some who cannot even answer questions as simple as “How are you?”
b.) The ones who do speak English well tend to think that they know English better than the native speakers themselves, because they studied in the Philippines for a year.
c.) They tend to rely on tests that require the students to translate English into Korean, thus really only testing the kids’ ability to write in proper Korean.
Anyway, theories involved with L2 acquisition all tend to have a component of repetition, though translation should be kept to a minimum. I try to use translation only when discussing abstract concepts. Otherwise, it is best to use previously known synonyms and antonyms, sketches and/or demonstrations.
You do touch on some good points though– style over substance being one of them.
If Korea really wanted results from its English education system they would get rid of all the Korean teachers who don’t even know English. I would say that more than half of them don’t know English. The first way they could do that is to enforce the regulations already in place, which require that the teachers have a B.A. or better in English. I have yet to find an English major in a hagwon, and I have been here for 9 years.
Anyway, about the regulations… Just like the Korean ESL lessons, it is all style over substance. If they really want to improve things, they will start requiring some form of certification for all teachers, rather than treat all E2 foreigners as potential criminals, because they saw something once on MBC. Korea spends massive amounts of money on English education, and the results are pathetic.
This last point cannot be pushed all onto the native-speakers, many of whom DO know what to do in a classroom, but are crippled by bad required texts, regular contractual abuses by unscrupulous directors, know-it-all Korean ESL teachers (who actually know nothing), and so on.
“In fact, if you take any TESOL or TEFL course, you will find that by necessity, repetition is not a “crutch of lazy teachers”, but a necessary part of teaching beginning students.”
I have taken a great deal of TESOL and TEFL courses. I’ve even taught a few.
Judicious use is the key. Even if the teacher explains to you the literal and figurative meanings of “Cão que ladra não morde”, you can repeat it until you’re blue in the face, it won’t teach you how to produce a similar utterance…nor will it tell you whether it’s Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, or French.
And while I’m at it…
“a.) inability to communicate in English themselves— I have met some who cannot even answer questions as simple as “How are you?””
Hence their reliance on the Grammar Translation method. It’s a crutch, as I was saying.
“b.) The ones who do speak English well tend to think that they know English better than the native speakers themselves, because they studied in the Philippines for a year.”
I wouldn’t say that, but some of them tend to look down on native speakers. Don’t you know, all our diplomas are forgeries?
“c.) They tend to rely on tests that require the students to translate English into Korean, thus really only testing the kids’ ability to write in proper Korean.”
Again, grammar translation…and studying for a test, not for fluency (too much emphasis on extrinsic motivators and not enough on intrinsic motivators).
too bad there will never be a TV show extolling the hardworking virtues and almost endless compassion of the majority of foreign teachers here.
That one made me chuckle.
“So who wants to bet that 6 months from now, the regulations will be quietly dropped”
I will take the bet. The looser must donate 50,000 to any charity.
Honor system.
#28,
Save the money to buy an airplane ticket for when you renew your contract.
i am completely discombobulated about this issue.
I’ve heard they don’t start until March 15th now.
I really want to do a story for Zine Magazine about this issue, but I don’t know enough to write the damn story.
Any takers?
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