Hey, pothead English teachers — don’t ever say Korean prosecutors don’t care about you.
MBC reports that with “foreign drug crimes” skyrocketing recently, the Incheon Prosecutor’s Office has held a program aimed at educating and enlightening foreigners about Korea’s drug laws.
Said Min Gyeong-cheol, an Incheon prosecutor, “During investigations, I could experience a lot that [foreigners] are smoking drugs like marijuana because they can’t sense the differences between Korea’s legal culture and the legal culture of their own countries. So in this case, punishments are important, too, but so is explaining sufficiently the differences in legal culture.”
The lecture was attended by some 100 foreigners. According to MBC, foreign English teachers showed much interest in the punishment laws for drug offenses, with which they were, reportedly, unaware. Said a Canadian English teacher, “In Canada, if we smoke marijuana, we just get fined, but in Korea, the punishment is much harsher, with jail sentences of up to five years.”
See that, prosecutors are enlightening Canukistanis already!
MBC concludes, “There are some 16,000 foreign English teachers in Korea. The number of foreign teachers is expected to increase even more in the future with the reinvigoration of English education, so in order to stop the spread of drugs, it appears the strengthening of immigration screening of foreigners and educating foreigners before hand about drugs will be needed even more.”
Oh, Yonhap ran this story, too. According to the Yonhap story, some 100 foreign English teachers were invited to the lecture, which dealt with, well, Korean drug law, criminal action procedures and the “evils of drugs.”
Incheon Prosecutors Office has no immediate plans to hold the lecture again, although they may if they feel it helpful.
Oh, this is a great headline from Yonhap:
“대마초 피우면 처벌받네요”<인천 원어민강사>
“Oh, We Get Punished for Smoking Marijuana”: Incheon Native Speaker Instructor
23 Comments
“Pot bad, soju good….mmmmkay?”
Yes, Mr. Mackey!
Lazy, silly weed is bad, bad, bad! But angry chemical soju is all Korean goodness! mmmmmmkay?
Prosecutors should also teach the police how to identify opium. I see it growing in gardens all over the place.
Doesn’t matter what is bad or goodness, it is the LAW.
Even in western countries..pot is illegal..alcohol is not.
If you don’t like the LAW..write some letters, start a picket line..cut off your thumb or jump into the Han.
Or, ideally, all of the above, in order.
… or douse yourself with bottles of soju, set yourself aflame with lit opium leaves, and charge towards the Incheon prosecutors’ office - molotov cocktail, korean-styled!
“The lecture was attended by some 100 foreigners. According to MBC, foreign English teachers showed much interest in the punishment laws for drug offenses, with which they were, reportedly, unaware. Said a Canadian English teacher, “In Canada, if we smoke marijuana, we just get fined, but in Korea, the punishment is much harsher, with jail sentences of up to five years.””
Right, so these people show up, probably in the hopes of getting the message across that not all foreigners are breaking Korean law, and the reporter spins it that way? No matter what we do, we can’t win, can we?
To quote the late great comic Sam Kinnison, “The key message here is ‘Don’t get caught!”"
yoosr, nice pic. you look like that mysterious green-eyed afghan from the cover of National Geographic some years ago. They tracked her down a few years later, and she looked like she’d aged about 3 times as long as was the reality.
I believe that IS the mysterious green-eyed afghan from the cover of National Geographic some years ago.
17 years later
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/afghangirl/
Yes, I know that is illegal in the U.S. too.
I’m well aware of the laws of both countries. In the case of weed=bad & alcohol=good, I fully believe it to be a stupid and ignorant law in both counrties. However, I don’t live in the U.S. I live here.
Because the punishment is so severe, we have to abide by this law if we want to stay in Korea. Yes, it sucks, but it’s the way it is.
Now, no matter if I’m living in Korea or in the U.S., I will never agree with someone and I will definitely question the intelligence of someone who actually believes that alcohol is just fine while marijuana is a real danger that is far more harmful and must be stopped at all costs.
Both of them are drugs. While they both have their good & bad sides, it is very well known that alcohol causes far more problems and is far more harmful than marijuana. If anyone does not understand this, including the governments of the US & Korea, then I will continue to think of them as ignorant idiots!
Also,
it’s funny that the cops are holding this meeting to try and get foreigners to stop toking up.
You would think they would want more doing it because the word on the street(from a former K-policeman) is that they get a million Won bonus for every foreigner(possibly every person) they catch with drugs or traces in their system.
This is why, when they catch someone, they demand that the person write down the names of all the people they smoked with in Korea. More offenders= more money in their pockets!
*I’m not stating this as absolute fact as I do not want to be prosecuted. I’m just saying that it came from a reliable source.
They should have thrown a net over all those teachers who came and given ‘em a whiz quiz.
so, is it illegal to merely have the chemicals in your body?
I wonder if the authorities kept a record of the people who attended their little informational session.
foreigners smokin dope in korea, koreans startin criminal gangs in america. that’s be a fair deal if ya ask me.
“so, is it illegal to merely have the chemicals in your body?”
Yes. It is the same as “possession” under Korean law.
However, the officer is required to have a warrant for your piss or blood. They count of foreigners not knowing that. I’m sure that if you refuse, they will just hold you until they get a warrant.
If you want to get more wacky, we can talk about the Korean company worker who smoked up in Amsterdam while on a business trip. He was arrested by the police in Korea because he blogged about his hash bar experience.
They are serious about nabbing drug takers here!
Cmm, Robert Koehler … yes, the pix in my gravatar is indeed the Afghan girl. Her eyes in the National Geographic feature, 17 years ago, remain etched in my memory. Her eyes speak volumes of … It saddens me to see such eyes around, I am not surprised that her ageing process has accelerated way beyond someone of her age, elsewhere … I’ve been stopping by the Marmot’s Hole since 2003. I left Seoul in late 2003, and this has been my most enjoyable highlight of the day since - coming here to keep myself abreast of the city of ambiguities, paradoxes, ironies, comedies and tragedies. I have been lurking around silently for the most part of my reading pleasure here. Thank you for blogging
Warm fuzzy tingles….
PS
All lurkers welcome! They don’t take up much space, and if they click on the occasional ad, they help pay for bandwidth.
For crying out loud, how many E2s have to get jailed/deported before they learn their lesson? I would WALK OUT of a place if I saw drug activity going on when I was in Korea - and I smoke weed all the time back here in Canada, so it’s not like I have a bias against the stuff.
Yes it’s illogical and unfairly administered, but Korea’s drug policy seems pretty relaxed compared to, say, Thailand or China, where you might pay the ultimate penalty. As far as I’ve seen they just bang you up in jail until you come up with a sufficiently large bribe and then they deport you with a big stamp that says “IDIOT SMOKED DRUGS IN KOREA - CANNOT RETURN FOR TWO YEARS AND ANY IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL READING THIS, TAKE NOTE”.
Let’s leave this discussion for Dave’s ESL and only revisit it if someone other than a teacher gets busted, eh?
What is South Korea going to do when the unite with their “Ice” smoking, Opium addicted Northern brethren?
Libertarianism.The ONLY legitimate ism.
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