Teaching Kimchi

Korean lawmakers need to come up with a new policy forbidding the issuance of work visa for unqualified English instructors. For a long time unqualified English instructors with forged degrees used to teach English in Korea.

With the arrest of 32-year-old Canadian Christopher Paul Neil, a suspected pedophile who taught at a school in Korea for three months before fleeing to Thailand the policy came into effect.

Because of the high demand for native English teachers in Korea a lot of money can be made teaching English there. There have been countless stories of Westerners coming to teach English in Korea under promises of large salaries, bountiful bonuses, and competitive benefits only to find that their work conditions are very different from those they were promised.

There are currently 16,000 foreigners working in Korea as English teachers. Over the past five years, over 800 foreign English instructors have been caught with forged degrees or having worked in Korea without proper visas. Some have even been found to have taught under the influence of drugs.

Lawmakers told that as per the new law the criminal and medical histories of all education work visa applicants will be scrutinized before a visa is granted.

Source: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200710/200710250003.htm

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