HT to Gusts of Popular Feeling for this.
You hear about the new visa regulations to be a teacher in Korea?
YOU have to provide a criminal background check, pass a blood test for drugs, HIV, and likely whatever else they think we all have, and have to leave the country in order to extend your E-2 visa.
This is a stroke of pure genius!
Treat all foreign teachers like criminals, and force them to produce these documents every time they apply for or even RENEW a visa.
So, now the hagwons and schools will be more apt to hire the many more foreigners working here illegally on tourist visas, while the number of the vast majority of completely non-child molester, non-drug runner foreigners willing to put up with an extended life of being treated like a child-molesting, AIDS-ridden, drug abusing criminal will surely decrease.
I'm glad I have an F-4 Kyopo visa. Seriously, since having "Korean blood" means I am most certainly NOT a child-molesting, AIDS-ridden, drug abusing criminal. Glad we got that straight.
Instead of doing something that would actually help FIX the problem, such as making a two-tiered system that would offer something like the 2-year, open F-4 visa to foreigners who have worked for say, 3 years or more WITHOUT incidents resembling the wild, drug needle-filled orgies Koreans seem to imagine all foreigners have with the little boys and girls whom we teach by dint of our faked degrees – which would reward the majority of good people here and create a more competitive job market by separating the ability to stay in Korea from one's workplace, we're just going to shrink the supply of good ones and increase incentive to shirk the system.
And with all the inconvenience, additional expense, and ill will created by such a policy, why would anyone come teach English in Korea?
Had I not an F-4 and a very specific set of reasons to stick it out here, I'd leave Korea, too. I hate to agree with some readers here who ask that question: "Why stay in Korea?" but that's the question people are going to ask.
And instead of rewarding those who'd like to stay long term because they've developed some reason to stay, you're going to be penalizing them.
Just on a practical level alone, if I had to leave the country and come up with a criminal background check, submit to extensive blood tests, and have to travel back to all the places I have lived in the US in order to get a complete criminal background check, since there's no central database on a federal level for records kept on state levels, I'd have to go to Ohio, Rhode Island, and California to do it. Or at least do some seriously irritating paperwork by mail and hope that all the stupid, clogged bureaucracy back in my OWN country gets this back to me in at least 6-8 weeks. And is all this paperwork going to come in during the time I have for vacation?
Who has potentially the thousands of dollars in time and money that may be necessary to spend in order to simply extend a visa?
Christ.
And for what? Inflated, racist media reports of incidents that largely are unfounded, or didn't even happen?
And let's not forget that the real problem isn't criminals coming to Korea to teach English, but rather the disreputable places that set the bar of lowest-common denominator for the quality of people hired. As in any human resources issue, getting qualified people isn't a matter of checking whether they are HIV carriers or child molesters, but improving the size and quality of the pool, while keeping the conditions of work and pay as fair and pleasant as possible.
Putting pressure on disreputable schools and hagwons to stop screwing over its foreign teachers, to professionalize their hiring practices, curriculums, and business practices, and to actively eliminate the sheister language schools and institutes that spoil the water for everyone – that or any one of these things would be far more useful in the long run.
Then, you'll have more, better people applying for the ever-increasing number of English teaching positions that this English-crazed society is creating, instead of making the pool smaller.
Of course, this is the thinking of Korean bureaucrats who just read Korean newspapers and have discussions with only Koreans as to just how to deal with FOREIGNERS. I'm sure no foreign English teachers were consulted in planning this.
And for those of you wondering whether you should go to Korea or Japan to teach...Korea or Japan...Korea or Japan...
Psst! Japan!
Well, unless you have "Korean blood." Like me. Then you're OK.
And the funny thing is that a lot of Korean folks will hear complaining like this and think, "You don't like it, go back home!"
Don't worry. People will. Or at least to Japan to work, or for their tri-monthly visa run.
"대~한민국!"
