Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Pusanpoe]

I hear an interesting story. It seems some 'fraud" based artists in Korea got personal documents of a least one teacher by tricking them that there was a job in Japan. Anybody know of other such incidents. As the Korean economy is poor, wonder how many of these tricksters will show up. See korean bridges EFL law as below.

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I recently was advised by a friend that a certain job was available at a Japanese university. It was fairly well paying and as this friend had been in a Korean government sponsored programme and I had hiked and travelled with him, I thought it must be legitimate. In fact it was not. Last I heard of him, he was working for a Korean hogwon on a very short term contract.

Representations of its existence were false. But before I realized this I had sent copies of transcripts etc. I heard that the said university had also been a target of fraudulent efforts to obtain scholarship money and that the perpetrators had put forth the names of Chinese students who were found not to exist.

NOW A BIG QUESTION FOLOWS FROM THIS. If a lot of hogwons/imstitutes are marginal operations some of which are struggling should unsuspecting Canadians coming over wonder whether their personal records can be misused by shaddy operators, recruiters or even individual questionable teachers with access to such documents.

I read on the internet that about 65 to 70% of immigration requests to Canada from Chinese, for example include false documents. In fact there may be a huge industry in China producing many false documents based on obtaining formats from well meaning Canadians and other westerners who are innocent victims. Of course, there is no reason to simply single out China or Chinese personsas surely it is coincidental that this friend is of chinese decent (via possibly Hong Kong?) But it seems that a huge lot of people in China are anxious to gain professional opportunity in the west as wages in China are generally extremely low. Desparation unfortunately can lead to nefarious actions. Though I have to say, that overall the Chinese people I have met are kind and sociable.

THat so called friend by the way is now probably being looked into by authorities. I presume. And it is a sad statement, I think of how the recruiting by even the Korean government has to improve considerably especially in the EFL field. There should be a complete shake out and am glad at least the Korean government is requesting criminal checks of EFL teachers before they are given visas. But I doubt if they have the time or resources to verify the legitimacy of such letters and the hundreds (if not thousands) of hagwons employing EFL personnel illegally do not need such letters as they use people not on regular work visas.

AND IF THEY ARE WILLING TO DO SUCH ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES WHAT ELSE ARE THEY WILLING TO DO? Given the state of the world such questions seem very pertinent. And how do they continously get away with it when you would think many authorities are aware of such blatantly illegal operations.? THe Korean government and Chinese government may have to realize the worldwide implications of not cracking down on these operators and the impact of their relations with the U.S.A. etc for not doing so. I sometimes wonder if some hogwons have been essentially taken over by mob like people and then using their commercial positions to do all sorts of underhanded activities.

Of course, one should not get too paranoid as there are still many good hogwons out there. But again, it proves buyers beware about the people advertising the jobs and those giving them. Korea and China, in particular are not the safest and securist places for getting legitimate true to advertisement, EFL jobs and straight laced employers.I believe on Dave's eslcafe, this has been a problem stated on the China board. And there is a whole discussion board just to deal with problems experienced by primarily native speaker hogwon employees.

Final conclusion: THe Governments in China and Korea in particular should thoroughly investigate the EFL industry even within their own programmes so to close down shaddy operators and further reduce the riff raff charletans. They are willing to make huge probes into scummy politicians and put it on the front pages. How about scummy hogwons and teachers!

[Pusanpoe]

What do you think? Maybe the teacher's friend needed the documents because his own were not good enough for his job application. Could he change them using his computer skills especially if they were scanned. Heard some of the documents in question were from a British Columbia universityand the guy was a Canadian in fact of Chinese decent. So he can be easily identified as that reduces it only to a few hundred people at the most.