Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Kimchieluver]

la tete means head in French (noun)

[Derrek]

[JongnoGuru]

[chronicpride]

Sorry to be an ass and steer an eslcafe thread back on topic, but I don't know how you guys on the 1st page read into the article that they are just going after teachers with no degrees. What I read was that they are also going after any teacher that might be on a tourist visa or teaching privates. Hence the reason for the checking passports and bank accounts method and posting ads for private lessons on ESL sites. Their method of going after the non-degree element looks like its going to be by giving recruiters a hard time.

What's really surprising is what wasn't said, like a change to immigration policy for background checks or degree verification. If something like that was being implemented, then they wouldn't be pressing recruiters to clean up their acts.

I'd hazard a guess that the timing of the crackdown is to keep in line with the regularly scheduled pattern of these things, coupled with the tricky re-assigning of police to help make up for immigration's manpower issues. If last fall's prostitution crackdown can foretell anything, the bulk of the police were re-assigned after the conclusion of the 1st month, which coincided with a press release detailing the crackdown's results.
Bear in mind that the immigration task force who will be coordinating this, likely has a good historical list of which doors to knock on, to generate their numbers. If you are an illegal teacher and your director is a total cheapskate, then I'd be worried, as he probably has been too cheap to grease the proper palms, as well. And that'll be enough to put your school on the list. The recruiter pressure and what you are going to see in Itaewon and Hongdae will be more of trying to achieve deterrence through harassment.
Having said that, I'd expect June to early-mid July will be fairly intense for those of you that are under the radar.

[crazylemongirl]

[JongnoGuru]

Okay, back on topic. Heh-heh... got a bit off the track there. But hey, I didn't start all that. It was Derrek or PS, not me. Just wanted that on the record.

All right, let's have a look at some of the tactics.

Random passport/ARC spot-checks ... at bars & clubs in Hongdae & Itaewon ... at night ... when those places are packed and noisy and sweaty.... So, I guess they'll just be outside the clubs lassoing likely suspects on the streets? Oooh-kay.

But I suppose stationing cops & IO agents in Clubland would have powerful PR effect on many K-netizens, while at the same time improving the hit-ratio for non-teacher types. Might they have paddywagons ready to haul suspects away? A little footage of that would go down a treat on nightly news, I'm sure. I'm not being sarcastic... this one sounds like a media 'winner' -- discussions of diploma verification and E2 screening whatever-whatevers sounds deadly boring and dry by comparison. And it just doesn't make good TV news, unlike a pack of scared-looking round-eyes in the back of a paddywagon in Hongdae at 2 a.m.

Inspections of teachers' bank account passbooks ... meaning just the accounts the schools happen to know about and pay salary into ... not other accounts a teacher may have opened at other banks ... or bank accounts in their Korean girl/boyfriend's name ... Right? Got it.

Planting phoney job ads ... Okay now, this one actually appeals. All sneaky and underhanded. Yep, if they have the talent to pull those sorts of sting operations off, I imagine that could be rather fun.

But yeah, as you say, Chronic, this really is deterrence through harrassment. Have they jettisoned the old apartment-guard snitch-for-rewards ploy? That one always seemed like a good way to save money (well, earn it, actually) and manpower.

[chronicpride]

The phoney job ads will be interesting to look out for and when they start cropping up.

Jongno, great new av, btw.

Kinda reminds of this photo:

[mishlert]

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

[desultude]

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Tete means head, silly. Gimme a head. They obviously had a cannibal fetish to work out.

[Teufelswacht]

Back on 3/20 when I posted the link to the same article as the OP I stated that I had received a friendly visit from the local PD wanting to check the foreigners that work for me. Well, according to the other academy owners in the area, they are receiving visits also. I have been in business about 6 years now and this is the first visit I have ever received. I think the "deterrence by harrassment" scenario has a lot of merit to it. I think in some cases the harrassment may extend to the academy owners to deter them from hiring illegals. This, in turn, will possibly lead to reporting by owners on other owners - great way to damage the competition.

Not to sound alarmist but a fair warning ladies and gents - if you are working 2 locations for your boss and don't have it annotated/approved at immigration, now is the time to stop or get legal. The authorities are looking for any/all violations, not just private teaching and fake diplomas - they want a good "body count," if you will, as JG talked about earlier. If you are working at an academy without an E-2 with the promises, by the director, of a visa run very soon I would recommend you stop and force the issue. Anyway.....

There may be some good that comes out of this. It may lead to an increased spotlight on the whole industry as outlined in a recent Yonhap news report..........

South Koreans' Zeal for English Leads to Abuse of 'Hagwon' System

By Matt Hodges
SEOUL, March 4 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean public's gold rush for English and a better life has led to educational innovations, such as "English villages," and depredations, according to some local media that have put Western language teachers under the microscope.

In the global telecommunications hub, where unemployment among young people is skyrocketing due to intense job competition, parents routinely send pre-schoolers and older students to extra-curricular English "hagwon," or private academies, in hopes of giving them an early leg up the career ladder.

Students often have to run from school to English, math, science, piano and other specialized academies to keep up with their parents' dreams of success.

Because the English-language institutes frequently only require a native tongue and a bachelor's degree, however, there is a high degree of latitude in terms of quality.

In some quarters, the system provides excellent immersion teaching. In others, it "lays itself open for abuse," says English-language instructor Nathan Millard from Britain.

"It is ridiculous that someone who knows nothing of Korea, knows nothing about teaching and has only a degree can walk into a job teaching a foreign language ... So this is a problem in Korea, but it is a problem that Korea has created for itself," said the teacher based in Ilsan, a satellite city of the capital.

Rather than attack the root cause of the problem, recent over-blown media reporting has tended to demonize foreign teachers and foster racial animosity.

On Feb. 19, terrestrial TV station SBS aired a program ("I want to know that") painting a picture of foreign teachers in South Korea as an assortment of high-school dropouts, losers, drug peddlers and pedophiles.

Millard, who was interviewed for the show at 1 a.m. the previous weekend at a popular Seoul party area, said the key issue -- a teaching system that badly needs one of President Roh Moo-hyun's election-winning platform of reforms -- was being sidelined.

"For example (they) said, 'Isn't it true that many foreign teachers have one-night stands with Korean girls?' and whether we agreed it was easy to get a job in Korea, playing on the idea foreigners see it as an easy country," he said.

The show's high ratings cashed in on the negative sentiment sparked by a foreign-administered Web site that pulled the plug after incensing the nation by allowing a step-by-step guide to bedding local women on its bulletin board posted by a foreign English teacher.

"Even my girlfriend believes this stuff now, that all the teachers only have high-school diplomas and they're all demons," said Andrew Petty, a former reporter of The Korea Herald, an English-language newspaper published in Seoul.

Since the early-1990's, a wave of hagwon have sprung up offering conversational English tuition to students, bored housewives and professionals. According to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources, there are 5,138 foreign language institutes and 6,410 foreign teachers in the country.

Many hagwon use CCTV surveillance in the classroom to monitor teachers, who may be experts in bioengineering or botany but know little of teaching English. Critics argue that they should not be granted working visas in the first place.

"I don't think our government is doing a good job regulating private institutes, hagwon and foreign teachers ... it is essential to set rigid regulations on employment for teachers so that students can be protected," said an official at the Korean Education Development Institute, requesting anonymity.

As if to underscore the point, local English-language newspapers frequently run advertisements for a new fad: telephone teaching. "No experience necessary!" is the banner for one.

Asked about plans to better regulate the system, an official at the Lifelong Education Division at the Education Ministry felt that the problem was one of supply and demand: "If we significantly upgrade the qualifications required, supply will fall short and this will make the price (at hagwons) higher."
Falling birth rates and student figures in past decades testify to the potential social ramifications of a hike in fees.

Government statistics show that between 1980-2003 the number of elementary school students dropped by 1.5 million -- a trend Seoul National University Professor of Applied Linguistics Dr. Oryang Kwon attributes to a successful birth-control campaign, more careers for women and exorbitant tutoring fees that "scare prospective parents from having more than one child."
The feeding frenzy for English has spun off a lucrative black market where people who skipped college can earn up to US$50 an hour for reading the day's news in their native language.

"We're not teachers. We're entertainers," said Ray Jordan, a Canadian finance student who worked for an illegal outfit in 2003 that sends teachers to "home-classes" in suburban areas.

"We do the same thing every lesson -- chanting and picture cards. Sometimes we circle round to the same kids and go through exactly the same routine. The kids even remember us."
Like many, he was wooed into Korea's teaching market by the offer of free international flights, US$2000-plus a month, free apartment, taste of a new culture.

In this unevenly regulated environment, horror tales of forfeited remuneration, summary dismissals and teachers doing "midnight runs" on payday abound. The U.S. State Department only recently softened their advisory "counseling against" teaching here as an occupation.

"My hagwon falsified teacher's resumes, saying they were from prestigious schools like Berkeley," said a Korean-Canadian woman employed in the affluent district of Daichi-dong in southern Seoul two years ago.

"I got fired three days before my contract ended. According to (my director) 'I didn't complete the terms of the contract' and wasn't entitled to the bonus month," said American Scott Oer.

Such claims come thick and fast in Korea, where many teachers only last a year, but none are quite as bizarre as the murky distinction between legal and illegal teachers.

Irishman Alex McGreevy was deported Feb. 21 for working at a school without an E2 (teaching) visa -- a permit denied him after his previous boss dismissed him without granting a crucial "release" letter. He was given the option of a US$500 fine or a prison cell and given a 12-day leaving order.

The irony? He is a qualified "career" teacher.

Seoul National University's Dr. Kwon says the solution is greater social vigilance.

"Parents and teachers need to be rightly educated to believe that NS (native speaker) teachers are not panacea for learning English effectively and efficiently. Well-trained Korean teachers of English can, and do, teach English better than untrained or poorly trained NS teachers," he said.

Over 120 years since English was introduced into the national curriculum and half a century after schools were partially Americanized following the nation's liberation from Japan in 1945, the laws on foreign hagwon teachers remain stuck in a time warp.

Nascent trends such as TETE (teaching English through English) programs may up the ante, however, by providing stiffer competition in the nation's fierce market economy.

Local authorities made a bold move in this direction in 2003 by putting Korean English teachers through six-month boot camps in an environment of native speakers. The quota grows with each year as the clock ticks on a percentage of backpackers looking for an easy meal ticket at the head of a Korean classroom.

(END)

[Captain Corea]

interesting article Teufelswacht.

As for the Immi' crack-down i've been wondering about this.

Suppose the officers come to a night club and check everyones ID. Supose 60% have an ARC while the rest only have tourist visas. SO WHAT!? What will that prove? It will only show that tourists like to go to bars! Serously, it makes no sense at all other than to catch people that have over stayed a visa (which I don't think is a real problem).

The bank accounts is a slightly different matter; if they were to check "suspected" foreigners accounts (or accounts in their names) I think they'd hit on quite a few. How to get that list of foreigners? Maybe take it from the night club raids but better yet do it as part of an investigation. If someone is "busted" for teaching illegally, why not put a case together and actually PROVE IT!?

In my opinion the best place to start a crackdown is at the airport. If you have trained Immi-officials that ask question like "well you have been to Korea 6 times in the last three years and stayed for 6 months each time (if its a Canadian), what exactly are you doing in Korea?" Or possibly flagging individuals for further investigation.

As for the web-site investigations, well... they should be carefull with that one. Although it would seem obvious to investigate everyone who is looking for part time work... what if that person didn't even post the add? Maybe I have bones to pick with someone so I put their name on the web.. it's been done before.

I guess my question is.. will this be effective? The crack down on prostitution (to my surprise) worked (well, kinda). Will a bunch of officers scouring the streets, with little o no English ability, be able to snag those rascaly foreigners?

[Derrek]

Captain Corea, the crackdown on prostitution worked temporarily.

I went shopping at Youngsan last week, and was curious to see if the "windows" were still there, and took a peek (they're right by sinyongsan station). They were all lit up like normal.

Hookers are still in Itaewon, and even though Korean police and MPs/CPs patrol (it's mostly MPs/CPs) there are still hookers. They have obviously hurt business, but it's still out in the open. I think it's mostly due to the US Military crackdown in that area.

Also, I still see barbershop poles around.

[desultude]

[chronicpride]