Turbulent Times in Korea . . . for Teachers, Anyway . . .
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
For a very, very long time, native speakers of English with a Degree could get jobs teaching English – with varying degrees (ahem) of success – in Korea, having a very good set of conditions and a decent salary for so doing. However, as with Japan, where a similar situation obtained, this came to be abused . . . and so the Koreans decided to do something about it.
Here we discuss the changes, the new documentary requirements and the implications for the long term.
So here we are again; over half way through my fifth year in South Korea, still working for the same employer and facing the prospect of yet another year here, when something deep and disturbing slithered its way over the horizon. Two problems had begun to manifest themselves:
Firstly, a thriving industry has arisen online supplying people with fake Degrees and university transcripts for profit. The first we knew of this was about three years ago, when foreigners were summoned en masse to the Masan Immigration Office to have their Degrees verified – again. This was when the scale of the problem was finally emerging from the background. People with falsified documents had been getting jobs in the private sector in Korea and had, in fact, been able to get away with it for quite some time – including at least one prominent academic. She was subsequently named and shamed (but will not be so treated in this discussion).
Secondly, the case of the alleged Canadian paedophile Christopher Neil, who actually had no criminal record back in his homeland, but had his Internet activity monitored and was finally arrested in Thailand. His case is an interesting one, as will become apparent later.
These two had slowly been coming together, but the catalyst was the snap election called in December 2007, in which a typical (for Korean politicians) display of foreigner-bashing was, as always, a cheap and convenient tub to thump to motivate the public, and the media were active as ever – as if this country were somehow more perfect than others, and its public figures were also less blameworthy than those of other nations. Christopher Neil was mentioned despite the fact that there was no evidence of any "activity" on his part while he was here or even previously; a female university lecturer was discovered to have no qualifications, though she had originally claimed otherwise; and these and the minority of foreigner teachers with falsified documents were grafted together and the result, in December, was a change of requirements for the issuance of the E-2 visa, which is required for most instructors who intend to teach here.
Neil had in fact been working here on an E-7 visa. This is issued to people who work here in positions at the invitation of the Korean government (or, more accurately perhaps, local government institutions). But he apparently committed no crimes here in Korea, nor did he have any detected previously in his homeland of Canada. Bear this in mind as you read on. He did however take a picture of himself and scrambled it using Adobe Photoshop; he then posted this on the Internet. Ahh, but there you go, someone else with Photoshop was then able to unscramble the picture and reveal his face! Very clever . . . no?
So when he skipped across to Thailand – for whatever he intended to do – he was nabbed. The picture had been descrambled, his face was known and his activities on the Net, having been monitored for some time previously, had revealed his intentions. He had apparently also been daft enough to taunt people online using his disfigured photo.
Now we come to the sequelae. Due to the media-fanned public outcry ("Something must be done about these evil foreigners!!!"), the Immigration Bureau responded by toughening up the requirements for the renewal or issuance of new E-2 visas, and in true Korean style, they may have shot themselves in the foot – again.
All foreigners intending to teach in Korea must now provide the following:
* A certificate from their local or national law enforcement agency testifying to their lack of a criminal record (i.e. no history of violent behaviour, abusive sexual habits or use of drugs);
* This must be apostilled or notarised by the appropiate authority to prove that it is genuine;
* Their original Degree certificate;
* Two sealed copies of Degree transcripts, issued by their university and less than three months old (repeated annually);
* A satisfactory result of a medical examination to prove that they do not have any STDs, are not alcoholics and do not take drugs (repeated annually);
* A signed copy of their contract (repeated annually).
* A passport issued in their country of origin with no less than six months remaining validity before a new one needs to be issued.
The medical examination and transcripts apparently need to be submitted annually. New prospective teachers who have never been in Korea before also need to travel – possibly some great distance (think of Canada) – to attend an initial interview at their local Korean Embassy or Consulate (this possibly with a Korean who may not be too good at English, from what I have been reading online). The process for obtaining a criminal record check varies between countries and there has been talk of up to four months' processing time for Canadian applicants and up to seven months for US applicants, due to the fact that their application may have to pass through numerous hands in the FBI. However, applicants who have held an E-2 visa previously are exempted from the requirement to have an interview in their own countries.
Regarding the medical, testing must be carried out and certified after arrival, so new applicants must self-certify before arrival and take the appropriate medical tests immediately thereafter. I asked my Boss about this recently (because he has a friend who is the head man at a hospital here) and he told me that the actual financial outlay is very small.
All of these changes stirred up a lively debate in various online fora and elsewhere. Lags who had already been here forever and a day, and who have always referred to Korea as "the land of milk and honey", are put out by all of this, although to be honest, unless they had a heinous list of crimes to their names in their homelands which would light up the police computers like a Christmas tree, it's difficult to see why they would have a problem. They would not have been able to remain here if their bosses thought that they couldn't do the job, and there was nothing about the original documentation requirements which would have made the transition between jobs especially difficult. Despite all of this, however, the fora have been illuminated by vitriol, fulmination and hyperbole as the reactions range from "I can't see any problem with this, it's only the same as it is back home" to "This is outrageous, I will never return to Korea and will tell all my friends never to come here, either!"
Figures vary, but the intended targets of the new regulations appear to be few in number. Even one university professor commented that it was difficult for him to see how effective they were likely to be, given that the intended target constituted only some one per cent. of the total foreigners likely to be engaged in affected occupations. Another, who had to administrate a large number of foreigners at his university, said that he was unable to advise them what to do in order to comply because the new regulations were unclear. As anyone who has been in East Asia generally (and not just in Korea) will tell you, this lack of clarity is quite typical and the circumstances under which the new regulations were apparently rushed into implementation have hardly been helpful.
Mention needs to be made here of a prime tool of Korean obfuscation, a piece of office software called Hangeul Word Processor. The spread of information was slowed down by the fact that rather than use a more widespread file format such as Word or PDF, *.hwp files were used instead and had first to be translated from one format to the other. In operation (and I have copies of this software on my Windoze systems as well as on the machines at work), HWP is simply awful and like everything which runs under W., is a pig to use. That the Immigration Bureau and other organisations in Korea should default to this is indicative of something . . . especially when perhaps the changes impact not only the thousands of foreigners in Korea engaged in the education sector but also the hagwon, school and university administrators, part of whose job it is to ensure compliance with the new regulations. Yet we are told that the IB is trying to reassure people that they are trying very hard to make life easier, to make the process simpler. Oh, really?
It used to be the case that anyone intending to come to Korea (as in other locations in East Asia) was expected to literally drop everything and fly out at a moment's notice. Now that will not be possible for most applicants, and perhaps that is not a bad thing, not simply because there was always a proportion of applicants who would arrive and then jump ship when they felt that their new post was not for them, but also because of the number of hagwon owners in particular who were genuinely abusive and got their names and their institutes onto the Internet blacklists. This in turn translates into a bad name for Korea, which is completely unfair. As I have mentioned previously, one of the big problems of the Internet blacklists is that – like so many other things Net-related – quality is dubious because of the intermittent nature of the maintenance each site gets and the lack of provenance, plus the lack of updates. People go to blacklists and other sites to vent their pent-up frustrations and as in war, the truth is often the first casualty.
Perhaps the most surprising comment from the Immigration Bureau, however, was regarding people who were "fleeing debt", as this is a major motivator for foreigners coming here, especially the younger ones who have graduated recently and have therefore acquired a small mortgage around their necks so early in their tender years, and need to repay the cost of a dubious "education" (see my previous remarks about the quality of modern edukashun). Recruiters in particular use this as an enticement to persuade younger applicants to consider Korea, and indeed, remuneration is now on a par with Japan, but with better benefits as part of the contract.
There are many things that any prospective language teacher coming to East Asia – not just Korea – needs to consider before applying. For Korea, the Immigration Bureau now needs him or her to actually turn up on time at the door of their local embassy or consulate to be interviewed, which for some may represent a considerable inconvenience and expense. They also need to be healthy and be able to prove that this is the case, as well as providing certified documentary evidence of a lack of any criminal record back in their homeland.
However, these difficulties are not so great as they seem. Because the lead-in time to departure (assuming that a new visa is issued) is now much longer, there is time for people to calm down a bit and ask themselves if it's what they really want to do. Remember: most people arrive here with no practical knowledge of speaking Korean (and many of them depart unchanged in this regard); your contract will only be for one year, and you may decide to go elsewhere thereafter.
What the Koreans really need to understand is that from the foreigners' collective point of view, the Korean employment/immigration system discourages people from staying, and this is arguably bad for all parties involved.
It is bad for the institutions involved – particularly the hagwons – because it is hideously expensive to bring a new foreigner in – not only does the hagwon owner have to pay (under the terms of their contract with the noob) for the existing foreigner's outbound flight, he or she also then has to finance the inbound flight of the new foreigner. Probably the existing incumbent's apartment has to be cleaned and/or redecorated, often on a tight schedule; arrangements have to be made to verify documents at the local Immigration Office prior to the issuance of a visa; and very often the recruiting process itself passes into the hands of a third-party recruiter, who (of course) increases the overall cost by a wide margin. Your writer was reading recently that one hagwon owner was so glad when his (female) foreigner repeatedly renewed her contract over successive years – she saved him no less than five million won each and every time she did so. So serious money is involved in the process of replacing each departing foreign teacher. This is to say nothing of the costs involved in finding a suitable place for said newbie to roost, including key money.
What this all boils down to is that in the longer term, the relationship between employer and employee must of necessity look towards an extended partnership rather than jumping between countries or jobs annually. This saves a lot of money but also leads to a more stable relationship, not just between employer and employee but also with the students, for whom a stable environment is more settling, as well as for their parents, who then have a better idea about the attitudes and behaviour of the foreigners. Therefore it would become more important to seek increased capabilities in speaking Korean, which can actually be important in the class context because you will more than likely be teaching alone, without the assistance of an English-speaking Korean, and let me be blunt with you – it ain't easy.
The kids' parents actually want the foreigner not to speak any Korean at all, in order to force the students to speak only in English, but this seems not to work particularly well – they revert to their native language at the first sign of a problem. So we walk immediately into a wall of trouble as communicating even the simplest ideas in real time slows everything down and may bring the lesson to a grinding halt. This seems to be a major and frequent blunder in the private-school environment. I will deal with this in a succeeding blog, but don't think for a moment that this is caused exclusively by a particular type of institution or environment – see my remarks passim about the quality of the materials used . . . but it should perhaps be a mandatory requirement (as opposed to a voluntary one) that educational establishments employing foreigners in Korea should provide regular Korean lessons – and have to report their progress on a regular basis.
The last thing I would want to do, ever, is to discourage potential foreign teachers from coming to Korea, but you need to be sure right from the beginning that it really is what you want to do, because the fact is that you are entering into a partnership, based upon trust, with people you will almost certainly not meet until after you arrive; you will be here for at least a year; you will need to communicate with not only your Boss and co-workers, but also with the kids, perhaps their parents and – of course – people you meet in the street, like when you go shopping, or when the owner of next door's restaurant thinks she owns the sidewalk and foreigners are somehow forbidden from putting out their trash (again, see my past remarks about the neighbourhood)!
People need to be encouraged to come here, as ambassadors of their own nations but also as ambassadors for Korea. This is a point which cannot be stressed enough. In the twentieth century alone, Korea's story was a long and agonised one as it was used first as a colony and then as an actual battle zone (and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war); recovery left the nation split, with still no resolution in sight. The world needs to know about the feelings of ordinary Koreans, their yearnings for being reunited with lost relatives in the North, the differences between them and the peoples of other nations which make them so unique, and which must be preserved; but it is these very differences which often make life difficult for the unprepared foreigner, and for those of us who have come here with the stated aim of helping the people here to acquire our language in the name of communication in the international arena, there is a deep requirement for some humility. Noisy, self-centred foreigners are really not wanted or appreciated in a society in which consensus and social conformity are still considered important aspects of an individual's behaviour.
Please remember: you are not coming here as part of a cultural imperialist experience; you are here to foster understanding and communication. And to go back to your homeland, eventually, with a head and a photo album (and probably a lot of video files these days) full of vivid memories of a distant place, and to be able to justify the right way of looking at a country like Korea among people who have probably never even heard of it (again, see past remarks), can be a tall order. But the best ambassadors a country like Korea can have are not those whom she has bred at home, but instead are the foreigners who have come here, worked hard at learning the language and have at least some understanding the way that the people here think and feel.
So in the longer term, although the new visa regulations seemed rather Draconian, their result should be that people look at a place like Korea vith a view to staying, learning and understanding about the place, its history and people, and thus to always be better-informed than those for whom this country is never more than a few shifting TV images.
As for myself, it looks like the Boss expects me to be here for at least one more year; certainly his behaviour regarding the renewal requirements for my visa indicate that he does not expect me to leave. Alas, one aspect I have not discussed here (so far at any rate) is the often rather small size of accommodation. If I stay here for a longer period of time, I really must build a new PC and with one still very much alive (courtesy of free alternative operating systems) and a laptop which has to be perched somewhere when not in use, plus the fact that for someone like myself, the home is often at least partly a workplace, space becomes increasingly important, and he has finally (although, I think, reluctantly) agreed to start looking for somewhere new to accommodate me. Now, if I could just get another pay rise, too . . !
Having discussed the current snapshot of the immigration situation here, perhaps it would be best if I discuss the actual work itself next time. For now, let me leave the reader up in the air somewhat with regard to the immigration outcome, as this will not be fully clarified until after renewal in July 2008.
July, 2008 . . . how frighteningly the years pass.
Andrew. ^_^
