Seoulscapade

Unfortunately, the following is not about sex and molestation, booze and drugs, so I’m sorry to disappoint. Foreigner excesses in those areas have either declined or simply haven’t reached the news. I certainly hope this isn’t going to be a trend.

In the meantime, here’s something else foreigners are getting in trouble for in Korea: visa fraud and working illegally. I know, it’s lame, and I do apologize.
Here is the article from The Globe and Mail website that I include in its entirety because to read it on that site you have to pay.

Monday, October 10, 2005 Posted at 4:52 AM EDT

By COLIN FREEZE

Nearly 50 English teachers from Canada have been detained, deported or investigated on allegations of visa fraud in South Korea, a country seeking to purge itself of young Westerners increasingly regarded as unqualified, unruly and unwelcome.

Long a magnet for foreigners drawn to working overseas, Korea has arrested hundreds of them in the past couple of weeks. Immigration officials have been rounding up dozens of teachers at their homes, work, or at the airports.

While as many as 10,000 foreigners legally teach the language at private English schools in Korea, the nation’s media have been full of exposes about teachers with dubious credentials.

Many of the foreign teachers, if not most, are Canadian.

Many teachers say Korean officials and unscrupulous recruiters have long tolerated, even encouraged, the illegal activity.

Some Canadian teachers are worried that they, too, could end up in prison.

“I wish we could tell exactly how much trouble we are in,” a 30-year-old Canadian teacher said in a phone interview from Kwangju, Korea, on Friday. “The idea of me being locked up and handcuffed and fed grog is ridiculous. They say what we’re doing is criminal, but it doesn’t feel that way.”

The woman, who is from B.C., said she arrived on a spousal visa, but was enticed into teaching English illegally to supplement her husband’s income.

Her husband, a legal instructor, said Korea’s response is out of proportion to the situation. “We are all teaching children how to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and ABC,” he said, adding that he believes more than 150 Canadians doing this type of work have been arrested.

The couple — who, like several other Canadians interviewed, asked not to be identified — say they are contemplating a “midnight run” out of Korea, and complain that the local embassy has not done enough for jailed friends.

“The whole situation is totally inhumane — I’ve heard of 70 [foreign teachers] being put in a room with capacity for only 30 or 40,” the wife said. “It’s not like they were dealing drugs or running guns.”

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department says there are limitations to what it can do. It has officially logged about 50 English-teacher cases in the past two weeks: 35 have been deported, five are awaiting deportation and the rest under investigation.

“It’s clear that the South Koreans are enforcing their laws in a recent wave that began as little as two weeks ago,” the Foreign Affairs parliamentary secretary, Dan McTeague, said from Ottawa.

The Liberal MP warned Canadians in Korea to “make sure their credentials conform to the rigours of the law. If they don’t, they are strongly advised to rethink continuing in that setting.”

Many of the arrests of foreigners have followed that of a Korean man who is accused of selling fake diplomas. Many Canadians who tried to establish teaching credentials by buying fake university degrees are worried that their names have been handed over to the authorities.

One Canadian, who has taught legally in Korea for nine years and helps run an Internet message board for expatriates, is telling affected colleagues that the wisest course of action is to surrender.

“There are some people that freak out and say, ‘I better get out of Dodge’ — and then they get nailed at the airport,” he said.

Given that Korean authorities are believed to have an inch-thick dossier on illegal English teachers, he urged his compatriots to go a different route. “If you turn yourself in, immigration tends to take a more lenient thinking.”

Like many Canadians interviewed, he said that Koreans have an innate xenophobia that has hardened of late. “There has been a definite change in the way we’re being perceived in the last nine or 10 months,” he said. “Before, it was, ‘Please speak me English.’ Now, it’s ‘Get out of my country, white devils.’ ”

Visa frauds go on in just about every country, but Korea’s clampdown has been lent a sense of urgency by highly publicized accounts of immorality by young foreigners. Reports of marijuana and cocaine busts have long tended to feature Westerners — including five Canadian teachers who were arrested two years ago.

But more recent events have led to a furor. An unknown English teacher in Korea used the Internet to post what amounted to a how-to guide for seducing Korean women. Then, two English teachers from Cape Breton, N.S., made the headlines for breaking a local man’s jaw in a bar brawl. They spent 40 days in jail and were ordered to pay $30,000 (U.S.) in a form of restitution known locally as “blood money.”

And lately, Korean TV has aired segments painting English teachers as inept, unqualified foreigners who frequently lie about their credentials.

“People basically think all foreign teachers are drunks and molesters who can’t get a job back home,” said the teacher who helps run the Internet board for expats.

Mmm . . . that comment at the end is a bit harsh, though sums it up for me. No, only kidding—I would have left out the molesters part, and that’s because if Korean girls are willing, it doesn’t count as molesting, right? Let’s get one thing straight: not all foreigners are bad white trash. Good white trash are out there, too, you know, getting drunk and legally working for pay they’d never get back home.