By Kang Shin-who, Park Si-soo
Staff reporters
The Korean government's move to add new drug tests for an English teaching or E-2 visa is drawing protests from foreign teachers.
From this Thursday, those who want to obtain the visa should receive an additional "cannabinoids" drug tests, which detects marijuana, on top of a "TBPE," the Ministry of Justice said.
Facing a number of crimes by native English teachers, the Korea Immigration Service (KIS) has required foreigners hoping to teach English here to submit to HIV-AIDS and drug-tests from 2008.
At that time, KIS planned to include both TBPE and cannabinoids, but it gave up the latter because of a lack of hospitals equipped with the test devices, and smoking marijuana is not illegal in some countries.
Foreign teachers are up in arms over the government's move. Some teachers are calling the move "discriminative and biased" against foreigners.
"The level of media coverage given to alleged drug crimes and acts of violence by native speaker English teachers seems to be completely disproportionate. We are seldom given reliable statistics concerning actual convictions, and even when these are given, it is clear to see that these apply to a tiny minority of those working as English teachers in this country," said Mike Long of Daegu National University of Education.
"It is little wonder that native speaker English teachers claim there is a xenophobic agenda directed against them when the magnitude of the response of the Korean government, in terms of ever more draconian immigration requirements, simply does not match the actual numbers of cases."
Greg Dolezal, president of the Association for Teachers of English in Korea (ATEK), said, "We also believe strongly that any legislation aimed at protecting children from abuse should be applied equally to all teachers, and should not discriminate based on nationality, race, or any other demographic.
The immigration agency plans to remove the HIV-AIDS test following advice from international communities that it is discriminative against AIDS patients.
In addition, the agency will require English-teacher hopefuls to prove the authenticity of their college degrees, as well as criminal background documents from their governments.
"Those who habitually use marijuana could stop the drug for a while in order to have negative results on the cannabinoids test. But it would be better than not doing the test," said Yoo Byung-kil, a KIS official. "We will designate more hospitals for the checks."
Immigration officials said that a bill proposed by Rep. Choi Young-hee, would further help to reduce crimes by foreign English teachers, once it is passed at the National Assembly.
The bill seeks to obligate all native English teachers, whether they are ethnic Koreans or not, to present criminal and drug test results that were issued less than one month prior to them landing a teaching position.
"I think that any effort to strengthen the existing E2 visa regulations is misguided at best and, at worst, plain racist," said a 26-year-old Canadian who has spent three years as an English teacher in Seoul. "The use of cannibas is not a criminal offense in many countries that E2 visa holders come from. In fact, it is even legal in some circumstances. To penalize a citizen from another country based on Korean standards of conduct smacks of cultural elitism."
According to recent statistics, there were 23,600 E2 visa holders in Korea at the end of June 2010, Dolezal of ATEK said.
"From Jan 2007 to Aug 2009, 274 English-teaching E2 visa holders were convicted of crimes. This implies a crime rate equivalent to seven-tenths of a percent," he said. "We stand with Korean families, educators, and the law in hoping for impartial justice for all concerned in this situation. We hope, for all concerned, that a fair and thorough investigation follows. We have the utmost faith that even at a time of heightened public attention to sexual abuse cases, a judgment will be reached after an unemotional, logical review of the facts of the case."