By Phillip Hartman
It happened a few days ago, as I was going through my annual probing at Seoul Medical Center.
The nurse was asking me to read numbers off on an eye test chart. I chanted aloud, ``5, 9, 3 …" and then that menacing thought crept into my head: why? Why, oh why, am I here, 12,000 kilometers from home, in a foreign country, taking an eye exam? I came here to teach, didn't I? I'm not buying a new pair of glasses and being examined to enter a military sniper squad. For what possible reason would a teacher need an eye check? Had not the invention of eyeglasses made irrelevant the possession of poor eyesight?
Next I stepped onto a scale to be weighed. Again the question as to what my weight had to do with teaching inevitably crept into my mind. If I were too heavy or too light, would that be grounds to deny my visa? I wondered this as I walked down to the x-ray room to get a chest x-ray. This part of the journey is always a source of frustration. X-rays are no light matter. They emit radiation. They can be dangerous. They should only be used in the interest of treating or preventing far more serious diseases. But what they are checking for is tuberculosis, a disease that is all but non-existent in Canada.
I may as well have been tested for the Black Death. In fact, South Korea has a much higher rate of tuberculosis than Canada. According to the World Health Organization, South Korea has 79 cases for every 100,000 people, while Canada has 4 for every 100,000 people. Statistically speaking, Koreans are twenty times more likely to have tuberculosis than Canadians.
On top of this, the Canadian Lung Association says 70 percent of TB cases in Canada are among foreigners. So native speakers who were born in Canada are even less likely to have TB. The reason for this is quite clear to me. As a baby and a child I received the TB vaccine, so I'm immunized against it. Yet here I am, having an X-ray for a disease it is almost impossible for me to have.
The futility of these tests is clear to see, but then there are the more controversial ones. The blood test ― looking for HIV ― is one example.
Many of us worry about HIV, as we have been taught in school to practice safe sex in order to avoid the disease. It actually does not bother me to be tested for it, as it serves my interest, but the issue of contention is the relevance HIV has to teaching.
Mandatory HIV testing is common in the sex industry, where people have sex as part of their profession, but clearly having sex is not part of a teacher's job description. Korean immigration has made this test mandatory as a protective measure for children. But what is the implication here ― that foreigners are raping students?
Obviously, one cannot help but feel insulted when one is treated like a rapist. Shouldn't we be trying to prevent rape in the first place? The best immigration can do is say: ``When you get raped, at least you won't get HIV?" And then there are the statistics once again. The odds of a Canadian being infected with HIV at all are very low. Only 0.3 percent of the country's population are infected, compared with South Korea's 0.1 percent. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
And, so, to the question: ``Why?" That poser has perpetually aggravated me since the exam and has found its way into this paper ― and it continues to perplex me. I've heard many say the exam is actually to my benefit and I should be happy to receive it. But it is easy for one to say such things, but it is another to live them.
The health exam takes time out of my day, time that could have been put to making money. It also takes money out of my pocket and it further adds to the list of hoops I must jump through just to take on a job. It's the icing on the bureaucratic cake, so to speak.
And the worst part of the entire process is it is entirely unnecessary. The vision test for the glasses I already have, the weighing of my weight that doesn't matter, the measure of my height which is on my driver's license, the calculating of my blood pressure when I'm only 25 years old, the X-raying for the TB I can't possibly have, the drawing of blood for the HIV it's unlikely for me to have, and the peeing in a cup for the drugs I don't take and couldn't buy in Korea anyway.
If there was ever an utter waste of my time, this health exam is it, and they wonder why foreigners are unhappy.
The writer has worked as a teacher in Korea for three years at EWAS Uijeongbu and LCI Kid's Club Gangdong. He can be reached at johannphilipe@hotmail.com