News Flash!

Every couple of years one of the TV Channels will do an indepth investigation on English teachers in Korea and stir up a lot of panic. A couple of years ago it was how the Male English species was corrupting the innocent women of Korea. It was filmed from handbags and other hidden locations in the style of a nature program trying to understand the beast. On Wednesday they were at it again this time looking at the wide spread drug use(a huge no-no) among teachers in Korea.

The report started out with a ex-girlfriend (bitterly?) exposing her American ex as a lazy teacher who only cared about drugs. He did. They followed him for a night and showed him bragging about teaching hung over and without a care. These teachers do exist here and you can spot them right when you meet or work with them. After watching him in action they then had the police come by and bust him. Straight away they tested him for weed and he failed. What this guy was doing is extremely illegal here in Korea. This guy deserverd to be busted, it's well known that you don't smoke weed in Korea.

This report then started to ask him questions about drug use among English teachers and this "expert" claimed 2 out of 10 of his friends did them. This of course was taken as evidence that it's rapant among teachers here and not as a survey of his crew. The next leap was made that drug users must be here on fake degrees so the investigation went on to look at how easy it was to obtain a fake degree from Thailand. It was all a bit ridiculous as the report blamed these foreigners, Thailand and inept government official who couldn't figure out a real diploma without sealed transcripts from a University were fake. The report did mention how desperate some places are for teachers that they don't care to follow the law and I think this need to be examined more.

The schools (hogwans/academies - not the public system) are giving away jobs. There is a minimal interview (to see that you can speak English) and then the ball starts rolling to work here. It's ridiculously easy. In this report that busted the Ex and his friends (police went through his phone and contacted any suspicious friends to also test and six in total were detained) they questioned the school about their teachers and the owners played the role of the victim. This is not true.

Schools know when their teachers are hung over but they turn a blind eye as long as a mother never complains. The school has invested so much money in a teacher that short of murder (it took my friend a huge amount of energy, strained working relations and finally blackmail to get a pedophile fired from her school) the school will just run out the year long contract.

There will be a couple of weeks of suspicious looks from the easy to rile Koreans (I want to know how many hogwans got phone calls about their teachers on Thursday) but it will all blow over soon enough. It always does.