Teaching English in Korea...News

                         

Unqualified English Teachers Held

Seoul Metropolitan Police arrested two Canadians for working as English instructors with a fake bachelor’s degree and booked seven other foreigners and Koreans either on the same charge or for employing them. To work as an English instructor, foreigners have to get an E-2 visa permitting them to teach English in Korea. The visa is granted to applicants who have either a BA from universities in English-speaking countries or an English-language diploma from universities in non-English speaking countries. Of the arrested Canadians, one studied only at an adult education center affiliated with a college after finishing high school. While working part-time in a fast food restaurant in Canada, he bought a fake U.S. bachelor’s diploma for US$300 on a U.S. website in August 2003. He came to Korea at the end of that year and started working as an English instructor for a private language institute in Songpa-gu, Seoul. The other graduated from a Canadian junior college and then worked in a factory. He came to Korea on a tourist visa in 2001 and paid US$500 to a Korean broker to buy a fake Canadian bachelor’s diploma in August that year. He worked as an English instructor at a language institute in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province since January 2004. Meanwhile, police have arrested an Australian English instructor who made headlines last month by telling his Korean ex-girlfriend he was infected with the AIDS virus when she broke up with him. (englishnews@chosun.com )