Lee Myung Bak, a man who needs to get his country back on side, is showing no signs of slowing down. Since starting his term just a few months ago he has been following through on his pledge to make Korea more accessible to foreigners, much to the annoyance of those who voted him into power.
Not only has he managed to upset the electorate by moving to resume imports on US beef, a cause of protest throughout the country, but he has also been working to ratify the Korea-US FTA. The Korean people see this as something of a betrayal, as they believe that the world should buy Korean goods, but the Korean people should not be allowed to buy cheap foreign goods. (Sure, this is a simplified version of events, but essentially the truth when all is said and done).
Now he is tying to make life easier for foreigners. Since the introduction of the new E-2 visa rules, designed to make it harder for foreign English teachers teachers to work in Korea, he has been working to make conditions here better for the teachers.
The new requirements introduced mandatory drug checks (good in principle, but poorly implemented), an interview to be held at the Korean consulate of your home country (bad), and a mandatory criminal record check (again, good but poorly implemented), and degrees validated and notarised in your home country (ridiculous).
The regulations came into effect on March 15th, and were the brainchild of the previous administration. Problems encountered include:
- Many countries have more relaxed drug laws than Korea. It is possible that a person could legally smoke in their home country, or during a vacation, and then fail the drug test. Korea is essentially trying to apply their drug laws globally.
- Qualified foreign teachers are being excluded because they are not in their home country, and travelling there for a 15 minute interview is prohibitively expensive. The same goes for having to visit to get a document notarised.
- Many instructors are being disqualified because Korean immigration do not differentiate between murder and speeding. As some US states leave driving offences on your criminal record for life, instructors are being disqualified from working here for minor offences.
- Teachers who have been living and working overseas for many years can not get a criminal check done in their host country. There are cases of people living in Korea for over 10 years who have to get a criminal check from home. Other cases include those who lived overseas from a young age but never changed nationality suddenly having to get a check from a country they have never visited as an adult.
Changes to the process have already been made since the President took power, and he seems to have taken a more measured approach.
- Drug tests no longer include cannabis. The reason is simple and logic: Korea should not be dictating the laws in other countries.
- The consulate interview will only be required of people who have never visited Korea before, and they can be completed by webcam.
- Notarisation can now be completed in Korea, at the Embassy of your home country.
Whilst these measures don’t help with all of the issues facing foreign instructors, especially those who have built up lives and have a long-term emotional connection to Korea, it does take away a lot of the stress that was intended when the new regulations first came about.
Of course, when the regulations first came about, the previous administration did offer some ‘benefits’ to those teaching English here:
- Documents will no longer need to be re-submitted every year.
- After 9 months of a contract has been completed, foreign teachers will no longer require a letter of release to change jobs.
The first is undeniably a benefit. In the past, a foreign teacher had to prove that they graduated every time they changed jobs. The fact that they had previously worked here with an E-2 visa (and to get the E-2 they need to prove graduation), they would have to submit the same documents every subsequent year!!! This has thankfully changed.
The second benefit is not really a benefit at all. In Korea, if you are a visiting teacher on an E-2 visa, your employer owns your visa. If your employer is an arsehole, you can either continue working for him, or you can leave. If you want to take another job, he has to give his permission. It used to be that he owned you for the entire year. Now he only owns you for 9 months. As jobs in Korea pay a bonus of 1 month salary upon completion of a year, leaving at 9 months is not usually financially viable, and by this point most teachers would simply complete their contract. If they choose to leave before this time, your employer reports you to immigration and you must leave the country until the 1 year is finished before you return.
As there are usually around 10,000 unfilled teaching positions in the country at any time, many of the dishonest business owners like this arrangement, and of course the teachers who work for those owners hate it. If you look at the most popular Korean ex-pat forum, you can see that complaints are numerous.
The new President wants to change things. More importantly, he wants to change things for the benefit of the foreigners. Rather than appeasing the business owners who feel that he should favour them for being Korean, he is doing what is right and removing their ownership of foreign labour. He now plans to allow teachers to switch jobs freely after completing just 1 month of their contract.
This should do everything that Lee Myung Bak promised to do in his election pledge. He is ensuring that competitive businesses will be able to prosper under him, whilst those businesses that resort to underhanded measures to gain a competitive advantage will be penalised. Simply put, a good Hagwon that treats the teachers well and pays them on time will prosper, as all other teachers will be free to work there. They will have no problems finding replacement teachers and they will be able to compete in this very competitive industry.
A Hagwon that lies to teachers, refuses to pay them, gives substandard accommodation or tries to breach the contract under threat of deportation will suddenly find they are without a native teacher, and as a result, without the number of paying customers they once had. Are the Hagwon owners happy about such a positive turn of events? Are they shite!
The Korea Association of Foreign Language Academies (KAFLA), are complaining. Apparently, introducing measures that will encourage qualified teachers to consider Korea over other countries that offer similar freedoms will encourage illegal teachers to come here. Apparently, allowing people basic human rights such as choosing where to work (or even to join any labour organisation – see same article), will encourage LESS qualified teachers to come here. I’m not sure what they are smoking, but since I have an F-Visa, any chance I could score some?
Seriously though, if the KAFLA, an organisation of 7,000 members, votes against allowing teachers joining an organisation that is labelled as “union like”, and is complaining about the government allowing free movement for foreign teachers, they are giving away a very important fact about themselves: At least 50% of their members are corrupt business owners who prefer to have the option to cheat and steal from their employees, rather than deal with them in a fair manner. Perhaps ATEK should reciprocate, and encourage members to boycott any Hagwon that has membership of the KAFLA. I am sure that KAFLA members will ignore the decision to hire a member of ATEK if they are presented with a breathing native, but being faced with the possibility of losing access to a large number of teachers by being members of an association that seeks to abuse teachers could cause them to think carefully when voting in future.
Seriously, I don’t think goods are so expensive here now, and even just on the IP stipulations alone, I think Korea’d be better off without the FTA. The version of copyright and IP being instated here is as (stupidly) restrictive as in the US, but lacking many of the restrictions and loopholes of copyright law enjoyed by Americans… in other words, Koreans get an even worse version of copyright law than the already out of hand American one. Kiss the public domain goodbye… well, public domain for anything after your grandmother’s youth, anyway.
Some imported goods are very expensive now, and the tariffs on these goods allows domestic manufacturers to artificially inflate the price of their products. Examples include cars (Korean cars are lower quality, and are only so popular here because they competition is priced out of the market), Beef, Rice, and electrical goods (Samsung electronics are often more expensive here than in the UK).
If the US decided to introduce tariffs that made Samsung electronic goods as expensive as Sony goods in the US, demand for Samsung would drop, and that would hurt the Korean economy. Korea, as a developing nation, were given a break by the US. Now that they are considered a developed nation, Korea needs to reciprocate, or lose the unfair advantage they have in the US market. Koreans need this FTA more than they realise, as a lot of their future growth depends on exports. Without the US market, the Korean economy will stagnate and then decline. China, due to their cheap labour, do not need an FTA with the US in order to remain competitive. Koreans do not have that luxury, and need easy trading conditions to maintain and grow their economy.
The copyright laws will be a pain, especially us ex-pats who are used to Koreans having such a “relaxed” attitude to what really amounts to theft. Some of the laws regarding published content do appear to be a case of heavy-handed overkill. That said, we should not really be in a position to get a high-speed download of an entire seasons of a US TV show (or movie) in a high quality format, which we can then save and distribute as we see fit, for as little as 200w. That was something that clearly needed to be addressed.
Englishman, i was wondering what your sources were on this information.