Oh, those naughty, AIDS-threatening, skirt-chasing Aussie English teachers…



The Chosun Ilbo (English) contributed a true classic today,

REALLYY?

Australian English Teacher Blacklisted for AIDS Threat

Allegations of improper conduct against expatriate English instructors in Korea refuse to go away. The Korea Foreign Teacher Recruiting Association estimates that about 10 percent of the 20,000-30,000 foreign instructors working here are fired after they were found to have committed sexual improprieties or refused to teach classes.

It cites the case of a Korean woman identified as Kim who says she met an English instructor from Australia at a friend’s birthday party. Kim went out with him for several months. When she broke up with him, the Australian sent her an e-mail in February saying he had had sex with two prostitutes in the Philippines without using condoms in 2006 and Kim had been his next date. He said he was so afraid that he could not tell her about it, and had not had an HIV test. The instructor said Kim “deserved” to get AIDS considering what she did to him.


NOW THE ALLEGED EMAIL IS ON THE WEB SITE, BUT IT WAS JUST SO SMALL THAT I COULD NOT COPY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!






The KFTRA has added the instructor to a blacklist of 68 foreign instructors accused of sexual harassment and contract breaches. The association told institutes not to hire the Australian.

In an earlier case, an American instructor who worked in a high school in Yongin made headlines when he was fired for teaching students how to smoke marihuana and said Japanese women “are the best.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )


citing Korea Foreign Teacher Recruiting Association (KFTRA ) estimates that some 10 percent of the 20,000-30,000 foreign instructors in Korea have been canned for either “sexual improprieties” or because they refused to teach.

No word from the association on how many have been canned in the last month of their contract so the hagwon owners could avoid paying their severance bonuses.

The Chosun — no doubt for reasons of journalistic integrity — included this cautionary tale:

It cites the case of a Korean woman identified as Kim who says she met an English instructor from Australia at a friend’s birthday party. Kim went out with him for several months. When she broke up with him, the Australian sent her an e-mail in February saying he had had sex with two prostitutes in the Philippines without using condoms in 2006 and Kim had been his next date. He said he was so afraid that he could not tell her about it, and had not had an HIV test. The instructor said Kim “deserved” to get AIDS considering what she did to him.

Lovely. The KFTRA added that the instructor in question has been added to its blacklist of foreign teachers. Whether he sues the KFTRA for defamation and violation of labor laws, however, has yet to be seen.

One American teacher, meanwhile, reportedly accomplished the difficult feat of simultaneously violating Korea’s drug taboos and hurting national pride by teaching his students how to smoke pot and claiming that Japanese women were “the best.”

Interestingly, the headline of the Korean Peace reads, “White English Teacher Threatens Korean Woman with AIDS.” Great. Remember this should said paper start complaining about US headlines.

The story apparently started in the Chosun Ilbo’s tabloid paper, the Sports Chosun, whose piece ran the very helpful subheader, “Beware the ‘Ugly White Teacher’” (as opposed to “Beware the Ugly White Magazine Editor,” which would be me). Informatively, it quotes one 28-year-old Korean female English teacher in Busan, who claims that white teachers have a tendency to believe that they can easily bag Korean women who approach them to learn English. The story also includes other tales of whitey teacher behaving badly, including one 43-year-old teacher in Andong — of all places — who had the gall of writing on the profile of a chatting site that the most precious thing to him was looking at the glistening sweat on the curves of a woman’s breasts, thighs and ass (The horror! The horror!). He also counted sex as one of the things he likes to do during his free time. Hey, it’s better than masturbation. Or blogging.

This is all very humorous since right next to the piece (this is the online edition of the Sports Chosun, after all) are links to the headlines of Orange, the Chosun Ilbo’s adult content site — today’s edition apparently includes such morally uplifting topics as the wonders of mesh stockings with a hole in the crotch, a guide to cheating with your ex, a piece on women who like it doggy-style and a guide to camping sex. Thankfully, however, the articles are all in Korean, and presumably none of them were written by white English teachers.

UPDATE: And in a related note, one of the bigger online stories Today (in Korean) involves school parents outraged at elementary school teachers at a school in Gwanak-gu who signed a petition pleading for leniency for a fellow teacher found guilty of molesting two female sixth grade students. The court’s decision wasn’t exactly draconian — the teacher, who was accused of sitting two students on his knee while he touched their chest, was sentenced to fines since, according to the court decision, the incidents took place in the open and the defendant was “sufficiently aware” of his mistakes. And even this was after the the prosecutors decided not to charge him with violations of child sex laws and settled for violations of child welfare laws. The guy has been relieved of his position, but he still attended at outdoor school function (supposedly in a private capacity) earlier this month. In a telephone conversation with the Munhwa Ilbo (unlike foreign English teachers, I guess Korean teachers accused of kiddie molestation get to present their side of the story), the teacher said he can’t accept the court’s original decision (claiming he sexually abused the children), so he’s going to appeal. So much for being “sufficiently aware” of your mistakes.