Wednesday, July 1, 2009

i commit ceasless sex crimes

the chosun ilbo has printed the following article:

With ceaseless sex crimes committed by native speaker instructors working in foreign language hagwons, two more were recently arrested for sexual molestation.

The “Anti-English Spectrum Cafe” (불법 외국어 강사 퇴출을 위한 국민운동) announced on the 30th that an American and a Canadian currently teaching children at a famous language hagwon in Seoul engaged in lewd acts towards female elementary students at the hagwon.

According to the internet organization, the native speaker instructors in question repeatedly committed lewd acts towards the students, of course, and also touched their genitals to the buttocks of female Korean co-workers, also instructors, both in the teacher’s room and while at company dinners.

The native speaker instructors denied the accusations of parents and the female instructor by saying, “this is a simple misunderstanding of skinship due to cultural differences,” and the hagwon, concerned about damage to its image, staying uninvolved and not reporting the matter to police.

The instructors moved to another hagwon when the accusations grew fiercer, but currently are being paid and treated even better than at the previous hagwon, Anti-English Spectrum Cafe announced. The Korean female instructors who were the victims of their molestation had to leave the hagwon due to continuing nasty rumors.

Similarly, the native speaker instructors have not ceased to engage in sex crimes such as molestation and rape, and with no way at present for them to stopped or punished their crimes will continue to increase.

The biggest problem is that the victimized women prefer to keep the crime a secret, not reported to police, because of the prevalent view that “that’s what happens when you hang around with foreigners.” Thus once the affair dies down, their victimizers are able to move on to another hagwon and commit the same crimes free of a criminal record.

39-year old Lee Eun-eung, operator of the Anti-English Spectrum Cafe, said, “foreign instructors of low character frequently toss women away without compunction after attaining their goal of meeting them for money and sexual relations, so many of the women have their lives ruined by abortion or, of course, sexually transmitted diseases.”

Mr. Lee has created on the website a discussion forum for women to share stories of being victimized by foreign instructors, and such tales have been pouring in without end. The victimized women all tell dark stories of suffering sex crimes at the hands of foreign instructors.

Recently, 33-year old Tanzanian Mr. S, who taught students at a hagwon in Seoul, caused a great shock in Daejeon by entering in to a sexual relationship in 2007 with an underage female student (just 18 years old at the time) at an English hagwon. The crime was revealed when the student went on the internet after they had had sex to discover if she was pregnant or not.

Mr. S introduced himself to the female student as “a child of Tanzania,” asking her to keep secrets and telling her many lies and tricks. In the end the illicit relationship became known to the the hagwon and to the girl’s parents, Mr. S left for Seoul, and the family came near to ruin.

In December of last year a native speaker instructor attending a foreign language program run by a local government in Seoul was caught placing his hand into the underwear of a girl in the first grade of elementary school and was sued by the family of the victimized girl. The case is currently underway.



of course these things can possibly happen, but note the hagwons aren't at fault at all? mr lee seems to me a zealot of the rush limbaugh variety, but with more scare power. not even right-wing radio could have 'the anti-immigrant spectrum cafe'

i'm not crying oppression, but it is interesting that korea is trying to see itself more and more as a multi-cultural society, yet can't help but cast anything multi-cultural as intellectually, morally, or financially bankrupt

thankfully, my interactions with this type of idiocy is relatively minimal (tho the swine flu, known locally as 'pig sick', outbreak had some silliness come my way from a co-teacher)

5 comments:

cid said...

Damn! They got me. . .

The Primes said...

Briefly checked out this post. What strikes me is that teacher recruitment in Korea may still be poor. If perverts, wierdos, or mass murderers were hired, I wouldn't be surprised. The interview process of " SO, you speak English? You were a Lit major and got a bachelors degree or something? Good. You can start next week", isn't so good. If scumbag recruiters and other hiring agencies did a thorough job of finding quality teachers, a lot of problems would be solved. Among these problems is the generally low reputation hagwan teachers have-- there are some very good hagwan teachers who are in Korea for a variety of reasons. Not everybody is running away from the states. When I read stuff like this I get very frustrated and realize I did the right thing in coming back... (Although I will be visiting in August)...

The Primes said...

BTW, love that you have MacLow as a quote. I've often thought he'd be useful for CEOs and mgmt. in corporate everywhere on how to create envioronments that were creative for all involved. He was so open source in many ways.

kevin.thurston said...

i think for hagwons it is the same as for public school (i work in a public middle school) in that you have to have a criminal background check

there are, yes, many 'perverts' and 'weirdos' but stating that this is 'to be expected' is annoying to say the least, and that a media outlet feeds these types of things, grrrr

where are you visiting in august ?

The Primes said...

i'll be visiting seoul, inchon, suwon, andong, visiting wife's family... BTW any good galleries or art events to check out? The one I wanted to go to closed.

BTW, I replied more thoughtfully to your comment earlier, but it didn't publish somehow.

Primes