Cracking Down

For those of you who were around when I made my decision to come to Korea, you might remember how easy the whole process was. I made the decision and had my flight booked and paid for by the school all within one month's time. I had one phone interview with the teacher's coordinator and sent my paperwork over. The most difficult part of the whole process was that once I was issued my visa number electronically, I had to travel back and forth to NYC two days in a row to drop off my paperwork and then pick up my visa the next day. But all in all, it was really easy for me to get this job. So basically anyone with a college degree can get hired to teach here. I didn't have any experience with teaching at all before I came to Korea and that wasn't a problem at all. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, since the screening process is so lenient, sometimes foreign teachers sign a contract with a school to get their ticket here paid for and then don't show up or they bail after a short time to find something better. I have heard about so many teachers who bail on their contracts. Of course, it goes both ways, sometimes schools don't hold up their ends of the contract either. Thankfully I haven't had any problems whatsoever so far and my school has done a great job of taking care of me.

So I was reading the news today and they were talking about how Korea is going to make the process of getting hired as a foreign English teacher more difficult. The article said that teaching applicants may be required to submit criminal and medical records as well as the results of drug tests. Apparently Seoul has had enough of inadequate foreign English teachers and it is getting tough on issuing educational work visas. According to one article, there are around 16,000 foreigners who work as English teachers in Korea. Sadly, over the past five years over 800 foreign English teachers have been caught with fake degrees or improper visas. Some have even been found to be teaching under the influence of drugs. I think it's understandable that parents are welcoming the government's tougher measures which are set to go into effect in mid-December. I definitely think its a good idea to make the requirements more difficult to meet though. It was a bit disconcerting how easy it was to come here. The recruiter asked me over the phone if I had a criminal or child abuse record. It would be so easy for someone to lie and the next thing you know they are in Korea teaching children. I didn't even have to provide references - just a diploma and a passport! PS sorry this post is so poorly formatted, I couldn't figure out how to fix it....