Proverbs 16:18 Part II

See how easy it is to "BE A CRIMINAL" in Korea? You can imagine how many times OTHER E2 visa holders have run into problems with immigration workers who didn't do their jobs properly, or just didn't care to, causing delays and ending up in overstays. Since visa dates and contract dates are almost always fairly similar, a person typically has just a short period after their contract has fully expired, to renew their visa. I've even seen it where the contract expires AFTER the visa does. Another way the "criminal" activity numbers have been bolstered.

I bring this up because this is the way the dumbasses who created this law in half-cocked, ultranationalistic vengeance are trying to cover their asses. (or in Korean parlance, "save face") Do you think the guys at the top don't know forcing everybody to get CRC's at the Ottawa office is stupid? Of course they do! But we deserve it. Do you think they don't know that making people, like me, get them more than once is cruel and unusual punishment? Of course they do! But when Canadians hurt Koreans, Koreans MUST hurt Canadians. They're trained to see things as Korea vs the world. When this happened I had all kinds of students apologizing to me. And I'm not even American. Do you think that not a single person has bothered to ask someone in Canada at the R.C.M.P. how these criminal record checks work, or, for crying out loud, FLIPPED ONE OVER? Of course that's not the case either! That would be pretty stupid.

A little history. Christopher Paul Neil.
THIS guy, a Canadian, from BC, who worked in Gwangju is the guy that created this anti-foreigner paranoia and ultimately lead to fairly forced amendments in Korean laws and immigration procedures. And it's possible that since I am from Canada, from the same area, and have taught in Gwangju, THIS might be the reason the girl at Gwangju Immigration wouldn't even sit down at her desk while I was there. I am not kidding at all. The heights to which the hysteria about foreigners possibly sexually molesting Korean children seemed to have no limits for a while. The security cam business boomed for months while hagwons and schools across Korea installed cameras to monitor possible criminals to whom their children were entrusted every day. And accusations against foreigners ran wild so long as the VERY newsworthy stories of sexual misconduct by foreigners remained in the news.

But a funny thing happened on the way to martyrdom. What Koreans found out with the heightened awareness and concentration on sexual and just plain child abuse in school and daycare facilities wasn't quite as newsworthy as they'd hoped. You see it wasn't just foreigners doing it as the TV had told them. In fact it was an inordinately small number of foreigners who were the guilty parties. But anything we foreigners can do to draw national attention to a REAL problem in Korea! You're welcome.

I'm being facetious but it actually DID turn out to be a good thing. Now, largely because of foreigners in Korea and the nationally inspired mistrust Koreans have for us, the children are better protected. And in the end that's a very good thing. The same thing happened, (or seems to happen ever 3 or 4 years really), when the first news stories of foreigners using fake degrees in Korea surfaced. News was made, foreigners were checked, and indirectly thousands of KOREANS with fake diplomas were noticed. Some of very prominent status.

In both cases the story originated because it was foreigners who were the bad guys and Koreans who were the good guys. In both cases laws were hastily enacted and amended and rules were enforced before people even knew exactly what they were. Foreigners Korea-wide were forced to have their degrees inspected AGAIN at their own expense. You see everyone gets their degree verified at a Korean consulate in their country when they first come to Korea. At least I know I did, (see top). Since then I've had to get it verified twice more and I've supplied sealed transcripts to 3 universities for verification purposes 3 times at my expense.

Once Korean bad guys started being exposed at alarming rates both of these stories faded away. But the laws still remained in place to punish foreigners. If anything they are being tightened.

The sexual abuse is what Koreans feared most. I haven't heard a story of a guy who was caught committing it in Korea but there have been people who were convicted pedophiles teaching in Korea. And THIS is what caused the misinformed amendments to the Korean immigration rules regarding criminal record checks. And I'll just do the Canadian version. You see NOW every Canadian possible criminal must get a fingerprint-based criminal record check run AND processed at the Ottawa R.C.M.P. office and present it during their application process while it is 3-months-old or less. If the lawmakers took a little time to find out what they were ordering takes at least 120 working days, from the time of receipt to process, add to that the mailing time and current backlog of requests we're looking at 5-6 months. Then they would know it is impossible. Let me splain:

There are two kinds of federal criminal record checks that can be done. By far the more common is the name-only CRC whereby a cop or prospective employer requests that a name be run through the massive criminal data bank known as the National Repository for criminal records, which is located at the R.C.M.P. offices in Ottawa. This takes very little time and the results can be given almost immediately. They can be documented in FAR less than 3 months particularly if the Ottawa RCMP office is not the place drawing up the documents.

There are 3 possible results for a name-only check: 1. negative 2. positive 3. inconclusive. Negative is positive meaning you have no criminal offenses on file. Positive is negative meaning you have been convicted and not pardoned of a criminal offense. Inconclusive is when a person might have a pardon pending or is on trial or something like that. It could also mean that there is a possible sex offender charge or what they now call "vulnerable sector" charge. In this case, since names are confidential and not released, it is necessary to conduct a fingerprint-based CRC. THIS is what the fingerprint-based searches are for. Fingerprint-based searches are NOT more accurate or better in any way. But they are considerably slower.

So since the main concern of Koreans asking for the CRC's WAS sex offenses, and they heard that the fingerprint CRC's were connected with sex offenders they said, "Okay, yeah, we want THAT!" and promptly ordered the thousands of Canadians in Korea or coming to Korea to get them. TOTALLY UNNECESSARILY!

The CRC I got 2 years ago was name based, (see top). That is what I showed to the irritable immigration workers in Gwangju. THAT was a completely solid CRC that should be honoured as such by a well informed Korean government. But it's not and they're not. The reason they're not well informed is this pride I started talking about. When somebody starts to explain these things to them the reaction is much the same as the people at the immigration office, or the advanced level student in the mixed level ESL class I mentioned. "YOU're going to try to tell ME the the laws of MY country are flawed?" And it's like talking to a wall. I defensive, even aggressively argumentative wall.

HOWEVER, I think that the realization is slowly seeping into the top officers and law makers in Korean immigration that their hastily enacted laws may actually BE flawed. But we're in Korea where the tragic flaw is hubris. These guys can't simply change the laws they hastily and vengefully enacted! That would cost them face! So they've been looking for a couple of years now for a face-saving tactic. Here it is!

Now all us E-2 visa holders are committing crimes at an alarming rate. So alarming that it is becoming newsworthy in Korea. And soon a panic will spread and things will be investigated. And this time it's pretty safe to think that while investigating E-2 visa holders' criminal activity in Korea they won't accidentally stumble onto a way that Korean criminal activity can be exposed thereby ruining a perfectly good and newsworthy story. And it can be reasonably expected that the immigration brass will claim vindication for tightening immigration laws and probably enact even MORE dumb ones as a result of this.

In my argument at the Gwangju immigration office they asked me what I had been doing in Korea for the last 6 months. The insinuation was obvious. They assumed because I had lots of free time and I'm a criminal foreigner that I was obviously breaking some laws. And since it is pretty common for foreign teachers here to teach privately, (which is illegal), that might be what they assumed. And they seemed pretty sure of it although I did not teach a single private lesson or break a single law. But much like a person suspected of a sex offense, I was guilty whether I had done it or not. The facts, if they were revealed would undoubtedly show that teaching private lessons and unintentionally overstaying visas BECAUSE OF THE STUPID NEW LAWS, and the far more suspicious and inefficient immigration officers make up a vast majority of the laws that are reportedly being broken by foreigners. But the facts are not revealed, and won't likely be which just fosters mistrust and anti-foreigner sentiment in a country already in desperate need of a tolerance infusion.

The results of all of these things have certainly NOT helped the ESL industry. Or foreign workers affairs in this country. In fact the Koreans hurt, (or punished), financially by all this silliness FAR outnumber the foreigners. Hagwans, schools and universities all over Korea are ripping their hair out trying to get good teachers. And good teachers are going home. It is actually hurting the industry in Korea. They are just shooting themselves in the foot. Repeatedly!

And in other areas, like I explained in my blog another time when I tried to help my school by splitting a large class in half and teaching the resulting second class for free, my efforts were STILL misconstrued as an affront to the Korean education system and a personal attack on the Koreans who made the schedule. I have no doubt that this kind of hostility in reaction to people who are trying to help is finding its way into other industry and areas all over Korea. I also have absolutely no doubt that I have seen an INCREASE, not a decrease in this kind of hypernationalism throughout Korea. And as the country gets richer, and as the compliments from foreign dignitaries flow the Korean chests, (and heads), are swelling to a point where they are just going to have to explode. And if this ISN'T a tactic employed to sink the powerful Korean economy by other competing nations, boy it sure SHOULD be because it would work.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. I wonder how that translates into Korean. Despite myself I like the people here and think they are good people with incredibly bad leadership. They're just trained to be bad. And this haughtiness is one of the results of this bad training. I really hope Korea and Koreans realize this before it's too late.