Foreign teacher reported arrested for drunk driving

On April 29 Newsis published the following article:

Incheon university instructor charged for driving while drunk

An American native-speaking instructor working at a university in Incheon was charged for driving his Carens while drunk.

According to police on the 29th, a 46 year-old American [working at] a university in Incheon drank at least a bottle of makgeolli at a restaurant and at 12:30 in the afternoon on April 12 drove away in his car. Police were sent out after receiving a report from a resident and arrested him.

The results of a breathalyzer test found that his blood alcohol level was 0.184%, a figure which calls for the revocation of his license.

The man stated to police that "That day I heard the news that my cousin in the U.S. had died and, feeling depressed, I drank and then drove."

I was curious about what other stories were published in April describing arrests for drunk driving, and the following were turned up:

A story about a bus driver driving 40 elementary school students on a school trip who was drunk.

A police officer arrested for causing an accident while drunk 14 years ago did so again.

A man in Jeju who was caught driving drunk without a license in a stolen vehicle.

Another police officer arrested for drunk driving.

A drunk driver who injured 5 people at a stoplight in Busan.

A drunk driver who smashed through a guardrail on a ramp on Jayu-ro in Goyang and fell quite a ways.

Also, it was reported that penalties for drunk driving (and blocking fire trucks) will be strengthened.

So it seems - from a glance at such reports at Naver over a month - that driving drunk while being a police officer, injuring people while driving drunk, or doing spectacularly stupid things while driving drunk (like driving 40 children around or committing other crimes like theft) will get reported in the media. One wonders if driving drunk while being a teacher - of any nationality - is also enough to make the news.

The only teachers or instructors reported to have been arrested for drunk driving this year, at least according to Naver, was the foreign instructor above and a Korean elementary school teacher in Cheongju, who, in a particularly "absurd" case from January, was so drunk he tried to drive the wrong car home and punched the owner of that car when the owner tried to stop him.

If you're thinking that, perhaps, Korean teachers don't get caught for drinking and driving very often, this article suggests otherwise. The statistics it provides shows that, from January 2003 to August 2005, 1059 out of 1733 crimes by Korean school teachers involved losing their license for such things as drunk driving. If today's rates are similar, that works out to an average of over 300 cases a year, or 25 per month, but four months into 2011 there's only been one news report about such an arrest.