Thursday, October 25, 2012

Former Tanzanian English teacher in the news

Yesterday the Maeil Sinmun published this report:
After deportation, reenter Korea on another's passport and live as native speaking instructor
5 including a Tanzanian arrested

On October 24 Daegu police booked without detention five people, including A (32), a Tanzanian, for illegally entering the country with a passport issued to him in someone else's name.

According to police, those arrested, from Tanzania, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Cambodia, were deported for illegally staying in Korea and, finding it difficult to return to Korea, they gave local brokers 5 to 10 million won to issue them a passport in the name of another person.

The police investigation revealed that A, who was deported  in December 2009, reentered the country in May 2010 and was a native speaking instructor at an English hagwon in Daegu for three months.
This was also reported by News 1, which also mentioned his job as a native speaking instructor at an English hagwon. What was he doing for the other 26 months? In comparison to him having been a native speaking instructor, I suppose it doesn't matter. To be fair, his other jobs likely didn't involve being around children, but the fact that there's no mention made (by the police?) is interesting, though not unexpected.

In May last year Yonhap reported on a meth bust involving a South African drug mule and a Nigerian in Korea who had worked variously as a factory worker, clothing seller, and illegal English teacher, and chose the title "Former native speaking instructor caught smuggling philopon." A police official was quoted saying "This is the first time that a native speaking instructor has tried to smuggle a large amount of philipon, rather than marijuana," ignoring the fact that Nigerians are usually not included in the immigration defined "native speaker" category in Korea. YTN followed this up later in the day with a report titled "Native speaking teacher arrested for smuggling large amount of Philipon," which effectively erased the South African (the actual smuggler) from the story to focus on the Nigerian who "worked as a native speaking English instructor." This was also similar to a series of stories Yonhap and YTN published in 2009.

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