Saturday, December 31, 2022

The Rise and Fall of E-2-visa HIV testing in South Korea, 1988 - 2017

Or, how a "Citizens' Group" worked with news media and police to tar foreign English teachers as AIDS threats and convinced a government ministry to require HIV tests for them, and how these were challenged at the national level (which failed) and then at the international level, which ultimately led to them being rescinded. 

Some of this material exists elsewhere on this blog, scattered about (or as parts of other series), while most of the new posts (parts 5-10, 11-12) expand on previous posts by translating various articles, in particular the TV news reports from July 2007. I translated these almost five years ago but just never got around to posting them. Considering the work I put into it back then, I decided I might as well post it all and gather it all together. (This will also convince me to finish my 1988 Olympics series, the conclusion of which ties directly into HIV testing of foreigners.) Elements of this research appeared in this 2012 Journal of Korean Law article written with Benjamin Wagner: "HIV/AIDS Tests as a Proxy for Racial Discrimination? A Preliminary Investigation of South Korea’s Policy of Mandatory In-Country HIV/AIDS Tests for its Foreign English Teachers".

This (for now) collects the series together; once Part 2 is finished I'll place this 'table of contents' at the top of each post.

  The Rise and Fall of E-2-visa HIV testing in South Korea, 1988 - 2017

Part 1: The 1988 Olympics and Korean fears of AIDS
Part 2: HIV testing for foreigners in the aftermath of the 1988 Olympics (unfinished)
Part 3: Anti-English Spectrum begins to link foreign English teachers to AIDS (2006)Part 5: Using their own articles, Anti English Spectrum petitions for E-2 visa changes (2006)


A selection of related articles and series:

Delinquent foreign instructors, "Freeze!" (NoCut News' Puff Piece about AES) (2009)

2 comments:

daeguowl said...

I wonder what Lee Eun-eung is up to nowadays. Has he embraced reality?

matt said...

Haven't a clue! You'd think he'd do well in PR. I can't imagine he was happy to see the HIV tests lifted, but ten years was a run longer than it should have been.