The following is a presentation that Ben Wagner prepared for the National Human Rights Commission of Korea and the Gonggam attorneys handling my case at the Constitutional Court. I've received his permission to put the powerpoint into a blog format. I found the background information on the how the HIV/AIDS tests & drug tests came about both enlightening and very disturbing. I thought other people would be interested in learning about it as well.
This presentation will explain why the E-2 visa policy is about xenophobia and race, and why it signals the beginning of a disturbing trend in Korea which needs to be immediately addressed by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK).
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is of crucial importance to understanding the E-2 visa issue.
The Commission should be reminded that the Convention is fully executed and binding upon the government as well as private individuals and organizations.
Indeed, in the words of the ROK “the Convention was ratified and promulgated by the Government with the consent of the National Assembly [and] [a]s such, it has the same authority of domestic law and does not require additional legislation."
The Commission’s attention should be directed to:
Article 2 of the Convention, which requires this nation to prohibit and bring an end to racial discrimination by persons, groups, and organizations, and “to review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination[.]”
And Article 4, which requires that Korea declare illegal and prohibit organizations “which attempt to justify or promote racial hatred and discrimination in any form[.]”
The NHRCK should be aware of General Recommendations number 30 (on discrimination against non-citizens) and number 31 (on the prevention of racial discrimination in the administration and functioning of the criminal justice system).
Had these recommendations been followed there would have been no need for the many complaints that have been made to this Commission because of the E-2 visa policy.
General Recommendation 31 warns about “searches which are in reality based solely on the physical appearance of a person, that person's colour or features or membership of a racial or ethnic group, or any profiling which exposes him or her to greater suspicion.”
General Recommendation 30 on the discrimination against noncitizens, section 3, details "protections on hate speech" --
This recommendation reminds the Republic of Korea to “Take steps to address xenophobic attitudes and behaviour towards non-citizens, in particular hate speech and racial violence, and to promote a better understanding of the principle of non-discrimination in respect of the situation of non-citizens”
It also reminds the Republic of Korea to “Take resolute action to counter any tendency to target, stigmatize, stereotype or profile, on the basis of race, colour, descent, and national or ethnic origin, members of "non-citizen" population groups, especially by politicians, officials, educators and the media, on the Internet and other electronic communications networks and in society at large"
The wording in general recommendation 30 is especially poignant as it so clearly illustrates the insidious process that has unfolded here in Korea and which has resulted in the E-2 visa policy.
Racial hate speech directed against noncitizens has been allowed to flourish unchecked, moving its way from hate groups on the Internet to mainstream media. It has since been taken up by public officials, it has been taken up by politicians and it has been taken up by educators and promulgated to society at large. It now threatens to become law.
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The Republic of Korea has explained to the UN Human Rights Council that a major part of the NHRCK’s work is educating and monitoring the media for representations of racial minorities in order to make sure that the spirit of respect for other races and a human rights friendly media exists in Korea.
The task of fulfilling the guidelines of General Recommendations 30 and 31 belongs to this Commission.
A major source of the promotion of racial hatred and discrimination exists here. This website is the home of what used to be a small group of netizens who organized themselves in 2005. As you can see the membership numbers have grown, there used to be only a few hundred. Now, there are over 17,000.
The group’s website is hosted by Naver.com. Naver is the most popular search portal in Korea and accounts for over 70% of all search queries in Korea. Naver hosts internet forums called "cafes" at cafe.naver.com and, with over 17,000 members, “the Anti-English Spectrum” cafe is Naver’s most popular cafe.
Race and racism is central focus of this organization. In this picture three mountains are shown, each representing a teacher of a different race. The Rocky Mountains represent the white race, Mount Kilimanjaro represents the black race, and Mount Baekdu represents the Korean race. The text has the black dolls beginning a hypothetical dialogue, which is concluded by a Korean narrator. The black dolls say that Korea is a racist country because it only chooses English instructors who are white, not those who are black. Because of this they – the black dolls – are suffering discrimination. The narrator concludes the dialogue by explaining that the real sufferer is the precious national teacher of the Korean race, who stands like Mount Baekdu.
The message is that racial discrimination is necessary in order to promote the interests of the Korean race.
The Commission is reminded of Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which states “Parties condemn all propaganda and organizations which attempt to justify or promote racial hatred and discrimination in any form”.
This is what we see here, an attempt justify discrimination. In order to preserve the precious Korean race teacher, the other races must suffer discrimination.
This next piece of propaganda also focuses on race. In English it lists each of the despised races as "black pigs," "rednecks," and those from “Baquistan” – wordplay meaning “cockroach country”. It shows images of blacks wearing face paint in one picture and carrying guns in another. In another picture people are shown holding flags with Arabic writing. The text says “anyone” is welcome to be an English teacher in Korea. It explains that all of the world’s “idiots” come to Seoul, specifically to Itaewon, where they can enjoy free alcohol and free sex.
Again, Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is directly on point. Article 4 explains that the Republic of Korea not only has an affirmative duty to “adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination” but it also must “declare illegal and prohibit organizations [that pursue the type of] racially discriminatory propaganda activities” we see here.
In fact, the Convention states that “participation in such organizations or activities [constitute] offence[s] punishable by law.”
In agreeing to Naver’s terms of use agreement, cafe.naver.com members agree not to engage in illegal or improper conduct. Naver also states that service will not be provided in cases of illegal or improper conduct. However, Naver has continued to host the hate group’s website for over four years now as it has become Naver’s most popular “café” blog.
The group calls these racist images “promotional posters”. They are featured prominently on the website. They are very large and designed to be downloaded, printed out and distributed as propaganda. Here are a few of them. As you can see there are several pages available.
Again, under article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, “promot[ing] racial hatred and discrimination in any form,” such as with the use of “promotional posters,” is a prohibited practice which is illegal under Korean law.
By hosting on these posters promoting racial hatred and discrimination, Naver has participated in “assistance to racist activities” under Article 4(a) of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, an offense that Korea has pledged to declare “punishable by law”. Naver’s role has been crucial to the organization; it provides the network for the group to be able to “promote racial hatred and discrimination”. But also of crucial importance, the Naver brand name lends this hate group the label of legitimacy.
Here the group is distributing some of its racist “promotional posters” on the streets of Seoul.
Notice the Naver website address featured on these racist promotional posters instructing citizens where to find more materials provided by this group. Above the naver.cafe website, there is a quote where the group is again actively promoting racial hatred.
The Anti-English hate group explains that “we look coldly upon Southeast Asian workers, yet we are much too generous and tolerant of blue-eyed foreigners…”
Here is more literature designed to incite racial hatred which the group distributes among Korean citizens with the Naver address prominently featured. These cards say that “foreign English teachers” have “AIDS,” engage in “sexual molestation” and are “targeting your children”.
It’s important to recognize that this group is focused on discriminating on the basis of race and not because of citizenship. In fact, although the terms “white” and “black” are often used by this group to refer to race, even the term “foreigner” is used by them to designate someone not of the Korean race.
The spokesman for this “Anti-English” group, Lee Eun-ung, makes this clear in a recent Seoul Shimun article. In discussing non-citizens English teachers of Korean descent, Lee uses the term “brethren” and elsewhere simply refers to them as “Koreans”. He explains that “to treat the Republic of Korea’s brethren like foreigners would be unreasonable.”
Therefore, the “Anti-English” group believes that background checks and other precautionary measures should be for “foreigners” only; non-citizen English teachers of Korean descent should be exempt.
Indeed, despite several high profile cases of criminal activity and drug use by non-citizen English teachers of Korean descent, this organization has remained true to its mission of censuring only non-citizen teachers who are of foreign races and never non-citizen teachers of the Korean race.
The Korean Americans gang members discussed in this article worked as English teachers in Korea. They had criminal histories for theft, drugs, and illegal weapons. They used fraudulent diplomas and their ability to speak English as native speakers to get jobs in Korea as English teachers. The article explains that while in Korea one of them ran a fake diploma operation, while another worked as an illegal drug dealer.
While these individuals are exactly the type of illegal English teachers this group has dedicated itself to expelling from the country, they are of no concern to this organization because as members of the Korean race they are “brethren” and not “foreigners”.
Even arrests for murder are apparently not a concern for this organization if the individual is of the Korean race. David Nam is a Korean American who was arrested for murder in the U.S. and then fled to Korea in 1998. Nam worked as an English teacher of children and lived in Korea for the next ten years.
A Korean police officer explained that “[a]s a native English speaker it would have been very easy for Nam to get a job as a teacher and make a living."
In keeping with his group’s belief that treating “brethren like foreigners would be unreasonable,” the spokesman for the Anti-English hate group has argued that ethnic Koreans should be able to bypass AIDS and drugs test as well.
The group hasn’t presented any data as to why they believe ethnic Korean are less likely than other ethnic groups to use drugs or transmit AIDS, but this neglect makes sense if one recalls that the point of requiring foreigners to submit to drug and AIDS tests has never been about real concerns over drug use or AIDS. Instead, the drug and AIDS tests were introduced as a method of stigmatization.
That the drug tests were instituted simply to stigmatize foreign English teachers as “drug abusers” becomes very clear when we look at the data for the years prior to the institution of the drug tests. The column that indicates narcotics (마약) shows the drugs that teachers are tested for under the E-2 visa requirements. As you can see, according to the Narcotic Division of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, there were no arrests for those drugs. In other words, when the drug tests were instituted in 2007 teachers were tested for drugs they had never been arrested for using. On the other hand, there have been arrests for marijuana. But marijuana isn’t tested for.
Such a system seems illogical, but in reality it serves exactly the purpose it was designed to serve: stigmatization.
As a precautionary screening measure the tests are a dismal failure since they don’t screen for drugs that foreign English teachers have been arrested for. But again, keeping drug using foreign English teachers out of the classrooms is not the purpose of the E-2 drug tests. The purpose of the E-2 drug tests is to stigmatize foreign English teachers in Korean society as drug users. In accomplishing this goal of stigmatization, the drug testing has been a great success.
By broadly proclaiming to the public that drug abuse is so rampant among foreign teachers that the government has had to step in and demand medical drug tests for the entire foreign teacher population, the stigma of the foreign teacher as illegal drug abuser has been well established.
It’s exactly the same story with the AIDS tests – they are all about stigmatization. And what is especially revealing is that in its haste to stigmatize foreign English teachers residing in Korea, the government has neglected its own laws on AIDS and disease prevention which require HIV/AIDS tests to be given in the home country of foreign visa applicant as “entry requirements”. But the E-2 visa HIV/AIDS tests are not entry requirements. Foreign teachers, regardless of HIV status, must first come to Korea where they are required to submit to tests in-country.
Korean laws on HIV/AIDS make clear that the legally required method of handling foreigners deemed to present the threat of AIDS is to conduct overseas tests in the sending country and to condition the issuance of visas on an applicant’s HIV negative status. But the E-2 visa policy in-country tests are in direct contravention of these laws.
Anxious to stigmatize foreigners living in Korea as infected with AIDS, the E-2 visa policy has neglected its own legally established HIV procedure and violated two binding Acts from the National Assembly.
While we must be clear that these HIV restrictions on foreigners as they are written are laws we are critical of and we don’t want to appeal to them for support in criticizing the E-2 visa policy, the fact that the government has violated its own laws for what it has defined as effective prevention strategy against foreigners with AIDS is highly significant.
It demonstrates, quite effectively, that the intent of the new E-2 visa HIV tests actually has nothing to do with AIDS prevention and everything to do with discrimination and stigmatization.
And that is the key to understanding the new E-2 visa AIDS tests in Korea. They are all about trying to mark foreigners already living in Korea with the stigma of the AIDS-infected.
That's why in-country testing and deportation was necessary. An overseas testing program wouldn't have been as effective in stigmatizing in-country foreigners.
HIV/AIDS testing foreigners on working visa is nothing new. The E-6 “entertainer visa” has been around for many years. Here’s an article from 2003 with Japanese actress You-Min (Yuko Fueki) complaining about being discriminatorily tested for HIV/AIDS. So Korean government authorities are well familiar with testing foreigners for HIV/AIDS, and the process established by both the AIDS Prevention Act and the Immigration Act is to require HIV/AIDS testing in the home country of the visa applicant before entry to Korea is allowed.
The standard overseas testing procedure, as required by Article 8(3) of the AIDS Prevention Act, is common knowledge. See the quote, for example, from the same article about the Japanese actress mentioning the procedure: “So last month in Japan,” it says, “after receiving an HIV negative result, the medical certificate was submitted to the Korea Immigration Office.” As required by Korean law, the Japanese actress had to take obtain an HIV negative test result from her home country of Japan before being admitted to Korea.
Contrast that with the approach of the E-2 visa where foreigner teachers are required to be tested in Korea.
This is Andrea Vandom, an E-2 visa holder and professor of English at Chung-Ang University. Ms. Vandom was the first English teacher to legally challenge the E-2 visa requirements as unconstitutional. The Constitutional Court has recently accepted her case. After living and working in Korea for 3 year as a professor of English at Chung-Ang University, in 2008 the government demanded she submit to an in-country HIV/AIDS test.
When she was told about the mandatory HIV test Ms. Vandom was disappointed with the discriminatory travel restrictions but contemplated submitting an HIV negative result from her home country in satisfaction of the requirement. But as a foreign English teacher, it was explained to her, she would not have the option of taking the HIV/AIDS test in her home country -- she would have to take it in Korea.
Again, like the drug testing of foreign English teachers, this approach to HIV testing seems illogical. While Ms. Vandom happens to be HIV negative, if, hypothetically speaking, Vandom had tested positive for HIV in her home country then the immigration authorities could have denied her a visa and effectively upheld the entry requirements of both the Immigration Act and AIDS Prevention Act. Why would the immigration authorities break their own law, invite an HIV positive foreigner into the country, wait 3 months to test the individual only to issue a deportation order sending the person right back to where they could have kept her in the first place? It’s very clear that the E-2 visa HIV tests fail miserably to uphold the accepted (though misplaced) legal procedure in Korea for immigration and AIDS prevention. If we keep in mind, however, that they weren’t designed with AIDS prevention in mind, but with the intent to stigmatize foreign English teachers in Korean society as an AIDS threat, then we see that the E-2 visa policy has actually been a great success.
And as we will see, it is the racist Anti-English group that has operating as lobby group, for four years now, pushing very hard from behind the scenes to get foreign English teachers AIDS tested.
Marking foreign English teachers with the AIDS stigma has been an especially important goal for this group in order to frighten Korean women from engaging in interracial sexual relations.
Condemning even the suggestion of interracial sex is a major concern for this organization.
Scenes such as this one, showing a Korean woman and a foreign man dancing together, are unacceptable to this hate group. This is one of the pictures that this organization was founded on in 2005. They were taken at a nightclub party. The party was hosted by foreigners who contributed to a website called English spectrum. The racist hate group takes its English name “Anti-English Spectrum” from this website.
Korean netizens have added a caption to the above photo, which reads “Come to Korea, every night take your pick and have good time” the message is attributed to “Korean Fucking Girls” – a double entendre indicating these Korean women are despised by Korean males and sexually available to foreigners.
Korean women are often targets of this group for their betrayal of the their race by having relationships with members of different races – dancing with or even talking to members of different racial groups puts Korean women in danger of persecution from this group.
This is a woman whose picture appeared in a photograph taken at the nightclub party. She required psychiatric treatment after being stalked and harassed by phone and email. She made clear one of the sources of this harassment: “Some online articles and the Anti-English Spectrum cafe said we were prostitutes, western princesses, and brothel keepers.”
This is the original banner for the group’s website in January 2005. The banner shows images from the nightclub party that sparked the furor that would forge the group.
As the group’s mission statement explains it:
“Our anger overflowed, as we felt unendurable humiliation through reading of the debasement of Korean women by the arrogant, infamous English Spectrum. We gathered here [at this website] with our seething consciences, our ‘active consciences,’ which could not stand this. A heart which could hear of this evil work and yet be able to endure it is a heart that has already shriveled up and died. Bothered by this, and gathering our power together, our consciences would not allow us to overlook this tragic story as if we were looking across a river. We are aware that loving your country does not only mean taking up arms and fighting in a war…”
The next incarnation of the group’s website in 2006 is also instructive. Across the top banner stretches various patriarchal heroes. The red text reads “The blood of our ancestors protects the motherland.” On the right Admiral Yi Sun-sin is shown brandishing a sword with the words “Citizen’s Movement to Expel Illegal Foreign Teachers”. On the left is shown a hwarang, meaning the “flowering of Korean manhood.” The hwarang represent “an ideal man: one of honor, strength, responsibility, and virtue” – the antithesis of the foreign male.
Looking at the evolution of the banner designs, we see the group trying to distance itself from its negative identity origins as an “anti” organization and also to advance a locus of concern (first, defending the motherland; second, protecting children) that will appeal to a broader membership base.
In the shift from the first banner to the second, the group struggles to overcome the “unendurable humiliation” suffered because of the betrayal of Korean women by putting a pronounced emphasis on Korean patriarchal potency and martial pride. The second banner elevates the status of members from humiliated cuckolds to defenders of the motherland. If “those women” (“그녀들” as they are often called) cannot be relied on then it’s up to the men to “expel” the invaders. Accordingly, the name of the group becomes the “National Movement to Expel Illegal Foreign Teachers.”
In the final and most current design, the children, who were absent in first and barely visible in the second, have now swollen to fill the entire banner, concealing the emphasis on the blood of Korean ancestors and the patriarchal theme. The group now portrays itself as the moral regulators of the English language learning phenomena in Korea. Accordingly, the name of the group becomes the “Citizens Group for Upright English Education.” The Anti-English group has tried to position itself as essential player in English language learning in Korea. “Low quality English instructors,” the group explains, “prevent our land from learning English.” The Korea Foreign Teacher Recruiting Association (KFTRA) will regulate the import of foreign teachers, the Korean Association of Foreign Language Academies (KAFLA) will regulate them in the workplace, and the Anti-English group will regulate foreign teachers’ free time and their expulsion from the country for any behavioral breaches. The fact that the group is still focused on expelling foreigners is preserved in the sub-heading: “National Movement to Expel Illegal Foreign Teachers”.
Notice that, beneath the pantheon of patrilineal ancestors and to the left, there is a small picture of a woman. She’s the only woman shown on the page. Her name is “Non Gae” and she is a Korean courtesan (kisaeng) from the late 16th century. She is shown in a yellow hanbok.
Nongae is revered for hurling herself off a cliff while embracing a Japanese general, killing them both. The message is that sacrificing one’s life (and taking the foreigner with you) is better than betraying Korea by having sex with a foreigner. The website creator laments the loss of Korean women ready to follow Nongae’s example. The caption in Korean reads: “Nongae, we miss you.”
Here is another picture from the same 2005 party. The caption, created by Korean netizens, reads “Korea is a country where the women are easy to sleep with.” Korean women are often targeted by this group for their betrayal of their race.
Korean women seen with white men are labeled “빽빠,” meaning “white man groupies”. This image lists the negative traits ascribed to Korean women labeled as “빽빠.”
This next slide shows another “promotional poster” from the group with further justification for racial hatred for the white foreign English teacher. As this poster tries to illustrate, interracial sex is not a victimless activity. The Korean woman’s hard-working father is shown in the background working himself to death so that his daughter can feed stacks of Korean currency into the mouth of the white foreign English teacher whose only interest in the relationship is money and sex. Her “빽빠,” groupie status, is made clear by her “I love foreigner” t-shirt.
Several other posting at the Anti-English website target Korean women and censure them for having relationships with foreign men.
This post targeted a separate website where Korean women showed interest in foreign men. These women are told that “90% of white men in Korea are villainous human garbage..”
Stories and images move from the Internet into the media. This is the same picture shown above and as you can see it has found its way into the newspapers. The graph shows that in the week the Anti-English group was formed “foreign instructors” was a popular search term on the Internet. It will become increasingly popular in the news media in the following years.
This 2005 story in Breaknews called "Tracking AIDS-Suspicious Foreign Teachers on the Blacklist" was a major propaganda victory for the Anti-English hate group. This article does many things.
It links foreign English teachers with sexual debauchery and stigmatizes them with the AIDS virus.
It warns Korean women that consensual sex with foreigner language teachers will lead to a deadly disease.
The article attempts to shock its readers by explaining that 80% of foreigners seeking AIDS tests at an Itaewon AIDS counseling center were foreign English teachers.
This data is presented as if it were evidence that foreign English teachers are an AIDS threat to Korean society. It also implies that being voluntarily tested for AIDS is a bad thing, which is clearly not a message that benefits the public health.
For all of its scare tactics and sleazy journalistic style, the article shows a sophisticated understanding of immigration law. The article explains that while the E-6 entertainers’ visa requires an AIDS test, the E-2 foreign language teacher's visa does not.
The article concludes with a contribution which says that since foreign English teachers lead perverted and overactive sex lives and have AIDS (as evidenced by their voluntary HIV testing rate), the E-2 visa should be amended to include a mandatory HIV/AIDS test for foreign English teachers.
This was in September 2006, within about a year this is exactly what will occur. And as we will see, it was an intense lobby effort by the Anti-English group to have foreign English teachers marked with the AIDS stigma that was responsible for getting the tests instituted.
It is important to note that the article’s focus on E-2 visa holders marks a significant change from the group’s earlier tactics. When the group was first formed in January 2005, they defined problematic foreign English teachers as those “without E-2 visas,” not those working with E-2 visas. Their February 2005 flyer, for example, says:
“Definition of low-quality native speaker teachers: those who have come to Korea without E-2 visas for the purpose of engaging in sexual pleasures and to create trouble. What are E-2 visas? Visas that are issued by the Immigration Office to those who have a 4-year university degree from overseas and have a teaching license.”
This initial approach is logical. Because it’s impossible for the group to achieve its goal of punishing foreigners for “engaging in sexual pleasures” without these foreigners actually breaking any kind of laws, it makes sense to portray them as working illegally without a proper visa and without the proper qualifications. But there are a few problems with this approach. First, unless they are caught in the act, foreigners working illegally as English teachers in Korea are a difficult group to identify. Thus, rather than try to hit a moving and vaguely defined target, it made sense for the group to focus on stigmatizing E-2 visa teachers. Second, the group gradually became aware that the teachers they were most interested in targeting were qualified and working legally in Korea. As we will see this second point has continued to prove a challenge for the group.
A posting on the group’s Internet site just after the article comes out takes credit for contributing to the Breaknews newspaper article. The group has been responsible for feeding the media and the government with discriminatory propaganda on foreign English teachers, and as we will see, it has been accepted by them without question.
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Rarely is the pattern of intentional discrimination as clear as it is in this case. But with the Anti-English group we can actually trace, step by step, the moves the group makes to target and label foreign English teachers as an AIDS threat and the willing acceptance of these moves by the Korean government.
The inspiration for the September 2006 Breaknews article that we have just examined came as a result of the article displayed above that dealt with concerns over AIDS and foreigners.
This article points out there are few places for foreigners to be tested and that illegal aliens, unaware of their HIV status, may be unknowingly spreading the disease because of the government’s lack of proper policies and facilities. The article concludes by explaining that experts say that the government needs to establish a better HIV/AIDS policy because foreigners in Korea are increasing, and for the health of foreigners themselves, there should be more AIDS testing centers.
In the course of examining the issue, foreign English teachers are mentioned in passing and distinguished from illegal workers, who unfortunately do not visit the one AIDS counseling center in Korea then available for foreigners. As the official at the Itaewon clinic was quoted as saying, “we have almost no illegal immigrant foreigners;” instead, as the official explains, the foreigners visiting the clinic are “mostly white collar foreigners, such as English teachers.”
From this offhand mention of English teachers and HIV tests the idea for a propaganda campaign against native English teachers is born.
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This next post on September 9, 2006 from the group’s spokesman mentions the DongA news article and provides a link to the news article on the internet. He includes two stories of Korea women who he says are now “trembling from the fear of AIDS after having sex with foreigner English teachers.” 
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The next two posts, which appear on the following day, also contain horror stories regarding foreigners and AIDS – one even featuring a terrifying “AIDS Mummy.”The first slide contains a post by the Spokesman that claims to relate "the truth behind the rumors circulating around Itaewon regarding the 'AIDS horror story' . . . that infected foreigners are indiscriminately spreading the virus." Shamefully, the Spokesman insinuates that "a foreign AIDS-infected peoples' organization" may be plotting to infect Koreans. "It is not yet known," explains the post, "whether a foreign AIDS-infected peoples’ organization is responsible for inciting these people, or whether it is the infected foreigners within Korea just working amongst themselves. The only truth known from the rumor is that these people are spreading AIDS in order make their existence known."
There we have it, the propaganda message has been clearly established: "Koreans who have had sexual contact with a foreigner will almost all contract AIDS.”
By this post, on September 15, 2006, the group is in contact with news media. The Spokesman tells the group members to “Get ready to freely spread the resources and original materials. Low quality native speaker teachers and AIDS.” The message is clear. Plans for spreading a propaganda news story about foreign English teachers with HIV/AIDS transmitting it to Korean women were well under way. As the Spokesman explains to the members, “Soon the AIDS native speaker teacher issue will take off.”
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Three days later the Breaknews article appears containing the message that E-2 visa holders should be tested for HIV/AIDS.
On September 28, 2006, ten days after the Breaknews article comes out, the group uses quotes from the article in a petition to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) asking for mandatory HIV tests for foreign English teachers on E-2 visas. In just over a year the MOJ will grant this group’s wish, and in doing so will use the very same media quotes and bogus statistics that the Anti-English hate group has made available through its propaganda.
As mentioned above, it’s rare to be able to see intentional discrimination so clearly laid out. But here we have an undisguised animus that seeks whatever means necessary to target foreign English teachers. The ‘foreigner AIDS scare’ meme was a readymade idea that this group appropriate for its own purposes.
Struggling for a way to understand the disease when it first took hold in Korea, the common explanation became that HIV/AIDS was a result of foreign contagion and moral decay. In 1991 a public opinion survey found that 69% of Koreans believed that AIDS was associated with “corrupt sex lives.” (Segye Ilbo). In 1993, the response from Korean Anti-AIDS Federation (KAAF) (at the time the largest HIV/AIDS NGO in Korea) was to embark on its “Purity Campaign” with the objective of preventing HIV/AIDS, not by promoting condom use, which was not advocated by the group, but by “the enhancement of sense of morality of Korean nationals.” HIV/AIDS was understood as resulting from “sexual excess and foreign sexual contagion”. (See “Popularising purity: Gender, sexuality and nationalism in HIV/AIDS prevention in South Korean youths, Sealing Cheng (2005)).
As Professor Cheng explains: “Women, whose purity is essential to the family and moral social order, are concomitantly a source of real and uncontainable menace when they become sexually active as a result of changing social environment and foreign influences.” (Id.)
In Korea, “HIV/AIDS [has been used] as a metaphor for fears of women out-of-control at times of rapid social transformations, targeting women as objects of control.” (Id.)
As has been explained above, the Anti-English hate group’s first attempt was to control Korean women through shame and harassment. The next step was to try to control Korean women through fear and panic the public with rumors of AIDS horror stories, pictures like the “AIDS Mummy” and dubious statistics like those listed in the Breaknews article above.
The 1990s popularized the idea that “corrupt sex lives,” “sexual excess and foreign sexual contagion” were responsible for the AIDS epidemic. The accepted Korean response was “it is good to prevent AIDS with awareness of sexual chastity and proper and healthy sexual culture.” (2000-2001 KAAF Survey, 87% of respondents agreed with the statement.) Id. Thus, Koreans sought to explain rising AIDS rates in the population with a decline in morals, sexual chastity, and “healthy sexual culture.”
What the Anti-English hate group has done is to make use of this accepted “logic” and work it in reverse. That is, because the group perceives a decline in morals and sexual chastity among Korean women involved in the “corrupt sex lives” of foreign men, AIDS must be spreading among them. That’s why you will notice the group has no need of any public verifiable data on HIV infection rates among foreign English teachers. All that’s necessary to stigmatize foreign teachers as an AIDS threat is to provide evidence of a decline in morals and sexual chastity in Korean women and involvement “corrupt sex lives” of foreign men.
As Professor Cheng points out: “Because HIV/AIDS is constructed as a moral and sexual onslaught against the Korean nation, the sexuality of Korean women becomes all the more a target of censure. Women’s embodiment of moral purity as national essence is designated by the masculine nationalist discourse and required by the patriarchal order”
It is telling that this group has chosen Nongae, a kisaeng, as a symbol of purity for Korean women. Her purity stems not from her chastity but from fact that her sexuality is exclusively available to Korean males. Nongae is placed just below the hwarang, the legitimate object of her sexual desire.
The next major propaganda victory for the group came from the Chosun Ibo and Chosun Sports in May, 2007. The headline reads “white English teacher threatens Korean woman with AIDS.” Again the focus is on race and preventing interracial sex.
The Chosun Sports ran the same article with the subtitle: “beware of the ugly white English teacher.” White English teachers are themselves something to “beware of,” interracial sex itself is a threat. Korean women must be stopped from willingly participating in sexual relations with foreigners.
Like other propaganda materials, the article contains no verified facts or data. What it does contain is an unverified e-mail allegedly written to a Korean woman by a foreign ex-boyfriend which the reader is expected to accept as genuine. It says that the foreign ex-boyfriend had unprotected sex with prostitutes and then had unprotected sex with his Korean girlfriend. Despite the alleged AIDS “threat,” the story does not involve any actual AIDS infections.
Nearly 2 years later, in February 2009, the Anti-English group publicly takes credit for placing the AIDS propaganda stories in the Chosun Ilbo and Chosun Sports. We'll see this as a pattern. The Anti-English group works to develop ready-made stories for the press and public consumption that seek to implicate foreign English teachers in immoral or illegal activities.
Spokesman Lee explains that he and his group have spent months tracking individual foreign English teachers who they suspect of illegal activities.
The Commission should be alerted to this group’s method of operation. Foreigners are stalked by the group and their home addresses are recorded. They are targeted, profiled and stigmatized on the basis of race and nationality.
This group conducts its own searches for illegal activities solely on the basis of the physical appearances of individuals, their race, their nationality, etc. This group is in the business of profiling foreign English teachers in order to expose them to greater suspicion.
This Commission must be reminded that the activities of this hate group are precisely what general recommendation 30 and 31 warn state parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to be on guard against.
56 – 61.
The targeting, stigmatization, and racial profiling that we see here, which expose these individuals to greater suspicion, are exactly what this organization is all about.
Yet instead of being condemned, this group has been praised for its activities. It has been given special access to the press; and, as will be discussed further below, the group has been invited to participate in governmental decision-making.
And disturbingly, this group has been awarded by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department for its activities in stalking foreign English teachers – and this will be further discussed below as well.
At this point, what must be emphasized to this Commission is that this hate group has worked with the press, and with the government and within civil society to make sure that foreign English teachers are perceived as “guilty until proven innocent”.
As this poster makes clear in English – so that foreigners are sure to understand: "foreign teachers and professors be warned, you are watched".
This is the message that Korea has chosen to convey to foreign educators invited to this country. We are watching you, and if necessary you will be, as the poster explains, “prosecuted, blacklisted, and deported.” Phone numbers for the police and government Immigration and Education offices are provided.
In this slide foreign teachers are warned by the government that they are living under an "intensive control period” for their "forced deportation" here in Korea. Native speakers, you are being watched. Again, phone numbers for government Immigration and Education offices are provided.
Again we have active targeting and profiling designed to expose foreign English teachers to greater suspicion. In the lower right hand corner is an image that most have seen. These are the small A4 sized posters placed in subways and elsewhere alerting citizens to the presence of North Korean spies. Compare those small warnings with the enormous banners required to alert citizens of the presence of foreign English teachers performing “illegal extracurricular work” and one begins to understand the level of scrutiny these foreign teachers are under.
This television program aired in 2005 shortly after the photographs of interracial couples appeared on the Internet and “Anti-English Spectrum” was formed.
This incredibly irresponsible program purports to be an investigative report of the illegal activities of foreign English teachers in Korea, yet even the title of the program sets out the racist agenda by calling the program a “situation report” on "blonde haired blue-eyed foreign instructors". It poses viewers with a loaded question by asking them if the sexual perversity these foreign instructors are allowed to enjoy with impunity makes the Republic of Korea their "heaven".
The group Anti-English Spectrum would later take credit for contributing to this program.
The program profiles foreign English teachers as child molesters and sexual predators by beginning with a dramatization of a hypothetical scenario, which in fact had never occurred.
These shots dramatize a scene where a white foreign English teacher devises a method to be alone with a Korean child in order to sexually molest her. Korean viewers are invited to believe the incident has occurred, and will continue to occur, as long as foreigners are allowed to tutor young children in Korea.
The scene is not based on any actual occurrence, but rather was based on a comment left on an Internet site in English in July 2003, a year and a half before the program aired. The comment was translated at the Anti-English website and spread to the media.
Real life film footage from the program shows interracial couples walking arm in arm in the streets of the Seoul as if such an occurrence was scandalous, something to be feared as dangerous and wrong.
And of course this is precisely the message the Anti-English hate group: interracial relationships are wrong. They are suspect, they are dangerous. Whether it ends in disease or abuse or rape, interracial relationships are something to be avoided at all costs. Such is the racist focus of the group.
This newspaper article makes clear the SBS program had exactly its intended effect. The Korean public was thrown into a panic. The TV programs website recorded over 1000 furious posts.
It should be noted that this article in the English press which purports to neutrally report on the “Foreign Teacher Controversy” contains this gratuitous photograph of interracial couples walking arm in arm. The picture helps emphasize what the "controversy" is all about: interracial relationships. As a Korean woman married to a foreigner explains in the article, “Since the show aired on Saturday, I’ve been afraid to go out . . . It’s absolute nonsense that I should now look like a whore because I live with a foreigner.”
But this is precisely the goal of this group, to stigmatize Korean women who have any type of interracial relationships.
The slide shows a few of the comments that were left on the SBS programs website, which are not particularly surprising considering the content of the program. Mothers terrified to send their children to school, citizens so enraged they can't sleep at night, others proposing to just go out and randomly attack foreigners.
The SBS broadcast was beyond irresponsible. The so-called “situation report” on "blonde haired blue-eyed foreign instructors" was simply propaganda designed to “justify and promote racial hatred and discrimination,” which is precisely what the Convention Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination prohibits in Korea.
Under this Convention, and under Korean law, it is the duty of the Korean government and this Commission to condemn such propaganda and “combat prejudices which lead to racial discrimination” by working with the media to help educate and create a more human rights friendly environment which promotes understanding, tolerance and friendship among nations and racial or ethnical groups.
Unfortunately, the Anti-English hate group has been much more successful than the NHRCK in working with the media. First, the group was active in providing material for the program. The opening dramatization, for example, which shows a foreign English teacher devising a method to be alone with a Korean child in order to sexually molest her, was supplied by the Anti-English group. In January 2005, they revived a website post from July 2003, translated it into Korean, and distributed it through their website. The content of the post is very disturbing, but it should be recalled that it didn’t involve a real incident, and when it was originally posted in 2003 it was foreign English teachers living in Korea who immediately condemned it. It could hardly be called be a “situation report” indicative of foreign English teachers sexual perversity.
Of course the real reason this post was chosen was not because any concern over the safety of children, but because of the photographs of interracial couples that had come to the netizens attention on January 11, 2005. This was what provided the motivation to form the group on January 12. And it was the very next day, on January 13, that this post appeared on the website.
Once the group had successfully got its message into the press, the group printed up flyers promoting the program. These posters promote racial hatred and intolerance and scold the public for being “much too generous and tolerant of blue-eyed foreigners…”
The group then organized a campaign and took to the streets to spread its message of racial intolerance and to solicit membership. The result of the campaign damaged the lives not only of foreigners living in Korea, but also Koreans who had relationships with foreigners. As the Korean woman married to a foreigner explained in the Chosun article above: “I’ve been afraid to go out . . . It’s absolute nonsense that I should now look like a whore because I live with a foreigner.”
Here is Spokesman Lee being interviewed in the Seoul Shimun in 2009. He explains that his group was responsible for supplying the SBS program with material in 2005.
So again, at the center of the media blitz promoting racial discrimination, we see the Anti-English hate group actively working to transfer the racist propaganda available on their website directly to the mainstream media.
The Anti-English group has an active working relationship with television, the print media, the police and, as we will see, with government policymakers.
The Seoul Shimun article displayed here begins with a quote by Mr. Lee which I have placed at the top of the slide. Mr. Lee explains that “carrying a gun into battle is not the only way to love one’s country.”
Of course, Mr. Lee is correct. On the battlefield, which his group staked out in its struggle against interracial mixing psychological propaganda operations are indeed just as important as physical attacks.
Propaganda is essential in making sure the enemy is dehumanized and despised.
This next image seeks to explain to Koreans how the mind of foreign language teacher really works. Again, as we can see plainly depicted, the centermost concern of this group is interracial sex.
The Commission is warned that many of these images are vulgar and degrading.
Of course, that is their purpose. They are intended to inflame racist sentiments
Condemning interracial sex is the motivating force for this group. The foreigners from the despised races must be prevented from having sexual relations with “our” Korean women.
This is a classic propaganda effort with parallels in the Second World War.
In the picture in the upper left-hand corner a black man is shown about to penetrate a white German woman. The German text reads “firmly enters the foreign worker.”
In picture to the right of the foreign worker: Blacks and Jews, the members of the races despised by the Nazis, are shown fraternizing with the pure women of the homeland. These propaganda images were designed by the Nazis to inflame sentiments exactly like the propaganda showing white foreign English teachers and Korean women locked in sexual embrace.
In the bottom left-hand corner is piece of propaganda from Imperial Japan: a woman is pictured in the arms of a Jew. Here the Jew is called “that slick fellow, that slacker.” He is “The villain that is rich, handsome, well groomed and full of influence . . . He might be having your girl right now.” In addition to being considered over-privileged, Jews were also portrayed as morally corrupt with a propensity for sexual perversions and sex crimes. These are, of course, the same labels that have been applied foreigners in Korea.
In the picture to the right another Jew is pictured and also called "the slacker".
The blond haired blue-eyed white foreign English teacher has been portrayed as the same type of sexually perverse, over-privileged slacker who takes advantage of Korea, and especially of Korean women. That “slick fellow” who “might be having your girl right now”.
This type of propaganda showing foreign men violating Korean women is designed to be provocative, to encourage Koreans (pictured here in yellow as the “hwang-in”, the “winner”) to strike out against the dark figure of “the sexual molester foreign language teacher” as he is called in this picture.
As we have seen, mass media has joined in the propaganda effort. This program shows pictures of interracial mixing with the warning “illegal foreign teachers are violating our Korean women!!!” The Anti-English group also contributed to this program. On their website they boast of their involvement and claim the program received the highest rating of any show on the network.
Another program shows the same theme. The disco, the alcohol, drugs slipped into the beer bottle, and a sexual assault by a white foreign English teacher.
Oddly enough, the Segye Ilbo credits this adult entertainment program with portraying “sexual-harassment by foreign teachers” calling it “an emerging social issue.”
Newspaper articles that detail the deplorable morals of foreign English teachers and contain insinuations and unspecified allegations of sexual assaults are common. What is rare is any mention of actual cases of rapes and assault by foreign English teachers.
In fact, despite several years of heightened scrutiny and concern, no precise data has been collected on sexual assault by foreign English teachers. The graph presented here is over-inclusive, listing sex crimes from all visa types (not just English teachers) from the 7 English speaking countries. Yet despite being over-inclusive, the data shows sex crimes by Koreans at more than four times the rate of those from native English speaking countries.
Here is another television show with the same message and the same formula. Like the Sexy-Mong program, there is the disco, the alcohol . . .
. . . and the sexual assault by the foreign white English teacher. This time it's a gang rape.
Again, this propaganda shows strong similarities with other types of propaganda.
Despite the absence of data or specific cases, police departments have joined in supporting the media’s biased representation of foreign teachers. In one article, an official with the Foreign Affairs Division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency explains that Korea is a “perverted paradise” because American and Canadian foreign English teachers find it easy to seduce Korean women and do drugs with them.”
In another article, a police official from Incheon explains that “sex crimes are committed by foreign English teachers, who are high on drugs”.
Foreign English teachers, sexual assaults, drugs. Exactly the same information being provided in the television shows. But no public verifiable data, no arrest statistics, no case mentioned, just more propaganda.
General Recommendation 31 of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination explains that the police authorities must be forbidden to “cast suspicion in advance on the members of a specific racial or ethnic group.” It explains that the police “have an obligation to ensure that the mass media do not disseminate information which might stigmatize certain categories of persons, particularly those belonging to non-citizen groups.” In addition to monitoring the media for representations of minorities, another major task of the NHRCK is to educate law enforcement officers in making certain that Korea’s human rights obligations are being fulfilled.
Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, the Anti-English group seems to have more influence with the police departments than the NHRCK.
In receiving an award from the nation’s police department for its vigilante activities, the group has, in effect, been deputized to conduct its own private investigations of foreigners. As the group has explained in the media and on its website, it stalks foreigners, tracking their movements (sometimes for months at a time) and recording their places of residence.
In addition to their unique role with the police department, the Anti-English group has been invited by the Ministry of Justice to help create national policy for foreigners residing in Korea.
This poster shows a very significant meeting that was held by the Ministry of Justice’s immigration foreigner policy team of the office on October 23, 2007.
This was the meeting that would create the E-2 visa policy memo which required the mandatory in country AIDS and drug tests for over 17,000 foreigners residing in Korea. This is the same policy that was created without any oversight and put into practice without passing any laws.
The bottom of this poster shows the list of participants of this very significant meeting. There are several important officials from the Ministry of Justice, the foreign-policy division of the Immigration Office, representatives from the Ministry of Education and Human Resources, and another representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. From private sector, the Director of Korea Association of Foreign Language Academies is also in attendance. And finally, Mr. Lee Eun Ung or Chairman Lee as he is referred to here.
It is very disturbing to see that a representative of a racist propaganda organization has been granted a seat at the table of government by the Ministry of Justice to help draft the new E-2 visa requirements.
A posting made immediately after the MOJ E-2 visa policy meeting confirms that Spokesman Lee was in attendance. The posting also includes more detailed information on the MOJ's new plans for the introduction of the E-2 visa requirements.
After making contact with the Anti-English hate group at this meeting, it’s not surprising to see the Ministry of Justice begin to express the same type of views on foreign English teachers. Here, just days after the meeting, the Ministry of Justice explains that strong measures are required to crack down on drug use and sexual offenses by foreign English teachers.
In a post on the Anti-English group’s website from July 2007, there is a mention of an earlier visit to the MOJ where the group emphasized to officials the need for medical checks for teachers. In a post made just after the October 23, 2007 E-2 visa policy meeting, it is again explained that the need for medical tests was emphasized to MOJ officials. The Anti-English group will soon have their way as the MOJ decides to incorporate these suggestions into its E-2 visa policy memo requiring in-country AIDS and drug tests.
Here is the infamous policy memo, released in November, about a week after the E-2 visa policy meeting. This is the memo that puts in place the in-country medical procedures causing human rights violations for thousands of foreign residents.
At this point, in late 2007, the Ministry of Justice becomes bolder with its rhetoric. The Ministry of Justice condemns foreign English teachers in the international media for “disrupting social order by taking drugs, committing sexual-harassment, and alcohol intoxication.”
Here is a domestic media source. An official from the Ministry of Justice explains that drug use and criminal activities by foreign English teachers have risen to “dangerous levels.”
Again there is no public verifiable data provided, no arrest statistics, no cases mentioned. Just a firm conviction on the part of the Ministry of Justice that “dangerous levels” of drug abuse by foreign teachers have been reached.
We know, however, that such statements do not accord with actual data provided by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.
Turning back to the fateful policy meeting on October 23, 2007 for a moment; in the center of the page, the Ministry of Justice Foreigner Policy team makes a statement explaining why this meeting is taking place. There are a million foreigners in the country, it says, but there is no system in place to deal with them.
The terrible irony is that the National Assembly had recently enacted the well-known and highly celebrated Act on the Treatment of Foreigners Residing in Korea, which was in full force at the time of this policy meeting. In the words of the ROK, this Act “establish[ed] . . . the Foreigner Policy Committee under the Prime Minister for deliberation and coordination of policies on foreigners.” The Act had gone into force in July and by October it was already forgotten; indeed, the ink is not even dry on the newly created Act on the Treatment of Foreigners in Korea when the MOJ is busy violating its provisions, as well as the Constitution.
In spite of the MOJ’s Foreigner Policy team’s statements, it was certainly not the case that no system existed to manage policies on foreigners. In fact, as the ROK has explained, “the Act provides a framework whereby related government agencies can more closely cooperate in the execution of policies on foreigners including those prohibiting discrimination.” Furthermore, article 4 of the Act requires that rules affecting the treatment of foreigners residing in Korea must conform to the purpose of the Act, which is “to help foreigners in Korea to adjust themselves to the Korean society to reach their full potentials and to create a society where Koreans and foreigners in Korea understand and respect each other”.
The MOJ’s Foreigner Policy team was well aware of the important legal obligations that the Republic of Korea had established for central and local governments but instead choose to disregard them. Rather than consulting the Basic Act on the Treatment of Foreigners, as was required by law, and coordinating with the Foreigner Policy Committee established under that Act, the MOJ’s Foreigner Policy team decided to consult with a racist hate group and implement its policies of stigmatization, and discrimination.
The Basic Act and Foreigner Policy Committee are integral parts of the ROK’s ambitious 2007-2011 five-year “National Action Plan (NAP) for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights,” which is Korea’s “comprehensive nationwide master plan . . . present[ing] an overarching perspective for all human rights related laws, systems, and policies.”
The MOJ’s Foreigner Policy Division bears responsibly for being seriously negligent in disregarding national policies and embarrassing Korea on the world stage by undermining commitments that the national government was interested in promoting to the international community.
At the same time the MOJ’s Foreigner Policy Division was implementing extra-legal measures against foreigners by explaining that there was no system in place, the ROK was telling the international community about the new “Inter-Ministerial Committee on Policies Regarding Foreigners in Korea” and explaining how the new Act on the Treatment of Foreigners will contribute to “social integration through the promotion of mutual understanding and respect between foreigners and Korean nationals.”
In fact, the ROK has said a great deal about the new Act on the Treatment of Foreigners to the International Community. At home, unfortunately, the Act has been completely disregarded by government agencies such as the MOJ’s Foreigner Policy team, and what we’ve seen instead is a racist hate group stepping in to help draft rules for foreigners to abide by.
The Chosun Ilbo published this article in July 2009. It was the first in a series of four articles published consecutively on June 30, June 31, July 1, July 2. (A fifth follow up article also appeared August 20, 2009). Four articles in four days, all on problematic foreign English teachers and the source for the material is again the Anti-English group.
Here we have to remember that the E-2 requirements were put in place in 2007 order to calm what the Ministry of Justice called “serious social outcry” created by news media coverage of unqualified foreign English teachers. The MOJ emphasized the supposed palliative role of the E-2 visa policy in its March 2007 press release, saying “thanks to measures introduced on native English teachers by the Ministry of Justice, the anxiety of citizens over ineligible foreign English teachers is expected to be alleviated.”
Yet as this series of articles (and many others that continue to be published) demonstrate, the E-2 visa policy has failed miserably at alleviating the anxiety of the public. In fact, media reports over unqualified foreign English teachers have only increased since the E-2 policy has gone into effect. But this is only to be expected when you have a group with over 17,000 members committed to stigmatizing foreign English teachers in Korean society.
Given the Anti-English group’s unique access to the press it is not surprising to learn that the material for this series of four articles in four days was provided by the group, as the author herself explains. So once again, behind the flurry of press reports of problematic foreign English teachers and the so-called “social outcry” we see the Anti-English group in the trenches working hard to transfer their message of racial hatred and discrimination from their website to the mainstream media.
And like the Anti-English group’s website, in news reports such as these we see an emphasis on the condemnation of interracial sex, unsubstantiated rumor, and dubious use of statistics. In fact, statistics that are downright inaccurate often appear in media reports.
Take, for example, the statistics shown in this article. You notice that both graphs purport to show the total number of E-2 visa holders in Korea through September 2008. But there is a difference of approximately 13,000 between the two of them.
The graph on the right is a correction; the total number of E2 visa holders has never exceeded 20,000.
The JoongAng Ilbo was good enough to correct its mistake when it realized it had used the wrong number. The immigration figure that it had originally cited was the number of times that E2 visa holders had entered and exited the country. In other words the counts of 30,000 and more visa holders are double counts of individual visa holders coming in and out of the country, not the total number of E-2 visa holder, which has never exceeded 20,000.
But you see these type of incorrect statistics used all the time. Here is a pointy nose blonde haired blue-eyed foreigner holding up a chart that says there are nearly 35,000 E2 visa holders in Korea. One hopes that instead of being a racially derogatory caricature perhaps the effect of his having to hold up these lying statistics has made his nose grow like Pinocchio.
But this is what foreigners have come to expect from the Korean media. The racially derogatory caricatures, the inaccurate statistics, the race baiting language -- this article begins by asking: “if you're white [in Korea], is it ‘anything goes’?”
When the Anti-English group, the media and government are all on the same page – often the wrong page – inaccurate statistics like those cited earlier can be very damaging to foreigners. Here's an article explaining that National Assembly Person Choi Young-Hee suggests that urgent measures are required to manage E-2 visa holders.
The article explains why. It seems that of the nearly “39,000” [sic] E-2 visa holders, 22,000 are unaccounted for. No wonder urgent measures are called for, the government has lost 22,000 E-2 visa foreign English teachers somewhere within the borders of the Republic of Korea.
Of course we realize that the same error has been made yet again. There are no missing E-2 visa holders, nor have the numbers ever been anywhere near 39,000.
But instead of working to correct inaccuracies such as this, lawmakers have been happy to cite bad statistics and are pushing ahead with even more restrictive measures for foreign English teachers.
In fact Rep. Choi has recently introduced 3 new bills designed to further regulate foreign English teachers. These bills seek to revise laws to require even more extensive drug testing for foreign English teachers.
When it comes to foreign English teachers it seems that no measures are restrictive enough.
A good example is a recent complaint brought before this Commission by a foreign English teacher who works for the Ulsan Office of Education. This particular provincial education office has decided to require its foreign workers to take additional AIDS and drugs tests beyond those required by the national government, despite the fact that no law exists granting them the power to make such a demand.
We are only one year into the E-2 visa policy and the intensely restrictive requirements just put in place are already seen as unsatisfactory. The call is now for more AIDS tests, more drug tests.
No amount of regulation is satisfactory it seems when it comes to foreign English teachers.
This makes sense if we consider the active lobby by Anti-English Spectrum constantly pushing for more discriminatory measures against foreign English teachers.
Here is another article from by Spokesman Lee, showing the Anti-English group in lockstep with Representative Choi. The article alerts readers to the new bills being prepared by Rep. Choi.
These bills would not be formally announced for nearly four months, but the group apparently has advanced notice.
It seems the group is well acquainted with Rep. Choi. A posting on the group’s website relates a private meeting that Lee had with Rep. Choi’s office in January, month before the bills are announced.
While Anti-English Spectrum and its representatives are well connected with the media, the police, and the Ministry of Justice and have succeeded in advancing their agenda, the extent of their influence with the National Assembly is not well known.
On its website, the group claims to have contacted National Assembly lawmakers “countless times” and to have met with them on at least seven occasions. They also claim to have provided information and reports to other many other government officials and agencies.
There is some evidence to support the group’s claims that information flows between them and the National Assembly.
This familiar quote from the 2006 Breaknews article, for example, which explains that in 2005 foreign English teachers accounted for 80% of those seeking voluntary AIDS tests.
The same quote shows up in an interview with Spokesman Lee in early February 2009, where he explains that that in 2007, 80% of those seeking voluntary AIDS tests at the Itaewon AIDS Counseling Center were foreign English teachers.
And in a second article in February 2009, Spokesman Lee has again recycled this figure reemphasizing that in 2007, 80% of those seeking voluntary AIDS tests at the Itaewon AIDS Counseling Center were foreign English teachers. This time adding that the 80% seems to include some “white collar workers”.
Lee seems fixated upon this 80% figure as some sort of shocking revelation of English teachers’ dangerousness to Korean public health. Of course nothing could be further from the truth, in fact encouraging foreigners and Koreans to come in to receive voluntary AIDS tests was precisely the reason that the Korean UNAIDS Information Support Center (한국 UNAIDS 정보센터) first opened its offices in Itaewon in 2003.
It seems as if Lee would be pleased if foreigners were totally unconcerned about their HIV status and had no interest in visiting clinics for voluntary testing. Rather than an 80% number, Lee is hoping for 0%. That’s what Korea needs in his estimation, no one visiting HIV testing centers at all – total indifference to one’s HIV status.
This of course is the underlying message to his fellow Koreans: don't be like these foreigners, don't go in to do voluntary HIV testing. For one to be at all concerned about one’s HIV status indicates moral depravity and dangerousness.
But contrast that perspective with the wisdom of Judge Yu Seong-Jeong of the Seoul High Court, who explains that “the most dangerous thing for society is not persons who are infected with HIV and aware of their status, but persons who are infected with the disease and unaware of their status. A person who is aware of infection will be less likely spread the disease. On the other hand, a person who is unaware of infection is more likely to spread the disease. In the final analysis, encouraging the public to voluntarily receive HIV testing by protecting the human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS is the most effective policy for preventing the spread of the disease.” (Heo case, 2009).
Thus, in addition to acting as spokesman for a racist organization, Lee actively works against efforts to fight the AIDS virus here in Korea by publicly campaigning against voluntary HIV testing. And keep in mind this is a man who has the ear of lawmakers, who has been given a seat at the table of government by the MOJ when it comes to making policy decisions here in Korea.
In examining the extent of the group’s influence with the National Assembly it is instructive if we look here at the progress of Bill 3356. In the yellow oval, we can see a contribution made by the Legislative and Judiciary Committee on February 24, 2009.
The purpose statement of the Bill shows it to be an extremely xenophobic piece of proposed legislation. It explains that “nowadays a good many foreigners coming to Korea have previous convictions for drugs sexual crimes or carry infectious diseases.”
One may wonder if any evidence has been provided to substantiate this claim; and, in fact, there has been...
The language in this footnote from the Legislative and Judiciary Committee is recognizable enough; it contains Spokesman Lee’s statistics.
In 2007, it says, 80% of foreigners seeking voluntary AIDS tests at the Itaewon AIDS Counseling Center were foreign English teachers.
Mr. Lee’s quote is certainly similar.
The quotes are disturbingly similar, nearly identical.
But even more disturbing, the statistics are inaccurate, and inaccurate in exactly the same way indicating that Legislative and Judiciary Committee of the National Assembly and a racist propaganda organization are sharing notes.
First, there was no Itaewon AIDS Counseling Center in 2007.
The Itaewon AIDS Counseling Center was opened from 2003 until October 2006. It ceased operations in 2006. Because of discriminatory views on HIV/AIDS and the stigma of the disease, neighbors pressured the Itaewon AIDS Counseling Center to change locations after just three years of operation.
In 2007, the center was relocated in Seong-buk-dong near Sungshin Women’s University.
Here we see a brochure for the center showing its Seoul location in Seong-buk, not Itaewon, and its second location in Ansan.
Not only is the Anti-English group wrong about the location of the clinic. It’s also wrong about the statistics from 2007.
Here are the actual statistics released by the counseling center in 2007 in their official report. There’s the pie chart at the bottom of the page. According to the center, all of the visitors listed here are foreign.
You can see the section in purple, which indicates “teachers”. After consulting with the center, they have confirmed that the “teachers” here listed are the foreign instructors – the 외국인 강사 – of interest to Spokesman Lee and the Anti-English Group. Yet as we can see here, the number is not 80% in 2007, but 54%.
So where does that 80% figure come from?
Again it is clear enough that the numbers have simply been recycled from the 2006 Breaknews article. Such ignorance and xenophobia is hardly surprising considering the propaganda coming out of the Anti-English Group, but from the National Assembly the use of such bogus statistics is unexpected.
Incidentally, the second quote about “60 countries conducting AIDS test on foreigners according to visa type” is also incorrect. In fact, the Director of Korean Alliance to Defeat AIDS, the very AIDS Center cited as the source for the 60 country quote, denies that these statistics were provided by their institution.
Of course it’s disappointing to see lies put forward as truths, but again one expects it coming from a racist propaganda organization like the Anti-English hate group.
But it is extremely disappointing to see the National Assembly feeding off of such inaccurate and misguided views. Here we see the process of xenophobia and racial discrimination being transformed into law in the Republic of Korea.
123-124.
We’ve seen how the process begins. Stories and images move from the Internet into the media.
The media, in turn, gets citied by government officials as a reason for introducing discriminatory measures. The authors of the E-2 visa policy memo, for example, specifically list the “[s]erious social outcry” created by “[n]ews media coverage about those unqualified E2 teaching visa holders” as a reason for introducing the requirements.
Discriminatory policy then finds its way into law.
We see the same process beginning again with new bills introduced by Rep. Choi, and just as in the case of the E-2 visa inaccurate statistics have been used to support discriminatory legislation. And also just like the E-2 visa policy, behind the legislation we see the Anti-English hate group lobbying effort.
This slide shows the intensive efforts of the Anti-English group. This list posted on the group’s website advertises the “achievements our café has accumulated . . . for those who are first visiting.” (A complete English translation is available here.)
Examining the list of “achievements” it becomes clear that, ever since the hate group was forged in a collective rage over photographs of foreign men with Korean women four and a half years ago, they have been driving an unrelenting media blitz against non-Korean foreign teachers. Indeed, the hate group has been behind nearly every negative media report on foreign teachers for the past four and a half years.
But the group’s “achievements” don’t stop with media reports. The list also goes on to detail numerous activities that shows the group exercising the government’s police powers.
In the group’s own words:
“Collected information and exposed illegal native English teachers and reported them to related institutes.”
“Cooperated with related organizations to track, conduct stakeouts on and report numerous low-quality teachers with forged academic credentials, and successfully made disclosures and arrests.”
“Collected information regarding low-quality drug-using foreign English teachers and tracked down their dwellings.”
“Tracked down people for 100 days in cooperation with relevant agencies, and also conducted a 17-day stakeout”
“Together with Gyunggi Provincial Police Agency , captured 3 native speaker teachers”
“Tracked down an unqualified teacher with an STD”
“Booked 10 people including teachers"
“Received award for contributing immensely to police operations.”
The group also engages in extensive public campaigns promoting its agenda as well as petition drives and the submission of “in-depth reports on . . . low-quality native English teachers” to National Assembly members, the MOJ, the immigration office, Supreme Prosecutor’s Office, the Education Ministry, the Information and Communications Ministry, the Ethics Committee, National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee and “policy commissioners at Education Offices all over the country.”
Here is the group’s most recent petition drive from July 2009. In this post the 17,000 members are given step-by-step instructions in filling out government petition forms. They are urged to formally petition the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education by using convenient internet petition forms available at “epeople.go.kr”. A model form is provided with suggested content for the petition, however this post suggests that members make their own additions to make sure it has a greater effect by looking like it represents a diverse body of opinions.
The model petition says that the media stories make it clear there is a problem with managing foreign English teachers. Therefore, it continues, the government should take urgent measures.
Significantly, the petition explains that while foreign English teachers may be “professionally qualified” to work as teachers they are “morally unfit”.
This marks a shift in strategy. The anti-English group has participated in many petition drives. Previously, however, the focus was on an alleged lack of professional qualifications of native speakers – and the government and media followed suit by profiling foreign English teachers as professionally “unqualified”.
In 2005, for example, with a big-nosed foreigner holding a sign saying “unqualified” and inviting other big-nosed “unqualified” foreigners to Korea.
In 2006, the blonde-haired blue-eyed foreign English teacher leaning on a lectern, which reads “unqualified”.
In 2007, a National Assembly representative explains that 32% of foreign English teachers are “unqualified” because they don’t have CELTA certificates.
In 2008, an Education Ministry official explaining that nearly 50% are “unqualified” because they don’t have TESOL certificates, or degrees in English or Education.
If indeed all of these were all actual requirements then we are already at 80% “unqualified”. None of these, however, have ever been official requirements for the E-2 visas. A degree from a four year university in any major is all that is officially required. Nevertheless, the market has been sensitive to a demand for increased qualifications and foreign English teachers with enhanced professional qualifications in the form of degrees and certificates have stepped in to fill that demand.
Now it seems that regardless of professional qualifications, the Anti-English group has decided that foreigners are “morally unfit” to teach.
This is a shrewd move on the part of this group. After all, professional qualifications can readily be identified and satisfied by foreigners; “moral qualifications,” on the other hand, will be unattainable.
In a recent interview Spokesman Lee explained that “[t]he majority of foreigners are acting innocent or indifferent about their indecent behaviors which don't follow the Korean moral code [because] their behaviors are not problems in their motherlands[.]”
In other words, simply being foreign makes it nearly impossible to behave morally in Korea. With the majority of foreigners indifferent to morality or unable to even comprehend when they are behaving indecently, the group’s spokesman reaffirms the point that discriminatory measures are justified.
This petition therefore insists that the government take “urgent measures” to further regulate foreigner English teachers. However, since no amount of regulations will succeed in transforming foreigners into Koreans capable of living by Korea’s moral code, foreigners can only expect the discriminatory treatment to increase.
This attempt to justify discriminatory measures by stigmatizing foreigners as “morally unfit” and unable to change their nature is within scope of Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, which obliges all state parties to “condemn all propaganda and organizations which attempt to justify or promote racial hatred and discrimination in any form.”
