An Open Letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-In on the 2017 E2 Visa Crisis

Instead of writing an OPEN letter to the prez he or she should be marching right into immigration and applying for the correct visa.  IF the OP has the 2 degrees they claim to, they should easily qualify for the E7 needed to teach beyond conversational English permitted on the E2. 

Why wait and see if Immigration gets around to picking on his/her school next or soon. Fill out the application for changing status and get that little piece of paper that says you have applied and you are good to go while your application is pending.. Letters to the government aren't going to help.  Everyone on an E2 that could get an E7 and has not, should be doing it right now.. WTH. why wait and see if they can F you over next.  Proactive be proactive. If you wait to be reactive, its too late. They will just hand you something you cant really understand and say sign it and get out..

In this case....if it's about that CBC school, they weren't allowed to just "switch" to the correct visa.  Immigration this time wanted to make examples of them I guess and just gave them an immediate deportation notice.  Immigration was not kind to these foreigners at all in this case.  Which is funny because if know of people who have gotten arrested for fighting and they have been given second chances to avoid deportation.  So it all depends on the Immigration department in your area.  Not all immigration departments sing the same song.  The Suwon district might be more strict on trying to deport foreigners that misunderstand the visa system while the North Seoul region might be a little more understanding to a foreigners mistake. 

So....OP are you ever going to response to this thread!?!?!?  (*cough troll *cough *cough)

I was responding assuming the OP was sincere and not involved in any "case" as of yet and immigration had not been in contact with him or members of his school. So wasting time trying to affect/effect (never know which is correct here) system wide change, is unwise when correcting his or her own immediate situation would be the better course of action based on that described scenario i.e. having the required degrees, teaching certs, and experience to qualify. 

So I wasn't thinking or applying my response to what has transpired already.  I am saying to others who haven't yet been impacted by this "crack down" if you notice the trend here (in Korea)  and you are on X visa when you should be on Y visa for the type of work you do, you (not anyone else) had better take immediate steps to correct and change it. 

Stickied, if someone can provide a Hangul version?  Maybe it can actually be sent out.

So....OP are you ever going to response to this thread!?!?!?  (*cough troll *cough *cough)

No need for this, he's asking for some help.  Think about your own accusation.

I am sure the OP, who is a teacher, won't mind an edit. :-)

There are PLENTY of qualified subject teachers in Korea.

It might be a little subjective about what is considered "plenty".

As many already know, there are also Korean contract English teachers that are worried about getting cut from their jobs too.  Apparently, a lot of full time teachers don't like the contract workers because they do substantially less official work than they do.  To me, I don't know if that is really a fair to say, only because I feel like the school teachers now aren't even suppose to be doing the bulk of the administration work.  It seems like just over the years, it was kind of pushed to them and stayed as a thing.  The school should really just have a bigger full time administration staff handling school paperwork, and let the teachers focus on developing better lessons for their kids. The biggest complaint that I always hear from teachers is that they are consistently overwhelmed with senseless paperwork completely unrelated to teaching.

If the system is not going to change in a way that gives "full time" English teachers more time to effectively master English to then teach their students, then I don't see a good reason to axe the contract teachers either.  I think most would agree that the average English ability between a contract teacher and your average full time teacher that happens to teach English can be quite huge.  At least for me, I probably catch a regular teacher make like 5-10 times more mistakes than a contract teacher does.  Certain times, the English teacher speaks zero English, but is just given the job because she's enthusiastic about it?   So, it does become a concern about how "accurate" students would be learning English if GETs and contract teachers get eliminated.

I personally have been here a good number of years myself, jumped from school to school like many others, but I haven't gotten the impression that "qualified" English teachers (full time ones) are very plentiful at all.  If you are talking about the contract teachers, I'd say in the 70-80%+ have a very good mastery and make minimal enough mistakes for elementary and middle school.  But even then, its not like the majority are like EBS TV level teachers in terms of fluency.  But again, regular full time teachers that just happen to teach English...?  Well,let's just say... I wouldn't feel very comfortable letting my children learn English from them, but maybe that's just me.

Lol is this a troll? "I can read hangul" haha

lol!!!!!

Dear moon,
Stop feicking tying our visas to the place of employment .   ,  please think about this .
Sincerely
Chester Jim

Moon will be over the moon in a couple of weeks.  Goodbye sir....

It might be a little subjective about what is considered "plenty".

As many already know, there are also Korean contract English teachers that are worried about getting cut from their jobs too.  Apparently, a lot of full time teachers don't like the contract workers because they do substantially less official work than they do.  To me, I don't know if that is really a fair to say, only because I feel like the school teachers now aren't even suppose to be doing the bulk of the administration work.  It seems like just over the years, it was kind of pushed to them and stayed as a thing.  The school should really just have a bigger full time administration staff handling school paperwork, and let the teachers focus on developing better lessons for their kids. The biggest complaint that I always hear from teachers is that they are consistently overwhelmed with senseless paperwork completely unrelated to teaching.

If the system is not going to change in a way that gives "full time" English teachers more time to effectively master English to then teach their students, then I don't see a good reason to axe the contract teachers either.  I think most would agree that the average English ability between a contract teacher and your average full time teacher that happens to teach English can be quite huge.  At least for me, I probably catch a regular teacher make like 5-10 times more mistakes than a contract teacher does.  Certain times, the English teacher speaks zero English, but is just given the job because she's enthusiastic about it?   So, it does become a concern about how "accurate" students would be learning English if GETs and contract teachers get eliminated.

I personally have been here a good number of years myself, jumped from school to school like many others, but I haven't gotten the impression that "qualified" English teachers (full time ones) are very plentiful at all.  If you are talking about the contract teachers, I'd say in the 70-80%+ have a very good mastery and make minimal enough mistakes for elementary and middle school.  But even then, its not like the majority are like EBS TV level teachers in terms of fluency.  But again, regular full time teachers that just happen to teach English...?  Well,let's just say... I wouldn't feel very comfortable letting my children learn English from them, but maybe that's just me.

Let the teachers form stronger unions and push back.  While I sometimes dislike teachers unions in the west for being too strong.  I equally find them too weak here.  There should be a middling balance. 

Let the teachers form stronger unions and push back.  While I sometimes dislike teachers unions in the west for being too strong.  I equally find them too weak here.  There should be a middling balance. 

The two major teacher's unions in Korea are pretty powerful. That's why full-time Korean teachers are essentially tenured jobs, back in the day schools were able to fire teachers on the spot, not these days.

Let the teachers form stronger unions and push back.  While I sometimes dislike teachers unions in the west for being too strong.  I equally find them too weak here.  There should be a middling balance. 

Would you join and pay dues? You strike me as a typical free rider.

The two major teacher's unions in Korea are pretty powerful. That's why full-time Korean teachers are essentially tenured jobs, back in the day schools were able to fire teachers on the spot, not these days.

It's almost as if hangook doesn't know what he's talking about

Would you join and pay dues? You strike me as a typical free rider.

The little racists wouldn't give me a permanent job and visa and raise the pay.  If they did all these things, I would pay.

The little racists wouldn't give me a permanent job and visa and raise the pay.  If they did all these things, I would pay.

I heard there was actually some foreigner who went to education school or was certified back home, learned Korean and went through the whole process and actually became a Korean public school teacher.

It's not racism hangook77, it's you being indolent and blaming others for your lack of exertion.

I heard there was actually some foreigner who went to education school or was certified back home, learned Korean and went through the whole process and actually became a Korean public school teacher.

I believe he wasn't hired in the end. He did that standard few month student-teacher internship though. His Korean wasn't fluent enough to the standards of the MOE I guess. He was really really fluent, but not to a native level.

I believe he wasn't hired in the end. He did that standard few month student-teacher internship though. His Korean wasn't fluent enough to the standards of the MOE I guess. He was really really fluent, but not to a native level.

He was fluent, they just had to slant it enough to not hire a foreigner.  Foreign devils not allowed. 

I heard there was actually some foreigner who went to education school or was certified back home, learned Korean and went through the whole process and actually became a Korean public school teacher.

It's not racism hangook77, it's you being indolent and blaming others for your lack of exertion.

Blaming others for what?  Even those who have a million degrees get no more extra respect from schools here.  A foreign devil is always a foreign devil no matter how many years they live here.

He was fluent, they just had to slant it enough to not hire a foreigner.  Foreign devils not allowed. 

He wasn't native fluent, so probably some gaps in retaining information at those teacher meetings.

He wasn't native fluent, so probably some gaps in retaining information at those teacher meetings.

So, will we fire an Indian or a Korean for speaking English with an accent?  It would be a violation of one's civil rights.  He spoke Korean and the locals just didn't want a foreigner working for them.  The point is no matter how many hoops are set up to jump through, you will always lose in the end as a non Korean. 

So, will we fire an Indian or a Korean for speaking English with an accent?  It would be a violation of one's civil rights.  He spoke Korean and the locals just didn't want a foreigner working for them.  The point is no matter how many hoops are set up to jump through, you will always lose in the end as a non Korean.

Isn't this a given? Korean society favors the Korean. Don't have any sympathy for the guy, he should've have known, as a foreigner you'll almost always be outside the circle.