Should South Korea End Visa Waiver Program for Jeju Island?
With all the recent major crimes being committed on Jeju island some resident want to see the visa waiver program ended to better ensure public safety:
In line with the rise, the number of foreign tourists who commit crimes at one of the country’s most popular tourist sites has also increased.
The Jeju Provincial Police Agency said 347 foreign offenders have been arrested on Jeju as of July. The figure is up by nearly 60 percent from the number tallied in the same period last year, which stood at 218.
Among the 347 foreigners, Chinese nationals accounted for the largest proportion of offenders with 240, or 69.2 percent, followed by Americans with 13.
Reflecting such trends, calls to beef up security by local residents have been rising.
More than 14,500 people have signed a petition filed at a bulletin board of local Internet portal Daum as of Tuesday since it was first proposed on Sunday.
“The country’s precious island of Jeju has turned into a lawless zone with Chinese tourists who enter without visas,” the netizen who first proposed the petition said. “The safety of South Koreans should be given top priority than what can be earned from tourism.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
How many foreigners are there? What percent commit crimes? Are certain ages, genders, ethnicities more likely to commit crimes?
Raw numbers out of context mean nothing.
Can’t tell whether this is sensationalism or not.
What added protection would a visa provide? Would there be a requirement for anyone to have a criminal background check before they got a visa?
It would at least partially filter out those Chinese who do not economically qualify to enter Jeju and become criminals and illegal immigrants. By your own logic then, why don’t the US give Mexicans, and Chinese, Visa free status?
@setnaffa, according to the article 2,624,260 foreigners visited Jeju in 2015 and Chinese visitors accounted for 85.3 percent of all foreigners arriving on Jeju. For overall crime the Chinese make 69% which is less than their overall visitor numbers. So depending on how you look at it there is a Chinese crime problem, but by having so many people coming in an increase in crime is inevitable.
It is the same problem with having a large population of US troops; expecting no crime in such a large population is unrealistic. However, there are measures that can be taken to limit crime from US troops as we have seen over the years in various forms and the Koreans are looking for what measures they can take now to limit crime from Chinese visitors to Jeju. Ending the visa waiver is one tactic they are considering.
Thanks for the details. It looks like they should end the visa waiver. And maybe just for countries whose citizens commit crimes. But someone might complain that was racist.