Tag: English teacher

It will be interesting to see if more schools in South Korea turn towards AI robots instead of hiring foreign English teachers:

Seoul Education Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon speaks during a press briefing held at the Seoul Metropolitan Education Office of Education in central Seoul, Wednesday. (Yonhap)

Robots powered by artificial intelligence will aid English education in five elementary and middle schools in Seoul starting in March 2024, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said Wednesday.

The English tutoring robots will aid students in brushing up their English language knowledge, conversation skills and pronunciation. For students struggling academically, the robots will provide a customized education service, enabling them to learn the language at their own pace.

The education office also said it would provide schools with a chatbot app, which allows users to practice conversations via mobile phones. The app enables students to engage in conversations and discussions with the robot based on a topic selected by the user.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Condolences to the friends and family of the British English teacher who was found deceased recently at her school in Gwangju:

A British woman in her 20s has been found dead at a middle school in the southwestern city of Gwangju, police said Thursday.

A janitor found the 25-year-old woman, who has been teaching English, in a research room of the school around 4:50 p.m. on Wednesday and reported the case to police.

The English instructor, whose name was withheld, was lying on her back, and there were no signs of fighting with any intruder at the scene, according to the police. 

Her acquaintances have told police that she was supposed to undergo a surgery the same day for a disease that hurt her back and made it difficult for her to breathe.

Yonhap

Via a reader tip comes this interesting CBS News report about an English teacher murdered in Seoul back in 1988 and how her alleged killer is free back in the US:

Imagine a loved one brutally murdered in a foreign country — allegedly by another American.
Correspondent Peter Van Sant and his team have investigated the disturbing 1988 murder of Carolyn Abel, an American teacher in South Korea, and the loophole in U.S. laws at the time that mean the suspected killer may never face trial.

For writer and author Nancy Bercaw, flying to South Korea last winter reopened a painful chapter in her life: one of murder, loss and fear.

CBS News

You can read the whole thing at the link, but the suspected killer of Carolyn Abel was her boss at the English school she worked at named Kathy Patrick. Patrick was gay and supposedly was angered when Abel rejected her advances and decided to kill her. After killing her Patrick then flew home to Washington State. Since there was no extradition treaty between the US and Korea at the time, US authorities could not arrest her for murder.

Since the murder Patrick has lived as a free woman in Washington state and she actually currently works at Western Washington University advising students.

Allegedly an English teacher was behaving badly in Cheongju:

Amid the spreading #MeToo movement, a native English-speaking teacher at a girls’ high school was recently fired over allegations of sexually molesting students and calling the East Sea the “Japan Sea.” It was the victimized students who told the school of his misbehavior.

According to Yonhap News, the instructor, who worked at the school in Cheongju, was booked without physical detention on suspicion of sexually molesting students. The school also terminated his contract.

The former instructor is from Western Europe and worked at the school for seven years.

The school became aware of his misbehavior in May last year and asked police to investigate.

The school confronted him with its findings and he admitted making unwanted physical contact with the students, and racial and sexually offensive remarks.  [Korea Times]

Here is his most shocking crime:

He also allegedly told the students that Korea and Japan should share Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo rather than fighting over them.

He should be exiled to live out his life on Dokdo after making a statement like that!  😉

It looks like there is an English teacher job opening at Sahmyook University after one of their professors was fired due to his link to the murder of four people back in Canada:

A former professor at a Seoul-based university is a suspect in a mysterious missing-person case in Canada, according to South Korean broadcaster JTBC.

Canadian Paul Laan taught English at Sahmyook University in Nowon, northern Seoul, from 2014. The university stripped him of his professorship early this month after learning of the accusations in Canada and then terminated his contract.

According to the report, Laan came to Korea in 2006 and earned a living by teaching English at private or public institutes.

According to JTBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), he was a suspect in a high-profile missing-person case in Ontario in 1998. A woman in her 70s, known as the “Cat Lady,” was a tenant in his house and disappeared outside Huntsville. Police later found that three other tenants were missing.

Police investigating the case saw Laan as a suspect but they found no evidence, and it became a cold case.

CBC put the case back in the spotlight on its investigative program “The Fifth Estate,” aired in September.

The program said the residents’ disappearance was not reported and that pension checks were stolen from them by the Paul family. The youngest of the family was living in South Korea as a professor, according to the program.

“Paul now teaches English at a university in South Korea and travels with his wife extensively, professing their love for God on their family blog,” CBC reported.  [Korea Times]

You can read the whole CBC report on these murders at this link.  The Paul family are all part of a crime family in the Huntsville area of Canada that have a long criminal history culminating in the murder of four people.

Here is an interesting interview with a journalist who worked for six months as an English teacher in North Korea:

In 2011, American journalist Suki Kim secured a job teaching English at an all-male university in North Korea. Pyongyang University of Science and Technology had just 270 students, all of whom were the sons of North Korean elites.

Kim spent six months at the college, recording notes for what would become her 2014 book, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite.

Last week, after the news that North Korea had conducted yet another missile test, I reached out to Kim by phone. Her perspective is valuable and rare; few Americans have spent much time on the ground there. I wanted to know what daily life was like for average citizens of North Korea, the world’s most reclusive country.

“The level of fear is unimaginable,” she told me. “It’s possible to be both happy and terrified all at once, and I think that’s the case for many North Koreans.”  [VOX.com]

Here is a small snippet from the interview:

Sean Illing

If the Kim Jong Un regime were to collapse tomorrow, and North Koreans were suddenly liberated, how do you think they would react?

Suki Kim

I feel like they would probably be relieved about the system. But I also think they’d find something else to believe in absolutely, some kind of faith that requires total fidelity. There’s a deeper layer of psychological trauma here that is difficult to grasp. I think they’re conditioned to follow whoever is in power, whoever is appointed the leader.

We’ve now had three generations of tyrannical rule and abuse, and people who have lived under this their entire life have never thought for themselves. How do you fully account for that kind of damage? My suspicion is that they’d blindly follow whoever would ascend to power. I hate to say it, but the soil is ripe for future dictatorships.

You can read the whole interview at the link.

This guy sounds creepy if the accusations are true:

A native English teacher at a high school in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, is under investigation for allegedly sexually harassing the female students, according to Heungdeok Police Station Thursday.

The teacher, whose identity is unknown, is accused of hugging the girls as a lesson in “foreign greeting.”

The school has suspended the teacher from teaching.

The students told police the teacher sexually harassed them verbally and physically.

The teacher denies the accusations, saying they are the result of misunderstanding cultural differences.  [Korea Times]

Here is a power tip for everyone, don’t be giving unwanted hugs or having sexual conversations with high school students especially if you are a teacher.

Here is a win in the courts for the foreign English teacher community in South Korea:

A court has recognized foreign tutors at a private language institute as “employees” entitled to severance pay, rejecting the institute’s claim that they were self-employed.

Judge Oh Sang-yong of the Seoul Central District Court ruled in favor of five native English teachers at an unidentified private language institute in Seoul, Monday.

He ordered the institute to offer them 180 million won in severance pay and other unpaid allowances.

The institute had claimed the tutors were”self-employed” teachers paid by the hour so they were not entitled to severance pay. But the court ruled that the five were “employees” who had to act upon their contracts regulating their working hours, curriculum and other details. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I would think the hagwons in South Korea will just modify the contracts in some way to get around this court ruling.

Via a reader tip comes this news that North Korea is looking for English teachers willing to work for many years in the country, but there is a catch you can’t leave campus:

Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), North Korea’s first privately funded university, is recruiting English teachers.

The school is receiving applications from candidates in dozens of countries, many of which are ironically non-English speaking countries such as South Korea, China and Japan.

Preference is given to candidates who have a long-term mindset and are open to staying at PUST for a number of years,” the university says in its recruiting message on www.heysuccess.com , a British recruiting website.

“English teachers are required to commit to an entire 15-week semester. The spring semester begins in early March and finishes in mid-June. The fall semester begins in early September and finishes in mid-December.”

Detailed working conditions such as salary and welfare are unknown.

The university says the ideal candidate will be an “energetic, responsible, and well-qualified professional teacher with relevant English teaching experience.” It It says an English teaching qualification (TEFL/ CELTA/ TESOL) is also highly preferred.

Successful applicants are supposed to have a campus-based lifestyle, meaning they may not be allowed to travel outside the campus.  [Korea Times]

This sounds more like a jail sentence then an English teaching job.

Via Gusts of Popular Feeling comes a Korean news report about a foreign hagwon teacher who is driving a scooter and reacts angrily to being cut off by a Korean driver.  He later pulls in front of the car to stop the driver and then punches him in the face.

Video of the incident can be seen at this link.  Not that it is a good thing to try in the first place, but considering all the cameras in Korea it would be hard for a foreigner especially to get away with an assault like this.