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Yie Eun-Woong, manager of 'Anti-English Spectrum'

John M. Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has written an excellent piece on Yie Eun-woong, manager of ‘Anti-English Spectrum‘, a group which I posted about last December, who actively go about finding and following foreign English teachers in the hope of finding some dirt on them to pass onto the local authorities. These self-proclaimed patriots have been embolden by the arrests of individuals being caught teaching illegally, engaging in gambling or engaging in otherwise illegal activities.

Not content with just that, they also actively work on rumour-mongering, demonising and stereotyping the foreign English teacher community as a whole, but when called out on it, fall back saying we’re only looking out to catch the bad guys. Well, I guess if you scrutinise and demonise an entire community for long enough, you’re bound to catch one or two bad apples, aren’t you?

Anyways, here’s some of what the man himself, Yie Eun-woong, had to say about the group’s activities along with his own activities and experiences as manger of the online community. (The rest can be found here).

Reporting from Seoul – Sometimes, in his off hours, Yie Eun-woong does a bit of investigative work.

He uses the Internet and other means to track personal data and home addresses of foreign English teachers across South Korea.

Then he follows them, often for weeks at a time, staking out their apartments, taking notes on their contacts and habits.

He wants to know whether they’re doing drugs or molesting children.

Yie, a slender 40-year-old who owns a temporary employment agency, says he is only attempting to weed out troublemakers who have no business teaching students in South Korea, or anywhere else.

The volunteer manager of a controversial group known as the Anti-English Spectrum, Yie investigates complaints by South Korean parents, often teaming up with authorities, and turns over information from his efforts for possible prosecution.

Outraged teachers groups call Yie an instigator and a stalker.

Yie waves off the criticism. “It’s not stalking, it’s following,” he said. “There’s no law against that.”

(Somehow I can’t see Mr. Yie being as happy if it were I following, not stalking, him all hours of the day as it’s not illegal, is it?!)

Understandably, this article has created quite a buzz in the Korean ex-pat blogosphere with Brian, Robert and Matt being just some of the bloggers posting on this article, along with some discussion over at Dave’s ESL Cafe.

It is true that they are and have been some bad seeds in the foreign English teaching community, it would be almost statistically impossible to have such a large population of individuals and not have at least a few dodgy individuals. Individuals who break laws and commit crimes should be punished accordingly regardless of nationality, race, creed or ethnicity. That said, there’s a major difference between catching and reprimanding law-breakers, and brushing an entire community as evil and in need of constant monitoring over the actions of a limited few individuals.

I’m thankful that Mr. Glionna took the time to interview Mr. Yie and that this piece has entered a major Western newspaper. For all the millions of welcoming, friendly, hospitable and open-minded Koreans unfortunately there still is a significant number of misguided, self-righteous, nationalist individuals of Mr. Yie’s ilk whose thinly disguised xenophobia and racism undermine and threaten to sabotage the leaps and bounds this country has made over the last 50 years from war-ravaged impoverished agrarian society to modern, wealthy, democratic, economic powerhouse of today. Mr. Yie and his ilk are not the future of Korea, they are the past. I hope and trust that the majority of good people in Korea will eventually see through the lies, hate and mistrust, and move on to a more integrated, welcoming and tolerant nation.