He uses the Internet and other means to track personal data and home addresses of foreign English teachers across
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
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.”
Since its founding in 2005, critics say, Yie’s group
has waged an invective-filled nationalistic campaign against the 20,000
foreign-born English teachers in
On their Web site and through fliers, members have
spread rumors of a foreign English teacher crime wave. They have
alleged that some teachers are knowingly spreading AIDS, speculation
that has been reported in the Korean press.
Teacher activists acknowledge that a few foreign English instructors are arrested each year in
— cases mostly involving the use of marijuana — but they insist that
the rate of such incidents is far lower than for the Korean population
itself.
“Why are they following teachers? That’s a job for the police,” said
In November, the president of the teachers group
received anonymous e-mails threatening his life and accusing him of
committing sex crimes.
“I have organized the KEK (Kill White in
one e-mail read in part. “We will start to kill and hit (foreigners)
from this Christmas. Don’t make a fuss. … Just get out.”
Yie acknowledges that he has been questioned by investigators but denies any involvement in the threats of violence.
“To be honest,” he said, “a lot of our group members believe the teachers made this all up.”
The debate over foreign English teachers is symbolic
of a social shift taking place in a nation that has long prided itself
on its racial purity and singular culture, analysts say.
In less than a decade, the number of foreigners living in
Also included are the foreign English teachers, most from
Yie’s efforts have the support of some educators who say many foreign teachers lack the skills to run a classroom.
“This has nothing to do with race. It is all about teaching,” said
The government has tried to stem what it sees as a
troubling number of racist incidents. A 31-year-old man was charged
last year for a verbal outburst against an Indian man and a Korean
woman traveling together on a city bus in
But some teachers from abroad say that South Korean
laws regarding their status remain discriminatory. Foreign English
teachers must undergo HIV tests and criminal and academic checks that
are not required of Koreans doing the same work, they say.
Yie says he has nothing against foreigners. Growing
up near the city of Osan, he often rode with his taxi driver father and
encountered foreigners who served at the U.S. military base there. “I
learned to pick out the good guys from the bad guys,” he says.
In 2005, by then living in
he joined the fledgling activist group after seeing an upsetting
posting on a website: claims by foreign teachers that they had slept
with Korean students.
Yie, who is single and has no children, quickly volunteered to help organize an effort to rein in such behavior.
“People were angry; most of them were parents with kids,” he said. “We all got together online and traded information.”
Gaymer says he doubts that such a posting ever
existed. Instead, he says, Koreans were angry about photos posted on a
job Web site showing foreigners dancing with scantily clad Korean women.
“They were consenting adults at a party with foreign men,” he said. “They weren’t doing anything bad or illegal.”
Yie’s group, Gaymer says, has used the incident as a
rallying call. “They’re posting online pictures of teachers’ apartments
and whipping each other into a nationalist frenzy, creating a hysteria
against all English teachers, troublemakers or not,” he said.
Yie, who says his group is managed by half a dozen
key figures and has 300 other members, created a system for parents and
others to report bad teachers. The group says it has contributed to
several arrests, including the recent bust of several foreign
instructors for gambling and marijuana possession.
Yie says he strives to keep his activism on an even
keel. Those advocating violence are shunned, he says. And he says he
monitors his group’s Internet community billboard for defamatory
postings.
“I’m being called a racist who judges the entire
group by the mistakes of the few,” he said. “I’m trying to look at
these teachers with an open mind.”
—
(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
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