Here’s another classic one from Yonhap, entitled “자질 시비 원어민 교사 판친다” or “Unfit English Teachers Run Unchallenged.” Of course, the article is based nearly completely on hearsay and rumors. And the one actual complaint with numbers was that there was the statistical equivalent of 160 foreign teachers out of 5,417 who left their jobs early. That’s a whopping 2.9% of the population. Oooooh. It’s an epidemic, indeed. Crunch the numbers, Yonhap.

And where are the interviews with the alleged teachers who said these things? How come, in these little exposes, is there never an interview with a representative for foreign teachers, or the foreign teachers in question. This researcher went so far as to interview people with the Ministry of Education, the Korean Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, and lots of Korean teachers who have lots of bad — but purely anecdotal — things to say about foreign teachers.

But no interview with an ATEK (Association for Teachers of English in Korea) representative, who might point out that the number of people who jump off their contract is quite low, and the reasons for doing so are often related to not being paid on time, if at all, or for the many, many times Korean schools and hagwons simply lie about the contract conditions before bringing foreign teachers over.

The major point: the “problem” of teachers not finishing their contract is surprisingly LOW, considering the abuse that many foreign teachers experience in terms of false contracts, and this is just another piece beating up on English teachers without interviewing a single one of them, or talking to a group who can represent their point-of-view.

It’s a high school-level hit piece, pure and simple. Rumors and hearsay from panicky moms and hostile Korean teachers — note that I quit a job at a prestigious foreign language high school in Seoul after a Korean teacher started spreading rumors that I was running a pornography site. Reason? I would not allow the Korean staff to change my grades so that they could accept bribes that they regularly receive for adjusting class rankings.

I wonder what they would say about me if interviewed for an article like this. And how does it look if they don’t even interview me to get a response?

Shoddy and extremely biased journalism at its best.