advice on getting into web design from Derek Allard.

I sent an email to my editor at the Korea Herald to see about this getting into national media and not just on blogs.

Got a really distressing — and infuriating — email this morning from a reader telling me of the tragic death of a 14-year-old son of a foreign English teacher in a sauna in Daegu. Mike McStay in Daejeon has been covering it on his blog, and all I have to say is I’m completely speechless. To give you the summary I got in the email:

There has been no coverage of this story, and it’s heartbreaking.  A 14 year old boy, Mike, died in a sauna this past weekend.  The sauna staff assumed he was dead and waited almost an hour to notify his mother in the women’s area.  Turns out he WASN’T dead, but because they waited so long to try to revive him, he ended up dying.

The Daegu police are not conducting an investigation.  They started one later, but they won’t even give the victim’s mother, Stephannie, a copy of the police report (I suspect that none exists).

From Mike McStay’s blog:

What do you call it when a room full of men/boys doing their family bathing before the Buddha holiday just turn their backs on someone who’s coughing & retching so bad that there’s extensive damage to his throat, lungs & back of the mouth. What do you call it when ’someone” called him in DOA at 11:02, the mother isn’t notified until 11:45 and she arrives in the parking lot to discover that the DOA is actually alive & NOW doesn’t have proper help because the WRONG type of ambulance was sent.

The mother now has a page open on Facebook with information on this tragedy.

My condolences got to Stephannie White at this difficult time.

UPDATE: I’d be irresponsible if I didn’t point out that so far, there have been no reports on the death, so there are many unanswered questions and nothing you read is “official.” I just called the establishment in question (note to fellow bloggers/netizens: I’d remove the name of the place for legal reasons), and they couldn’t even confirm whether an incident took place (BTW, I don’t blame them for that — obviously, this is not something you discuss with every Tom, Dick and Harry that calls), and the person who might be able to wasn’t in (probably not smoke & mirrors, given I called at lunch). There could very well be more sides to this story; we’ll have to wait to learn more.

If you are looking to hear from two expats who’ve been screwed by their employers this is the podcast for you. It’s not overly bitter, but it is definitely informative.

Hey- I don’t have the patience to search all of your postings, but you seem to have put a lot of effort into knowing the law and likeness of Korea. What do you know about private tutoring? Is there any way to do it legally besides marrying a Korean? What if you have permission from your Hogwan boss? Just curious. I’d like to do it, but I want to do it legally, obviously. Do you know a good website with information of the illegality of it?

Thanks!
Heidi

I know that it is illegal and a deportable offense if you have an E2 visa. For those teaching on the F2-1, F5 and F4 visa’s it is not illegal but you are still required to register with the MOE and pay taxes on the income.

I do not know any web sites with information specifically related to this, but the immigration site might have information though I doubt it since they are pretty much like bureaucrats in any country, useless. If any readers have more information on this please comment and help Heidi out as well as other E2 visa holders.

p.s. Heidi, you might want to use the search before sending an email in the future - it’s not difficult and if you are too lazy too do it, don’t let the blogger know that. I almost didn’t bother replying to you at all.

I’ve also pruned membership - any member for longer than 180 days with zero comments, guest entries or forum posts has been deleted.

Regarding guest authoring - membership is required. If you would like to guest author on this blog, leave a comment or email me and I’ll get back to you about how to register for the site. I really would like to get 2-3 semi-regular guest authors here who would be willing to write at least once a month, but more is of course better.

Of course those already with a membership can already guest author.

Lowering the already low standards is not going to help things - the Korean media already vilifies foreign EFL instructors due to a small minority of miscreants but now new teachers won’t even have completed a degree and can arrive younger and stupider in greater numbers. - it appears that Korea really does not value English Education.

It’s time to get out of this industry and out of this country - they don’t want professional teachers.

The challenge is to essentially widen the range of comments and discussion in the edublogger arena - one of the keys to keeping your posts known is to tag them for technocrati with comment08 or include a link to that feed in your entry. There is also a list of participants on the wiki which will be a great source to find new blogs to follow - I’ll be adding my blog there and trying to participate as much as possible.