Next they will institue weekly drug tests for foreigners

I am a little bit behind on this. I first read it over at Korea Beat and then at Marmot's. It seems some enterprising Americans and Koreans got together and decided to sell weed, hash and ecstasy out of their apartment. They had a nice little grow operation set up right there in there villa. When I first read about this, I thought of two things; 1. Damn are they stupid and 2. The Korean media loves to put the bad foreigner on the national stage. Starting with number 2, if you compare this situation to the States, at first glance this would not make the national news, but if they were really selling to their students then it would be carried by all of the major news outlets. If a ring of Colombia Spanish teachers were caught supplying cocaine to their students, America would be outraged. I don't read Korean well enough to read the local newspapers, so I don't know if the same thing offense was committed by only Koreans would the media coverage be the same. I tend to think that it would.

Now #1 Boy are they stupid. If you are living in Korea, stay away from the damn stuff. Korea doesn't tolerate it and there are no activists currently trying to decriminalize it as in Canada, America etc.... Actually, with the sale of ecstasy they would be looking at some serious time in North America, but I guess if they were first time offenders they could possibly plead it down to some serious probation. I remember Brendon Carr (a lawyer working in Korea) writing an article about drug use and possession I will have to find it later, but I wonder what punishment they are actually facing here in Korea. If they can afford it, maybe these guys need his firm's services.

Even with the new visa regulations, I think these kind of incidents will continue to occur. All your average Hakwon(Academy) worries about is your skin color and your pulse. The demand for native English speakers in classrooms is so high that they don't really worry about what kind of person you are. I don't really know where Korea needs to go from here. Until the quality of the needed teacher is changed, this will keep happening.