Monday, March 22, 2010

Huffington Post mentions AES

There was an interesting article in the Huffington Post today about South Korea's contradictory, or some might say hypocritical, policies concerning aids.

It seems that Korea has pledged to lift the travel ban on aids infected people but haven't actually passed any legislation that would make it legally binding. Add to that their mandatory aids test for ONLY foreign teachers. One which could soon be expanded to apply to ALL foreign workers in Korea. But not Koreans.

It was also interesting to see Anti-English Spectrum being discussed and exposed as the racist piece of shit we all know it to be.

"Critics of the bill, like Wagner, take issue with its purpose statement that reads, "Nowadays, the number of foreigners working in Korea is increasing, but a good many have previous convictions for drug and sexual crimes or carry infectious diseases." Wagner traces the statement's origin to Anti-English Spectrum's efforts to stigmatize foreigners as AIDS-infected, sexually abusive predators. To this day, no foreigner has ever been found guilty of infecting a Korean child with HIV, and in 2008 the native English teacher crime rate was more than five times lower than the Korean crime rate."

While it is nothing new to those of us in Korea that AES is a racist organization it is nice to see it being exposed more outside of Korea. Especially when you look at the politicians here using their fabricated facts to help make policy.




2 comments:

  1. Flint,

    It's not just the English Teachers/Professors that are tested, in fact every international professional is tested every year at the pretext of mandatory medical tests.

    I have a question. Do teachers receive the report or a copy of the report?

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  2. I assumed that any foreigner teaching on an E VISA was being tested but wasn't sure. My only real problem with it is that they aren't testing ALL teachers while trying to say this is a public health and safety issue. If it is that much of an issue then ANYONE teaching should be tested.

    If it is all foreign professionals then they should be testing all professionals. God knows how many of the Koreans would fail the STD tests. Probably why they don't make them mandatory.

    The hospital sent a copy of the test results to my boss. So he could take it to Immigration. Other than being told I am not an aids infected, STD carrying, drug user I never heard anything about the results.

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