Korean-Americans should be treated same as natives

From the Korea Times.

I have to admit that our firm is somewhat guilty of this too.  While we don’t necessarily recommend Korean-Americans/Canadians on a lower pay scale, they are in a separate category then ‘E-2’ instructors who are considered true natives.  I wholeheartedly disagree with this notion but hey, this is Korea.  Sometimes a school a ‘원어민 강사’ which literally ‘foreign native speaker’ but they consider these to only be E-2 holders.  In other words, if they request a 원어민 강사, they are actually requesting a Caucasian instructor.  Umm…I’m Korean-Canadian (born in Canada) and consider myself a native speaker.  I guess it just sounds better than ‘gimme a whiteboy’.

However, like I said, the schools that we work with do not pay 교포 instructors any less than E-2 guys but nonetheless, it’s annoying that they’re placed in a different class.  Being paid less for this reason is even worse:

A 30-year-old Korean-American filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) last May, claiming Busan Global Village, an English-immersion facility in Busan, paid him less than other native English speakers due to his birthplace, South Korea.

Even more pathetic though, is that he accepted this ridiculous salary:

He was hired by the institute last year and coerced to sign a contract that treated him like an English-speaking Korean, whose annual pay was roughly 7-10 million won ($6,100-8,700) less than those of native English speakers who were not ethnically Korean. He worked there between July 2009 and April this year.

So he was making around 800,000 KRW per month less than E-2s?  If this is true, that means if the average salary there is 2.2 million, he would be making around 1.4 million (English Villages don’t pay that much to begin with).  There are schools (including schools that we work with), that prefer Korean-Americans and actually pay them a premium salary over E-2s.  Those that have a lot of experience and connections can make salaries many times than that of the average ESL instructor.

If you have an F-visa, use it to your advantage and don’t be duped like this guy!