Hello President Moon,

Your country is currently making a huge mistake and only you can stop this.

For the last few years of my life, I have lived in South Korea. I have fallen in love with your country, fallen in love with a nice Korean girl and have gotten accustomed to a nice life in this wonderful country. I love Korea.

I have two university degrees from Canada; one in the humanities and one in education. I am a teacher who is seeking economic refuge in Korea since the climate for teaching in Canada is currently very unfavourable.

I have dutifully paid my Korean taxes on time. I have never broken a law in Korea. I can read Hangul. I can communicate in broken Korean. I have local friends in my neighbourhood: ajjoshis and ajjumas at the local grocery store, kimbap shop, CU, GS25 and of course, the local bar. In other words, I am the ideal foreigner from a Korean perspective; one who has become “Koreanized” in order to live a good, successful life here.

Over the last few months however, there has been a massive change to my way of life. You see, I teach in an international school in Korea that is considered to be a “hagwon” by your country. In my school we teach an international curriculum, entirely in English to children whose parents hope that they study abroad one day. I am helping to fulfill a need in the Korean economy. My school is identified as an offshore school in my home country and is considered to be an international school by everyone else in the world.

However, as Korean law states that an international school must have 75% foreign passport holding students, very few schools in this country actually qualify as international schools. As such, due to this E2 visa issue now bringing down schools in Korea, I am not only now in fear of losing my job, but I am also in fear of being deported and being banned from entering this country that I love for one whole year.

As a former human rights lawyer, I hope that you can look at our plight with mercy. The government has already brought down CBIS and CCS; and as I write this, teachers from WCA are being interrogated in an immigration center and being made to sign a form saying that they are criminals who broke the law. This is a colossal slap in the face to us who have worked hard to make Korea a better place for its youth and to better internationalize Korea for its future.

The fact that my school has existed for nearly a decade without any problems and now might be made to shut down, shows the incompetence of the Korean government to have tackled this issue sooner and more effectively. It is not fair that us teachers are made into criminals and are deported and that the owners, who were simply following the accepted protocol of procuring E2 visas for their teachers, have their schools shut down. This is a drastic and unfair punishment to those of us who have made lives for ourselves here.

I love my Korean students and I love my Korean life. By literally going after the most educated foreigners in Korea (to work at these schools one needs not only an undergraduate degree but also a teaching degree and certification in a Western country), you are quite literally causing a massive foreigner brain drain from Korea. You will make the hundreds of potential deportees bitter against Korea and turn them against the country that they loved so much.

I literally see scammers and fraudsters from other countries here in Seoul on a weekly basis, and it is devastating to me that they will be allowed to stay here and continue robbing the Korean public while us teachers are forced to leave.

I therefore ask that you kindly do something about our situation soon. Our schools are falling like dominoes, and the way things are going, we will all be forced to leave Korea soon.

Please find some other way to deal with this situation other than deporting this large, educated populace of teachers from Korea. I can assure you that of those of us who are deported, only a minority will look kindly to Korea and consider returning in the future.

Thank you.

You might want to start a little lower on the chain of command...

Lol is this a troll? "I can read hangul" haha

Nah - like someone else pointed out, this really is a troll post - ignore and move on.

A quote - ' I have local friends in my neighbourhood: ajjoshis and ajjumas at the local grocery store, kimbap shop, CU, GS25 and of course, the local bar.'

... fallen in love with a nice Korean girl ...

With his anti-gay comments about the military and citizens, who knows if he'll be accepting of interracial relationships.  Even as the more liberal candidate, Korea as a whole is still super conservative, and many still retain the idea of purity of blood.  If the president has secret negative feelings about interracial dating/marriage, this letter would just screw foreigners up even harder.

Korea is also one of the more closed nations in the world, and don't accept immigrants very freely, which is one of the things they need to offset the declining population.  That's how several countries of Europe does it, that's how the U.S. and Canada offsets the issue of its citizens not wanting to have as much children.

I also don't see any likelihood that the current establishment will be very pro-foreigner anyways.  It seems like Korea is going through a lot of internal issues at the moment, so catering to foreigners isn't really the top of its priority.  And in terms of the broad international relationship, they are more focused on China, the U.S., Japan and NK. These are the more important issues because that is what is directly affecting their country now.

Sounds pretty negative, but this might just be the reality of it all.

That bloody bastard.

It's funny, because it's obvious that the writer did not read Moon's campaign pledges in regards to the use/importance of English in SK schools.

I'm curious at to what those pledges are?  Links to article? 

This post can't be taken seriously. It's far too vulnerable for any crazy Korean (which there are many of in Moon Jae-In's party) to completely tear it up and use it as a reason to pit against foreigners as truth that foreigners are leeches.

With his anti-gay comments about the military and citizens, who knows if he'll be accepting of interracial relationships

Mixed puppies are ok, but I don't think mixed relationships are ok with our new president.