Though many headlines have been made about the increasing arrests of "low quality foreign English teachers" for drug use; it appears they are just part of a larger trend of increasing drug usage across Korea overall:
The number of drug-related arrests in South Korea rose again sharply last year threatening the country’s "drug-clean" status, the top prosecutors’ office said Sunday.
Arrests increased by 38 percent from 7,711 in 2006 to 10,649 last year mainly due to the increase in methamphetamine and marijuana users, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said in a news release. [Yonhap]
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8:23 am on February 4th, 2008 1
Oh, oh! Wow, the number of foreigners using, abusing and selling drugs is lower than I expected. On a weird note I guess this will make all English teachers unqualified!
To Tom: You see Tommy Boy, the Korean media will use shit like this to fuel the xenophobic fans of Koreans. This is the way it is. This is why the Korean media sensationalizes all this crap. They hope xenophobia (racism really) will boost sales. Why else would they print (in a national newspaper) three scuzzy looking foreign nationals chasing down a poor, innocent Korean girl with the hope of raping her?
I guess I imagined that one though eh Tom?
1:27 pm on February 4th, 2008 2
Do you happen to know what “drug clean” status means? Is that an internal Korean assessment of how clean they are? Or is it some status being tracked by some international body or some other country (like the US?).
(full disclosure: I’m an extremist in favor of drug legalization, so the answer, if you have it and give it, may bring aid and comfort to my side of that debate)
3:42 am on February 5th, 2008 3
Beatinzone, I don’t see how this article is xenophobic or racist.
8:05 pm on February 6th, 2008 4
4:55 am on February 7th, 2008 5
[...] this week I mentioned that drug statistics for Korea in 2007 were released. Now that I have had some time I decided to cruch the numbers and [...]