PANELISTS
Stafford Lumsden (The Chosun Bimbo)
Regina Walton (Where the Hell Am I, Look to the Stars)
Me (lao-ocean-girl)
Rob Ouwehand (Roboseyo)
David Harris (SeoulLife.net)
Luke Martin (ROKetship)

Actually, Ras’ cousin Jake is in the bike business himself.  He and his partner own Daedalus Custom Bamboo Bikes.  There is an article about them HERE.

Building a bicycle infrastructure

]]> http://lao-ocean.com/2008/07/14/bike-friendly-portland/feed/ 0 http://lao-ocean.com/2007/11/26/more-questions-answered-about-the-new-e-2-regulations/ http://lao-ocean.com/2007/11/26/more-questions-answered-about-the-new-e-2-regulations/#comments Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:27:58 +0000 lao-ocean-girl http://lao-ocean.com/2007/11/26/more-questions-answered-about-the-new-e-2-regulations/ A friend and former colleague who is now working at a university in Daejeon, went to an immigration meeting today and has this to report about new E-2 visa regulations:

Q: For people RENEWING their visas, what do they need?
A: Same as before, plus criminal check and medical check (and letter of release if necessary)

Q: What kind of criminal check? National, provincial, or local?
A: I don’t know. Right now there is no set specified regulation, so anything is acceptable for now.

Q: Many countries’ criminal checks require 4-5 months to receive back. What happens to our renewal in February?
A: We will accept your visa on a provisional basis and you can submit the check when you get it.

Q: How often do we have to submit this criminal check? EVERY time we apply for a new visa?
A: No. Once you submit it once, that’s all you do. After that we check your Korean record. We are Immigration, so it is our responsibility to keep track of your criminal record of Korea. That’s our job, but we have no access to your home country, so you just have to give it to us once.

Q: Do we have to leave Korea to renew our visas?
A: No. Even if you are getting a new visa with a new school, we will not require you to leave Korea IF (a) you have the criminal/medicals checks and (b) you have completed at least 80% of your contract. If you have 80% minimum completed, then we will just transfer your visa to your new school, and you don’t have to leave Korea (ie. no visa run)

* I specifically asked why these points had changed, and she said because the regulations are so tough now, they are afraid that it will be very difficult for the necessary teachers to stay here. They don’t want to have a teacher crisis, so they are making it more flexible for teachers already here.

Q: Do we still need to submit sealed transcripts?
A: You only need to submit them once. After that, you don’t need to submit them again.

Q: What kinds of documents must be notarized/apostilled?
A: I don’t know the regulation. Email me and I will get you that answer.

Q: For the medical check, can we have it done in Korea, or do we have to go back home to get it done?
A: You can have it done in Korea. You don’t have to go back home. As long as you go to a government-run hospital for the check, you will be okay.

Q: What must we have checked by the doctor?
A: drugs and HIV.

I will email her and get more info on the apostille and the medical.

You can see the rest of the post HERE.

According to a Ministry of Justice press release, foreigners who apply for teaching visas will have to submit a criminal background check and a medical check, and must undergo an interview at the closest Korean consulate to their home town. Visa runs to Japan will also be scrapped. Teachers must now receive and renew visas in their home country.

I live near Portland, Oregon, and the two Korean consulates closest to me are in Seattle or San Francisco!  What a waste of time and money.  Here’s a list of all the Korean consulates in the United States.

Read the entire news article HERE or below:E-2s to need medical, criminal checks

The application process for an E-2 teaching visa will be tightened up in December.

According to a Ministry of Justice press release, foreigners who apply for teaching visas will have to submit a criminal background check and a medical check, and must undergo an interview at the closest Korean consulate to their home town. Visa runs to Japan will also be scrapped. Teachers must now receive and renew visas in their home country.

The exact date of implementation has not yet been decided, an official at the Ministry of Justice said. “The changed regulations will be implemented sometime in December but we have not yet set an exact date, as the ministry is still in the process of finalizing the details.”

“Hagwon and other employers of foreign teachers will be informed as soon as the details have been finalized,” he told The Korea Herald.

The tightened controls come in the wake of news that a pedophile suspect worked in Korea on several occasions, along with the avalanche of fake-diploma scandals throughout Korean society. The suspect has not yet been convicted, and there is no public link to any offences in Korea.

“We have been drawing up the new regulations for some time but the recent case of Christopher Paul Neil could be said to have brought the issue to the surface,” said the official.

“Drug use and other criminal activities carried out by foreign English teachers have been a social issue for some time, and have built up to dangerous levels in recent years. That is why we are implementing changes now.”

The new regulations will only affect foreigners holding E-2 visas, and those seeking an E-2 visa.

“We do not plan to strengthen regulations concerning all foreign nationals in Korea, as that would be unnecessary,” the ministry official added. “We are focusing on teachers because they come in close contact with children, and we have a duty to protect children from unnecessary dangers.”

Concern is mounting among current teachers, not about the validity of the new rules, but about the “messy” implementation, as one teacher described it. They say information from the government has been vague and unclear. Potential teachers are also put off by the uncertainty of the new regulations, which some important government organizations don’t even seem to be aware of.

The Korea Herald contacted Government for Foreigners, a Korean government organization which “aims to provide comprehensive information on entry regulations.” When asked if there were changes to the regulations being planned for December, the help desk clerk’s answer was a vague “probably.”

He was unsure of when they would be implemented. “How are we supposed to know,” he asked the reporter. The clerk then said that he is aware of new regulations, but could not comment on them, saying “We will have to wait and see.”

There are concerns about the logistics of the consulate interview part of the plan. “It’s about time they had criminal record checks, and the health check is a good idea,” says Tricia Elliot, a teacher at a private institute in Seoul. “But this interview at the consulate is a bit overboard because it cuts out a lot of people from smaller areas of large countries.

“A lot of the Canadians who work as teachers are from the East coast, and the nearest consulate is in Montreal,” she explained. “That’s really far away, and impossible for most people to get to on short notice for an interview that doesn’t guarantee a job.”

English teachers have had trouble finding information about the changes. Many have been told by their local immigration branch that there were no changes, or that the office was unaware of them. This is in spite of a press release which came out last week.

If implemented in December, the move would leave schools struggling to fill vacancies as applicants spend months waiting for police checks and arranging medicals and travel to embassies. It would also discourage hagwon from getting rid of underperforming teachers.

While no one doubts hagwon would boot abusive teachers, those coming in hung over, unprepared and unenthusiastic could be more of a problem. Schools already have a tough time shifting them because their replacement is costly, difficult and time consuming.

Some suspect the extra time and expense of visa application will deter legitimate teachers. “I predict a mass exodus of legitimate, qualified, native-speaking ESL Teachers. They will be replaced mostly by highly transient and unskilled backpackers who will work illegally on tourist visas at premium wages,” said one teacher, asking not to be named.

Mindful of this, the ministry also intends to increase the severity of punishments for those hagwon employing illegal teachers.

But that teacher remains unconvinced. “You’ve got to really want to work in Korea to go through all that mess,” he says. “Those few teachers who are compliant with these new visa regulations will almost certainly be demanding extraordinarily high wages.”

By Paul Kerry

(paulkerry@heraldm.com)

2007.11.07

For more information, check out The Marmot’s Hole, which is very comprehensive.  There isn’t a lot of news in the Korean English newspapers, but LOTS of stuff in the Korean news sites.  My students knew details about the shooting that even I didn’t.  Such sad news.  I’m glued to my computer reading about what happened, since I don’t have a TV.

In 2004-05, the last year for which national numbers are available, county residents borrowed 19.4 million books and other items, according to Penny Hummel, a library spokeswoman.  Portland libraries have the highest circulation numbers of any system in the nation.

That’s more than Los Angeles (15.7 million items), New York (15.5 million) and Chicago (6.9 million), Hummel said.

Just this morning, I saw at least 25 people waiting outside for the the downtown library to open.  I use the library a lot myself – going about twice a week.  Speaking of books, Portland also has the largest bookstore in the nation.  (Powell’s Bookstore has about 1 million new and used books on its shelves.)

WITH the hammer and sickle fluttering from shop fronts and odes to the revolution blaring across the capital, Laos has geared up to celebrate 30 years of communism.

In what was arguably the final act of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese backed Pathet Lao communists who had overrun the landlocked Southeast nation formally created the Lao People’s Democratic Republic on December 2, 1975.

*****

Despite the relative peace of the past 30 years, all is not as rosy as the official papers would have people believe.

With a tiny economy hamstrung by a lack of enterprise and investment, Laos remains one of the poorest countries in Asia with many people struggling to survive on less than $US1 ($1.36) a day.

It also had the dubious honour of being the most bombed country per capita in the world due to the massive US bombardment of the Ho Chi Minh trail, the jungle transport network used by North Vietnamese troops and weapons.

Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku girls have been getting lots of lip service lately, and I have to say I am confused. 

Now she has 4 things all together, the Harajuku Girls. I want to like them, and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don’t want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. Amos ‘n Andy had lots of fans, didn’t they? At least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there.

It is weird being Asian American right now, because I don’t exactly know what my place is. America is supposed to be for everyone, and people are supposed to treat me like I belong here, and yet you would never know that from watching tv or movies. I still get the questions about where I am really from. Then when I try to explain this feeling of invisibility to those whose every move and moment is entirely visible, they come back at me with, "Maybe Asian Americans don’t want to be in entertainment!" Yes he really said that. I just screamed, because there was no other way I could answer without hitting him.

This one’s a highlight from a Salon.com article:

They shadow her wherever she goes. They’re on the cover of the album, they appear behind her on the red carpet, she even dedicates a track, "Harajuku Girls," to them. In interviews, they silently vogue in the background like living props; she, meanwhile, likes to pretend that they’re not real but only a figment of her imagination. They’re ever present in her videos and performances — swabbing the deck aboard the pirate ship, squatting gangsta style in a high school gym while pumping their butts up and down, simpering behind fluttering hands or bowing to Stefani. That’s right, bowing. Not even from the waist, but on the ground in a "we’re not worthy, we’re not worthy" pose.

She’s taken Tokyo hipsters, sucked them dry of all their street cred, and turned them into China dolls.

Every single day, 30,000 children die, needlessly, of extreme poverty.

On July 6th, we finally have the opportunity to stop that shameful statistic.  8 world leaders, gathered in Scotland for the G8 summit, will be presented with a workable plan to double aid, drop the debt and make the trade laws fair. If these 8 men agree, then we will become the generation that made poverty history.

But they’ll only do it if enough people tell them to.

That’s why we’re staging Live 8. 10 concerts, 100 artists, a million spectators, 2 billion viewers, and 1 message… To get those 8 men, in that 1 room, to stop 30,000 children dying every single day of extreme poverty.

We don’t want your money – we want you!

If you want an image of what poverty looks like, this picture will break your heart.  It did mine.  It’s by Pulitzer Prize photographer Kevin Carter, who committed suicide a few months after taking this picture.  Read more about it below.

A tiny Sudanese girls crawls to a feeding center as a vulture waits for her to die.

In 2003, the South African photographer Kevin Carter was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his picture of a well-fed vulture stalking a starving Sudanese girl. In May, he came to New York to receive his award. Two months later, the thirty-three-year-old news photographer connected a hose to the exhaust pipe of his red pickup truck and gassed himself to death. Journalists who had buried colleagues killed covering South Africa’s turmoil resumed their grim role of pallbearers. Carter himself had barely missed being killed covering incidents in Tokoza township, the township where his best friend and colleague Ken Oosterbroek was later shot dead.

Carter had been documenting the political turmoil in his country since 1983, when he was hired as a photographer by the Sunday Express. His first Time cover came the next year. Thereafter, he worked for most leading South African newspapers — The Star, The Sunday Tribune, and the progressive Rand Daily Mail, which later became The Weekly Mail — and finally Reuters.

The violence seemed to affect Carter more than it did other colleagues who managed to shrug off with joints and jokes what they recorded on film. Returning from particularly upsetting assignments, he would often cry, or try to drink or drug himself into oblivion. Friends grew used to his 3 A.M. phone calls, rambling about suicide. He said that after shooting the Pulitzer-winning picture, he "sat under a tree and cried and chain-smoked. I couldn’t distance myself from the horror of what I saw."

Carter’s private demons were closing in on him when he returned to South Africa from New York. His suicide note said he was "depressed . . . without phone . . . money for rent . . . money for child support . . . money for debts . . . money! ! !" "I’m really, really sorry," he explained in a note left on the passenger seat beneath a knapsack. "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."  But he also lived with the demons familiar to all those whose profession makes them witness to horror. "I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain . . . of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen."  [www.expreso.co.cr]

From Wikipedia.com:

Canada Day (French: F?te du Canada) is Canada‘s national holiday. It is celebrated on July 1.

It celebrates the creation of the Dominion of Canada through the British North America Act 1867, which came into effect on July 1, 1867, uniting three British territories ? the Province of Canada (southern Ontario and southern Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick ? into a federation. (See Canadian Confederation.)

The holiday itself was formally established in 1879 and was originally called Dominion Day, making reference to the Canadian-originated term ‘dominion’ to describe the political union, at a time when the Fathers of Confederation were hesitant to use a name such as the Kingdom of Canada. The name was changed to Canada Day on October 27, 1982.

It is a mandatory holiday across Canada for all federal institutions. It is also celebrated by all provincial governments and businesses across Canada. Quebec provincial governments under the Parti Qu?b?cois refused to recognize the celebration. In Newfoundland and Labrador, July 1 is also recognised as Memorial Day and commemorates Newfoundland’s heavy losses during World War I in the Battle of Beaumont Hamel as part of the Battle of the Somme.