영국사람

ATEK Death threats: A Whodunnit?!

I was informed of the death threat against ATEK President Greg Dolezal shortly before they hit the Korean blogosphere last week. At first, I thought it may be an AES nutjob gone postal, but after Mr. X a Dave’s ESL Cafe poster called JohnFlory decided to try and pin the blame on me, I spent a few minutes (and really, that was all it took) to take a deeper look.

Here is what I did:

• I got the email address from the AES site.
• I plugged that address into Facebook.

Simple right?

The email address is linked to somebody in the US. Whilst their profile is locked, I could browse their friends. Total friends outside of the US: 0

If the AES email address and the one received by ATEK are one and the same, then the address has probably been spoofed. It is highly unlikely that this person even knows of ATEK, and I doubt a US citizen would knowingly allow his email to be used to send death threats to South Korea. If this is the case, it is pretty easy to find out where it originated.

Spoofing an email is pretty easy, especially if you use gmail. The good news is, the header information of any gmail mail sent from outside of gmails browser composer will contain ip address information (though posting from within it will hide the original ip).

Open up the header and look for the ip. Check it was not sent via proxy (though a proxy would not usually hide the originating ip) by googling the ip along with the word “proxy”. If it passes that check, enter the ip into a site that tells you where it is located, and you have just narrowed down your search.

As I found when I had to track down a message supposedly left by the AES leader (though it turned out to be Mr. X somebody else), Korean ip traces are very effective: if the person used a PC bang, the name and address of the business will show up on the trace. From that, you can get access to their CCTV and find out exactly who it was.

Happy hunting!

The NHRCK have made their decision (and ATEK are not operating illegally)

I have it from a reliable source that the NHRCK have made a decision in regard to the Equal Checks for All campaign, and so I figure this is a good time for me to break my silence in regard to ATEK.

The HIV tests are not something that the NHRCK want to even get into. I suspect that they are not sure if they can call ‘not wanting to foot the bill for a foreigners medical care’ as a human rights infringement.

As for the background checks. They have found that all teachers in Korea, be they Korean nationals or those on other visa types, are required to submit a background check from their country of permanent residence (i.e. Korea), and so foreigners should have to undergo the same checks.

6 months of headache for this. Nice!

In other news, I recently heard the outcome of the Prosecutors investigation into ATEK’s fundraising. It went to my old address instead of my email address as requested, and so it got to me via the new occupant calling my wife, getting my permission to open it, and then reading it to my wife over the phone.

Unless ATEK raise funds, they are 100% legal in Korea. This goes not only for the organisation, but also for the volunteer members who work for free regardless of their Visa type. If the volunteer members draw a salary or expenses, then things get hairy.

ATEK can also engage in fundraising activities, as long as the funds are used for charitable purposes. This means that they can not be used to pay for things to give away (such as books), can not be used to pay expenses for seminars or press conferences, and can not be used to pay for travel around the country. They CAN be used to assist teachers who are suffering hardship.

The amount they may raise is capped at 10 million won before they need to register. It was not made clear if this is a total, or an amount per fiscal year, but they don’t need to be worrying until they come close to that limit either way.

If they wanted to be smart about this, could could start off with a simple fund, and when a teacher is in need, they can have that teacher raise their own funds with ATEK members donating. That teacher can then repay ATEK. Sure, it relies on the teacher being trustworthy, but it does allow ATEK to keep raising funds without capping. They raise the funds, they loan the cash to the teacher, and the teacher repays it with funds they have raised. Happy days!

Now that they are (a) legal, and (b) unlikely to fuck around with ECFA campaigns again, I just might join them

E-2 restrictions to be relaxed – Hagwon owners peeved!

Lee Myung Bak, a man who needs to get his country back on side, is showing no signs of slowing down. Since starting his term just a few months ago he has been following through on his pledge to make Korea more accessible to foreigners, much to the annoyance of those who voted him into power. Since the introduction of the new E-2 visa rules that were designed to make things harder for foreign English teachers, he has been working to make conditions here a little better.

Not only has he managed to upset the electorate by moving to resume imports on US beef, a cause of protest throughout the country, but he has also been working to ratify the Korea-US FTA. The Korean people see this as something of a betrayal, as they believe that the world should buy Korean goods, but the Korean people should not be allowed to buy cheap foreign goods. (Sure, this is a simplified version of events, but essentially the truth when all is said and done). 

The new requirements introduced mandatory drug checks (good in principle, but poorly implemented), an interview to be held at the Korean consulate of your home country (bad), and a mandatory criminal record check (again, good but poorly implemented), and degrees validated and notarised in your home country (ridiculous).

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