Yuletide
  • Yuletide blog
  • About Me
  • Links
  • List of All Posts

Post-230: American Imprisoned in North Korea was an Illegal English Teacher

9/15/2014

0 Comments

 
One of the Americans currently in North Korea was found guilty this week. His name is Matthew Miller.
Picture
Matthew Miller, American sentenced to prison in North Korea for spying.
I first heard the name Matthew Miller in April 2014 (when I was in the USA). I remember the official North Korean press release being terse and cryptic...
.
Read More
Of course, NK official press releases are, usually, terse and cryptic. (But not always. They rev up the engines and soar to the heights of bombast when discoursing on the subject of the perfidious, nefarious eternal enemy, Yankee Imperialism. Flowery language is also used to mock the "South Korean puppet government" [they often use quotation marks around "government"]. See for yourself; all the NK official daily press releases are here in English: KCNA. [The site is blocked under the anti-sedition law in South Korea. I don't blame them; if you're gonna have an anti-sedition law, that site'd have to be the first to be banned].)

I now read the following from NKNews.org:
Matthew Miller grew up in the Californian town of Bakersfield, the son of petroleum engineers, and first visited Korea four years ago to stay with a brother stationed with the US Air Force where he found work teaching English.
Miller is reported to be 24 years old. If he was working as a paid English teacher at age 20, he was almost certainly illegal. A prerequisite for even the most basic, bottom-of-the-barrel English-teaching job in South Korea is a college degree. If he didn't have one, he could never have gotten a work visa (they are strict about his). He was illegal.

Some of the newspapers and TV news in South Korea occasionally run stories vilifying "illegal English teachers" as a menace to Korean society. I wonder what they would do if they figure out Miller was...one of those?
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    About

    Welcome. This is a place I write things that may or may not be of interest. Thanks.

    See here for more.


    Search this site:

    List of All Posts
    List of all posts
    Subscribe via email:

    Subscribe to the Feed:

    Enter email address to subscribe to daily updates:



    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013


    Contact by Email
    Yuletide5142 at y@hoo.com


    Picture
    Me

    I thank you for
    stopping by
    this quiet corner
    of the Internet.

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.