After I translated their press release of August 18, which I and others criticized for calling certain foreigners “poison mushrooms” and “viruses”, being factually inaccurate in some ways, and not mentioning some solutions to the problem, Seoul.com responded through a new press release, this time in English. I don’t have too much to say about it other than that the conciliatory tone is nice, except that Korea Beat is not a “club for foreigners”, and only one commenter mocked Seoul.com’s English — hey, my Korean writing ability is not that good, you know. Key paragraphs:

There are already more than 15,000 legal native English speaking teachers who are living and working Korea. If we added the illegal teachers, then the number is going up to approximately 40,000. It is speculated that the number will soon exceed 100,000.

With this type of numbers, there will always be ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys.

There were some bad guys reported as teaching English without E2 Visa visiting company or houses for personal teaching. Some were reporting people smoking marijuana or even having improper relationship with local Korean girls and more. Some of these reported people were deported from the country already.

Seoul.com has no argument about these, because these ‘bad’ people violated the law. Korea has a right to filter them out.

There was one particular Korean internet cafe, whose members would aggressively track those illegal aliens aggressively and brought them to public prosecutor to face their crimes. Even if these illegal aliens were responsible for their actions, it definitely caught attention of the legal aliens in Korea too. It probably brought a sour taste to their mouth for knowing that there was a group of people who solely dedicate their time tracking down illegal aliens. Under such circumstance, perhaps, these legal alien may be worried that the Seoul.com Forum might be yet another Anti-foreigner site.

Seoul.com acknowledged the current situation.

Some asked, why are Koeans silent about 300,000 illegal Koreans residing in the USA and Canada, while are so against only 30,000 illegal aliens in Korea?

Some view that this is not a unique situation for those English teachers in Korea, but is common in any community in the world; therefore, the blame should not just rest on these English teachers in Korea.

Yes. Seoul.com agrees on that point too.

Well, such things are happening all the time in everywhere.

There are always the die-hard patriots, and those who would die opposing them.

Seoul.com reviewed its news release again after the KOREA BEAT pointed out some phrase and words in their news. We believe that the words were misunderstood in their context; however, they were not created to attack or damage anyone’s views. However, we understand that this is a very sensitive issue and we will be more sensitive to such issues in the future.

They also put out this Korean release pointing out that native-speaking teachers in public schools are good for their students and that parents like them but their effectiveness is limited by too-large class sizes. Seoul.com may or may not be around much longer, however, as its current owner is seeking a buyer with an asking price of $2 million (!).