Is it just me, or has there been a decided increase in sex crimes being committed, (or just reported?) over the last year or so?

Either way - Korea has a significant problem dealing with sex offenders, especially since people who commit crimes facing less than a 3 year prison sentence have their records wiped clean after 5 years on non-offending. I stand to be corrected on that one but bring it up in light of the fact that as a foreigner I have to produce my Criminal Record (or to the point, lack thereof) every five minutes, despite the fact that it wouldn't prove if I was a sex offender or not.

So how many Foreigners have been found to be kiddie fiddlers in the last 3 years?

Two. (And even then, that's in the category "Sexual Violence" which may or may not incorporate paedophilia.

How many Koreans?

Lots. There's the Na-Young case, A 55 year old Mr Kim taking advantage of an ADHD elementary school student, A Mr Kim in Busan was found guilty of having sex with a teenage runaway, then there was the case of two dudes pimping out two middle school girls....The List, unfortunately, goes on.

So you will understand the proverbial spitting of the proverbial coffee all over the computer monitor when this evening I read this:

Foreign Pedophiles to Face Permanent Deportation

Surprisingly This one wasn't penned by Kang Shin Who.

From the article:

The Ministry of Justice said Thursday it will revise immigration rules to ban foreigners found guilty of raping Korean children from re-entering Korea permanently.

All two of them.

Of course The Foreign Paedophiles are a greater threat than the home-grown Han-Kiddie Fiddlers, even the article says that right?

The government has announced a package of measures against sex offenders after the Supreme Court upheld a lower-than-expected prison term handed down to Cho Doo-soon, a 57-year-old man convicted of kidnapping and brutally raping a nine-year-old girl.

Cho, given a 12-year-term, is now in prison for class-A criminals in North Gyeongsang Province. The victim, widely known by her alias Na-young, suffered incurable physical and mental damage.

Of course, because every foreigner I know is likely to get drunk, molest a child and then disfigure her by sticking a broom handle permanently and only get 12 years.

Jeebus H. Christ Esq.!

But wait, here comes the head thumping moment, because, as you well know, not only is it foreigners, but specifically it is E2 visa holders that are the scourge of Korean Society and it's children:

...Rep. Lee Joo-young of the ruling Grand National Party urged the ministry to tighten the rule on E-2 visa issuance, arguing it’s so lax that many convicted foreigners attempt to cross borders with legal residential status. The legislator did not disclose the exact number of foreigners caught for the violation.

Under the law, E-2 visa applicants are mandated to submit records on their criminal histories and health check-ups particularly on AIDS and drug use, which are issued by their country of origin.

All two of them.

I used to think a T-shirt, in Korean stating I was not American might go a long way to ingratiating me to my Korean hosts.

From now on I will just hand out copies of my Criminal Record Check and AIDS test results. (Neither of which go any way in proving that I'm not a paedophile, but you know, nothing like a bit of pragmatism.)

Thankfully a modicum of sense seems to be coming from the parliamentary opposition:

Earlier this month, a group of lawmakers of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) proposed a bill, which will make it impossible to reduce the punishment of sex offenders on the grounds that they were drunk at the time of the crime and thus unable to make sound judgement.

It also aims at removing the statute of limitations on rape cases. At present, it ranges from one to 25 years depending on the seriousness of the crime.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to clean up the bloody mess on the wall....

----

BTW Korea Times it's spelt "paedophile."

Dear Sir,

A number of points you may wish to consider regarding your website http://www.visitkoreayear.com.

1. A year constitutes 365 days or one revolution around the sun by our planet. Though this is sometimes longer (i.e. during leap years) no where in physics, mathematics or any of the other natural sciences, has a year involved more than 366 days.

You're slogan "Visit Korea Year 2010-2012" could in fact encompass three years if taken from 01 January 2010 to 31 December 2012.

I think, perhaps, your understanding of "Year" needs to be checked.

Just a bit.

Might I suggest the handy English - Korean dictionary on Naver.

2. Who are you trying to get to visit Korea?

As it stands your website (noted above) is solely in the Korea language and to my eye there is no link to an English version of the page.

If you are intending expatriate Koreans as your audience then this is totally understandable, however Korean, a very scientific and difficult language, is not as widely used in the world as you might expect, thus the choice of language for http://www.visitkoreayear.com shuts out 99% of world wide internet users.

3. The English used on http://www.visitkoreayear.com is both grammatically incorrect by and large and quite awkward in it's usage. "Green and Human" ? Really? What does that mean. Are you making a statement on human skin colour, or perhaps using "Green" in terms of it's environmental collocations? Either way it is not clear in your usage.

4. The page itself http://www.visitkoreayear.com is poorly coded, fronted by a both bandwidth and processor intensive flash presentation which as it turns out isn't even interactive and you provide no low graphics / dial up / mobile version of the sight.

Subsequently after visiting your site I still have no information about the Visit Korea "Year".

I wonder how much money the organisations involved in producing this really crappy site have poured into it's development. I am pretty sure that monies contributed by the likes of the Korea Tourism Organisation, The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Seoul City would have been better spent hiring at least one person fluent in English just to double check the use of a Language which seems wholly foreign to you and the site's programmers.

As it stands your site does not incite me to visit Korea in any of the years between 2010 and 2012 simply because I have no idea about it - thanks to your ill conceived, boring, uninformative website.

Regards

Stafford H. Lumsden Esq.