smokehard

When a pedophile, who had taught English in Korea for a brief stint, was caught in Thailand, the Korean government sprang into action and implemented a plan to safeguard Korean children from evil foreign teachers that was both ridiculous and almost impossible to fully implement. The plan went into effect, and after being criticized by diplomats, teachers, overseas embassies, school owners, and well…everyone, the government ended up axing most of what it had wanted to do. I won’t go into great detail, because its fairly old news, but if you are interested, check out Sean Hayes article in the Korea Times, and this, this, and this.

The government’s announcement and quick implementation of a grandiose scheme to filter out ‘undesirable’ teachers ended up just frustrating potentially ‘desirable’ ones. Instead of jumping through a million hoops to get a so/so job in Korea, native English speakers could easily go to Taiwan, China, or wherever and start teaching without going through red tape obstacle courses.

The best example of ill planning was the required interview. According to the original plan, anyone who wanted to come to Korea to teach English had to go through an interview at a Korean embassy in their home country at their own expense. Now, why would someone from, lets say, Churchill Manitoba pay whatever it costs to go to a Korean embassy in Toronto, Ottawa, or Vancouver when they could simply book a flight to Taiwan and start teaching in a little more than a week? That example is just one of the many idiotic measures that were drawn up by the government in order to make Korean students “safer”.

In the end the plan died because it was a knee jerk reaction to some random news event that had “Korea” in the text. Instead of sitting down and rationally changing existing procedures and creating committees to look at the new plans feasibility, the government simply drew up some hair brained scheme, ordered it be done, and didn’t look back to see if it had been implemented properly. Announcement to the press and public complete, all is well, right?  Well that might be how shit gets done in a banana republic, but in a nation that wants to be included at the ‘advanced nations’ table…blunders like the new visa procedures should be avoided at all cost. Apparently, learning from past mistakes and avoiding policy blunders wasn’t what pulled Korea out of poverty and into the OECD.

Indeed, thanks to such an awesome capacity at implementing ill planned knee jerk reaction legislation, come July the menu I am handed at a restaurant in Korea will probably be as thick as the bible.

New rules requiring all restaurants to specify the country of origin of beef used in meat based dishes is angering owners, who are skeptical about the efficacy of the new labeling rule, calling it “nonsensical.”

From July, all restaurants must indicate the origin of all beef they use to allow customers to choose between Korean and imported beef.

“It’s annoying. We haven’t received any guidelines whatsoever from the government,” said Lee Mi-ja, who runs the Korean restaurant Sarangchae in Sinchon, Seoul. (Korea Times)

No guidelines have been received? You don’t say!

“It’s okay to specify the origin of grilled meat customers eat. But it’s too much to show the origin of all side dishes and soup as well,” she complained.

Her restaurant serves a total of 19 dishes, seven of which include beef. Six side dishes also contain beef ingredients. Now, she has to make a whole new menu to clarify which dishes use ingredients from where.

“It’s ridiculous and confusing. The menu will too thick and we will have to update it every time we change ingredients,” she said. (Korea Times)

That IS pretty ridiculous, as a lot of Korean restaurants buy their side dishes from smaller companies that deliver them ready made for the restaurant to serve. If the company delivering sides dishes with meat in them were to decide to change the nationality of beef they were using, id have to make an entire new menu based on what; one side dish? Dear god what a stupid plan.

Kim Sang-hun, owner of the Korea grill restaurant, Miga Saebyeokjib, in Bangbae-dong, southern Seoul also called the rule nonsensical. “It seems as if those with no idea about running a restaurant came up with such regulations.”

He called them typical bureaucratic policy, which was ignorant of real-life business. “You may need to use beef and bones from cows from different countries in some dishes. How do you put such information on the menu every time you change your ingredients?” (Korea Times)

Mr. Kim is correct. What if a distributor is sold out of a particular cut of Korean beef and the owner purchases some Australian beef in order to stay open?

Why isn’t the government simply making it harder for distributors to sell mislabeled beef to restaurants? These new rules will simply encourage both distributors and restaurants to lie. And realistically, who is going to stop them? Inspectors?

In Seoul alone, about 130,000 restaurants have to abide by the new rule. If cafeterias are included, the number will rise to over 640,000 across the nation, while only about 600 staff are available for inspections. The central government plans to raise the number of inspectors to 1,000. (Korea Times)

Will 1,000 inspectors be capable of handling 640 restaurants each a month? I highly doubt it. And what about bars that sell food with beef in it? Are bars not party to these new rules, and if not, why not? Clearly, these new rules were not taken into full consideration.

But the money quote from the entire article pretty much sums up every law in Korea.

“It’s true that the new rules will be confusing for restaurant owners,” said an official from the Seoul Metropolitan Government. “We know most restaurants will have difficulty implementing them and so in the initial stages, we won’t apply the rule too strictly.” (Korea Times)

Now there’s something I can believe with regard to most of the laws in Korea!