My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and am now a writer who has
published three books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.
I was an English teacher in Seoul back in the middle 1990's. The only thing that was at
the time required of us was doc-umentation that we indeed did graduate from a college or university, did
not commit any criminal acts, and that we passed a physical. Pretty standard, and pretty fair. However,
in 2007, the then Roh Myoo-hyun administration put in a required policy of testing potential and then
practicing English teachers to undergo an HIV-AIDS test in order to be able to teach English in South
Korea. The sad thing about this policy was that it had no medical and no scientific basis whatsoever.
It was plain discrimination of people in one category. It was not required of Korean teachers, and for
that matter in really any other category. One English teacher, a New Zealander named Lisa Griffin, refused
to be tested and was fired from her job in 2009. She took her case to the United Nations and the
Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ruled in her favor. It took a long
time, but finally the Moon Jae-in administration has done the right thing in getting rid of this discriminatory
act. I view this as a positive move to try and bring down racial and national barriers, and shall help not only
those who wish to become English teachers but also Korea and Koreans who want to learn English and
know more about the world we live in (note: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the only other country that
requires HIV-AIDS testing of any and all prospective English teachers. Needless to say I will not be going
to Saudi Arabia............that and a lot of other reasons why not!).
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