I’d encourage you, and all your readers, to take a closer look at the email. It wasn’t written by a native speaker of English! In fact, it reads distinctly like the work of a Korean student of the language.

Cases in point: “Last year when I went to [article "the" omitted] Philippines I . . . without [article "a" omitted] condom. . . . I didn’t take [article "a" omitted] test either.”

My purpose in indicating these errors is certainly not to nitpick. Rather, it is to suggest that the most likely author is the estranged girlfriend herself. She likely has the motive to wish to harm an ex; her faulty English gives her away as the true culprit.

Will you indulge me and allow my full letter to the Chosun Ilbo to appear here?:

Dear Editor,

I am writing to lodge a vigorous protest against your recent article “Australian English Teacher Blacklisted for AIDS Threat” (May 28, 2007).

The article is equally erroneous and unfair. In fact, it is constructed entirely upon a transparent lie.

A quick reading of the email supposedly sent by the English teacher in question reveals that it was unmistakably NOT written by a native speaker of English. Within just five lines of text, the writer omits essential articles (”the,” “a”) in three places. In fact, upon rereading, it appears that the email does not contain even one article: in every single place where an English-speaker would unfailingly use one, the writer omits to do so. It’s a very simple deduction that the true author of the inflammatory email is in fact the estranged girlfriend–not the English teacher.

Having demonstrated that your article, based entirely upon a fraud, is erroneous in its entirety, I wish also to address its patent unfairness. Not content to expose this one English teacher to public humiliation, you generalize, in your opening line, about “allegations of improper conduct against expatriate English instructors in Korea.” This is the journalistic equivalent of examining the Cho Seung-Hui case under a heading of “Korean criminality.” It is grossly and transparently wrong.

Further, your choice to black out the name of the Korean “recipient” while leaving unblacked the name of the foreign “sender” indicates a desire to protect members of your own race while exposing others to harm. Worse, your exposure of the teacher’s name in such a public way–without making allowance for his possible innocence–can only, at best, be taken as bad journalistic practice.

But the astonishing, overriding irony at work here is that you at the Chosun Ilbo, together with the KFTRA and the unnamed woman in question, while all conspiring to make foreigners look bad, have only shown yourselves to be idiots and bad actors. So far from demonstrating that Koreans are victims of foreign misconduct, you unknowingly, unintentionally prove the exact opposite in this case.

I demand that you retract this article and issue a public apology to the English teacher in question.

A false accusation of this sort, however, is not simply a breach of good conduct; it is also a criminal matter. The Chosun Ilbo, together with the other guilty parties in this affair, stand to face criminal charges for slander. If the foreign teacher you have sought to harm does not himself prosecute, expect that others may, on his behalf.

Yours sincerely,

Donald Webber
Seoul, Korea

I guess she had it coming, huh?

Ah, no, thats why I put “did” in inverted commas.

Why not contact him, and get is side?

Wow, her ex just told her that she “deserved” a long and painful death(preceded by years of waiting on deathrow), and you want her to get “his side” of the story…hmm…

Naturally Coreas most read newspaper the “new york times of Corea”, ties his behavior to all foreighers. It seems to me that coreans hate all non-coreans.

Missing the “ties”…
Matt,

I wonder what she “did” to him that was so bad?

I guess she had it coming, huh?