by REERA YOO | @reeraboo
editor@charactermedia.com
A United Nations committee recently called on South Korea to abolish its mandatory HIV/AIDS testing of foreign teachers, according to Yonhap News Agency.
Currently, the South Korean government requires all foreign English teachers to undergo a criminal background check and tests for illegal drug use as well as HIV/AIDS, while Korean nationals in equivalent jobs are spared from such scrutiny.
In 2009, Lisa Griffin, a New Zealand woman who taught English in South Korea, alleged that her teaching contract was not renewed after she refused to undergo a second HIV/AIDS test. Griffin, who had received a negative result on her first test, argued that the testing was “discriminatory and an affront to her dignity.”
Her employer, the Ulson Metropolitan Office of Education, told her that the mandatory HIV/AIDS tests were “viewed as a means to check the values and morality of foreign English teachers,” according to a statement released by the U.N. Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
On Wednesday, the Geneva-based committee urged Korean authorities to grant Griffin “adequate compensation for the moral and material damages she suffered.”
It also said the foreigner-only HIV/AIDS testing “does not appear to be justified on public health grounds or any other ground and is a breach of the right to work without distinction to race, color, national or ethnic origin.”
CERD strongly recommended South Korea to revise regulations and policies that perpetuate racial discrimination against foreign employees, giving the country 90 days to report back on the measures it has taken.
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Featured image via Yonhap
Correction: This article has been updated to state that South Korea requires all foreign English teachers to be tested for HIV/AIDS. Previously the article stated that all foreign employees are required to undergo the testing. While Korean authorities have previously presented a bill to the National Assembly that calls for mandatory HIV/AIDS testing of all foreign employees back in 2010, there is currently no law that requires all foreigners with a work visa to undergo an HIV/AIDS test. KoreAm regrets the error.
