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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Coronavirus: South Korea’s expats, teachers face scrutiny as nightclub outbreak worsens

  • Foreigners working in South Korean schools say employers are asking them to surrender credit card details to track their movements
  • Authorities are trying to trace about 3,000 people who visited nine clubs in the nightlife district of Itaewon that have been linked to a new infection cluster

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Quarantine workers disinfect night spots in Itaewon, Seoul. Photo: Reuters
Park Chan-kyong
South Korea’s efforts to trace and test thousands of people after a rise in new coronavirus infections linked to nightclubs and bars in Seoul’s Itaewon district has sparked unhappiness among expatriate teachers that their right to privacy is being breached.
On social media, foreigners teaching in South Korean schools complained their employers were asking them to surrender their credit card details to confirm they were not among the partygoers in Itaewon at the start of this month.

Teachers, including foreigners who teach English at schools or private language institutes, have come under scrutiny after the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said 158 people working at schools in the capital, including 53 foreigners, had reported to authorities that they visited Itaewon and other entertainment districts during the April 29-May 6 period when there was a long weekend.

Scores of other foreigners working at schools in other provincial cities, including 20 in the second-largest city of Busan, also visited Itaewon during the period, it said.

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Authorities in Incheon, a city west of Seoul, said they would pursue a criminal complaint against one infected teacher – a Korean – who had lied about his workplace and infected at least eight others including students and parents.

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