Thomas QuinnA teacher from the Republic of Ireland has been turned down for a job in South Korea because of the “alcoholism nature” of Irish people.
Katie Mulrennan, from County Kerry, had applied for a teaching job in Seoul. To her shock she received a reply explaining why she had been rejected. The agency she was using informed her that their client would not hire Irish people because of the perceived drinking habits of people from “God’s Country”.
The 26-year-old hopeful told the BBC that she could not believe the email was real at first. “Usually when you apply for a job and they don’t want you, they don’t send a reply,” she said. “Or they tell you they would prefer someone from North America, because some schools prefer the accent. But this reply was a first. When I got the email, it was so abrupt and short. I actually laughed when I read it initially. But then I wanted to write back a really angry response. In the end I took a deep breath and sent back a reply, that was a little bit sarcastic as I couldn’t believe the email I had received. But I haven’t heard anything back since.”
The teacher had found the job through an advertisement on Craigslist and had thus sought out the employer and sent an application in as she would for any other teaching position. She told the agency that she had been teaching English for over three years, in Barcelona, Oxford and Abu Dhabi as well as having previously worked in South Korea.
Miss Mulerennan said she did not know the recruiter as their information was not available on the site but she trusted that something as odd as this would not happen. She has since reported the advertisement to Craigslist but there has been no word on what will be done about the advert.
“It was disappointing because these employers did not even get to see me,” she said. “They never spoke to me and didn’t get a chance to hear what I sounded like.” Fear not though the teacher has since found another teaching job and has said she is able to laugh about this incident now.
“I was annoyed about it. But I can also see it was a little bit hilarious as well. A friend saw it and encouraged me to post it online as it might go viral. I thought: ‘Really? It’s just another silly thing poking fun at Irish people’. But then I put it online and people started getting in touch.
She also qualified her desire to potentially work in South Korea again by saying “I still love the country and being in Seoul.”