HIV in Korea: A Tangled Mess of Law, Stigma, and Bad Public Health

The routine health check required to teach English in Korea is a familiar annoyance to native English teachers, who have bonded over shared stories of blood pressure and temperature checks, blood and urine samples, and chest X-rays. Unfortunately, “routine” has an asterisk next to it: if a teacher tests positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, popularly known as HIV, the teacher will lose his or her job and be deported. This reaction has been recognized as discrimination, bad policy, and part of a larger problem of stigmatization of HIV in Korean society.

HIV, is a disease that is present in bodily fluids. The virus can only be transmitted to another person through sexual contact, needle-sharing, from a pregnant mother to her baby, or through breast milk.The percentage of adults with HIV in South Korea is very low, about 0.1%. The most recent figures available from the Korean Centers for Disease Control (KCDC) estimate that there are 7,780 South Koreans living with HIV. In 2012, there were 868 new diagnoses reported among Koreans and 85 among foreigners.

Currently, E-2 visa applicants are the only group required to be tested for HIV under Korean law. Supposedly, the reason why is that in 2007, a Canadian man who had formerly taught English in Korea was arrested for sex crimes against children in southeast Asia. Though he was never linked to sex crimes in Korea and was not known to carry HIV, his arrest sparked a moral panic and a fear of foreign teachers.

There are multiple problems with the response to this scandal, of course. HIV-positive status does not make someone a criminal, and HIV cannot be transmitted in the classroom, so outlawing it does not make students safer. When contacted by the Korea Heraldin 2010, an official from the Ministry of Education cited only parental concerns and a public opinion poll as justification. The government recently dropped the HIV test requirement for visa renewal, but new applicants must still be screened – and many schools disregard the law and insist on HIV tests for foreign teachers each year anyway.

Koreans are no safer from HIV stigma, and those who discover they are HIV-positive are pushed to the fringes of society if they disclose their status. Despite it being illegal, companies often screen new employees for the virus during the required health check, and workers are often fired if their employers find out they are HIV positive. One study on HIV-related attitudes among Korean high school students found that nearly half (42.9%) supported forcing people with HIV to live in isolated residences. The virus is associated with homosexuality and promiscuity, which are taboo in Korean society, and misinformation is rampant, which makes discrimination more insidious and difficult to combat.

This stigma actually makes preventing the disease’s spread more difficult. HIV-positive individuals might not get the medication they need in order to try to hide their infection. This is a big deal, because HIV-positive people who are not taking their medication are much more likely to pass the virus on to a sexual partner. To make matters worse, those at risk for infection often choose not to get tested at all so they do not have to know their status – which means they fail to get the care they need and are more likely to infect others.

Our knowledge of HIV has come a long way since the virus was first discovered in 1983, but public health policy to control the spread of the virus will only be effective if they are based on good science. Koreans and foreigners will be better protected against HIV when the government combats stigma, rather than enforcing it.