The Seoul district prosecutor's office announced Friday that it has provided the Seoul Immigration Office (SIO) with a list containing the names of 71 foreigners teaching English in Korea without a proper work visa, adding that SIO will fine and deport those on the list. The prosecutor's office said that most of the 71 entered the country on short-term tourist visas and have been teaching at universities and private language schools for hourly wages of around W20,000.

The prosecutor's office also said that it has arraigned a man identified only as Park on the suspicion that he has been recruiting teachers from overseas for the last two years, pocketing W1.8 billion since March 1997. According to the prosecutor's investigation, in 1998 alone, a total of 1,650 university students in Seoul and the surrounding Kyonggi province, including those enrolled at highly-regarded institutions like Seoul National University, Korea University, Sogang University and Ewha Womans University, attended courses taught by instructors who were in the country illegally.

(Lee Hang-su, hangsu@chosun.com )