An Irish woman says she was rejected for a teaching job in South Korea due to the supposed “alcoholism nature” of Irish people.
Katie Mulrennan, 26, has taught English all over the world, but was shocked and appalled when a South Korean teaching agency recently rejected her by assuming she’s a drunk, Mediaite reported. “I am sorry to inform you that my client does not hire Irish people due to the alcoholism nature of your kind,” read the email, which Ms. Mulrennan posted on Facebook.
“This reply was a first,” Ms. Mulrennan told BBC News. “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,” she said. “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.”
Ms. Mulrennan said she found the job opening through a listing on Craigslist. She has since reported the advertisement to web administrators.
“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.”
The English teacher has since found a job and said that she can laugh about what happened, BBC reported.
Ironically, South Korea reportedly consumes the most alcohol per person in the world. Mediaite notes that 13.51 percent of Koreans can be considered alcoholics, compared to 6.03 percent of the Irish, according to the World Health Organization.