Irish teacher's job application rejection due to 'alcoholism nature of your kind'

An Irish teacher was shocked when her application for a teaching job in South Korea was rejected simply because she was Irish.

Katie Mulrennan, 26, applied for a teaching job she found advertised on Craigslist, sharing that she had three years of experience teaching English in Barcelona, Oxford, Abu Dhabi and South Korea.

Last week, she received a reply.

The rejection letter read:

“I am sorry to inform you that my client does not hire Irish people due to the alcoholism nature of your kind. Best of luck in future.”

"Usually when you apply for a job and they don’t want you, they don’t send a reply," Mulrennan told BBC News. “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."

Mulrennan has since found a job and is now laughing about the rejection.

"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,” she said.

"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.”

"I still love the country and being in Seoul,” she added.

After Mulrennan’s rejection letter was posted on Reddit, stories flooded in of similar experiences in South Korea:

“I’ve been to SK three times (and NK once!) and I can confirm they have a similar drinking culture to Ireland. In fact when you get to know Korea you realize they are the Irish of Asia,” wrote Reddit user steve_ryan.

An Irishman currently working in Korea chimed in:

“That’s pretty outrageous, even by Korean standards. Many of the jobs here openly advertise wanting an American/Canadian female regardless of qualifications…Discrimination is practiced pretty openly here, at least in private sector teaching. Koreans can be very blunt when it comes to appearances and stereotypes etc,” wrote Stephen_Normal.

He continued:

“There’s also definitely a pecking order when it comes to which English speaking country you come from as a teacher. America/Canada is top and Ireland/South Africa/Scotland are probably tied for the bottom. The huge variety of Irish accents is pretty baffling to not only Koreans but anyone from outside of Ireland. I’ve often had American friends comment on how different my accent is compared to their former Irish co-workers.”

Others accused the letter of being a fake — although a friend of Mulrennan quickly came to her defence — because that’s what the Internet is for.

Mulrennan reported the recruiter to Craigslist.

The Irish Times found a degree of irony in Mulrennan’s rejection letter: According to the World Health Organization, South Korea consumes more alcohol per head of capita than Ireland.