YOU may be able to speak and write English like the English.

But just because you are not a native speaker, you may have been denied a job visa in South Korea.

That might change soon.

The new South Korean government is considering issuing English teaching visas to Asians whose countries have English as an official language, reported the Korea Times.

Officials in incoming president Lee Myung-Bak's team acknowledged a flaw in giving English-teaching visas only to native English speakers from the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland.

'Not all native English speakers can teach English well. So we should give visas only to qualified and verified English teachers,' said Mr Jung Dong-ki, the team's legal affairs head.

'We will carefully consider revising the regulation because visa issuance should be based on qualification rather than nationality.'

Some Filipinos married to Koreans are already teaching English, particularly in rural schools which have difficulty hiring native English teachers.

In fact, the Philippines' ambassador to Seoul, MsSusan Castrence, is so confident in the quality of Filipino teachers that she has asked the South Korean government to evaluate them in a feasibility study.

English teacher Chae Ji-yeon said that qualified Asian English teachers could be better than native English speakers, especially in grammar.

But don't expect to see Asian teachers in private language schools, which hire mainly Caucasians.

That's because many Koreans still believe that Asians are behind Caucasians in English proficiency, said education experts.

Korea's British Council does not insist that their teachers come from native-speaking countries.

Said its director, Mr Ian Simm: 'I have lived in India for six years and many Indians can speak better English than I do, really they do. Same in Singapore, even though they have accents.'