Korean Job Discussion Forums

[leebumlik69]

My contract is almost finished and hopefully I'll get through the next couple of weeks and see what happens after.

I'm not long in Korea, so I'm just wondering if I should stay around.
My background is computers but it seemed you had to prostitute yourself a bit to stay ahead in the game at that - learn the latest package etc...

BUT, in Korea, I think, teachers really are glorified prostiutes in many ways.

Yeah, you hear people brag that they have a nice public school number with xyx privates on the side and vacations in sumer and winter but they are in reality when you meet them they seem just as broken down or more so at the weekends as hagwoners and drink excessively etc.
We justify it with the fact that they can we can make more here than back home but at what cost?

Kindie teachers and village teachers jumping around like animals to amuse kids and wipe their bottoms, teachers generally being treated like as if they are children....I got treated like an adult back home. Here, I have my circus noose on at all times it seems.

All, I'm saying is that IMO, no matter how hard you deny it, you have to earn what you get!

The people that boast about easy numbers and big easy checks are not centred relaxed people when I meet them. They are often broken down by work, certainly more so than back home and most I know, when they're honest, lament not being back home or at least pack up the courage to say that they have to work their asses off and crave the weekends disproportionately more than they would at home.

I hate this money-grabber obsession thing. All of us IMO, are not really much different to the ladies that adorn the frontside of the hill. There are very very few people here in Korea that work for their contribution of quality skillsets (engineers, doctors, scientists) rather almost all (espeically teachers) seem to work for their contibution to quantity and tolerance or dancing or bullshi.tting.

I read it time and time again dere on Dave's ESL - A non-cute highly educated teacher working his ass of while a less educated but cute-handsome teacher gets a handy public school/uni position but is no less a prostitue because its so looks-centric here in many ways.

If your not working your ass off your showing your ass off etc..
I just wanted to post this to put everyone including me in OUR place.

I love Korean people generally and the country's ok, and I think I understand the hyper competitiveness here and why it's the way it is. I just get tired of these nimrods here that think they are the shi.t in Korea, but will get found out back home.
JUST AS, I am tired of the nimrods back home that think they are the shi.t there but would get found out here. We are all nimrods.

Let's just leave it there. I want Dave's to abolish the jerkoff posting about salaries and money etc.

That felt good heheh ^ ^

By the way I recently married a KBS actress and we live in Kangnam in a penthouse sex garden and our very happy kids are boarding in Switzerland, while I rake in 200 million won a year for using my super genius espionage brains. We have a holiday home in Thailand by the sea.
NOBODY really cares how much you live it up, (espeically if you look like the back of a bus on a rainy day..jk).

It doesn't really equate to anything.
We are all very lucky from an extreme point of view. We weren't born in
Senegal or somewhere like that..
I intend this not to be responded to but merely read. Thankyou

[VanIslander]

jealousy of others,
annoyance at values not shared,
seeking validation from Koreans for one's work

that's quite a handful of issues

[Ya-ta Boy]

The thought that came to my mind when I saw the direction the post was going (and stopped reading) is that all jobs can be viewed as prostitution. We all sell our time, skills, mind and body to make a buck. Unless you own your own business and are self-employed, you need to come to terms with it and get on with your life.

I can't help but think the OP has an unjustifiably high sense of self-importance.

[Real Reality]

Trafficking of English Teachers?
In legal terms, a contract is an agreement between two or more parties of equal standing.... the native speaker signs in good faith, accepting the terms and conditions therein only to find the employer has an often different interpretation of the contract; that is, they never intended meeting all or some of the terms either on the teacher's arrival or at some later date.

Speak to most native-speakers teaching English here and they will have a multitude of firsthand experiences or have knowledge of coercion, intimidation, non- or under-payment of wages, withholding of passports and/or university testimonials, fraudulent deduction of money for non-existent health insurance, turning off heat and water supplies to apartments should teachers threaten action with the authorities, and many, many more such incidences.
By Chris Brockie, Korea Times (March 17, 2006)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200603/kt2006031716054754060.htm

Foreigners Fight Bias
No Foreigners Allowed: Nationality Discrimination Legal in Korea
By Christopher Carpenter and Jane Han
Korea Times (December 12, 2006)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/special/200612/kt2006121219555767650.htm

Foreigners Experience Difficulties in Living in Korea
An official in the International Cooperation Division of Seoul City admitted, "The same complaints regarding visas, transportation, education, and environment are raised every year without being solved, due to the lack of cooperation from government agencies involved and their passive attitudes."
by Jae-Dong Yu and Soo-Jung Shin, Donga.com (July 4, 2004)
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2004070522448

For Housing Rentals, Foreigners Easy Victims
By Byun Duk-kun, Korea Times (August 28, 2003)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200308/kt2003082818233111970.htm

[Dev]

[quote="leebumlik69"]
I hate this money-grabber obsession thing.quote]

I'm not obsessed with making money here, but I don't get upset with the people who are. I get emails from people back home telling me how tough it is to earn a dollar there. I think a lot of the guys here are just happy to get opportunities to make money.

[antoniothegreat]

doesnt it all really depend on where you sign, and how you present yourself? some teachers are lame ars clowns like you say, some teachers work their butts off at quality jobs and are treated with respect, some of us stand in the middle.

like anything in life, you get what you put into this job.

[mateomiguel]

teaching English in Korea was the easiest job I've ever had in my life, and I've been working (at least part time) since I was 14*. What's this about slaving your butt off?



* in real jobs, in offices, with paperwork! That was a real drag at 14 let me tell ya.

[bellum99]

Confessions of an English Street Walker

I shake my money maker for the won, baby. I am a language *beep*. Anytime, anywhere and anyway you want it ... I can talk. I dance like a monkey in the mornings, wear a suit and tie in the afternoons and chat it up with the business men at night. I am paid by the hour but I count by minutes. It is all about the money.
Talk to me baby, talk to me. Talk hard, real hard. Make it last 50 minutes.

[numazawa]

[nautilus]

I suppose the key is to be a w h o r e on your own terms....

[Plastic B]

[numazawa]

I want to make a hundred man-won
I want to live inside an officetel
Have a K-gal and some chilled ones
Yeah I'd love a place that doesn't smell...

[trubadour]

Yeah, totally,

The more dignified and academically accepted term for it is 'wage slave'
Show me one person who isn't a wage slave and you'll see that they are born with some sorta golden spoon. In reality even those born with cash *beep* them selves for cash (or credit) on a daily basis.

Its a toss up (as we say in the old country): which is the older profession - prostitution or teaching. I'm sure Plato says teaching is the most Honorable, which may mean its the second most origional///

[jdog2050]

Yeah, I'm pickin' up what the OP is puttin' down. Actually, hah, I told my step-sister, who I hardly ever talk to (35 w/kids, I'm 25) that I now know what a prostitute feels like after doing an English summer camp. It's so awful to want to desperately, utterly leave a place, but you're just there because of that fucking paycheck. And now, I've been working 2 jobs since september, and I have been equally driven out of my fucking mind...just because I'm here for grad-school money.

In a way, yeah, I totally feel like a wh-ore. But, an attractive wh-ore, if that makes sense. I have a lot of work because I'm needed and wanted, a much better position than being an english major back home. It actually blew my mind when I was first searching for ESL jobs. I don't think many arts&science majors back home really *know* about how much opportunity there is over here.

[koldijk]

edu prostitute?

hell yeah!

i was fired in gimhae... because i didn't make the students fill in their books... whether or not they understood anything was beside the point...

one of my students, a while ago, in ulsan, complained that i was too "sincere" ; i.e. not spewing proper pablum... but trying to discuss WHY what she had said was INCORRECT ENGLISH...

finally, don't bother teaching in korea, unless you are a "real" american...

and let your students always use the present perfect... regardless...