Korean Job Discussion Forums

[swishyfishy]

My experience at English Village Paju camp, where I was hired to be an "Edutainer," was horrendous, in spite of the ridiculously huge effort I made to ensure that I was moving to Korea for a legit job. I stayed for half of my one-year contract, as they were still under construction when we arrived and we hoped the situation would improve. My resignation letter pretty much sums it up, so here it is:

To Whom it May Concern,

I responded to the casting notice for English Village Edutainers because the job description combined my two loves: performing and teaching. The notice first caught my eye because I have a good friend in Korea and had wanted to visit him and this part of the world for some time. After (much) further investigation, I came to English Village for the opportunity to perform while teaching and contributing to the curriculum development of an exciting and unique place. I came for the opportunity to explore a new culture, for a break from the difficult demands of a New York actor�s life: constant auditioning, short-term jobs, and working all weekends.
I was extremely thorough in asking questions and getting answers about the job before I signed my contract, and the answers we got, as provided in my interview (with Dusty and Stanton), and through the listserve and Teachers� Handbook, have been honored neither in spirit nor in letter (allowing for the flexibility that we have all, time and again, demonstrated above and beyond the call of duty).

We were told that we were coming to a �professional performing environment.�

Instead, we arrived to find that not one basic aspect of professional performance was in place (stage access, substantial written material, producer, director, musical director, accompanist, stage manager, proper rehearsal time and space, equipment, costumes, safety measures). We have been asked on several occasions to work for little, possible, or no pay, supposedly because we love and want to perform. Professional performers have already paid the career dues of working for little or no pay, and deserve to be ungrudgingly paid for their talents and hard work without having to beg for it or performance essentials. Almost six months into our contracts, the only improvement has been access to the mainstage and one overbooked rehearsal space, and costumes (but not their care). What little performance that is happening now is of junior-high-school production quality (as in by junior high kids, not for them). No explanation of the situation was ever offered to the edutainers, who can only surmise that GECF never researched the art or industry of entertainment before recruiting professional artists.

We were told that we would be on a rotating monthly schedule, sometimes working weekends, and that when we were on weekends, we would work 4-day weeks. We were told that we would know our schedule in advance so that we could make plans.

Instead, our schedule includes zero weekends off, and the Wednesdays off have been taken away without compensation. Forty-two days off have been taken away without compensation. Only when we realized that we would have no weekends or third days off did we finally have our schedule in advance.

We were assured that, in return for our flexibility, patience and hard work, we would be rewarded with cooperation, trust, openness, respect, and the highest level of professionalism.

Instead, our flexibility, patience and hard work have been met with utter lack of cooperation, trust, openness, respect and professionalism. We have been repeatedly told to have faith, while GECF has repeatedly refused to act in good faith. Flexibility does not mean suffering egregious breaches of our job descriptions or working conditions. Patience does not encompass waiting six months for the agreed-upon terms upon which our decisions to come here were based to be put into practice. Hard work does not entail allowing others to take advantage of our generosity of time, energy and spirit.

Information regarding many other working and living conditions has also proved grossly inaccurate, as a rule to our enormous disadvantage. Even the teaching environment has been woefully far from professional, as detailed in the ODP Program Staff Crisis Proposal Plan. Our curriculum development, to date, has been curriculum triage for despicably poorly designed plans. We are still regularly left uninformed on issues affecting us, the park, and visitors. New, often huge, problems that are the symptoms of lack of organization, understanding, communication, or some other vital overarching institution at the higher levels arise daily, in spite of extraordinary efforts by the teaching staff to provide preemptive solutions.

It has been argued that, regardless of all the grievances we have aired, this is still one of the best teaching jobs in Korea. I, for one (and I am not alone), did not apply for other overseas jobs. I was lured by the performance aspect, in addition to the cultural experience. I would not have applied for any job that required performance on this pathetic level, which is worse than not performing at all. I would not have applied for any job that required that I work all weekends, as I was specifically attracted by that change of pace. I planned to attend cultural festivals, visit with my friend, participate in Korean running and triathlon races and socialize with those new friends (all of which can only be done on weekends, all as discussed in my interview). I came to explore Korea and its culture, and intended to do this during the shifts when I had three consecutive days off.

I am dismayed by what English Village has turned out to be. I am appalled by the outrageous discrepancies between what we were told the job would be and what it actually is, and how unconscionably people were persuaded to move their lives around the world under false pretenses. The hypocritical spewing of promises of concern for our happiness is sickening. This experience is going to cripple me financially, but the cost to heart and mind in staying here would be far greater then monetary damage. As a teacher, performer, and human being, I am embarrassed to work in a place where the staff is so thoroughly disrespected and where the quality of the product is so low.

With great disappointment,
me

[ChuckECheese]

Wow!

In short, they suck!

[dulouz]

swishyfishy,

Welcome to town! Enjoy your stay.

dulouz

[tzechuk]

Wow.. what a long resignation letter.

Mine consisted of:

Thanks for the ride. It was good while it lasted.

Hope we never cross path again.

xxx

Haha.. just kidding.. but I simply stated I was resigning due to personal reasons and left it at that.

[wylies99]

I've been there twice with students on field trips, and it was pretty much a waste of my time and someone else's money.

Thanks for posting. Hopefully this post will help others avoid the horrors of that place.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

It seems it's just a multi-million dollar effort to prove they haven't a clue how to go about learning English.

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=56593&highlight=dancing+monkey

[Milwaukiedave]

I went there with a public school camp last year. I thought it was pretty much a joke. Yes, the place is really nice, but the whole idea of people living there made it seem like a prison or something. I remember one of the other teachers I was with was totally freaked out by the place. It was kind of funny.

[rutan668]

Paju seems like a strange place. It would be interesting to know what day to day life there consists of. I'm sure it would be much more popular if it was just closer to Seoul. It takes longer to get from Seoul to Paju than Seoul to Incheon (or Seoul to Daejeon on the KTX for that matter.)

They have Eastern Europeans that can speak English perfectly well, on much lower wages in the 'shops'. Their job seems to be to look white and that to me is explicitly racist. I mean if you go to a shop in L.A it's propably a Korean in it right? Or maybe with the neo classical architecture they're trying to look like London in which case they would be right to have Eastern Europeans serving in all the shops!

Why don't they just put a couple of hundred million into doing up Itaewon and make that look like the centre of London. They could provide free drinks at the pubs for foreigners, and Koreans could go there for all the English speaking interaction they could handle. After all, we know that nothing loosens the tounge like a few shots down it.

[cosmic charlie]

Hey Me
Was life at English village that bad? Why is evryone dissing the place so much? I think working there would be fun.

[ChuckECheese]

What am I gonna do after my one year contract is up with my current school?

I'm not going to Disney World!

I'm going to English Village in Paju, Korea!

[swishyfishy]

I should have added that my blog on my time at English Village is at www.swishyfishy.blogspot.com. We all went from having a great time getting to know each other and watch the place take shape (it was still under major construction when we arrived) in the beginning, to the realization that they had no idea what they were doing and that things we were expecting to get better were not going to change. Sigh.

[PRagic]

I have warned against taking employment with any English Village for quite some time now. First of all, welcome to Korea. Money filters from the top down, and 'edutainers' are on the very bottom end of the food chain. Buckets of money go into construction and 'administrative' costs, but very little into the actual education and personnel sides of the facilities.

These are also new places that demand 'flexibility'. In Korea, this means that you suck it up and often don't get paid so that the place looks good. While trust and loyalty were traditionally rewarded in this Confucian society in the past, in modern times, these are one-way streets. You give trust and loyalty, and they...well, you get the picture.

Only when newbies start asking for opinions in advance on boards such as this one, and only when they STOP COMING TO WORK IN THESE PLACES, will managment sit up and take notice. They are playing the odds and winning. Quit. So what! We'll get someone else fresh off the boat looking to pay off student loans!

Repeat the mantra: Avoid, avoid, avoid. I will avoid all Enlish villages.

[VanIslander]

[ChuckECheese]

[rutan668]