Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cubanlord]

Why not another country?

I had to pick "other" because I would have never come to Korea if it wasn't for my wife. Her desire to travel and work around the world was not only admirable, but hard to refuse on my part. So, here I am. What's your story? What drew you to South Korea? Or, why are you coming to South Korea?

[Young FRANKenstein]

Applied to JET, and got accepted. Was given a job in a Tokyo high school. Went and sold EVERYTHING i owned (apartment, computer, stereo, waterbed, etc). All i had left was 2 suitcases of clothes and the plane ticket they sent me. Went home to live with dad until time to leave. Two weeks before the job starts and I get a call from the school telling me they have no money in the budget for a new teacher and to stay home. Now what the hell am I going to do? No place to live, no possessions of any kind, just clothes and a plane ticket. And they're going to take the ticket back! So I RUN to the travel agetn to swap tickets.

"Where would you like to go?"
"What's the closest country to Japan?"
"Korea"
"Cool. Sign me up."

Two weeks later, here I was. I'm just glad the agent knew her geography, or I might have ended up in China or something.

[Hanson]

I chose the combination option, as I'm predicting most people will.

A buddy of mine suggested teaching English abroad to me, and another friend said he was thinking about doing it himself. I ended up coming with and working with the "another friend" to Korea on June 20th, 2000 - isn't it funny that most expats know the exact date they came over here? (That's another thread)

Then, why Korea? Simple; free apartment, free airfare and decent wages.

Note: I worked in low-level-management in a hospital back home, in what was considered a "good" job (read dead-end, low-to-fair-paying job that bored me to tears). I had the option, after 10 years of service, to take a 1-year leave of absence from the hospital for any reason. I used that option to come here, but with the safety net that I could always go back to dead-end-ville. Having that safety net sure was comforting for me.

[i_teach_esl]

i was aiming for japan. i applied w/nova, and got turned down. applied with aeon, and got turned down. i was working on my application for geos when i stumbled upon the korea forums here and found that it's common to have your airfare reimbursed and get free housing. at the time i didnt know the difference between korea and japan anyway, so i thought i'd give it a shot. the esl market is much bigger in korea, and after two japan rejections, i thought the odds were better for me in korea.

im glad it worked out that way, tho, i love it here.

[RACETRAITOR]

Basically the main reason I considered it was because my uncle was here in 1996 and I came to visit for three weeks.

Later when I was starting to make plans, I wanted to go to Malaysia a bit more because they have a giant underground music scene. But I knew some Korean and I was able to find out about Korean underground bands, and there weren't as many jobs in Malaysia, so I came back here.

[Qinella]

I always get this question from Koreans. Aaaaalllways.

Basically I wanted to stop being monolingual, and I wanted to escape America. I looked at the various languages in Asia and decided Korean was the most interesting. So here I am, living my dream, so to speak.

[cubanlord]

[the_beaver]

[cubanlord]

[cubanlord]

[cubanlord]

[Qinella]

[faster]

America: love it or leave it

[Qinella]

[The Dude from Canada]

Can I partake in this babble. It's already started and it will continue for a while, so let me spare you the suspense. Every post will say either
A)I wanted to see the world. B) I couldn't hack in my previous line of work. (too much stress, whatever) C) there's nothing back home man. No subway or department store man. Just a mall with fat people and no jobs man.