Korean Job Discussion Forums

[waltjocketty]

In my four years here I've only known a handful of teachers who have gone home before the end of their contract, with two of those being people who left almost immediately after arriving due to panic attacks or something.

From reading this board over the past year or so, however, it seems like it's far more common. What percentage of people have you met who have bailed out, and what was the reason?

[thegadfly]

Well, if you've known a handful in 4 years, that is actually quite a few -- how many English teachers have you met? 100? A handful (assuming that is 5) is 5%...not insignificant, but only 1 in 20.

My own experience is about 10% -- 1 in 10 people I have met have bailed in less than a year -- I am talking midnight runs or less-than-a-month's-notice. If we want to include folks that break their contract, but give the required notice and/or stay until a suitable replacement is found, I would say 1 in 5 or 6 in my experience.

[nautilus]

GEPIK has something like a 40% quit rate I gather.

Its not a bad program but I still challenge anyone to last a year of boredom sitting at a desk pretending to work and politely turning down token requests to attend yet another mind-numbing dinner.

[Freakstar]

I bailed after 3 weeks but not because I hated my job or had problems with my hagwon - I found another non-hagwon job.

In my hagwon contract, it states that if I break my one year contract before it's up, I could be asked to fork over 1 million won to cover the expense of finding a replacement, but since I paid for my own airfare over here and I was on an hourly contract with no housing, no love lost between me and my hagwon - they were pretty cool about it.

[bosintang]

[Fishead soup]

[mspencer1983]

at my previous job in the 1 year i was there i saw 3 runners *all around 1 month into the contract* and 2 people quit giving proper notice...at a school with only 6 foreign teachers i actually became the most senior teachjer only 4 months into my contract because so many people were quitting....and the job itself wasnt even that bad compared to many horror stories ive heard.


in addition to that i also met numerous other people who quit, ran, changed jobs etc at other schools....so i think the percentage is quite high.