Korean Job Discussion Forums

[travelingman2]

Hello!

My name is Brandon Walcutt and I am an asst. professor at Hankook Univ. of Foreign Studies. I am currently working on a research project involving the economics of discrimination within Korea's ESL industry and have a request to make. Anecdotally, we know that white, blond hair and blue eyed teachers are considered the most "ideal" teacher by the parents/hogwon owners in Korea. The question is�how much of a factor does race, sex, nationality, etc. play in the selection and especially in the payment of teachers? These are just a few of the questions I am empirically trying to answer. Later this year, the findings will be published in an international academic journal and have the opportunity to assist in setting future government policy to prevent discrimination here in Korea.

If you are a foreign teacher/professor teaching English (either full or even part-time) in Korea, please click the link below and fill out the short questionnaire. This questionnaire is anonymous and no individual information will be disseminated to anyone. Also, participation will NOT put your name on some spam mailing list. There will be a box to fill in your email address ONLY if you are interested in getting a copy of the final analysis or the final paper.

The questionnaire link is:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WHpSrgBzLXXb3_2bINZcl7zg_3d_3d

Thank you very much for your anticipated participation and time.

Thanks again,

Brandon Walcutt

[thegadfly]

Your survey remains anecdotal, since all you are doing is collecting a bunch of anecdotes...and the folks that generally take the time to fill out surveys are either a kind minority (just trying to help out) or a complaining majority (looking for a drum to beat).

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WHpSrgBzLXXb3%2bINZcl7zg%3d%3d
is a page asking "do you feel discriminated against?" How is that answer empirical? (whoops -- my link just goes to the first page of the survey -- I tried to link directly to the third page.)

This is a horribly worded survey, and will not do the job you seem to want it to do. If you really want to research the subject, please make a real survey -- I mean, good lord, are you talking about racism, sexism, age-ism, discrimination based upon religious preference or tatoos or hair color? I mean, start with one and design a real tool that might actually tell you something! I am ticked off at you for wasting my time, as I am one of the kind minority willing to help out -- but this was crap.

[kabrams]

[mnhnhyouh]

http://www.motorcycle.com/events/the-adventures-of-riding-in-korea-71434.html

h

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I'd love to, but my school's Net nanny strongly discriminates against foreign websites, and is blocking yours.

[Unposter]

While I applaud you for trying to do some reseach on an important topic, I too think that some of your questions are too sensitive and some of your questions lead me to scratching my head about how you would determine if racism exists. At best, it would give a sense if FTs felt descriminated against.

If you want anectdotal:

My opinion is that attractive, fair skinned, tall Westerners do get preferential treatment in Korea. They are more likely to get hired; they are more likely to be offered privates (especially if they are total strangers); they are less likely to get fired if they are not doing a good job; they are more likely to have students interested in them and attend their class regardless of teaching skill; they are more likely to be demanding of Koreans as they get used to Korean catering to their whims.

This does not mean that unatractive, darker skinned, short Westerners don't get jobs, privates, students, and their whims catered too. They do to. It is just that it is to less of an extreme. Usually, the unattractive and people of color have to work harder to get what the fair skinned get easily but they often get what they want if Koreans feel they are getting something in return. It is just that Koreans want to be around and seen with fairskinned people more than dark skinned people.

One does not have to go much farther than commercials and the make-up industry to see the role fairskin plays in Korean life.

[travelingman2]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the replies to my earlier post. Some good points have been brought up. Also, some other points have been brought up that are not quite so fair or accurate. I wanted to take a few minutes and address a few things.

First, how can you determine whether there is wage discrimination within a particular industry? The initial step in doing so is determining a baseline for productivity amongst the members of an industry. This can be determined by comparing differences in characteristics that are correlated with productivity, ie. for the ESL industry, these characteristics could be experience, education, teaching certificates, etc. Then after correlating these characteristics with teachers� salaries resulting from their primary positions or hourly private lesson wages, differences in wage trends can be uncovered. The survey definitely covers these data requirements.

Are these differences in wages, then, discrimination? Maybe�.maybe not. The next challenge of is determining the actual cause of the differences. Methods of doing this very well can, and do, entail looking at people�s perceptions of whether they believe they were discriminated against. I cant look at how folk�s might have been treated within a particular job, but I certainly can correlate whether groups of teachers are claiming degrees of discrimination and their salaries reflect the unexplained differences from the norm.

This survey is the first step that I know about towards determining baseline wages of the various gender, age, racial, etc. groups of teachers in Korea�s ESL industry and identifying whether there are differences that are unexplainable from a productivity basis. From that point, given the data, I can attempt to make some educated guesses based on the data as to the cause of those differences. That is it for this initial study. Future studies can dig a lot deeper into the situation, but you need to start somewhere.

Some folks are correct in the assumption that this questionnaire has asked questions covering a very wide swath of material. It did. Depending upon the results of the econometrics, a lot of it might not be directly usable in this initial study. That is the nature of the business.

Gadfly did bring up a good point about the validity of the respondents and whether they were just good samaritans or simply had drums to beat. Too many of the wrong group of people can indeed skew the results of any study. If this forum was the only source for this information, I would indeed be worried. However, the survey has been circulating around a lot of different circles within the ESL community in Korea for the past week or so and I am getting a very wide range of participants. Also, based on a few statistics from Immigration, the results I am getting are fairly consistent with numbers of foreign teachers in Korea in terms of the % of Americans vs. Kiwis, men vs. women, etc. His point is valid, but I believe we will end up with a good look at the �typical� foreign teacher working in Korea.

Anyway, thanks for your time.

[thegadfly]

Fair enough -- the first two pages were the empirical data to determine the range of salaries, with correlation to experience -- so you find that the average salary across the board is 2.4 million, with those in the 1-3 years of experience range earning between 1.6 million and 2.5 million, and those with 4+ years earning 2.2 million to about 4.5 million, with an average of 2.95 million and around 4.5 million being the top level for base salary, with only one or two exceptions. You will find that those earning more than 4.5 million won a month supplement their salary with private lessons and overtime classes. Those with advanced degrees will earn 300,000 won more a month, on average, than their similarly experienced counterparts with BA's, although those with 4+ years and an advanced degree will actually earn less, on average, from their primary position, making up the difference from private lessons. 85% of the respondents will express some degree of both positive and negative discrimination, with those in years 1-3 seeming to experience mostly one or the other, and the 4+ years folks having experienced both roughly 50/50.

If my numbers are off by more than two standard deviations (+/- 6%) I will buy you a beer and a pizza. Seeing as I pulled those numbers out of my butt, without much thought, I would imagine you could have gotten a little further with the third page of questions...or skipped them entirely until you had the empirical data you need before you can design a survey.

I mean, come on, the sky is high, water is wet, and people feel like they are not being treated fairly -- whether they are or not, most will respond that they FEEL they are not -- "that piece of cake is a smidge bigger than the one I got, I get the snotty-toned hello instead of the nice one, or I get the insipid, too-nice hello instead of the respectful one...".

I will go out of my way to help anyone who asks, but flopping-inkfish scholastibation ticks me off! Ask questions that have not already been asked a hojillion times -- try to bring something of your own to the topic!

[Cerriowen]

Something else to keep in mind though...

There's lots of discrimination regarding Citizenship... USA #1, Canada #2, ... I don't know what order they prefer England, Ireland, Australia and NZ. I've seen them mostly treat South Africans like they're the bottom of the english-pool.

There's also a lot of emphasis on accent, even within those countries. At least in the USA... Most "non-accented" or "neutral accent" places, tend to have a higher percentage of whites than other nationalities.

So... even if they *weren't* discriminating by skin color, it would still appear to be so, just based on the geographical favoratism.

By the way... I'm *TOTALLY* not saying they aren't discriminating by race. I'm confident that they are... Particularly in Hakwons, we're eye candy for parents.

[mnhnhyouh]

[OiGirl]

I have encountered discrimination based on language skill and level of education, both of which are not covered by your survey. There are no opportunities to enter specifics when choosing "other." (Which may well have been an intentional part of your study design.)