Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mayorgc]

Getting screwed over by the boss?

Dealing with devil kids?

What's the worst that could possibly happen when working for a hagwon?

I have friends looking into the hagwon industry. They're a little bit hesitant. (so am I)

Wrong forum??

[DWAEJIMORIGUKBAP]

Man I have no time to write it in it's full details but, here goes (including kidnapping, blcakmail, chases, staged break in and cop shops...)


my 2nd job in Korea myself and the other foriegn teacher were fired and given only 3 days notice to leave our apts and the boss screwed us out of the last month's salary, effectively leaving us homeless and without money.

I went to the Labor office to complain. Ex boss calls me in to discuss it and try to pursuade me to cancel my labour office application. When I refuse him and his henchman kidnap me and lock me in an office with one of them guarding me outside the door. After some time the door is unlocked and I manage to throw the owner on the floor, push the other guy out of the way and then run out of the buiolding whereupon the owners adjuma wife grabs on to my wrist and tries to drag me back and ends up being dragged by me until she falls down. I look back and see the two goons chasing me but I was a slender 27 year old and they were fat gorrilas in their 50's who smoked 3 packs a day each so I soon left them behind, jumped on a bus and went home.

Now, I had the students attendace sheets so I call the ex boss and tell him I have all of his studetns phone numbers, quoting some of them to verify my threat and I attempt to blackmail him by telling him either he pays me what is owed or I get my Korean girlfriend (she agreed to do this - cool huh?) to call all the parents and accuse him of being a pervert and trying to french kiss me and grabbing my ________.

A week later, still no joy on the wages owed front and I'm working in a new gig. The owner tells me we have to go to the immigration office tommorow as he is trying to get me kicked out of the country and sadly she'll have to close the school down the whole day as I'm the only teacher (it had just started up.)

We get to the immi office in Omokyo and meet the officer in charge of our case. He seems a nice guy and talks to my director who assures him I'm a nice guy (true) and that she wouldn't have hired me otherwise and translates my claims of all the mistreatment suffered at this guy's hands.

3 hours later of us waiitng in the office and the poor immi oficial having to hang around, the ex boss and henchman saunter in 3 hours late, reeking of soju and staggering. long story short, they've bought in a mother of a kid that WASN'T EVEN IN MY CLASS and we're in the office and she tells her story of how I used to beat her daughter and say disgusting things in the class. She owns the gimbap Nara next tot he haggie and my guess is he told her he'd give her free tuition for her daughter if she incriminated me. By now I'm just outraged at what this guy had done to me and is now attemppting to do to me so I ask my new boss to translate and I look this lying b*tch right in the eye and tell her -

"You know that soo jin was in ______'s class and not mine as you own the gimbap nara in the building where I ate lunch everyday. I have a girlfriend here and lots of friends now and by your lies you are not only slandering my good name but jeopardising my relationship with my girlfriend and getting me kicked out of this country when I'm trying to live well here. How can you live with yourself?' etc...

The woman goes bright red, shamefaced and looks down at the floor. The immi officer asks me and my director to go to another room whilst he interviews my drunk ex boss, his henchman and the lying hag.

Thirty minutes later (all we heard in the next room was a ot of fist banging and shouting) the immi officer tells me that he's dropping the case, I will not be deported and can go about my life etc and tells us he believes my ex boss used to be a gangster and that he was trying to hit him and wouldn't let him (the officer) talk and kept shouting at him.

So, it was over. so I thought.

Three weeks later, the cops come to my new school (turning into a nightmare job itself, with one student having ran up at me in class, punched me in the stomach and shouted that his father said I was from a dirty country and that all Englismen had 'crabs in their hair.' The director
refused to make him apologise!!!!!) and tell me we have to go to Seoul Police HQ. WTF??? We get there and I'm held in a cell, but luckilly they could see I was confused and not a threat so they let me keep the door open. After 20 mins of incarceration I'm taken to an interview room where they show me polaroids of the office I'd been kidnapped in all smashed up, even the lock on the door had been taken out of the door with all it's housing and fittings and strewn over the room, as well as a crow bar. They told me the ex boss said that I broke into his hakwan and broke into the office and smahsed the place up!!! So anyway, after I deny it and tell my version of events, the officer tells me

'Don't worry, we believe you and there is no evidence against you either. Also we think he is not a good man etc. don't worry about this case.'

And we're driven back to school.

THEN - two weeks later, we get a call from the police and immigration. The ex boss is now trying to have me deported claiming that I regularly had hooker parties with drugs and wild sex in my apt and lots of the neighbours had complained. So I had to go to the cop shop again next week and give hair samples and pee samples.

By this time I'd had enough of working in this industry in this country and hated the new job too (they'd started farming me out to another school to do 'singing classes' in a Karaoke room - I sh*t you not, I did two of them....) and was having women trouble (yes I use the plural) money trouble and general panic and anxiety about my future in general so I left the country....

Anyway, that's the quick version...

[mimis]

...........

[Whitey Otez]

I briefly worked for a hogwan in one of the "best" parts of Seoul, and getting fired was the best thing that could've come from the job.

It was horribly mismanaged, a side project of one of those businessmen that owns a hogwan, two bars, a few noraebangs, a room salon, and I'm sure he probably had some thumbs in some other pies. He entrusted the place to a sleazeball sort of guy - the sort that makes you feel like no amount of soap in the world could get the creepy feel of his leer off. The Korean teachers revolved in and out of the place too often, causing the parents to switch to more reputable places. After a couple of months of nosediving, the owner dumped the joint.

The new owners came in with their "new" ideas, which was to basically ignore the advice they asked for and basically change every minor detail without correcting the big issues that would have helped them rebuild their image.

Within a month, they were losing more students, and three foreign teachers was far too many for a roster of seventy kids, so they had to cut a teacher. Their options were a newbie who hated it there, a nice teacher who loved Korea but saw the ship sinking, and the grizzled old veteran who would have no trouble finding another gig within hours. They chose to fire me.

It definitely messed up my confidence as a teacher, but I did indeed find a new position with job security and slightly more integrity. But here's why I'm glad I got canned: since they didn't want any fuss from me in the end, they reviewed my records over the months that I'd been there, and it turns out they weren't paying my pension, taxes, or incidentals that they had deducted from my pay each month. I got a lump refund that allowed me to live comfortably through the transition, and a few weeks off in November, a period of time that is generally devoid of holidays. The guys that fired me was also fired, and the other two foreign teachers quit in protest to how they handled my situation. Everyone decent landed on their feet, and life goes on.

Don't hesitate to come to Korea, especially if you have friends coming along. You'll possibly end up miles apart, but they'll be good support. Get a reputable school, talk to the teachers there, and make sure they aren't talking to you with the boss hovering over them. Be flexible and try to laugh at the silliness of it all as you make your way through.

[iammac2002]

My previous employer was not satisfied with me teaching kindergarten, so she took that class away, and accordingly only paid me a million Won salary, even though the hagwon must pay me the full salary, even if they don't give me enough classes.

2 months after I quit and started a new job, my former employer called me and said she wants a million Won from me. They gave 3 reasons why:

1. Blood in my bedding
I cannot have children, I do not get periods. My old school told the new school that they had given me many many many pain pills before for my period pains. I only once asked for a pain pill because I was nauseous from eating the school cake.

2. Broken drain
The drain was working perfectly fine when I left. I cleaned the bathroom myself and took out the hair in the drain.

3. Broken dishes/plates/mugs/cups
The plates were plastic, they couldn�t have broken.

They just want their airfare back, they didn't put that clause in the contract, and they never asked for it before I left.


Hagwons aren't all that bad, just make sure you meet your foreign colleagues before you sign the contract to see if it's the real deal.

[mayorgc]

I'm actually at a wonderful public school. Couldn't ask for anything better. My buddies are looking into hagwons because they aren't able to get public jobs.

Dwaeji's story is just amazing. It sounds far fetched, but I'm guessing it's not.

[Carla]

[itaewonguy]

Too many to mention...

everything you can think of and a bag of crisps!

[Bronski]

I don't have anything nearly as bad as DWAEJI, just a lot of usual little pain in the modedit things that add up:

-having to come in 5 hours early to wear a suit and bow to parents
-deciding that we won't have breaks between classes for first and second graders anymore
-8 classes in a row and 11 in a day, having to grade a bunch of extra TOEFL essays
-getting modedited out of overtime
-having to write a gazillion sample essays and sample speeches
-voice recording for up to three hours
-mandatory social gatherings
-being yelled at for doing stuff I was told to do

All these little things don't sound like much, but they mean 10, 11, and 12 hour days without extra pay.

[beercanman]

I believe perhaps the three worst excuses for human beings I ever had the misfortune to encounter were Korean guys owning or working for a hagwon.

Odd how that happened.

Some people could make the world a better place....by leaving it.

[Cohiba]

And people wonder why many individuals choose to be freelance!

[sugarkane59]

[beercanman]

^

Depends on the job. I had 8 to near 10 hours per day before, and then 2 hours per day another time. I preferred the latter.

[Ukon]

Didn't happen to me....read it online..

Hagwon was owned by a women who ran room salons and hired a pretty foreign teacher.....made the women's work life hell on purpose to coax her into being a prostitute for her instead of a english teacher....women was mentally unstable....

[Bronski]