Korean Job Discussion Forums

[teachteach]

I was having this discussion with a few ex-teachers I used to work with in Korea, and it made for an interesting topic.
Basically, for the last 10 years especially, Korea has hosted thousands upon thousands of native speakers in ESL jobs. Many of them, in spite of their arrogance, have time and again, on this board and elsewhere, stated that if it wasn't for Korea they would be up the creek with no paddle. Most can't stand where they come from, the jobs they think they will get back home, their lifestyle back home, etc.... Personally, after living in Korea a few years myself, I was one of those people. I was irked at the thought of going back home. Images of call centers and high costsfor everything danced in my head.
But what would these thousands of ESLers have done if these opportunities to teach simply didn't exist. For example, if you grew up in Denmark or Germany, there is no way to get an E-2 Visa. So, I wonder how thousands of graduates from these countries make their way.
What would you do if you couldn't teach here? Could you hack it back home if you never had the choice?

[Whitey Otez]

Um, I believe call centers are dying out as an industry in most developing countries.

But if Korea were not an option at the time I came here, I guess I'd have continued the struggle at home. I had a job that bored me to tears daily, and occasionally I'd work a second part-time job. But I lived in a dump with a roommate, drove a POS car, and was up to my eyebrows in credit card and student loan debts. If I didn't get on the plane here, I would have probably kept searching for jobs on Monster.com, going to my useless career center, reading What Color Is Your Parachute, and waiting like a kid at the cardboard table at Thanksgiving waits for his great aunt to die so he can sit at the big boy table in junior management.

Two things would have happened. Either I'd have eventually gotten that awesome job that i went to university for, or I'd be on the lam, hiding from Citibank and the student loans collectors.

Years later, I'm in the black financially, and able to leave Korea at any time I see fit to whine about how Spaniards or Chileans are. I just need a few million more Won...

[No_hite_pls]

hmmm... I didn't work a call center before here. I was a GIS Specialist with a large engineering firm. The job was actually pretty good but I only got 2 weeks vacation unlike my job here. I quit and came to Asia craving adventure. I had wanderlust as they say but as I get older I am not craving adventure as much anymore. I am looking forward to going back to office work back home. I miss the office banter.

People in countries like Germany and Denmark do not have it that rough. They get a minimum of five weeks vacation so if they had wanderlust like me they could just use their very ample vacation days and their highly valued currency to travel.

[Goku]

I'd probably still be a manager or a fund account.

Either way I'd be overworked, underpaid, and grossly unhappy.