Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nightrider_1981]

Hello,

Spent a year 2006-07 teaching in a public school in Ansan and have found myself drawn back to Daves for some information about something, but it's been quite a enlightening experience and has brought back floods of memories.

For what it's worth I just wanted to write a post on my time in Korea, the lasting impression it has had on my life and the reasons I will one day come back.

I am now an teacher/anthropologist and from an human interest perspective it would be fascinating to hear what Korea, the Korean Experience, and/or teaching ESL has meant to other teachers (both past and present).

My story.... I arrived in Korea after taking a TEFL Cert. in Thailand and an unsuccessful attempt to find work in Hanoi. One day during this unsuccessful run of CV dropping in Vietnam and being consistently told "you have no experience" an email arrived from my TEFL school saying that there were jobs in Korea. I'll be honest, I knew nothing significant about Korea and nothing had drawn me to look there before, but I was flat-out broke so I applied through an agency for a GEPIK position in a public elementary school.

Like many other newbie teachers arriving in Korea was like a baptism of fire. Still half drunk from my last hurrah in Thailand and from too many red wines on the plane I was 'presented' to the principle of my new school; never have I felt so much like a fish-out-of-water. However everyone was super friendly and efficient and I got a small, but comfortable studio apartment five minute from my school. Ansan seemed a strange place, everything so new, high rise and monotonous.

Before I had time to settle I was whisked away to the GEPIK orientation and spend a crazy week with loads of other newbies, learning about the teaching process, life in Korean and making important contacts and friends. One of the other newbies there that week is now my wife. Life changing experience...

Teaching
The first few weeks of actual teaching were fun and the kids were great, the planning involved was fairly straight forward although I felt it strange to 'present' my plans (which were effectively the same every week) to my non-English-reading principle who would smile and sign them off. After a few weeks however, my Korean co-teacher (who had been the English teacher before me - I was the first native English speaking teacher they had ever had) started to act very strange. She stopped helping in my lessons and I was confused as to the role she should be taking; I tried to plan lessons with more of a role for her and some with less of a role for her, but nothing seemed to please her. I was nothing but pleasant to her but she began being extremely rude to me; literally ignoring me when I said good morning, snatching things out of my hand when I passed her things. Some weeks this was unbearable than for, seemingly, no reason the following week she would be perfectly pleasant again, here approach to co-teaching though never improved. It got to the stage where the kids sensed that she was not going to discipline them for bad behaviour and some of my classes became like riot zones. In retrospect I should have been more forthright in complaining about here, but she was my only English speaking contact in the school and I didn't want to rock the boat. This unhappy period lasted from June until after Christmas, punctuated by much happier solo taught Summer and Winter camps. Thankfully she left the school after Christmas and I had a fantastic, enthusiastic new co-teacher which made my final 4 months at school brilliant. I later also found out that my first co-teacher was "crazy" and "she argued with everyone!", by which I found out meant she was suffering with depression. It really was a yin/yang year for me, teaching wise.

Cultural Immersion
Alongside my ups and downs in school, I spent my weekends travelling to Yeoju where my future wife was based. Paradoxically her teaching experience was a revelation. Her co-teacher became a fantastic long-term friend of ours (she is visiting us this summer in London!) who accepted us into her family. We were fortunate enough to attend weddings, family meals, spend Cheoseuk with her extended family, make kim-Jang with her mother. This time was true cultural immersion and was utterly memorable.

Food
Then there's the food! Korean food is still my favourite food in the world and I cook it at least twice a week and we try and get to a Korean restaurant whenever we can. The Korean BBQ experience is completely unique and delicious and then there is: kimbap, kimchi jigae, bibimbap, beef-bone soup, soybean soup, spicy chicken and potato stew the list goes on. The Korean cuisine has permanently become part of our everyday diets. I ate Korean food everyday while in Korea and avoided 'Western' food, only really craving curry? For me this was all part of the cultural immersion.

Why did we leave? What did we do next?
If we loved it so much why did we leave Korea? At the time we were hungry to travel and my wife felt she could not leave her family for too long. We used our end of contract flight allowance to fly to Australia which started a 7 month period of travelling before we returned to the UK. Back 'home' we both became qualified teachers and have been teaching (on and off) in London for the past 3 years now. We have also used our Korean contacts and run a English camp in London for Korean students.

We still talk about Korea almost everyday and it has become part of who we are today. It was where we met which has obvious connotations for the meaning of the country for us, but it's more than that: the food, the culture, our friends, an introduction to a teaching profession.

We have a serious plan in place to return to Korea one day (when our kids are a bit older) and work in an International school. This is something I am looking forward to immensely!

I'm sorry this has rambled on this long and you are probably thinking "so what?", but I thought it would be interesting to start a forum for people to share their experiences of Korea and for newbies to perhaps get a deeper overview of a Korean teaching experience.

It's been fun reminiscing and I would genuinely be interested to hear other descriptions of experiences. If you are a newbie or someone thinking about Korean as a possible destination, I would jump right in!

[marsavalanche]

k

[Ramen]

nice piece of work knightrider. well done!

going into my 6th year in korea coming august. i am also glad that i chose this profession and this location.

i recently puchased second home in the states but considering permanently retiring here.

[nightrider_1981]

...

[Gorf]

You were here during the fat years. The situation is more grim now. Waves of fresh-faced grads are washing up at Incheon airport weekly, more and more of them come over without a job lined up, because their art degree can't find them a job back home, and they think this is a free ticket to another year of weekend drinking and coming into work at 1 PM. Employers are more exploitative than ever, the benefits are diminished, and the sub prime bubble burst sent wages into the pits. Be glad you were here when the exchange rate was 800-900.

The same problems existed then, but they're exacerbated by the awful wage most teachers pull here and the overly obsessive bosses that are breaking their employees' backs to keep student numbers up. Before, most employers only had to be severely incompetent drunks to have their schools close down. The same people are running the same schools now on a knife edge and the pressure comes down on the foreigners.

Simply put, I wouldn't come to Korea right now if given the chance to work anywhere but a university or an after school program. Everything else is just too much risk for not enough reward.

[No_hite_pls]

[Modernist]

Amazing that anyone would actually say this. Hard for me to believe [you would live in Korea over London? You LIKE kimchi jigae?! This boggles the mind]. But hey. Whatever makes you happy, I guess. There's no accounting for taste.

As for being with a Korean family on Chuseok, but WHY? That's a perfect opportunity to get OUT of this country. It's bad enough staying here alone or with foreigners, but staying here with Koreans? I'm continuously baffled that people like this OP don't need seem to need a break from Korea. Making gimjang with some CT's mother?! Really? And your wife ISN'T Korean? You either? Wow.

They should pay you to come to the orientations as the trophy waygookin. You could prance around and tell everyone how lucky they are to be living in such a WONDERFUL culture, with so much DELICIOUS food and so many OPPORTUNITIES for learning and 'immersion.' Maybe you could add some details about the great Admiral Yi who was one of the greatest admirals in history right there with Nelson and who invented, didn't you know, the ironclad 200 years before anyone else, and Dokdo which has always and eternally belonged to the Korean nation, and the East Sea which was unjustly renamed by the dastardly Japanese colonizers despite having ALWAYS been called 'East Sea' on all the maps for more than 460 years.

Kimch-huggers are always amusing to read. But are they real? I always wonder...

[komerican]

In times like this i don't see any bottom in terms of work conditions that would disincentivise Westerners from taking jobs in Korea since teaching English is still better than working at a call center or Walmart. Keep in mind that it's very important for some Westerners to retain the class status that comes with a teaching job, even if it is in Asia, as opposed to driving a truck or pumping gas.

[sojusucks]

[matty022]

Nice to see someone post about their positive experiences amongst the sea of negativity here.

Thanks OP.

[rabidcake]

[Davidbcnu]

[madoka]

[PatrickGHBusan]

OP that was a great post and a very interesting read. Well done.

[Who's Your Daddy?]