Korean Job Discussion Forums

[OopsIMadeIt]

Korea burned me out. I feel little but apathy about being there. All that's being discussed here I've heard. There is a void of existence one faces there, as if time stops and some sort of regression of your life takes over, because socially you're not climbing, but backtracking, trying to double back. You reach for a life raft, a Western community, but you just drift and drift until emaciated you land in McDonald's asking yourself how you ever got to this point as the kids stare and you order a kimchi and rice burger.

[recessiontime]

Back in 2009 I did 70 hour weeks plus under the table stuff. I worked at high school but I would stay back after classes to appease the teachers. I suppose it was all self inflicted. I burned out quickly after 10 months. I didn't have any western friends. There were a couple of white girls but they were NOT attractive.

Honestly, I look back and think how hard I worked for such little money. That's not to denigrate the pay (I used to get 2.1m), I just earn way more now for doing very little.

When I remember the good days there it was all about eating out at restaurants and going out almost every day to arcades. Everything was cheap as chips and I loved that.

Btw, I haven't posted here for over 8 years!! Dave looks so old now!!

[crescent]

You were doing it wrong.

My time in SK began when there was no Burger King, touch-screen phones, Facebook, or foreign food selections at Homeplus. After 3 years teaching at a hakwan with a fresh but useless BA, I began managing one of the campuses. 2.7 for a 40 hour week. A year later, at 3.1, I was promoted to Foreign Teachers Manager to the full chain of 5 campuses. After 5 years, with no MA required, I landed a 15 hour week uni gig at Kyungpook National, and all the time in the world for a hobby, daily health club workouts, and $50/hour privates. The 3 months paid vacation allowed me ample time to decompress in a different tropical location every year.

In the early years, when I was working at the hakwan, I volunteered at Daegu City Hall. This quickly led to well-paying work, proofreading and editing all English municipal publications and mayoral speeches. I also published articles in the city's Chingusai newsletter for foreigners. The contacts at City Hall led to more lucrative work for the 2011 IAAF World Athletics Championships.

I still do random work for the city a decade later from my home country and they wire payments to my bank account. I didn't eat at McDs any more than once a month. Instead, I hunted down atypical Korean restaurants, or Indian, or Russian, or Thai.

After 13 years in Korea, I paid off my student loans, saved enough money for a deposit on a new car and bought a small business in my home country. It's only now that I know the feeling of being burned out. Yeah, the stares and the crowds get to you. But it's better than hypodermic needles in the park where I walk my dog, or the massive chunk of taxes the govt robs from me every month.

[PRagic]

No secret to anyone who knows me, the better half included, but I probably would have burned out within a year or two and left had I just done the hagwon thing. I needed to keep building toward something here to keep me satisfied; I knew I wanted to be here, I just didn't want to be teaching English.

So I did an MBA here and built up a side business doing different things like writing (test questions, articles, whatever asked), recording, and editing. Taught a couple of higher paying corporate English classes, but other than that, I made an effort to keep away from kiddie privates. The money coming in made it more than worthwhile and was justification for my wife, who was also working, and I to want to stay.

Had an interim university job teaching English for a year and half when the 'IMF Crisis' hit, and that helped cement the idea of getting a Ph.D. and working in academe, albeit not related to teaching English. So that's what I did, and I've enjoyed it ever since. Totally different life. We're pretty financially set and can enjoy our lives given the time off my job affords.

Gotta side with crescent. Everyone does it differently, but there are a lot of things you can do here other than teach English if you like it here and want to make a go of it. We have friends who have shifted over to professional financial editing, who have open and run successful pubs and restaurants, and who have gotten involved in the ESL industry in radio and TV or who work in animation, PR, or commercial voice dubbing. Our friends who have made university English teaching their vocation have also done quite well, and ejoy pretty cool lives.

[amorphous154]

[PRagic]

Money is freedom. Crescent, like other successful cases here, saved and paid off debt. Some use the coin to better their condition here, some use it to transition to somewhere else, maybe back home or maybe somewhere new.

The important thing is to save, bank, and pay off debt. Virtually every miserable person I've met here has been miserable because they've felt they've had no options, no freedom of choice. And why would that be? Because they failed to save and invest, thereby limiting their options. And by that I meant not only money, but also an investment in oneself.

Things have changed here over the past 10 years, but you could still come back and make a go of it. It'd be worth it if you'd maximize any earning potential and if you saved and invested as much as possible, but that'd be the same advice I'd give to anyone going anywhere!

If you have a marketable skill set and experience, could you equally benefit, or benefit more, from a move to another region in your state or another US state all together?

[crescent]

[amorphous154]

[OopsIMadeIt]

The whole experience didn't matter much, is what I am saying, finances aside although the draw is more than this if one computes their status in life compared to success here and what I now find in comp