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spliff
Joined: 19 Jan 2004
Location: Khon Kaen, Thailand
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 Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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Hmmm...I'm making 3.5 for about a 30 hr workweek! No sweat  Oh, I almost forgot...I don't pay any bills or rent...I spend about 400,000skw on food and booze, the rest goes home to pay off my house! |
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SuperHero
Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Location: Superhero Hideout
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| Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:58 am Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| Do you get the feeling RR wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat screaming "would you like fries with that?" |
I nominate this as post of the week! |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 3:40 am Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| RR seems to paint Korea as a place where suicide rates have reached record levels, the white man isn't paid what he's worth, and Koreans want to get the hell out. |
Oh... he just seems to be painting Korea that way, does he?  RR is like a technical draughtsman -- great detail & accuracy, but a damned limited scope. Result = often a misleading picture of whatever you're looking at. (And he never posts anything postive about Korea, so you gotta wonder...)
To be fair to the ESL Cafe's most reliable and predictable poster, RR doesn't make his stuff up, he doesn't (AFAIK) fiddle with the figures, and you'll easily find the same views echoed by Korean social/economic commentators. ("Echoed"? What am I saying?! They're the sole source of his material, right?)
Rising Number of Suicides
There's no debate here. Korea went from having a low to one of the highest suicide rates worldwide in the veritable blinking of an eye. Not over the course of the country's decades-long "rapid industrial development", not as a result of the country's exposure to global market competition from the late 1980s, but now -- it's happening NOW, and we all have first-row seats to this ugly spectacle.
Note: Korea does NOT have "the highest suicide rate" in the OECD, as I've seen somebody (was it RR?) on Dave's state; it has the highest suicide growth rate in the OECD. ... or something like that... 
Whatever the case, in the short span of a couple years the suicide rate here has become surprisingly high and is soaring, and government/academia/society continue to avoid seriously discussing & dealing with this problem at their peril.
"The white man isn't paid what he's worth"
I think I would have to agree with this, too, assuming RR's "white man" refers exclusively to English teachers in Korea. (And knowing RR as we do, it must, right?) My views here are inevitably skewed by my own limited perspective and impressionistic knowledge. I'd welcome anyone who can enlighten me otherwise.
First, a few facts (or at least I take them to be facts)...
Taking an arbitrary 20-year timeframe:
Average Korean salaries have soared.
Though much higher to begin with, average salaries of (Western) ex-pats working in Korea have risen sharply, as well. Maybe not in each case as fast as the salaries of their Korean counterparts (where such counterparts exist), but they generally remain comfortably better-paid than the locals. (am I gonna get flamed for saying "comfortably"?)
There has been a marked increase in the number of ex-pats working in Korea in all career fields (not just English teachers, but also foreign investors, foreign business execs, foreign diplomats, foreign journalists, foreign technicians, foreign securities analysts, foreign insurers, foreign airline pilots, foreign attorneys, etc.)
(Judging from what I've read on these boards) Of the many different professions where ex-pats are found working in Korea, whose numbers we acknowledge have risen sharply, it is the English teacher -- uniquely -- whose salary has not kept pace.
One of many anecdotes that serve as the basis of my meager knowledge on this topic:
I met a trio of backpacker English teachers from the U.S. who lived in in Seoul in the late 1980s. They weren't overly concerned with exerting themselves, making heaps of money, or even turning English-teaching into more than a summer job. Just here to check out East Asia and party with the girls, basically. Still, what they earned individually exceeded a bank branch manager's salary in those days, and was many multiples of a department store or factory worker's income. That's the way it was.
Fast Forward to 2004 and 2.1 million won a month.
Given the cost of living in Korea today, given that many of you have to work so hard and under really unpleasant conditions, given that a lot of you are paying off school loans, given Korea's pants-on-fire urgency for the populace to acquire English skills... 2.1 million won (or even much better) seems unreasonbly low, unnaturally low, out-of-whack low considering the dramatic "wage inflation" that has benefited everyone else in the country (both Koreans and other ex-pats).
If you were typewriter repairmen/women or buggy-whip makers, I'd say you'd picked the wrong profession, wrong country, wrong century. That you're English teachers (of all useful things) in Korea (of all needful places)... yeah, I have to say RR is right.
"Koreans want to get the hell out"
Saving that one for another thread. (It's true, though, if we can believe Korean polls.)
The Guru |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:22 am Post subject: |
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| JongnoGuru wrote: |
If you were typewriter repairmen/women or buggy-whip makers, I'd say you'd picked the wrong profession, wrong country, wrong century. That you're English teachers (of all useful things) in Korea (of all needful places)... yeah, I have to say RR is right.
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With a free apartment I gross 2.5 mil a month. For a 4 hour work day, I'll take it. That would be 4.5 million a month if I packed in another 4 hours of privates and worked an actual 8 hour work day (let's not even speak about a 10 hour Korean work day and the 2 hours you have to spend after work drinking with the boss). But then I'm not here for the money.
My situation is a bit different in that I'm 38, debt free, I didn't get rich on dot.com options at my Seattle internet company but I did managed to cash out before the bust so I don't have to save for retirement, I know how to budget, I know how to keep on budget, I don't drink much, I don't smoke ... and I'm here for the joy. I can go back to a 60K a year tech job whenever I want.
I still contend that the lifestyle ESL teaching provides, and the amount of money you can save a month here, would mean having to earn 40-45K a year in North America. Not many 23 year olds with a fresh history BA can get a job that allows them to save $800-$1000 a month.
The dynamics change is you're actually trying to be a lifer, marrying, and raising a child and having to live under the pay-as-you go Korean system. But then you're competing with an army of 23 year olds who don't have the financial needs you do. The schools know this. That's why they pay what they pay and why there are so many of them. |
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Hagwon Muppet
Joined: 18 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm more RR nonsense.
Point 1: Averages are meaningless for any comparison. Average wages include the wages of the CEO who I hope makes substantially more than 3 or 4 mill a month. Thus, these number mean zip.
Point 2: Looking at the salary of an office worker in Korea and comparing to an English teacher is pointless since THEY ARE DIFFERENT JOBS requiring different skills and different qualifications.
Point 3: People in Korea (and everywhere else) get paid what their job is worth in the market. If YOU are worth more in the market go get that job. If not the sit down and shut up.
I wonder if anyone could be bothered to go and find out the average salary in North America and go and break down how it compares with an immigrant Korean, Chinese, Mexican or Cuban worker. What would that info tell us?? About as much as RR does. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 12:29 am Post subject: |
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| Hagwon Muppet wrote: |
Hmm more RR nonsense.
Point 1: Averages are meaningless for any comparison. Average wages include the wages of the CEO who I hope makes substantially more than 3 or 4 mill a month. Thus, these number mean zip. |
Really? You may be right, but unless they've recently changed how they conduct these surveys in Korea, CEOs or other management positions are not included in the computation of average workers' salaries. Unions, for one, would go ballistic if the press started bandying about "average workers' salaries" that included their bosses' pay as well! It'd make 'em all look filthy rich to the unknowing public!
| Hagwon Muppet wrote: |
| Point 2: Looking at the salary of an office worker in Korea and comparing to an English teacher is pointless since THEY ARE DIFFERENT JOBS requiring different skills and different qualifications. |
True. THEY ARE DIFFERENT JOBS. Every job is different from every other job. But does that explain why -- when the average Korean's salary has quadrupled or quintupled, salaries for non-teacher ex-pats working in Korea have increased sharply (if not "as sharply"), and the cost of living and housing in particular have galloped -- salaries of English teachers are at best -- what? double what they were at the start of the 90s? A little better?
(Surely the figures exist somewhere that will either support or contradict my anecdote-based contention that 1 million won a month was about average for English teaching in 1990... Anyone?)
Seems a cruel tide that lifts all boats but one. But look, maybe RR isn't referring specifically to teachers -- maybe he means that all ex-pats in Korea aren't being paid what they're worth. And if that's what he's saying, then we both disagree with him.
| Hagwon Muppet wrote: |
| Point 3: People in Korea (and everywhere else) get paid what their job is worth in the market. If YOU are worth more in the market go get that job. If not the sit down and shut up. |
I agree with everything you've said. (well, I suppose I disagree in part with the sitting down & the shutting up...) But is the market really working properly? Are hagwons and schools being too greedy? Is that not partly responsible for a benchmark in 2004 of 2.1 million won? And for the growing number of ex-teachers opting to open their own hagwons?
Whatever, it simply surprises me that teachers aren't being paid more than they are, and that a figure like 2.1 million won is considered a reasonable benchmark in 2004. (Yeah, yeah, even taking into account the cheap housing & budget air tickets. Hell, I'll even make the stupid assumption that every teacher receives their annual salary bonus, too. Still well below where logic says it should be.)
"Law of supply & demand" That's the standard refrain I hear, but I really have trouble seeing it. Sure, the "supply" of teachers is way up from 10-15 years ago. But I don't care if there are 100 more or 1,000 more or 10,000 more English teachers in Korea now than back then -- because the "demand" has grown by the millions of students. Students whose parents are infintely wealthier and more able to afford the tuition than they were a decade ago ... way back when English proficiency was a curious hobby-type skill that one out of 10 job applicants might tack onto their resume ("Let's see.... Well, I've got good "people skills" and... um, oh yeah, I'm semi-fluent in English, too! How 'bout that!  ") and not this nationwide pants-pissing, budget-busting urgency and unquestioned litmus-test for every child's future success & happiness that it has since become.
Supply & demand? Phooey! Not convincing.
The Guru |
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Hagwon Muppet
Joined: 18 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 1:48 am Post subject: |
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Well it IS supply and demand isn't it?
Are there thousands of unfilled teaching positions on the go because the salary offered is too low and noone will take them?? Nope!
The reason why the salary of teachers has not risen is that there are people prepared to work for the amount offered.
If you do a direct comparison of what a Korean English teacher would earn in a hagwon vs a foreign teacher I think you would find that the foreigner is winning even though they are probably less qualified, less experienced and less able teachers.
Remember that your basic hagwon English teacher is easily replaced...and experience, qualifications etc are not valued. Hence how someone with a 3-year bachelors degree in macrame gets paid the same as someone with a PhD in Linguistics the extra qualifications don't count in the market.
I'm not really sure what you are arguing....that a hagwon owner is greedier than a massive corp like Samsung or Hyundai??? That somehow everyone is getting massive pay rises EXCEPT for English teachers??? I'm not really seeing the logic there.
As I said if you don't like the salaries offered in hagwons then go find a job that pays better. If your qualified then you should get it easily enough, right? |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 3:07 am Post subject: |
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| Hagwon Muppet wrote: |
Well it IS supply and demand isn't it?
Are there thousands of unfilled teaching positions on the go because the salary offered is too low and noone will take them?? Nope! |
I think what has changed is teaching hours. "No weekends, no split shifts" seems to be a bigger draw than salary. It's still easy to find people willing to work for 1.7-2 mil but if every job involved working 6 days a week and working 7 am - 10 and then 6 pm to 9 pm they'd have to pay a lot more.
Those trying to pursue this as a lucrative career -- trying to earn every dollar to pay off student loans and credit card debt they amassed as students -- have to remember these days they're competing with thousands of people like me: older, we're fantastic uncles who love children, we made our money in the tech boom, we're debt free, we've got savings, and the almighty dollar isn't our quest for the next couple of years. I'm not looking to line my pocket. I'm looking to have a nice sabbatical, shift gears, and if I can bank $1000 a month, yi ha!
Frankly I'd have been as happy to work for 1.7 mil as 2 mil. What mattered to me was issues like a decent apartment, decent hours, no weekend shifts, and living in a nice part of Seoul.
My friend went for an interview with Nova in Toronto, which has schools in Japan and she was rather surprised to see most of the people were thirty something accountants, product development managers, marketing types, looking to take a nice one year paid cultural experience.
RR can post all the salary averages he wants and people can all bitch about forming a union, but there are thousands of people very happy to come to Korea and work for 1.7-2 mil. How are you going to change that?
Last edited by mindmetoo on Wed Sep 15, 2004 3:56 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 6:41 am Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
RR can post all the salary averages he wants and people can all *beep* about forming a union, but there are thousands of people very happy to come to Korea and work for 1.7-2 mil. How are you going to change that? |
This post should be made a sticky. I have one problem with your contention though. You claim that there are many people "like you" in Korea who made their money in the tech boom. Well, I have been on these boards for a while, and you are the first and only one I have seen making that claim. I would say that there is only a handful of people in Korea working as teachers who don't have to work for the "dollar". As for all those "thousands", the vast majority are people who are willing to work for that salary because it is better than anything they can get in the West, not because they have already made their cash and want to try something new.
Sure there may be a few like that, but again, they will be a mere handful or so. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| mindmetoo wrote: |
RR can post all the salary averages he wants and people can all *beep* about forming a union, but there are thousands of people very happy to come to Korea and work for 1.7-2 mil. How are you going to change that? |
This post should be made a sticky. I have one problem with your contention though. You claim that there are many people "like you" in Korea who made their money in the tech boom. Well, I have been on these boards for a while, and you are the first and only one I have seen making that claim. I would say that there is only a handful of people in Korea working as teachers who don't have to work for the "dollar". As for all those "thousands", the vast majority are people who are willing to work for that salary because it is better than anything they can get in the West, not because they have already made their cash and want to try something new.
Sure there may be a few like that, but again, they will be a mere handful or so. |
Let me say then it's a growing trend  I know another guy that was a sys admin and now he's here teaching. I've always felt the position of sys admin is the best form of training to deal with children. My friend's ex was a TV producer who, again, was just tired of the game and came to Korea for a couple. My friend at an ecommerce company said one of their VPs cashed in his options and packed off to Asia to teach.
The tech bust created thousands of disillusioned workers and many are now looking to escape high tech for a couple years. Chef seems to be a popular job. But you can bet, with the prevalence of blogs and people like me blogging and making Korea seem like a wonderful emotionally rewarding place for the disillusioned tech worker, they'll start to discover Korea, Japan, and China. If they're not here already, then brace yourself. They're coming. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 6:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Hagwon Muppet wrote: |
Well it IS supply and demand isn't it?
Are there thousands of unfilled teaching positions on the go because the salary offered is too low and noone will take them?? Nope! |
Though I have a hard time understanding why things should be the way they are, I do accept that the supply & demand explanation must be valid. Stands to reason: It's a job market with a bottomless pit of labour, where qualifications are often not recognised in hiring nor rewarded in pay, ensuring there will always be someone willing to take the lowest wages on offer. As a result, there's never any traction for efforts to make sure that teachers' wages keep pace with the rest of the country.
| Quote: |
| The reason why the salary of teachers has not risen is that there are people prepared to work for the amount offered. |
Alright, I will agree with you. So, when you asked me if I'm arguing that "everyone is getting massive pay raises EXCEPT for English teachers???"... aren't you (above) saying something akin to this yourself? As for claiming that "everyone else is getting massive pay raises EXCEPT...", not exactly.
(a) "massive pay raises" did occur across a broad spectrum and for many consecutive years from the late 1980s to mid/late 1990s, but not EVERY year nor in EVERY industry.
(b) "everyone EXCEPT English teachers" is not correct, and I shouldn't have said that. I think the whole "foreign labourer/3-D worker/industrial trainee" phenomenon demonstrates that English teachers are not entirely alone in this unfortunate respect.
But this gets back to what an earlier poster was criticising RR over (the "white man" not being paid what he's worth). When Koreans started vacating certain jobs because they weren't being paid what they're worth, workers from poorer countries took over. The jobs themselves, and the related industries, would have vanished otherwise.
Yet when salaries for English teachers have remained stagnant, have grown nominally though failing to keep up with inflation or national income levels, have been eroded by major currency devaluation, have fallen further behind salaries of most Koreans and ex-pats -- what has happened to the English teacher labour pool during this period? Did it shrink, as economic logic and common sense would suggest? Not at all. It grew by leaps and bounds. 
So, yeah, "it's supply & demand" alright. Look, I got that part already. Enough teachers to fill the job vacancies at almost any pay level. Understood. Me savvy. What me don't savvy is why this situation should exist or exactly how it came about.
| Quote: |
| If you do a direct comparison of what a Korean English teacher would earn in a hagwon vs a foreign teacher I think you would find that the foreigner is winning even though they are probably less qualified, less experienced and less able teachers. |
Really? The foreigner is winning? Ya don't say!  Sorry, but I'm sure foreign teachers here in the '80s to mid-'90s would be perplexed that someone saw any value in this direct comparison in the first place. Shows you how much things have changed (and from the English teacher's perspective, I believe, deteriorated).
| Quote: |
| Remember that your basic hagwon English teacher is easily replaced...and experience, qualifications etc are not valued. Hence how someone with a 3-year bachelors degree in macrame gets paid the same as someone with a PhD in Linguistics the extra qualifications don't count in the market. |
That's awful. Koreans are usually overly credential- & qualification-oriented when it comes to hiring, finding a spouse, everything. How come hagwons are so atypical in this respect? You'd think the parents -- who hold the economic whiphand -- would force them to be more selective, no?
| Quote: |
| As I said if you don't like the salaries offered in hagwons then go find a job that pays better. If your qualified then you should get it easily enough, right? |
Sound advice, I'd say. If the market doesn't shape up, time to ship out. But from what Mindmetoo tells us, that's not about to happen any time soon.
The Guru |
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weatherman
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
The dynamics change is you're actually trying to be a lifer, marrying, and raising a child and having to live under the pay-as-you go Korean system. But then you're competing with an army of 23 year olds who don't have the financial needs you do. The schools know this. That's why they pay what they pay and why there are so many of them. |
Tell me about it. |
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textin
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 9:50 pm Post subject: corporate jobs with foreign co's |
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Those who work for large multi nationals here do well.
Such as IT pros, Accountants, even architects.
I met a drunk French architect the other day who does well.
Chefs, Hotel managers etc....
Expat salaries. Leaves English teacher salaries for dust.
Those guyts cream it. Expenses paid, even kids education allowance etc etc...
But they are highly skilled. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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The pay is probably even a little higher than what RR says.
Koreans' don't declare all income to the governent. When LG builds a factory in Indonesia you think they report all the profit to the Korean government? You think that Duk Boki Ajuma tells all about what she earns? Also that figure wouldn't include all sorts of tax free allowances that Korean employees could get, and not all bonus money is always declared.
Furthermore those numbers don't include fringe benefits that Koreans get (which would include everything from DVD players as a holiday gift to trips to the room salon with company money to discounts at resorts to low interest housing loans from the company.)
So you could do worse than adding 10-20% to RR's numbers.
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Sat Sep 18, 2004 9:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Derrek
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Sep 18, 2004 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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Mods:
Why don't you combine all of Real Reality's post into one thread that just goes on and on?
You do that with everyone else's threads that are virtually the same, along with posting a link to the other similar thread. |
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