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joelseymour
Joined: 18 Apr 2005
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 Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 9:34 am Post subject: ..... |
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Last edited by joelseymour on Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 9:47 am Post subject: |
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If it's like just about every other Christian ESL school in Korea, keep your Sunday schedule open and don't plan on dating any Koreans.
Some people are okay with that, some are not. |
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joelseymour
Joined: 18 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 9:58 am Post subject: ..... |
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Last edited by joelseymour on Thu Feb 02, 2006 6:58 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 10:30 am Post subject: |
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I'm sure I don't know, but I do have a true story about religion in Korea:
Shortly after moving into a new apt in Seoul a number of years ago I came home from work one day and my wife told me she thought the apt was haunted- she kept hearing wierd insane noises. I laughed it off.
Some time later she said she discovered it was coming from the apt below, the downstairs neighbour was part of some wierd cult and they held prayer meetings there. She said the sounds made her scared. I laughed it off.
Some time after that I happened to be at home alone and heard for the first time what was going on. They started out with what sounded like hymns but rapidly progressed to some sort of incomprehensible shreiking and howling, what I have ever since described as "screaming in tongues". And it was freaky enough to give me the willies.
The next day I went downstairs to see who the neighbour was and it turned out be some 90 year old blind and deaf halmoni who lived alone. There wasn't much point in communicating with her. We complained about the noise to the building guard who basically brushed it off as a little old lady's eccentricity. His attitude was that she wasn't long for this world and hassling her about religion wasn't something he was about have on his karmic scorecard.
But me, being the arthole that I am, was starting to get pissed at the increased frequency and decibel level of the meetings. The hymns and chants I could live with on a freedom of religion/ freedom of expression basis, but when the screaming in tongues kicked in (as it always did) I would totally lose it: I'd put on some Infectious Grooves (Funk-metal: fronted by Suicidal Tendancies' singer and featuring Jane's Addiction's drummer) at full blast and turn the bass way way up. After a couple of songs I'd turn it off and listen. No more screaming. Whether it was a coincidence of timing or if they believed there was a Satan worshipping cult meeting going on above them I never did find out.
Shortly after I think started holding meetings somewhere else because we never heard from them again. I don't know what happened to the old lady, whether she died or moved away...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anyway, about BBC. I don't know them but I do know that what sometimes passes for 'Christian' in Korea can be quite different from Europe and America.
If you're not a devout Christian and don't want those values pushed on you should probably look for a different gig. If you are devout Christian, you still might want to consider that their Christian values might not be your Christian values.
Some of the worst treatement I've heard of happened to be from Christian teachers at Christian hagwons. |
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joelseymour
Joined: 18 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 10:40 am Post subject: ..... |
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Last edited by joelseymour on Thu Feb 02, 2006 6:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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joelseymour
Joined: 18 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:10 pm Post subject: ..... |
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Last edited by joelseymour on Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:49 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Dawn
Joined: 06 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 5:56 am Post subject: |
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| Can you elaborate on "some of the worst treatment I've heard of happened to be from Christian teachers at Christian hagwons?" |
I spent a year at one of the "better" Christian hagwons. Had great students, a pretty good group of co-workers (at least in the beginning), and a decent curriculum. But ... the married business manager had a roving eye and liked to put the single female teachers in compromising situations. (Read: "Wouldn't keep his hands off us, even in the presence of his wife, plus had keys to all of our apartments and used them anytime he took a notion to.")
Pay was low to start with, late occasionally, and frequently short -- not by a huge amount, but the school had 6 to 10 foreign teachers at any given time, so it could save a fair amount by "accidentally" shorting each of us W30,000-60,000 on pre-IMF salaries. The school also cheated all of us out of sufference, cheated several teachers out of a ticket home, and made us fight tooth and nail to collect even a portion of our final salary. All in all, I came out with about U.S. $4,000 less than my contract promised. Oh, and I later learned that all the money they'd been deducting for pension had never actually been paid into the pension fund.
At one point, a teacher pulled a mid-night run. No one particularly blamed her, as the school had promised her she'd be at the main campus and instead stuck her in a new school they were starting -- a school that was a 45-minute car commute from where she lived and not on any regular bus routes. Poor girl had to leave home at 7:45 every morning when the director (not a Christian, by the way, but a guy the sponsoring pastor said he felt "led" to go into business with) left for the school, and she was stuck there until 8 every night with no other person around who spoke English, no computer, no Internet access, etc. Anyway, the two of us who lived with her were pretty sure she was going to run and asked her not to tell us what her intentions were, as we knew we'd face an inquisition after the fact. What we hadn't counted on was the school getting so upset that they raided EVERYONE'S apartments after she left and took possession of all the passports they found.
As for the Christian aspect of the school, one of things most of us had asked before signing contracts was whether there was an English-speaking church in the area. We were told there was. What we weren't told until after we arrived was that we weren't allowed to attend the English-speaking church, as the Korean pastor wanted us in his church so everyone could see what devout teachers he had. When several of us complained about this arrangement, the school decided to start an English Bible Study expressly for the teachers and any students we could get to come. Of course, Sunday was already full with Korean church activities, so we got to meet on Saturday. ... Good-bye BOTh days of the weekend.
In all fairness, a few of us absolutely refused to be the token whites at the church's Sunday service, and we were grudgingly given permission to attend church elsewhere when we gave the school an ultimatum. We were told, however, not to expect any of the benefits the "obedient" teachers received, as the church was supposedly paying our salaries, and the pastor said the church had no obligation to teachers who weren't a part of it. (No disagreement there, but when I had upwards of 15 kids in most of my classes, I was pretty sure my students were paying my salary and paying enough to fund the typical holiday bonuses.)
Toward the end of my contract, the school decided Christian teachers were too hard to come by and start hiring teachers at random through a recrutiting agency. The proverbial stuff hit the fan when an avowed atheist was told she had to teach an English Sunday School class once a month. The pastor's reasoning? "The kids don't have to know that you don't believe what you're teaching them. They just need to hear you speak English." 
Other tidbits --
They moved a married couple into an apartment full of single girls.
They moved teachers into apartments vacated by church members, then made teachers pay the bills left by the previous tenants.
They treated another married couple like crap because the wife (who wasn't even under contract at the school) got pregnant and could no longer teach the kindergarten class she'd been teaching for free.
When they decided to build a resource library, they confiscated all the materials on teachers' desks and in the office area, and stamped it with a "PROPERTY OF ---" stamp -- never mind that said materials had been purchased for the teachers themselves. (Then, they claimed that since the materials had been purchased in Korea, they had obviously been purchased with monies the school paid the teachers and that made them school property.)
My Korean co-teacher was fired because she supposedly couldn't get along with the foreign teachers. Fact: I couldn't have asked for a better co-teacher. Fact: The guy who worked with her before me liked her so much he tried to get her to marry him and leave the country with him when he gave notice. Fact: The only person who was upset with her was the pastors, because she hadn't faithfully attended the daily 5:30 a.m. prayer meetings. (Never mind that she lived 40 minutes from school and the buses didn't start running until 5 a.m.)
Now, as I said, I was at one of the better Christian hagwons. I was left alone in the classroom, and once we butted heads over the church issue and they found out that I really would give notice and leave if forced to, they pretty much stayed out of my life. I have friends and acquaintances who were fired from supposedly-Christian hagwons for any number of reasons -- demanding to go home for a funeral when a parent died unexpectedly, asking for vacation days promised in the contract, missing church services over vacation, etc.
Mind you, I'm not saying all Christian hagwons are terrible, just a disconcerting proportion of them. Unless you personally know the person or persons running the school and know them well, I'd be more hesitant to sign with a proported "Christian" hagwon than a non-Christian one.
Last edited by Dawn on Fri Jun 17, 2005 2:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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just because
Joined: 01 Aug 2003
Location: Changwon - 4964
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| Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 9:02 am Post subject: |
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| I must admit Christianity in Korea is a lot like cult..... It is all or nothing.. |
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