Korean Job Discussion Forums

[BigBlackEquus]

For those of you who have been around a loooong time, please share some interesting stories about the whole IMF situation here. I would love to get some in-depth play-by-play reviews of the whole thing. What was it like? Could you feel it coming? Were your friends taking off and dropping Korea like flies? Were the hagwon owners going nuts because of this?

Do tell, please! I'd love a good history lesson about now!

[the_beaver]

What's to tell? The exchange rate tanked and the thick as flies whities thinned out.

[mindmetoo]

[indytrucks]

Ahh, the IMF days. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...

Currency went through the floor and I was making peanuts. Average hagwon salary was only around 1.2-1.4 then and the money wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Made my decision to stay a helluva lot easier. I remember the cost cutting, belt tightening movements like people donating gold from their fillings to help pay off the World Bank loan. Ajummas rallying in Sinchon and Myeong-dong coughing up their bracelets and watches and earrings. My hagwon shrunk from 3 floors to 1, 300 students to 150. Salary men and landlords were throwing themselves off the tops of Daewoo apartment on a daily basis.

The good part was things were dirt cheap (there was always an "IMF SALE" happening somewhere) and plum, cushy uni jobs suddenly started popping up everwhere. All the waegookin that were only here for the quick cash grab nearly trampled each other stampeding to the departure gate at Kimpo (it was Kimpo then, not Gimpo). Every second day I heard about someone mysteriously disappearing in the middle of the night. It was fine by me. Landed my first uni job after only being here a year with only hagwon experience and a BA. The rest is history.

Sometimes, I almost wish another IMF crisis would come around and flush Korea clean like in '97.

[SuperHero]

won tanked - foriegners got drunk and whined about the exchange rate. Salaries went up, life went on.

[indytrucks]

[bourquetheman]

I got here in July 97, just before the IMF crisis hit and for the first few months it was great! I remember taking 400 000 won to wire home and it was $600 Cdn which I was very pleased with. I had booked a ticket to travel to Bangkok for December and that was the month when the currency bottomed out. All of a sudden 600 000 won was $430 Cdn! Reverse opposite a few months before! I was flipping and couldn't send money home for a month or so.
Anyway the trip to Thailand was great even if I was spending money that I shouldn't have been spending due to the crisis. Oh yeah and my salary was a cool 1 250 000won a month at a hogwan. My second year I asked for
1 500 000 and she didn't even try to fight me for it which made me think I should have asked for more. Finally in the third year I asked for 1 800 000 and my own place plus no more kindy, as up until then I was living with 3 other people and doing a split shift. Again she caved to my demands. All in all a good three years before I moved to the university. I too remember people committing suicide and selling their gold jewelery etc. to help pay off the debt. Wow talk about patriotism!

[mack the knife]

The best part was (and remains) the Koreans blaming the IMF organization for the WHOLE PROBLEM. What cack. Koreans can never own up to anything. They still call it the "IMF Crisis" instead of the "Korea and Most of the Rest of Asia had Completely Dug its Own Grave Crisis", which is the accepted nomenclature in the rest of the world.

[Homer]

Got here september 1997...then the currency tanked and the great white butt exodus began.

Lot's of schools shut down and others grew stronger (mine did...as the boss ate up the clientele from the schools that closed!).

The waeguk scene changed from mostly young teachers in their 20s (me and most others) to older teachers who seemed to be either running from something, suffering from booze problems or otherwise shipwrecks in progress.

I had few Korean friends back then as I was a newbie but those that I knew suffered from the economic crash as some lost jobs.

As the currency was worth about half of what it was when I first arrived (vs the Canadian dollar that is), saving became a different game as sending money home was a costly proposition.

My school lost 2 teachers who left for greener pastures (one runner and one gave notice like an adult). The runner left because he was refused a 50% raise he asked for because of the currency devaluation, he then asked to be paid in British pounds (he was a Brit) to compensate for the currency loss....when that was justly refused he ran off into the night leaving a stack of bills for the school and his students in the lurch. The teacher that gave notice got his release and left for Saudi Arabia where he got a teaching contract. He came back to Korea in 1999 and still lives here (in Inchon).

In exchange we got one teacher from the used and out bin who came in stinking of booze and who clearly had issues with work in general. The other teacher we could not replace for a bit so it meant lots of overtime for us (good coin).

The IMF crisis sure was an interesting time...

[weatherman]

There were some good times and bad times in the summer of 96�� when I came for good; certainly Korea was a lot less cosmopolitan then, worked at a hogwon my first year and did me good in retropect. Money was good, exchange rate was good, and the number of foreigners of the ground was about 20% of what it is now. In the summer of 97�� I was working in the public school system with EPIK, and I remember taking a taxi home on the last of November or the first of December when the exchange rate was breaching 2000 to the American dollar. The taxi driver got pissed because my fare was only 2000 won, flag fall being a lot less then, and yelling {not at me} but at the economy, that it was worth only one U.S dollar.

As to foreigners leaving, I was in my Korean phase then, and didn��t really know any other foreigners. I can say lot of foreigner didn��t resign their EPIK contract that next summer and went home, I obviously stayed on.

[Roch]

[bluelake]

Sometimes, it seems like yesterday. It was strange, as my wife said she felt we should send some money to the States, so we wired $5,000; two days later, the bottom fell out.


T

[Ya-ta Boy]

I was making megabucks (W1.8 million) for three hours of work a day in a company job. When the bottom fell out at the end of the year the whole country took on a grim look. I swear I didn't see a smile anywhere, at work or on the street for at least a year. My students 'boycotted' Titanic because buying a ticket would send money out of the country. No one was supposed to push the 'close' button on the elevator because that was wasting electricity. The Halloween party of '97 had more than 200 people. In '98 there were barely more than 20. Month by month my income declined because the women in my company were 'encouraged' to take early retirement, so my student numbers fell through the floor (I was paid partly by the students.) But most of all, I remember the call from my stockbroker telling me that I had lost everything. Grim times indeed.

PS: Homer, great over-generalization about older teachers. Thanks.

[Mr. Pink]

I arrived in March 1997. Times were good for a bit. The first indication that something was wrong was the Hanbo Steel fiasco. I remember one of my students telling me her father worked for Hanbo and lost his job. She wouldn't be coming back to the hawgwon anymore.

I'd say it was a good year until the summer. The country owed so much foreign debt and had such small foreign reserves to pay those debts.

After Hanbo (think that was in September or so) the exchange rate moved slightly, maybe 100-200 in the wrong direction.

It was in December of '97 that the bottom fell out. I wanted to take a trip to Singapore. I had to cancel that plan as in basically 2~3 days the exchange rate went from like 600-650 to a cdn dollar to 1400 ish for a cdn dollar.

December was the month you say Koreans on the news crying and blaming the west for their problem. Basically the IMF and World Bank had to bail Korea out.

The stock market dropped like the Titanic as well. If I was smart I would have been buying up stocks. I was worried that the "IMF era" would last years, like in Brazil.

Anyways, yes, Adjumas were giving their gold, people were banding together to try and save the nation. I remember that other countries didn't want Korea to buy their way out of the problem with gold, as it would have sent the price of gold falling.

My favorite thing was all the IMF specials that popped up EVERYWHERE. Seriously, I think more Koreans exploited the situation for their own profits, then actually cared about their countries situation. IMF Hofs were like on every street. IMF sales were in every store.

No one I knew did a runner, but my hawgwon almost closed. Us teachers had to go out and give pamplets at some local elementary schools. That sucked but it helped us keep our jobs.

The single best thing the IMF did was it opened up Korea to Globalization. Before that there were 1/2 as many foreign businesses here. Before that our salaries sucked so bad. I make 3x more now than I did my first year here. Before the IMF foreigners couldn't own land in Korea, now we can.

The IMF days were scary if you cared for only the money. If you like adventure, they were quite fun.

[bluelake]

Remember all the things Koreans said IMF stood for ("IM Fired", etc.)?