Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JongnoGuru]

I usually give these "employment contract" threads a wide berth. Why? Because they're typically long, they're tedious, they're often depressing, they frequently provoke noisy fights between posters (yeah, imagine that -- fights on Dave's), and while they get at the very heart of why the vast majority of you are even here in Korea -- more so than any of the other subjects discussed on this board -- they just don't pertain to me personally. And after having made an exception to read this thread, all I can say is, Thank God for that!

First off, it was nothing short of low-level torture (or death by slow strangulation) just reading that contract. Such that I had to stop at midpoint and skip down to Grotto's fisking of it, his humourous comments being the only thing that got me through it. The demands, the assumptions, the restrictions, the threats... I feel like I've been accused, arrested, tried and convicted, when all I've done is read some company's employment contract, on the Internet, posted by some anonymous stranger I'll probably never meet. Gads!

Expat observers will often say that contracts in Korea are meaningless, that Korean employers won't honour them, that they'll sign anything and then screw you later on. But this place... this Kid's College whatever... they don't wait for "later on". They cut right to the screwing via the medium of the contract itself, rolled up and shoved in lengthwise. I think one could cut a better deal -- at least more freedom and fewer punishments -- with a maximum-security prison than with this employer.