Korean Job Discussion Forums

[baldrick]

[osangrl]

Been here 3 years....NEVER worked a saturday.

[Toby]

[VanIslander]

I used to work Saturdays in my first year, but no more.

I appreciate having the time to travel, especially given how cheap it can be to do so in Korea.

But if push came to shove, and I suddenly had to work either mornings or Saturdays I'd gladly choose the latter.

[Son Deureo!]

I sometimes work on Saturdays, but it is optional and well paid. My (adult) hogwon pays a percentage of the tuition of the students you teach, so depending on the number of students it can work out to anywhere from 30,000-50,000 per hour for a 3 hour Saturday class. Since it's adult conversation classes, it's not exactly stressful work and the pay definitely makes it worthwhile. It's almost like being able to teach a legal private. The only real downside is that it makes it pretty much impossible to travel on the weekends.

While the classes are optional the teachers at my school actually compete with each other for the chance to teach these classes. My hogwon is possibly the only hogwon in Korea where this is the case.

I'm taking Saturdays off this month because I want to take advantage of the May weather to do some travelling, but I plan to sign up for them again next month.

[em]

I volunteered to work Saturdays, but with overtime pay of course. I don't mind because it's a short day, that doesn't start until the afternoon, and the most motivated, polite, intelligent students are in the Saturday classes. I always leave in a good mood ready to enjoy the rest of my weekend.

[sadsac]

I don't care what 5 days I work, as long as I have two complete days off in a row. Now though, I only work M-F.

[ryleeys]

Question:

Why is it, that in America, everyone asks what you do and you tell them the job and the company...

example:
"What do you do?"
"Oh, I'm a teacher at Hollywood Elementary School."
or
"I'm an architect with PAS Architecture."

But if you ask in Korea, I have never met a single westerner that volunteers the information if they are working for a public school or a company (very odd, since Koreans usually not only volunteer the information, but give you business cards too). I've found that you can usually coax the school name out of someone, but never the company name.

Is there some big secret I don't know about?

[inkoreaforgood]

Yep