Korean Job Discussion Forums

[english puppet]

[expat2001]

If this is all true ,then I bet alot of the schools will not be paying the bonus and fligth ticket once everything is said and done.the schools will use the excuse that they have no more money

[iggyb]

Nobody has mentioned the change in government. That is one of the keys - among others - for why this is happening.

I believe the last elections have seen a change in power in both Seoul city hall and the head of the education department.

The current president is the one who was pushing hard for Teaching English in English, putting a native-speaking instructor in every school, cutting into the hakwon system, and was generally seen as pro-internationalist/US/West politician. The push to reform English education was also an attack on the Korea Teacher's Union (notoriously left-wing) and drew the resentment of teachers.

That began 5 years ago in a historic swing to the right and now the pendulum is swinging back to the left.

So, it is no surprise that as the current administration loses power in its last year, its key policy initiatives would come under attack like putting foreign instructors in the schools. There are certainly other factors, some mentioned above, but a change in power in the government is certainly a big one.

The hakwon system will flourish. (I wonder how much bribe money has exchanged hands between this mega-industry and politicians trying to get elected?)

The number of teachers overall in the country will go down, because there will be fewer jobs. But, it will still be one of the most attractive places for TESOLers - especially those with little to no experience or fresh out of college.

With the hakwon system being the primary employer again, the turnover rate will remain high and go even higher.

Salaries will come down some and maybe shared housing and Saturday classes.

After about 2 years, it will resemble the early 2000s.

I think there is too much instability in the hakwon and visa system for Korea to become glutted the way Japan became in the 1990s. The turnover rate in Korea is too high for that to happen, I think.

[english puppet]

iggyb,

I think you make some good points. It's always been my impression that KT's were at best sympathetic to you teaching and rarely one would co-teach. The other end of the spectrum would be the weird undermining of lessons or mood disorder displays you see posted in the esl forums. So this is probably just the political side of it at last. Korean teachers probably never were on board with the idea - a bad start to working together in the classroom (to say the least).

I also agree that people may not be interested in jumping through all of the hurdles for paperwork (fingerprints/cbc/apostille this or that) to come to Korea only to get screwed by a hakwon.

[iggyb]

10 years ago, Korea elected the first "modern" president who was far to the left and kinda anti-US/globalization. He was the first president since democracy came to Korea who was not an old key leader of the democratization movement of the 60s through 80s.

He won a very close election. His past as an anti-US democracy activist helped push him over the top, but it seemed to surprise a lot of Koreans the day after that they had actually done it. His mandate quickly evaporated.

5 years later, they elected his polar opposite - the current president - who was seen as pro-US/internationalism. One of his big initiatives was TEE and getting a foreign instructor in every school.

Now it is presidential election time again, and the last couple of local and regional elections seem to indicate the voters want to swing back to the left again.

Given this and the state of the global economy, I would have been surprised if significant cut backs in FTs had not come about.

This also means that we are likely to see steeper cut backs after the coming presidential election....

I think public school teachers should have plan Bs and Cs on standby for the next couple of years...

[different]

The kids who can afford to go to hagwons already go anyway, regardless of whether their school has a NET. I don't think there's going to be much of an increase in hagwon enrollment over the NET cuts.

[koreatimes]