Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Blind Willie]

[the eye]

you are both imagining this imagining.

i think a young male teacher has a different experience when out in public compared to older, or older looking, more fatherly types.
older men could be confused for professionals in other industries and escape this issue for that reason alone.
the incidents i have noticed, occur at night, albeit usually when i am alone or with a male coworker.

not only have i noticed a higher degree of insults lately, ranging from mild to shocking, but my girlfriend of two years has been repeatedly berated by her friends and aquaintances and business associates regarding her poor choice to be with me. strange how they all seem to mention what they saw on tv when offering their opinions of why i am not worthy of her.

even my school manager has complained about the sudden barrage of sensitive parents complaining of minor incidents that were left ignored months ago.
a month ago, getting a kid to write lines as punishment was accepted. now, it is questioned.
imagine something as trivial as that setting off an angry father that it must be the foeign teacher's lack of education, not his kid's lack of good behavior.

[jajdude]

Sadly it is the Korean isolation, the inward-looking thinking, the ignorance, the past hurts.... etc... that magnifies whatever any foreigner does here.

A Korean or even North Korean can set fires to kill many, can be a real beast of a human, but be forgiven easily enough.

A foreigner needs but to tread on a Korean pair of toes, and suddenly all foreigners are the devil.

It is sad. Some Koreans know this. Most are still in the cave.

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(Of course i may be wrong, but it still feels good to vent. )

[cheem]

[Blind Willie]

You know, you guys could all just be dicks.

[Homer]

The eye,

How old are you and just how old do you think I am?

[sparkx]

[lastat06513]

I'm not skirting around the issue,
I am just going alittle more indepth.

And as for the additional documents, they do ask for it as long as there is reason for them to believe that a person might be doing extra work while on a tourist visa. And alot of people on this board are not just teachers, some of them are businessmen and so on who have since moved on since initially coming to Korea to teach. So, some of theinformation posted here is not only relevent to teachers, I think this board is one of the few good sources of information that has not been attacked my the "cyber k-squad".

Yes, I am an American, but only by birth, and yes alot of the actions of my compatriots in uniform do cause alot of innocent people harm.

But like the Koreans, some people here take it upon themselves to bash others and point fingers instead of trying to find a real solution to the problem.
Not all Americans are beer-drinking sex mongers who go around preying on hapless young women. And not all teachers are backpacking playboys who only come here to earn some extra dough before heading off for another "beach season" in South Asia.
If I was, I can also toss stones at alot of Canadians who come to Korea only to pay back student loans or only get a sense of independence before heading back to Canada to move out of their parent's home.

But, I don't because not all Canadians come here for those reasons and I also have more Canadian friends than American ones.

And someone wrote about the unfair treatment given to younger teachers compared to the older ones. Well....that has always been my experience ever since I first got here when I was a 19 years old soldier and again in 2000, when I came back here as a teacher at 23.
Koreans tend to see age as a major factor of respect; the older a person is, the more they tend to know about a certain job.
I know this doesn't always apply, but the principal is always there.

But I don't want to get off topic.
I do strongly support the 3-month entry for Canadians for the simple fact that many of them are the ones doing privates and because I think that by streamlining the system across the board would not only make it easier to do checks on foreign teachers coming to work in Korea, but it will also make the profession seem more professional.

I have had C-3s, E-2s, D-1s and A-1 visas, I do have an idea what I am talking about

[Daechidong Waygookin]

I wear a suit. I find that it shields me from a lot of crap. I think projecting an image is important here. I go out of my way not to look like Im a teacher because quite frankly, I would rather not associate myself with the small minority of losers in the foreign teacher community that bring crap down upon the others. So these days, I pretty much dress in suits when I go out.

[the eye]

[textin]

Thank God I am not teaching kids.
Although to begin with it was OK....always so many more probs to deal with though.

[Wangja]

[the eye]

and stolen from as well!
twice!

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Lastat, the more you try to be academic about this the more you forget that Canadians will take this very personally. You support this? It's a movement? Well, it's a movement that we as Canadians can do something about. You Americans whine to high heaven if we criticise your foreign policy but here you are advocating discriminatory policies against us in Korea. We tell Koreans that we can identify with some of their issues regarding US/Korea tensions and you accuse us of undermining you overseas. I see this as a perfect manifestation of the inequality of our relationship as nations. You're hounding us around the world, telling us who we can be friends with and what they should think of us. You say you're not an empire but you expect to control South Korean foreign policy. This is a reciprocal relationship between the Korean and Canadian governments that has to do with relations between our two countries, not yours. Yes, you are affected by Canadians here. You are also affected by a huge number of other factors far beyond your grasp. There are a lot of things we don't know and a lot of things that we know that we don't know.

[lastat06513]

Hi

First, I usually never mention posters by name, since what one person is saying or thinking does not always represent the majority.
Do I speak for a majority? no. I am just expressing my mind about a certain topic.
You know, there is another American bashing/ Blame Canada post on the China off-topic forum that discussed how the Canadian Defense Minister was first denied entry onto a US-bound flight b/c his name appeared on the no-fly list. But also the fact that Canada refuses to join the US in the missile defense system.
Back home, I was totally oblivious to what the US does or think outside its own backyard. But since I've been in Korea, I can honestly say that the US has done some questionable things; then, now, and later.


Back to the point......

The reason I strongly support it is that the number of foreign illegal teachers are in fact from Canada and some of the other commonwealth countries that enjoy the 6-month entry permit.
Also, keep in mind that "actor" who spoke during the SBS program some time ago was in fact a Canadian and I recognized some of the other people in some shots to be Canadian too. So, to point the blame solely on the US is not a good thought.

But, I think that even if something was done to solve the E-2 crisis, there will be alot of other people coming into the country who would be teaching when they shouldn't, and it is alot harder for the Koreans to catch these people because, in the case of the military or diplomatic community, they are outside Korean jurisdiction.
No matter what is done to this problem, there are going to be people finding loopholes to jump through.