Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Vlad Spinner]

Apologies if this thread his been done elsewhere, but as I haven't yet seen it (in quite this form), it seemed like a good idea.

If you've recently left Korea in protest/disgust/whatever over the new immigration regs--or whatever else, up to you!--how about posting your experiences here?

I'll start with mine:

After nearly seven years in Korea (2001-2007), with stints both in Seoul and in Busan, teaching at both kiddie and adult hakwons, in a private secondary school, and with a year even at a law firm (editing/proofreading), I finally decided, late last year, that enough was enough. In summary, Korea, after too many years of longsuffering on my part, was proving inescapably a) too violent (daily canings at school, etc.), b) too racist (need I elaborate?), c) finally, with the new visa regs as confirmation, too d*mn unwelcoming of foreigners. (OK, so "b" and "c" may amount to the same thing. Together with "a," it all adds up to a lack of "jeong," the very thing Koreans imagine themselves to have so much of. Compassion, kindness, fellow-feeling? In Korea . . . ? You take my point.)

For the record, I've never had so much as a parking ticket in my entire life, don't do drugs (never have), and would almost certainly have passed the new regs with flying colors.

But why remain up to my armpits in kimchi when there was China waiting? Or Indonesia, or Japan? Why submit to the indignity of proving myself worthy of Korea--when Korea, manifestly, isn't worthy of me? (And no, it's not that I'm so great. It's that Korea is so terminally narcissistic that it doesn't deserve a moment of anyone's love, can't accept it, doesn't understand it, isn't worth the time and effort. Korea will gaze into the mirror with masturbatory longings until the day it finally blows itself up in a long overdue civil war--and meanwhile you're teaching English there--why?)

So I'm now at a university in Nanjing, China and it's such an extraordinary improvement over everything Korean that I don't know where to begin.

Cooperative students. Good food. No insane lies about Takeshima/Koguryeo/superior DNA/"stolen" kimchi . . .

The stress is gone. No more rush-rush, do-it-five-minutes-ago insanity.

Repeat: the stress is gone. Life is easy here. You just roll out of bed in the morning, enjoy your breakfast, go to work, do your job, enjoy.

On paper, meanwhile, I'm making about a third the wage I did in Korea. But I'm spending about five times less on food. I ride the subway for the equivalent of about 300 won, the bus for about 100. There's considerably less trash on the streets here. People seem happier, freer.

A student tells me that he's a Communist Party member, and then speaks very frankly about Mao's mistakes, the government's current shortcomings, turning to foreign media for objectively reported news. Not a hint of hush-hush, I shouldn't be saying this. Korean students, in my experience, are typically far more conformist, less free-thinking (when they think at all).

The public library here, a gleaming new building worthy of any great city, has entire floors dedicated to foreign-language books and periodicals. Want to check out books? Show your passport and deposit 400 yuan (about $50). Can you do THAT in Korea?

No one's yet mocked my Chinese language skills (or lack thereof).

Honeymoon? No doubt. Let it go on and on . . .

I'm writing this not so much to gloat as to encourage anyone currently caught in Kimchistan to consider wading across the Yellow Sea or . . . ah . . . the Sea of Japan . . . for that matter, and giving the expat life another shot.

The money may appear to be less on paper (or more, I suppose, if you're considering Japan!), but prices will more or less rise and fall accordingly when you make that move.

Your sanity is what you'll recover once you've left Korea.

"Your mileage may vary," as they say. But if my experience is anything to go by, I just can't recommend it too strongly. You don't have to stay in Korea. You really can do so much better--and it's easy! There are so many jobs over here, and out there. We owe it to ourselves to do better than Korea.

Take it away, fellow fugitives from Kimchistan . . . !

[SuperFly]

Can you get an international ATM card?

How's the booty?