Korean Job Discussion Forums

[teacherdude]

I have decided to delete this post.

[Bibbitybop]

Thanks for warning others.

To clarify:

1. Why didn't you get a different recruiter?

2. Who did you deal with? You are mixing way too many names in the same batch. SMOE and EPIK are totally different entities, and no one deals with the "Seoul Ministry of Education." This confusion could be due to a bad recruiter, bad communication or personal misunderstandings

3. Do you think your foreign attorneys or the Canadian BBB can do shit about your situation?



If you what you say is true, you are more qualified than most people here. From what you posted, you don't seem to understand EFL in Korea. Get a different recruiter, do some research about Korea and the organizations you want to work for and try again.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[Roch]

A few posters have posted similair complaints about Footprints in the past few years.

[Aussiekimchi]

If you were offered LEVEL 1 in Jeju, you would have been offered it through EPIK and your BASE salary would have been 2.3MIL.
You would then be offered 100K provincial allowance and possibly another 100K rural allowance.
This brings your possible salary to 2.5MIL.

Your recruiter may have been telling you what you could potentially earn, as most public school teachers make some overtime on top of their salary.

If you were offered a position with EPIK, you would not have been sent an official contract until your documents had been submitted. So I am not sure why you were given anything. Maybe it was a sample contract.

The EPIK contracts are actually sent by the individual EPIK offices. They are passed on to the recruiter and then sent to you, but the first batches are not going out until the end of June and they will only go out to those applicants who have submitted all docs by June 15. Other than that, the contracts will be sent out in the last week of July.

It sounds like there is some confusion between SMOE and EPIK, but that is normal. There is a lot to digest with the whole application process.
You may simply want to forget about EPIK now and look at the other two Ministry of Education offices ..SMOE and GEPIK.

oh BTW, good luck with the attorneys and the Canadian BBB. I'm sure you will see results very quickly for anything related with international govt agencies! Time to take a breathe, a step back and move on mate...life is too short.

[ttompatz]

Frankly, with the attitude displayed by the OP in the original post I think he would do very well in Korea.

It is JUST LIKE Kansas here with all of the same rules that he would normally expect at home.

Please hurry and find a new recruiter so you can get over here. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Now for a reality check.

The world does NOT work like it does in the litigious States of America.
SMOE and EPIK are NOT the same program.
SMOE and EPIK pay scales are NOT the same.

SMOE does NOT hire for Jeju and EPIK does NOT hire for Seoul.

You negotiated a deal to work in Jeju but you expected the Seoul contract, level and pay scale?

UMMM.... dude.... you are not 1/2 as smart as you think you are. Bringing an attitude like that will get you burned more ways than you could think of.

http://seoul.usembassy.gov/teach.html
The U.S. Embassy receives many inquiries about teaching English in Korea. We have prepared this informal guide to give teachers basic information on the business of teaching English here so they can better informed themselves before committing to a particular job.

YOU have 3 choices:

1) Get educated: read the FAQs and your embassy's website
(a year or 3 here can be a great experience)

2) think you are at home and spend a year in hell before you figure it out.
(get burned coming over here and discover that there is NO legal recourse - you are just out of pocket for the money)
... may lead one to conclude that the Korean and U.S. legal systems are virtually the same. Although this may seem so, there are a number of very significant differences. The main point to remember is that an American in Korea is subject to Korean laws, not American laws.

3) stay home.

And as far as suing or other legal remedies for your foolishness, no-one you were dealing with is within the jurisdiction of the US and it appears as though they were all following the laws of their respective countries.

Oh, and as an afterthought... you didn't sign a contract with anyone, you didn't pay any fees...

What on earth do you really think you are entitled to other than a swift kick in the ass for your own stupidity and possibly a libel suit against you for your post here.

.

[blaseblasphemener]

ShaZAAMMM!

[Stormy]

[bobranger]

Something seems off about the OP�s story. Why would a recruiter lose such a qualified recruit; especially when they work on a contingency base pay?

[jjk1013]

I have to disagree with the OP. I have been working with Footprints Recruiting to get a job with SMOE. They have been nothing but helpful and I'm happy to say that I'm officially a SMOE employee thanks to them.

I'm sorry that this kind of thing happened to you, but I think your best course of action, as Bibbitybop stated, would have been to get a new recruiter instead of bashing Footprints for "screwing you over". It's not that difficult to send in a resume and get an interview, especially with excellent credentials like yours.

Also, I, like others, was a bit confused about your post since you seem to be confusing SMOE and EPIK. Can you clarify?

[MECKWELL]

Teacherdude,

Let me see if I understand this correctly. You want to come to Korea, You OWN a consulting firm in NYC, you have taught at premier academies in NY for well over a decade, you have not one attorney but, apparently, a team of attorneys and the deal breaker for you coming to Korea was a discrepancy of less than $100 per month? Is that right?

If all of your original post was accurate, I think that your life story would make for a very interesting short story or novelette.

[hugekebab]

OP

You threw your toys out of the pram for 100,000 won which probably would have come in the form of another contractual benefit. if you had experience in Korean ESL you would have known that public school system contracts tend to be standardised and are the least risky when compared to hagwon contracts, for instance.

You threw your toys out of the pram, dug your heels in and the Korean employer smelt a future pain in the neck and therefore withdrew your offer of employment, which is their right and the right of Footprints who probably got a big complaint from one of their biggest and most reliable customers; I'm talking about the Jeju public school board, not your good self.

To talk about litigation seems incredibly immature (or American). Just go to another of the 4 billion Korea recruiters, whichever one you go with, you will still be screwed over on things in your contract and you will inevitably have a year of throwing numerous toys out of many many prams because this is Dodge brother and there be gunslingers in these parts.

[jackson7]

I used Footprints, as have a half-dozen of my friends here and we are all pleased with the placement and support. I have also spent some time with one of the owners of the Footprints (not Ben) in a social setting and he's a great guy. Sounds like they're just doing a good job in the OP's case, weeding out a stubborn whitey that will cause more trouble than his many years of experience (IN THE WEST!) are worth.

[cedarseoul]

Footprints placed my wife and I in our academy (a POLY) a little over a year ago. We've been completely satisfied - our school is excellent, our directors are compassionate, our students are talented, and we've been compensated in excess of our contractual arrangement.

Do I credit Footprints with this good fortune? Not necessarily, but they were the ones who made the connection for us, saving us from ending up like so many others, slaving away for 2.0 at thieving crapwons...

I've certainly read posts by disgruntled Footprints alumni, and it's obviously possible that we got lucky, but I have to say: they've been good for us.

[talika]

With your qualification you're better off applying for an university position! Have you ever considered that?