Korean Job Discussion Forums

[maddog]

One of our teachers recently went to a staff training thingy in Seoul. While there, he was told that teachers who leave the school will have their severance and deposit re-imbursed ONE MONTH AFTER LEAVING KOREA.

I know from my last job that they can call the building manager and find out exactly how much we owe on utils the day we leave, so I can't see how they can justify holding on to the deposit. Also, we all got out phones through the school, so it's not like we can run up massive bills before we leave. The school could easily check that.

As for getting severance one month after leaving, that sounds downright illegal to me.

We have a meeting tomorrow and I'm gonna bring this up. Can anyone confirm that what they're doing is illegal.

Cheers

MD

[ttompatz]

[maddog]

[CentralCali]

Step 1: Do not plan on leaving the country immediately at the end of your contract! Get a ticket for leaving the country within 5 days or 14 days after the end of your contract (number of days depends on contract stipulation for airfare reimbursement).

Step 2: File a complaint at the Labor Board.

Step 3: Do one of the following:

a. At the same time as Step 2, make a written designation of someone to appear on your behalf at all Labor Board hearings. The Labor Board has the form for this.

b. If you cannot do Step 3a before leaving Korea, you can go to the Korean Consulate for your area and designate someone in writing to appear on your behalf at all Labor Board hearings.

Step 4: Leave Korea prior to 14 days after the end of your contract.

It's much easier to do 3a than 3b. Also, you may luck out and not have to actually travel to your home to be entitled to the airfare. My dishonest hagweon owner wrote a contract that was bad for her but good for us!

[maddog]

Thanks to both of you.

My school is becoming increasingly dishonest, so I wanna have all my bases covered in case they try to screw me. There are now five of us leaving within 3 weeks of eachother. Because of some of the sh!te that's gone on recently, none of us are renewing our contracts. That's 5 out of 11 FTs. If you consider final salaries, severance, flights, and housing depostis, that's upwards of 30 mil.

They recently stated that they'd give us 700K for flights rather than a plane ticket. My contract explicitly states "a round-trip economy ticket". And a flight to the UK, specifically Glasgow is gonna cost more than 700K. The cheapest I could find on a quick search of expedia was closer to 2 mil.

MD

[CheeseSandwich]