Korean Job Discussion Forums

[SHANE02]

Note to Korean govt: making a hub or a FEZ or an international zone does not in itself make your country more open to western business ideas or investment.

Future of Korea's First Int'l School Uncertain
The W150 billion New Songdo City International School will be dedicated in the Incheon Free Economic Zone in April, but nobody knows when it will open for business (US$1=W1,506). It was originally supposed to open in October this year, but that now seems impossible due to lack of foreign students in Songdo.
If the quota is filled, the school would have a total of 2,100 students for kindergarten, primary and secondary classes. The FEZ had planned to increase the number of new students gradually every year as it hoped the foreign population there would grow. It can only recruit 30 percent Korean students.

A mere 744 foreigners are registered in the Songdo FEZ, with only about 50 of them born after 1990 and thus of school age. Even if all of them were to enter this school, the school would still only have 65 students including the permitted 15 Koreans.

The International School Service, which is to run the school, is against opening it with such a small intake. ISS, a non-profit corporation based in New Jersey, runs about 100 schools worldwide on behalf of their foundations.

The idea for the Songdo international school was first conceived in 2005. Back then, New Songdo International City Development, a joint-venture of Gale Real Estate of the U.S. and Korea's POSCO Construction, decided to build it as part of infrastructure aimed at attracting foreign investment to an international business district in the FEZ.

Construction began in March 2006. The school was originally scheduled to open in September last year, but delays in construction pushed it back until this coming October.

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http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200902/200902230002.html

[justaguy]

It's ironic that so many foreigners complained about the lack of education for their children in Korea. The Koreans build a school for these students and the foreigners won't put their kids in it.

[sobriquet]

There are a dozen international schools in Seoul.

Reading the reviews of them though, they appear to all have gyopos or Korean kids squeezed in somehow.

[espoir]

[PRagic]

Interesting this came up. I just gave a 1.5 hour interview to a PR branch of a Korean organization on FEZs, HUBS and CLUSTERS, and the Songdo, Incheon, Yeongjeon area came up. Come to find out, my views, while grounded in a barrel of research, didn't go over too well, nor did my projections on the long-term impact of the increasing household debt on the embedded Korean socio-economic system.

Anyhow, I got a rough draft of the article (in Korean) back from the interviewer, and it included pretty much nothing about most of our discussion. It was extremely abreviated to say the least. So I wrote back with some corrections and suggestions. A few days later, I got another draft, with the explaination that the head honcho had decided to really whittle it down. Ended up being about a paragraph, and only touched on the positive aspects of Korea's strategy that I mentioned.

So there it is. Songdo. Fighting.

[Crockpot2001]

[itaewonguy]

[moosehead]

[taiwan_girl]

[justaguy]

[cdninkorea]

[Crockpot2001]

[Guri Guy]

I am sure the tutition fees will be sky high in order to pay for this new school.

Sounds like a "White Elephant" to me.

[SHANE02]