Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Olivencia]

Just wondering if anyone has a guesstimate of the percentage of runners in Korea.......technically those who have left Korea.

[redaxe]

That would be an interesting statistic, what % of foreign ESL teachers in Korea leave before their first contract is up. It would be even more interesting to see it broken down by nationality, age, gender, race, school type (public vs. hagwon), etc etc. but I don't think anyone has good data on the subject. Maybe some of the bigger recruiters keep track.

I've been in Korea about a year and a half, and I personally have had about six friends who have done runners. All of them were Americans under the age of 25.

[Kimchi Cha Cha]

Ancedotally it seems a lot less than it used to be when I first arrived in 2003. The hagwons were in general a lot worse back then *shudder* and I'd guess at least 10% of hagwon teachers did runners and another 10-15% managed to get a release letter to leave early.

These days I rarely hear of people doing runners though I do hear of quite frequent early releases. But, these days most of my friends and acquaintances don't work in hagwons so maybe the numbers still are high.

[eIn07912]

I'd like to see some numbers comparing recent runners to those of a few years ago.

Sure people ran before, but I think those of us that came over a few years ago might be slightly more committed to the "foreign" experience.

The recent downturn back home and the drying up of jobs pushed a lot of fresh uni grads and mid twenty somethings to look for work abroad that probably wouldn't have, given better circumstances.

I've noticed a massive influx of newbies in recent months. It's evident when you look at how many new people are posting on this forum looking for advice on cities and packing tips and stuff like that. I'd say 25% - 50% of threads posted these days come from new guys looking for advice.

I'm not saying thats a bad thing, it's just a different crowd that used to hang out here. A lot more fresh faces, I credit that to the lack of jobs at home.

I got way off topic, but I was just pontificating as to whether the runner percentage has increased with the recent number of new teachers coming in? As with any situation, when you add a greater population, you get a higher percentage of ever variable. So I'd assume the percentage of runners has gone up in recent months.

[steveinincheon]

I would guess that there would be more runners - except for one major factor. There is nowhere for many to run to. There are many fewer jobs back home, and much greater competition for ESL jobs overseas than there used to be. Thus I'd guess that many would-be runners are sticking it out these days, because they'd rather have a crappy job than no job at all.

[redaxe]

[qcat79]

i'd say that anyone that's 22-24 with no prior international experience (studying, traveling or working) and/or work ethic is at a much greater chance of pulling a runner. hell, i did one back in the day when i first moved here and i already had been to europe twice before.