Korean Job Discussion Forums

[SteveSteve]

Hello Everyone,

I'm asking this question on my behalf of my girlfriend. She would have asked herself, but she doesn't have an account yet and her school prohibits personal use on the computer.

First, a little background information that may be relevant and helpful to the discussion: We arrived in Korea about two weeks ago, and we're both living and working in Daegu. I work at a small satellite campus for a university, and one of the directors found and lined up a job for my girlfriend at Wonderland. My university's director has a personal relationship with the Wonderland director, and they were able to put both of us on the same flight to Korea and in the same apartment in Daegu, which was a huge bonus for us.

Despite a lot of the negative attention of the Wonderland chain, I could not find any potentially negative information or red flags about the branch that my girlfriend works at. Additionally, my director is not a recruiter collecting commission, so we felt a bit more comfortable about accepting the job. She had had regular contact with the head teacher at Daegu Wonderland, so she did not go into this job blindly without any research.

Well, two weeks into the job and my girlfriend is miserable. The head teacher lied or exaggerated about virtually everything concerning her responsibilities and duties. She has many more classes than promised and she is responsible for teaching other subject matter, such as math and science, when she was promised that she would be only an English teacher. But worst of all, she comes home distressed nearly every evening because of the emotional abuse that is seemingly tossed and hurled around the office. The head teacher regularly harasses all of the Western teachers at the school.

This is simply unacceptable. We have spoken to other Westerners in our areas and they love their jobs. None of them are stressed out beyond a reasonable level or have to face any kind of emotional or verbal abuse at their jobs.

What should we do? I have a really great job that can support both of us until she finds another job, so returning home is out of the question at this point.

Can she transfer her E2 visa to another job, even if she's only worked at Wonderland for two weeks?

Can she cancel her current visa and just live with me until another job comes up? As I understand, Americans are permitted to stay in the country for 90 days without a visa.

Has anyone been in this situation before? Does anyone know of any jobs in Daegu for my girlfriend?

Many thanks in advance. I hope that we will learn from this mistake and that others may benefit from this discussion.

Best,
Steve

[OculisOrbis]

[SteveSteve]

@OculisOrbis

Thanks for being concise and to the point.

[OculisOrbis]

There is no official limit. Its when she comes and goes enough that immi becomes suspicious about whether she may be working illegally, they will deny her. It would most likely take at least three trips before they did that (or they might not do it at all).

[ttompatz]

[SteveSteve]

@ttompatz

Fortunately for us, I paid for her flight to Korea, so she wouldn't own the school any money.

We're pretty straight and honest people, and I wouldn't want her to do anything illegal like teaching on the side. But it's great to know that she can make repeated trips to and from Korea as a dependent.

Not that she ever wants to be my dependent. She is completely capable of working hard and just wants to work under a fair and supportive environment.

Thanks for sharing.