Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tom David]

I just arrived to suwon to begin a one year contract. The apartment where they have stationed me is extremly moldly, musty and smells horrible. The school refuses to give me a new place. I have emailed the two agencies that helped get me the job and I spoke to the manager of the school a couple times, but it seems my complaints are falling on deaf ears. What should I do?

Also, I spoke with my fellow teachers and one of them use to live in my pace but moved out because of the mold. After he moved out, the management simply wallpapered the walls to hide the mold.

On a sidenote, if they wont give me a new place...Ill most likely just go home. The school paid for my flight here, but obviously they wont pay for my flight back if I decide to leave a couple weeks later. In the contract the school says i have to pay back the ticket if I leave before six months. How would they collect that money and whats the worse that could happen to me.

I would really appreciate any advice, sincerely tom

[pikachun1]

I remember a hakwon showing me pics of where I would be staying and then when I arrived it was another place. I really hate how they try to deceive you of where you would be staying; it's really low.

Which visa are you on right now? I think the consequences differ upon which visa you hold. F-4 visas have more freedom than E-2. You could probably just leave whenever you want with an F-4 visa, but not so sure with an E-2.

Also, since they paid for your flight to Korea, I think you should pay them back if you decide to leave. If you are going to tell them that you quit after a few days/weeks, I'm sure they would want reimbursement. If you are deciding to just leave without notice, then you would not want to give them additional reasons to chase you down, so paying them back may be a good idea. It's also seems like the nice thing to do despite them misleading you.

I guess what i'm saying is that there are three choices. You can stay, you can quit with notice, or you can do the midnight run. I'm sure some people on this forum can be of more help to you. Sorry to hear about the living situation, but don't worry too much because i think you have options.

[OculisOrbis]

Assuming they wont listen or move to rectify anything - work for a month if you can stand it in the apartment that long, get you first pay deposited to your account, withdraw all the cash, pack up and leave. Dont tell them you are planning to leave or they will not pay you. Don't worry about repaying the airfare. They were supposed to provide LIVABLE housing, they did not not and will not. It may not be easy to get another job in korea for a while, but your health is more important.

[Snowkr]

I truly feel for you.

I experienced something similar my first year here with my apt. but I moved out as soon as the mold came. My hogwan boss tried telling me he'd have the walls recovered but I didn't accept that. I just left and went to stay with a friend.

Fortunately my director was very sweet about it and got me a new place. But if he hadn't, I would have stayed at my friend's place for the rest of the year or quit and gone back home.

Bottom line, you can't stay in a place with mold. That will mess up your lungs. Koreans are weird about that. They'd rather cover it up than deal with it. You need to put your foot down though. If you don't have anywhere else to go, then I'd say go home.

I would take some pictures of the place though first, in case it does come to that. I don't know how easy it would be for you to get back into Korea after leaving a new contract so soon...

You can't stay in that apartment though. Don't let them try to back you into a corner there.

[Captain Corea]

Have you brought them there with you? Made sure that they looked at it and know how bad it is?

If so, and they still refuse to move you, then they have far different standards than you. Leave now, or leave after your fist pay period... but either way, it's best to get out of there.

That being said, I've know quite a few young foreigners who have come here and complained about their places. Upon further inspection, it wasn't really much more than a bit of hard work would have cleaned up. I'm not saying that's the case here, but could you take care of it yourself?

[Janny]

You need to decide if you can live in that place for one full year. I doubt they'll help out financially with improvements since they already "fixed" the problem with the wallpapering over.

So...decide. You can stay and try to fix it up yourself a bit. Weigh the cost versus how much you're bound to make over one year + the benefits of staying (good social life, steady pay cheque to pay off debts, a couple vacations to SEAsia). The repair costs can't be that bad as long as you get a Korean friend (NOT THE SCHOOL) to help you.

You could also tell the school that you can't live there because it's bad for your health. However, they may decide that keeping you around is not worth the money it takes to really repair or move you to a better place. And you'll be labelled a "complainer" which sets you up for more BS down the line. That's how it works here...the people who complain are not well-liked. If you're not well-liked, getting ANYTHING you need is a fight.

If they say "we can't move you" and you decide to leave, you'll buy your own ticket home and the cost for your initial trip will be deducted from whatever you've earned the previous month. They can't really get money from you after you leave, so they'll just empty your Korean bank account that way before you go.

Korean people want to see you do something worthy of their respect before they consider you anything more than a hired hand. It took me about a year of working hard to be able to ask for stuff and actually get solid answers (that I liked). Unless you're some kind of star teacher, or really good looking, they will just consider replacing you ie. firing you and hiring someone else.

The third option is to run. First, tell them you need to be moved or have the stuff repaired. Remind them for a couple weeks that you're getting sicker. If they don't make any moves to improve your lot within 3 months, just collect the last paycheque and leave without telling them. This way you lose the least amount of money overall.

They'll cancel your visa soon enough and you can look for a new job in Korea maybe 3-4 months later. Or just get a job in China / Taiwan / Japan. Actually I'm sure you'll find a school willing to take you even though you did a "midnight run"...but chances are they'll be shady just like these guys.

TIP: ALWAYS talk to the teacher leaving and the teachers working there now before you sign anything. Principals / directors / Korean staff members lie and recruiters will just tell you exactly what you want to hear. Korean supervisors / recruiters don't like to say "I don't know"...they'd rather say something positive in the moment and recant later. That's some of the "saving face" stuff you might have heard about.

I have a feeling there's some culture shock involved here on your part. I have had to live in some DISGUSTING apartments (if you can call them that) while in Korea. The smells, the mold, the bugs, the noise...everything seems like torture and it's especially bad when you had higher expectations. ........Maybe you need to stick this out and see what you're made of..?

Good luck.

[Janny]

I forgot to mention that there is no recourse for them once you leave Korea, ie. they can't "track you down" and make you pay for your initial flight.

The worst that could happen is that your name is passed around as a midnight runner and you'll have trouble finding work in Korea for about 6 months. Or there's some 'red flag' attached to your name at Immigration. But when the school cancels your visa, I'd think Immigration would just delete your file. But I could be wrong.

Anyway, don't worry about them contacting authorities in your home country. They'll just write you off as a loss and move on.

[questionmark]

Try the Seoul Global Center for Foreigners.

http://global.seoul.go.kr/

English: Jeong Mae Bak (02-2075-4138)

They might offer you another alternative to quitting.

At the end of a teaching contract, I came home to find a note on my door that my electricity was going to be turned off for non-payment of utilities.

My school had been pocketing my utility money for months and not paying my bills.

I called Seoul Global Center. Their consumer specialist called my hagwon and they paid my bills the next day.

[laguna]

Mold is a serious health hazard, call the right people and you can get the building condemned, problem solved.

[plato's republic]

I ended up in a moldy apartment my second year in Korea. The hagwon's response was to send round an old lady with a bucket of glue and a new roll of wallpaper to cover it up. Needless to say that didn't help much. Over the Christmas and New Year period I ended up with a nasty case of laryngitis, and a few weeks later a nasty bout of sinusitis. Not entirely sure whether they were connected to the mold situation in my apartment, but I wouldn't bet against it. Your health is more important than a crappy hagwon job. Think it through carefully. If you can't clean the place up yourself, then request to be moved, or just move on/back home.

[Troglodyte]

Once there is mold in the walls, it's going to be very difficult to get it out permanently. There's a very good chance that the mold is there because there's a problem with water building up in the walls (from the roof or a pipe). If that's the case, you can clean up the mold all you want and it's still going to be back really soon.

The only way to get rid of mold is disinfect the entire place. And then find a way to keep it dry. A dehumidifier will help but you're still going to have to get the mold out of the walls. Concrete is porous so the mold is going to be IN the walls as well. It's also going to be in things like a sofa or mattress. Those can likely be cleaned up, but the only way to disinfect the walls is to wash them with something that will kill the mold AND permeate the surface of the concrete. If your walls had been painted instead of wallpapered, you could just whitewash the walls and that would keep them disinfected for the summer. With wallpaper, you're going to have to strip it all off and THEN clean it up.

If you have a serious mold problem and the school won't move you, then leave. Unless we're talking about a bit of mildew under the sink, you're not going to be able to clean it up completely. The spores will still be floating around. It's going to make you sick.

[Mr. Pink]

This (OP) is why living abroad isn't for everyone. People leave the comforts of their first world industrialized country and expect things are done in the same way.

Dave's is FULL of people who complain about their apartment. Did you think it wouldn't happen to you? How about this for constructive criticism:

Instead of wasting your first and only paycheck on a flight back home where I am guessing the same things that drove you away from home are still waiting for you, you spend it on getting rid of your mold problem. Yes, I know you shouldn't have to do such things, but at least then you can keep working and bank some money and have your Korea experience occur beyond a first paycheck. I can't imagine it would cost your whole paycheck either to hire someone to come in, ripe out ALL your wall paper and flooring and do a bit of work on cleaning it up and then re-doing the wallpaper and flooring. Then with the rest you can buy yourself a nifty air purifier that will take the spores (if they continue) out of the air and make it habitable.

OR

You could go find yourself another apartment and try to get a housing allowance...or go room with another co-worker or do a Korean home stay.

There are a lot of solutions to your problem besides running away from it.

[Troglodyte]

I've lived in places far worse than Korea, but I still wouldn't live in a moldy apartment.

That's not a matter of comfort. We aren't talking about a lack of good taco restaurants or the abundance of squatter toilets. Mold is a health issue. If I was living in a remote village in a developing country, I would probably accept accommodation that didn't include a flush toilet, hot shower or high speed internet. South Korea though is a first world country so it's disgraceful to ask an employee who is receiving accommodation as part of their contracted job benefits to living in a moldy apartment for a year.


OP, if you do want to try to stick it out, you could negotiate with your boss. If it's his apartment or if the owner gives you permission, then you could offer to split the cost of fixing the mold problem. Depending on the apartment, it might be cheap or expensive. If the floor is just covered with linoleum and the walls with wallpaper, then it shouldn't be to expensive. If you have floor panels that have to be removed, or a false ceiling or furniture that's fixed to the walls, then it gets more complex. The expensive part won't be getting rid of the mold. It will be putting down new linoleum and wallpaper.

If you decide to go that route, then don't just wash the walls and re-paper them. That won't do you any good. What you need to do is roll up the linoleum. If you're lucky it will come off the floor without cutting or ripping it. If you can clean the underside, then keep it. Strip off ALL the wallpaper. Take the walls right down to the concrete. Check to see if there are wet spots on the walls anywhere. If so, then you're problem is serious and you're not going to be able to fix it yourself. If there are no wet spots, then open up all the doors and windows and air the place out for a day. If you have a good dehumidifier, you could close the windows and let THAT run for a day. You need to dry out the walls. When they're dry, then put on a thick coating of white wash. You should be able to get this at most construction/hardware stores. It comes as a white powder. If you're wondering what it is, it's just burnt limestone or marble. There's nothing special in it. If you don't like white, you can get dyes to put in the white wash to give it a pastel color. You'll probably need to put on a couple coats. It's cheap though. This is a weekend job.

This will keep out mold for months at least. If they mold DOES come back, then just wash it off and brush on more whitewash. (This is a good reason to use regular white the first time.) Whitewash is caustic. It will kill the mold in the wall, and deter new mold from growing there. If you have a dehumidifier though, it would be helpful.

The downside is that if you lean against the wall, you'll get white powder on your clothes (easier brush off though). You can't tape anything to the walls afterwards.

Unfortunately, Koreans seem to love wallpaper, so your boss may not even allow this.

If I were you though, I would just say "Move me." If they say no, then quit (after pay day). It's not worth the health problems you'll have a few years down the road. It's also not your responsibility to fix up someone else's property.

[TheFoodie]

[ChilgokBlackHole]