Korean Job Discussion Forums

[diver]

This is for the oldtimers - do any of you remember Mike Oh and his Bok Ji Corporation recruiting outfit? I'd love to hear some anecdotes

[Scott in Incheon]

He was my recruiter back in 1994. Brought him a nice bottle of brandy, I think.

No real stories....but he did place me in Incheon after he said I was going to be in Seoul.

I remember though he had a party that year for all of his new recruits...we met in Seoul at his offices.

[hogwonguy1979]

Man did he have a rep, didn't use him when we came in 96.

there were some other doozies back then. The one we remember is Korea Services Group out of Portland Ore. They are how we became interested in coming here via a flyer they sent to the educational placement office where my wife was going to grad school out in Far West Texas. Talk about slick, their ad even encouraged people to do privates to make extra money.

Well we contacted them, they sent us a contract for some hogwon down south, in the contract you had to pay around a $400/person "guarantee fee" which my father said run from (oh and the pay was around 1.2 mil/month but the first 3 months you only got like 800k as you were probationary). Then we discovered this site and there posts about how bad they were, misleading people etc and were like "whoa". We found another recruiter Better Resource out of LA who placed us in what we thought at the time was a real univ position in Gongju but it turned out to be a unigwon position, actually turned out OK for the first year

There was another person who worked in the office who was also getting his MA at the time and we kept telling him, don't take it, you can do better etc. He was like "no they seem OK", well we kept in contact with him, he wound up down in Masan and got royally screwed, we found out. he lasted around 4 weeks. We've lasted 16 years

There were some other recruiters like that at time, you think recruiters are bad now man then it was something

[lemak]

I remember the guy trying to recruit me for his new company Lee's Manpower back in '98 or '99. Guess the powers that be were onto Bok Ji.
Swapped several phone calls, but could barely understand him on the phone.
When I decided not to take his 1.4 mil a month job he got kind of threatening implying that he was the only person on Korea who could assure I would get a decent apartment and that I wouldn't be ripped off. Also that he had "dibs" on me, so none of the other recruiters would touch me anymore. All crap. Wonder what ever happened to the guy.
True for all those who think the Korean ESL industry is dodgy these days, compared to 15 years ago it's a polished diamond.

[Died By Bear]

Mike Oh was last seen retired and living near Sokcho. I know this because a good friend of mine tracked him down after he witnessed Mike Oh exchanging his sloppy old Chinese made umbrella for his girlfriend's Lotte bought expensive one with auto-release handle.

[Zackback]

Lucky Manpower!
That was also a name he gave it.