Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tommy]

Hi everyone,

what are the standard working hours per week or per month? Almost every job offer that I've seen is 30/week or 120/month, or higher - though I've read that it should be no more than 25/week or 100/month.
Where have I heard this? I've seen a few posts here but particularly in a contract outline that I found on this board a while back... here: http://www.geocities.com/victoryolife/contractkr.html

"The Guaranteed workload is maximum of 25 clock hours per week, or 100 clock hours, per 4 weeks"
"Your salary should not be lower than 1.9 million won for 100 guaranteed hours in 4 weeks, for an inexperienced person with a BA degree that is not related to education."

Reading through this contract outline has been extremely helpful and I feel more confident in what I should be asking for. However, it seems that every job offer is asking for at least 30/week for 1.9 mil - is this now standard? So should I be negotiating lower hours or, if keeping 30hrs/week, a higher pay?

Also, the info about overtime pay was interesting, stating that it's law for overtime wages to be 1.5 times regular hourly pay. Is this correct?
"Many crooks try to pay you an overtime rate that is less than, or about your normal hourly pay." I decided to go over previous job offers to check this out at it was true - in every case the overtime pay was below the regular pay!
I have no idea who the author is for this outline or the validity of its contents - can someone please help me out.. is it mostly correct or incorrect or dated or what?
Thanks!

[babtangee]

By law the overtime rate is after 44 hours work per week - so in this instance it is probably wrong.

Working thirty clock hours per week for 1.9 would be a bit silly. Working for 1.9 in itself ain't a good idea. I would think of a class as an hour too (class hours) - those extra ten/fifteen minutes really do add up over a month.

[hari seldon]

The author of the contract explains it's rationale here:
http://www.eslcafe.com/jobinfo/asia/sefer.cgi?display:1082997236-47822.txt

He's advocating that it's in the teacher's interest to have the contract written as 120 classes per month instead of 120 hours per month. Obviously that would be the preference but it's not a legal requirement.

[benblex]

just got an editing job for english standardized tests. it's 40 hours a week (maybe more, haven't started yet, though they tell me it's pretty standard and no weekends). only pays 1.9 with 300,000 housing.

i tried to negotiate for more but got none - supervisor said it's standard for "non-teaching jobs" to start at 2 million but that after a year i might be able to negotiate for 100,000 more per month.

is this true about non-teaching jobs?

[Ya-ta Boy]