Think Twice Before Coming to Korea . . . Then Stay!
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
Officially, there are thousands of foreigners here in South Korea teaching English. You can go to any one of a huge number of web sites and see quite a large number of advertisements for posts similar to my own.
To see all of this, you might think that there are a huge number of jobs here for suitably qualified foreigners, and indeed there are. But what this apparent plenitude of opportunity disguises is a crucial truth: it is extremely difficult to get the right person, in the right place, at the right time, to come to Korea, despite the fact that once here, they could have a very stable job, and an enjoyable life, for years.
Why should this be the case? There are many reasons, but here I shall examine just a few . . . what follows is a brief discussion of the experiences of myself and others in this regard.
Here in Changwon, the foreigners go to the pub to relax. Never mind the fact that last night (Saturday, in fact), Professor Jeong came in for a quiet drink and a chat with friends, only to be insulted and physically assulted by one of the many not-quite-all-there inhabitants of the locality (and female, too). And never mind the fact that he finds the task of teaching Korean to foreigners, and writing reputable and useful bilingual and multilingual textbooks for them so much hassle. It would be very helpful for a lot of the foreigners here to be able to attend his classes (however expensive) at the local university. But they can't; there are not enough hours in the day. I myself am asleep in the mornings and in the afternoons and evenings, I am working. There are institutes in Busan which could fulfil this role, but that would mean extensive travel and expense on a Saturday at a time when I am normally asleep.:zzz:
So here's a paradox: despite the fact that there is no shortage of foreigners who desire to learn the local language not just for themselves but also for better communication when at work, out shopping etc., there are no suitable institutes like the "hagwons" to cater for this real need. Yet I know of at least two language institutes in the town here who cater for people who want to speak Japanese. This is a case of reverse logistics; there is plenty of demand for a particular product, but supply is virtually zero.:faint:
Nor is this the case just with people who want to learn Korean. The PC vendor, Dell, recently held a poll at their web site, and two facts became manifest: firstly, their customers, existing or potential, are fed-up with buying Microsoft-installed machines which come complete with all sorts of undesirable "crapware", but which in fact (and unfortunately for Dell, perhaps) is an important source of revenue for the company, Dell, itself. Customers want Dell to sell them reliable machines running some form of Linux. Secondly, they also seem not to want a lot of MS's own wares, for example its well-known Office suite, but rather Open Source products like OpenOffice, which is based upon StarOffice by Sun Microsystems. The problem? Michael Dell built his little empire flogging economical custom Microsoft machines. And unlike the very restricted choice of MS OSes which would otherwise be sold, the customers might prefer any one of a range of very good, stable and virus free variants of Linux such as Mandriva (my own), SuSE, Red Hat, PCLinuxOS, Debian or maybe even the one chosen for Nicholas Negroponte's well-known "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) project, Ubuntu. Decisions, decisions! :confused:
These two cases share one thing in common; reverse logistics. Professor Jeong could be offering more lessons to foreigners, but although he has the time and a reputable university behind him, as well as a string of very useful books which he himself has written, his potential customers have not the free time to make use of his services. Similarly with Dell; their customers are signalling that they want an actual change of OS at the point of sale but whichever way he turns, Dell won't satisfy everyone. Experienced Linux users will by this time have decided what they like and may be disappointed with what he offers; and sales must reach a certain volume in order to justify the expenditure not only upon optimised systems but also training and essential maintenance and support. It's a business, after all. It has a cash flow to maintain and if there is any Linux in there, it must justify itself by turning a consistent profit – the people who work for Dell can't live on air.:yuck:
And so we come to this vexed question of recruiting foreigners to work in Korea. Go to any one of a number of major ESL sites like Dave's ESL Cafe, ESLEmployment, or TEFL.com and there is never a shortage of potential jobs for someone who has at least an undergraduate Degree and wants a change of lifestyle. It even differs from other places like Taiwan (where I have also worked) and Japan (where I wanted to work) in that accommodation comes free as part of the contractual arrangements; the inhabitant therein just pays for utilities, cable TV, phone line etc., and the bills are all generally small.:cheers:
OK, so the kids can be objectionable at times and the job is often stressful, but the point is that anyone with a Degree can come here and teach their native language – not just English but Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, you name it. And on top of all of this, there is a burgeoning industry of recruiters who have arisen to fill the void of time available for institute owners to do the recruiting themselves.:pirate:
So, given that a fairly well-remunerated job can be had in fairly comfortable surroundings, how come there's such difficulty in getting people here? This is another of those nebulous ideas which crystallised after meeting fellow Linux adherent and Canadian ex-government worker Joerg (whom we normally, and mistakenly, call "George"), whose hagwon was having identical problems (he missed the entertainment with the Professor, though . . .). 😉
The first hurdle is strictly logistic: it was a simple matter to get myself here because I was living in relatively nearby (geographically speaking) Taiwan, and it was also simple to receive the legendary "Blue Form" (the authorisation for the initial entry visa) and get my visa stamped because there is a convenient Korean Trade Office in Taipei which handles such things. Also, a one-way ticket to Korea from Chiang Kai-shek is much cheaper and faster than from, say, New York or London or Sydney; the people who could potentially come here and do this job actually have to travel half way around the world in order to do it, and this is not only expensive but physically difficult, too. So despite the fact that the cost of travel is defrayed entirely by the new employer, many people are daunted by the prospect of flying far away from their own country to another about which they know basically nothing.:yikes:
I should digress here momentarily and put it to my reader that there is an increasing amount of fundamental ignorance in the world about surprisingly simple things. People from an older generation – even those who hadn't fought there – knew where Korea was, they knew that there had been an unsuccessful war prosecuted there in the early 1950s and those who didn't would have at least learned something about it from the famous American TV series, "MASH", with Alan Alda, and a small number of films made about the Korean War in the 1950s (as well as the original 1970 "M*A*S*H*" film starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould). They may even have not known exactly where it was but they had some idea that it was somewhere around China or Japan. Nowadays you talk to young people about a place like Korea and they are clueless; they have never studied a world map even with any passing interest and so they are completely ignorant that such places so much as exist. This is a sad indictment of our modern educational systems, which, far from educating people and encouraging their curiosity about the world around them, seem to be robbing them of any sense of historical, cultural or geographical perspective.:worried:
Some time before departing the green shores of England to teach little kids in Taiwan, I worked as a temp (not for the first time) at a certain well-known fire alarm company in my hometown (also, alas, not for the first time). On my last day there, I was talking to a rather nice young blonde lady: 😀
"Well, it's my last day here today," I said.
"Oh, that's right!" she said: "Where are you going?"
"South Korea." I said.
"Korea?" she replied: "Where's that?"
Apparently she had never even heard of the place . . . so much for the English education system! :clown:
Another example of this kind of ignorance was related to me by Gareth, a former co-worker from Ireland who worked with me at the Sodab-dong hagwon back in 2004-2005. He had gone to fellow Irishman Austin Buckley's "O'Brien's" franchised Irish-themed pub the previous night, and had an encounter with a young American lady:
"Ohhhh, what an unusual accent you have!" she said (or words to that effect). "Where are you from?"
"Ur, akcherly, Oi'm from Oireland." he replied, with typical humility.
"Ohhh, Ireland, yeah, uh-huh . . . uhh, Ireland . . .uhhh, is that anywhere near Maryland?" :alien:
Whatever . . . getting back to my theme, we are subject to a curious phenomenon, according to which people express an interest in the job but then change their minds about it. This has devastating consequences. What usually happens is that they show in the beginning that they are interested, but then, of course, they are also looking at other potential jobs alongside the ones we have on offer, and among these will be better-paid (but not necessarily better in fact) jobs in more northerly locations like Seoul, better-paid simply because it is, er, Seoul. :doh:
Max nested elements reachedMax nested elements reachedMax nested elements reachedMax nested elements reached
