How to Vote With Your Feet
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Living in Korea
Despite my best hopes and efforts, it's clear that I will not be staying here in Seomyeon . . .
As the time for transition back from my current place of work to the previous looms, increasingly I find myself with time for reflection . . . again, in the Wolfhound in Haeundae . . . reflection upon the factors which have basically driven me away from what I had desired for so long – my first adult teaching job in Korea.
And to tell the absolute truth, I am sad and disappointed about this . . . I came to Seomyeon from the boondocks of Yangsan with high expectations of a long stay, doing the task I had wanted to do originally, but it became apparent rather quickly that for someone like myself, this was not a suitable position.
Firstly, although I was given the highest possible basic salary (without overtime, or so I was told, but I'll return to that in a moment), and without a doubt my highest teaching salary to date, my new employer had a system according to which they pay only a relatively small proportion of the full cost of accommodation, and as I rejected their original offer of an apartment, they found me another place, which was actually close to the hagwon but was almost twice as expensive – and unfurnished!
Granted, the utility bills are (with some care) generally small, but along with the other salary deductions such as medical insurance and the national pension, even permanent overtime does not bring me as much per month as the previous place, and this is completely ridiculous.
In fairness, I should point out that my current (but soon-to-be-ex-) employer is not the only one involved in adult tuition which does this – but the opportunities for additional income are limited, especially when you refuse to do Saturday classes (as the last time I did this, I was working mainly free classes during the week, resulting in the extra hours being paid as "normal" hours – that was the last straw!). Unfortunately, by hitting my bottom line, they make it impossible to enjoy being here, either in terms of home comfort or in terms of social enjoyment. Accommodation is not the only expensive thing in Seomyeon!
Secondly, the relatively easy nature of the teaching method means that this job is really better suited to beginner foreign teachers, who need a relatively gentle initial foray into the world of English language teaching, than those of us who have more experience. This means that the company really needs to focus on a core demographic of younger and possibly completely inexperienced foreign graduates, for whom such a rôle would represent a perfect point of departure – provided that they do not go off the deep end after arrival, but rather stay at home most of the time in order to get some savings together. Ah . . . but to be comfortable at home, you surely need at least a sofa and a TV, neither of which were provided, and this is true not only in my solitary case, either!
If it were possible that one always arrived at one's new home here to find no furniture and TV provided, then this might have at least the forgivability of normality, as one would tend to accumulate such comforts, given sufficient time. However, every single one of my previous employers has provided at least a TV – even the one employer in Gwangju who fired me after only three weeks was good enough to buy everything new! But the essential point is that people are hardly likely to stay if what welcomes them turns out to be a sojourn of privation – they may put up with it for a while, but there is always something better on offer elsewhere. Wise people always vote with their feet . . .
It is not my intention to suggest that every new employee arriving in a new job should be indulged with brand-new everything; one would expect that most furnishings have a natural lifespan which covers the sojourn of several employees before expiring. But those same employees are expected to do all of the tasks their boss allots to them, often without question or demur. Some respect is due to the people who are actually doing the work and earning the income for the company in the classroom; the better rested and de-stressed they are, the better they should perform at work. One would have thought that this was the merest essential courtesy (not to mention logic) on the part of the employer.
Now, economies boom and bust, due to macro-scale mismanagement and stupidity (probably with a fair smattering of greed thrown in for good measure), but for various reasons such as travel, study and work abroad, plus liaising with foreign colleagues at work, the English language market remains relatively resilient due to its perceived desirability, at least. Older students – and there are a surprising number of these – often study with us because they actually have little else to do during the day. However, the hagwon style of tuition is for profit, which (as I discovered) is not always the case in public schools, and therefore quantity (of students, and therefore income) trumps quality (of materials and teaching) every time. It remains no less true in Korea than it does in, say, Japan, that persuading individual customers to continue studying even though they are making little apparent headway, rather than taking a break and thinking about whether this is what they really want, comes a poor second to the profit motive.
The irony, of course, is that the large hagwon chains are now known globally because of the Internet, and the idea was put to me shortly after I arrived here originally that I should "try to get a job working for a big [insert hagwon name here]", as the Koreans' attitude is to attach themselves to large and stable companies; self-employment, for example, is not the stuff of dreams for them as it might be in the West, where for some the idea of financial self-sufficiency remains a worthwhile (if somewhat elusive) target to aim for, to escape the fate of simply being another pointless and ignored cogwheel in a large and eternally grinding business machine. What East Asians generally, and not just the Koreans in particular, consider desirable would probably be viewed as being akin to a prison cell by many Westerners.
It is against this kind of backdrop that one eventually feels compelled to make the inevitable shift again; the surprising part is that, for the first time, this means a return to where I had been before. All the more so because I swore that I would never return to elementary school teaching – a sure indicator of how chastening an experience this turned out to be.
And that same experience, of course, tempers severely any and every attempt on my part to encourage replacements to take over after I have gone – companies like this one are out-competed by others who pay the full cost of their employees' accommodation, thereby allowing them to save more of their income. One need hardly point out how much better a situation this represents, not only initially when a job offer is made, but also when the time comes, close to the end of the contract, when the boss asks the employee concerned whether they would like to stay. As the job situation back home may be less than savoury, and employment and accommodation in a now-familiar environment remains available here, and especially as there may even be a better offer on the table from elsewhere in the country – most people with any sense will see the writing on the wall.
Potential applicants should certainly be confronted with a range of options, and even if the worst should happen and they arrive here to find their entry visa cancelled for whatever reason, well-oiled mechanisms exist, as in other countries, for them to have an ordinary landing visa (valid for three months), perhaps make a visa run if necessary, as long as they have the correct documents available, and have no trouble finding suitable enough employment.
My own personal agenda in all of this is to engineer a further transition to continue to work towards something closely resembling my original intended career in Japan. To achieve this, I want to squash my remaining debts back in Blighty and cut loose completely. At the same time, I want to return to the completion of existing projects, which have experienced an irritating hiatus, and reap the practical and financial benefits of so doing. I have no intention of "retiring" in the conventional sense, but I do intend to provide myself with the means to profit reasonably, at least for as long as my health remains sufficiently robust, doing things which were at best only partially possible back in England.
One would be a contemptible fool, when confronted with what the world offers, to turn one's back upon what may well prove to be life- (and career-) preserving opportunities – opportunities which, for whatever reason, were never emergent at home. It just seems a shame that these things did not appear possible before leaving my homeland.
So, with these thoughts in mind, I hit Haeundae on this Saturday night, to avail myself of some Swedish and American cider and commit those same notions to paper. When I came to Seomyeon, there seemed to be some promise, finally, that all of my scientific knowledge and experience could be placed into some kind of suitable educational outlet; but in the end, as I found so often in my previous incarnations, disappointment and more disillusionment seem to have been the outcome.
A person can only take so much of this before other outlets appear more inviting, and like all wise people, when confronted with the inevitable, I voted with my feet.
Tags: accommodation, apartment, conditions, demographic, disappointment, disillusionment, elementary, employment, enjoyment, expensive, foreigner, furniture, hagwon, hours, introduction, job, logic, opportunities, overtime, reflection, salary, school, social, sofa, teaching, transition, TV, unfurnished, vote with your feet
