My Job

I’ve finally decided to take on the monumentally boring task of explaining my teaching job and the education system of South Korea. If you enjoy learning random facts about other countries/cultures, read on. If you are hoping to be wildly entertained, I advise you to skip this post altogether.

In a broad sense, there are two types of schools in South Korea: public schools, and hagwans (a.k.a. private language schools). The public schools are run by the government while hagwans are run by private owners in more of a business model. English is taught in both public schools and hagwans, but a very high percentage of parents send their kids to a hagwan after school in the hope that they get a better grip of the English language. Therefore, the public schools run during normal school hours while most hagwans run from late afternoon until about 10:00 at night. As a foreigner coming to Korea to teach, I have the option of teaching in either model. If I were to teach in a public school, I would teach alongside a Korean co-teacher, I would likely have at least 30 students in a class, I would be the only native English speaker in the school, and I would probably be paid less, although I would get more vacation time. If I were to teach in a hagwan, I would teach my own classes (usually with a pre-determined curriculum and materials), I would rarely have more than 12 students in a classroom, I would most likely be teaching with co-workers from all over the English-speaking world, and I would probably get paid more. If you weren’t able to pick up on the obvious bias in the previous two sentences, I will be teaching in a hagwan.

Trying to find a hagwan I trusted, however, proved to be an interesting challenge. In order to get a job, you can either apply to a recruiter who will take your information directly to the schools, or you can apply to the actual school itself. Originally, it was my intention to find a school through a recruiting agency, my thought process being that if there was some discrepancy with my contract, I would have a middleman to help me sort things out. I quickly realized, however, that most recruiters work strictly for the motive of making money and don’t particularly care what happens to you once you are placed with a position. Additionally, after speaking to one recruiter who actually sounded less informed about the jobs I was seeking than I was, I decided to exclusively apply directly to the schools. After applying to a half dozen schools or so, I received three job offers. I didn’t take the first because I thought the salary and benefits were less than what they should be, and the interviewer sounded more interested in selling the school to me than I was in selling myself to the school. I didn’t take the second because they were clearly desperate. I sent them my résumé; they sent me a contract. The third school was the school that I was holding out for. Unlike the other schools that I applied to, I didn’t receive this job by answering a Help Wanted ad. The only reason that I even knew about this school to begin with was because my friend Charles, who taught in Daegu for over a year, told me that I should try to get a job with them because they are an ideal school to work for. Upon investigating, I found myself agreeing with Charles. MoonKkang (the name of the school, located in Daegu; population: 3-4 million) offers a higher salary for working fewer hours, offers more vacation time, and uses a structured curriculum, meaning that I won’t have to slave away for hours creating materials in my spare time. They also seem to go to greater lengths to ensure that teachers are adapting to the culture and the school…they offer free Korean language classes and, if the pictures on the website are in any way accurate, they evidently host a lot of parties that may or may not involve wrestling in the mud, dressing up like a Rubik’s cube, and drinking lots and lots of beer and soju (a Korean liquor that apparently tastes like vodka). If you’re interested in looking at the school itself, you can visit the website: www.mkeslteaching.com There are also some YouTube videos put out by my school that talk about culture/food/communication, etc. If you want to check them out, go to YouTube and type in “Moonkkang.”

I finally leave in a week and a half! Despite the fact that I’ve known for almost six months that I was going to do this, I’m somehow not prepared. The good news is that my almost complete lack of preparedness should make for much more interesting blog posts in the upcoming weeks.

Everyone Thinks I'm Going to Die

I will comment on the details of my impending job status at a later date, but for now I need a moment to rant about a recurring problem that I seem to be having every time I tell someone that I am going to teach English in South Korea for a year. Almost everyone, regardless of how worldly and open-minded they may be has a universal reaction: “You’re going where? Oh my! Why do you want to do that?” Even when people try to say something positive, they usually say it with a question mark at the end and an inflection of the last syllable: “Congratulations? Good for you? That’s great?” One person even caressed my shoulders, looked deeply and sincerely into my eyes, and offered the encouraging words of, “It’s okay! You’re gonna make through this,” as if I have just suffered through an embarrassingly public divorce complete with an embittered custody battle. The most enlightened of the group cite a potential threat from North Korea as the reason for their skepticism…the most ridiculous think that South Korea is a third world country in Africa. While those who have been supportive have been overwhelmingly so, my psyche is inevitably beginning to feel weighed down by the throngs of nay-sayers who demand that I defend my clearly erratic and ill-conceived decision to temporarily exile myself from the country. The truth is that most people don’t know anything about South Korea, and they therefore presume that it must be a terrible, unsafe, undeveloped country. I’m not wagging my finger and shaming anyone for this because the truth, also, is that until I began to obsessively research information about every aspect of the country, I too knew very little about it. Allow me to enlighten you with a few findings:

1. South Korea is modern. – This is a relatively recent development. Immediately following the Korean War in the 1950s, the war-ravaged country was left with decimated land, broken families, and mountains of debt. The road to recovery was a long and hard one, and South Koreans paid for it by being forced to work excruciatingly long hours and suffering under one military dictatorship after another, but eventually they emerged out of it ahead in the 1990s and currently have the 10th largest economy in the world, a pretty impressive statistic for a country the size of Indiana. Korea now boasts being “the most wired nation in the world” with over 75% of the population connected to broadband at home, and internet cafes and gaming palaces an omnipresent reality in the cities. If you find yourself saying “so what,” I completely understand. I mention these facts for the exclusive purpose of dispelling the notion that South Korea is an impoverished country. It is not. Not even close.

2. South Korea is safe…honestly – I was listening to the local South Dakota news tonight, and the highlights were depressing but not unusual: rape, child sodomy, murder, armed robbery, domestic violence, etc. – Too many South Dakotans falsely believe that we hold a monopoly on safety. We don’t. If you want to play the comparison game and analyze the streets of Sioux Falls versus the streets of San Francisco, then of course South Dakota is safer. But that doesn’t exactly mean we have achieved a utopian society in this humble state. Do I feel safe here? Absolutely. Here’s why: I don’t hang out with drug dealers, I don’t go into neighborhoods that I know I don’t belong, and I don’t walk around late at night by myself when I’ve had too many vodka crans. This basic code of conduct may not completely eliminate the threat of potential harm, but it can significantly decrease it, in South Dakota as well as South Korea.

That being said, the “Dangers” and “Safety” sections of my Korean travel guidebooks are curiously bare. The reason for this is because there isn’t all that much to say. According to my friend Charles, who spent a year teaching in Daegu (a Korean city of 3-4 million), he never once felt unsafe walking around by himself and he never came across a neighborhood that he would describe as “sketchy.” Guns are illegal in South Korea, and reports of rape or civil violence are few and far between. As far as I know, no gun-wielding Korean has ever walked into a national museum and opened fire because he was pissed off that said museum was devoted to an event that he claims never happened. I might need to worry about inadvertently eating barbecued dog, but I won’t need to worry that the lack of metal detectors in my school will invite troubled students to bring weapons to English class. It seems that the worst thing that might happen to me is that a crazy driver might accidentally swerve maniacally into me on the sidewalk (evidently the stereotypes about Asian drivers are quite true).

3. The situation with North Korea is impossible to predict. – I know I can’t get around the issue of safety without talking about North Korea, and I won’t try to. Does North Korea talk a lot of shit? Yes. Do they possess nuclear weapons? Yeah. Do these weapons have the range and accuracy to hit specific locations in South Korea and/or in Japan? Yep. Will they use them for this or any other purpose? I believe it is unlikely, but I cannot say with certainty. Here is what I can say with certainty: North Korean leader Kim Jong il is rumored to have life-threatening pancreatic cancer and is not expected to live much longer. Unlike South Korea, the North does not have a thriving economy. They do not have the means and they hardly have the motive to wage war against another country at this point, particularly against a country that has more resources, more allies, and more intelligence than itself. Does this mean that I have nothing to worry about? Not exactly. But if I were living in the States, would a potential attack from North Korea still be a legitimate possibility? I’m afraid so. Like I said, I don’t think it will happen, but these things are not easy to predict. I plan to exercise caution while overseas and to pay close attention to the antics of the North, but I do not plan to suck my thumb under the covers of my tiny bed in my tiny studio apartment for a year. In the words of Forrest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Another International Adventure Begins...kind of

During the past several months since graduating from college, I’ve found myself in the same rut that many recent graduates typically experience upon the completion of their undergraduate studies: What do I do next? After completing a long-term substitute teaching position in April, I decided that I would go to graduate school in the fall, though I could not articulate my reasons for wishing to do so. As graduate school rapidly approached, I began to seriously question my motives for going back and realized that it was more about buying myself two more years of time than it was about driving myself towards some particular career goal. I began to panic. I frantically performed nationwide job searches for positions that were even vaguely related to my somewhat precarious English degree. At four in the morning, three days after my initial panic attack set in, things were about to take a serendipitous turn in my favor. When I saw the job listing, I immediately burst into boisterous, maniacal, sleep-deprived laughter because I somehow knew instantaneously that this was the solution to my dilemma: I would just remove myself from the country for a year…to South Korea.

There are literally thousands of opportunities for native speakers of English to teach the language in various Asian countries, and you only need a four-year degree to do so. As it so happens, my degree is in English Education, and I also have experience teaching in a global context (I completed my student teaching in Ireland last fall.) While I jest that I am only doing this so that I can put off making serious decisions regarding my future, the opportunity is actually much more practical than it may initially appear. The salary is at or above what first year teachers receive in the States, the cost of living is relatively low, and your employer not only reimburses your plane ticket, but also pays your rent. Not to mention the fact that I get to see, work, and live in another part of the world, which is always a bonus to me, even if it means giving up a few conveniences such as a car, an industrial sized jar of peanut butter, television stations that broadcast in English, and clothing stores that are not tailored to 5’, ninety pound Korean women. And since getting a job in America is not exactly the easiest thing to do right now, and since going blind-sighted into graduate school doesn’t sound like a good idea, it seems that the timing is right for me to run off to South Korea for a year.

Of course, there are a few little bumps in the road…I know what you're thinking..."They got nukes over there!" as my boss so bluntly put it when I told him the news. This was not a major concern when I was living in Ireland. Ireland is quiet. Ireland is humble. Ireland is well-behaved. Ireland is aware of what is going on in the world, but it does not preoccupy itself with interfering or meddling in the business of other countries. Ireland does not go on power trips. And while I can generally say the same about the country to which I am potentially moving, I cannot say the same about its neighbor to the north. North Korea, in plain English, is very, very naughty. I will be living in a country that has the most heavily guarded border in the world, a fact that is both comforting and scary. Comforting because it is secure...scary because it necessitates security. Of course, while the tensions between North and South Korea have never fully ceased to exist and have actually escalated recently due to some provocative missile tests in the north, it seems as though lately North Korea has been focusing most of its energies on hating my country of origin, so perhaps in a twisted sort of way I will actually be safer by living in closer proximity to North Korea. It's a story I plan to follow closely, which is not always easy to do since the American media would prefer to expend its resources interviewing people who met Michael Jackson one time forty years ago, as if this somehow provides profound insights into his life, his death, and his character. In any event, I don't think I'll be going within fifty miles of that border, else I run the risk of being sentenced to twelve years of hard labor.

The other problem that I have with hopping on a plane to Korea is that I haven’t been offered a job yet. As is usually the case when I become determined to do something, I have become prematurely excited. I only applied to the recruiting agency yesterday, and while I am confident in my likelihood of getting placed with a teaching position, I perhaps should have waited until I signed a contract before I impulsively quit my job and spent money that I don’t have on Korean travel guides. I guess while I may be the voice of reason, my behavior suggests otherwise.