My Sheltered Existence

By living in a small city removed from all the big-city life in Korea, I've limited my exposure to much of what Korea is actually like. Visits to Seoul and Busan have given me a taste of what things are like, but to actually work and live in a big city is a whole different experience. Plenty of friends though have spent time (often years) in the bigger cities, and sometimes what they tell me makes me pretty happy I'm living here in Mokpo and not anywhere else.

Most jobs outside of my province are at private schools, called Hagwons. These hagwon jobs are privately run institutions, with anywhere from several hundred students to less than ten. Owning your own business in Korea is something the people here take huge pride in, and the owners of these hagwons often take extreme measures to make sure things are running the way they want them to run. Take sick days, for example.

For me, when I take a sick day, it's a pretty big deal. I phone my school, they get all worried, want to take me to the doctor, and fret over me the whole day I return to school. This is relatively little stress compared to some people. One coworker here had a fairly serious medical issue that needed attending to, and had a trip to the hospital planned for testing. After explaining this to his teachers, they thought about it and said - "Okay, you should be in for 10:00 then." "No," my friend said, "I'm going to be in the hospital all day today." The teacher thought about it for a while, then said "I will find out if that's OK first."

Another teacher managed to injure herself pretty good, and following her school's orders, got a doctors note to excuse herself from class. After giving it to her school, she said she would be back in a few days, however her school didn't agree - "This note is from today. You will need another note for tomorrow." And so, every day she planned to miss class, she had to get up at 6am, hobble to the doctors (a subway ride away), get a note, give it to school, and make her way home again.

Some schools won't even let you take sick days, despite their inclusion in your contract. I've heard stories of schools phoning doctors offices to make sure the teacher really was sick, threats to punish other teachers at the school if sick days are taken, and one English teacher even had two people from his hagwon come over to his house and walk into his bedroom to get him to come to work.

There are other painful methods of control these private schools may try to use on the English teachers here. Two friends of ours, a couple from Canada, were told they should stop hanging out with their friends around town, as it was a distraction from their work (or they might hear other schools that weren't so bad). Eventually, the English teachers threatened to quit, and so the school said fine, we'll fire all your coworkers as well and hire new staff.

Yep, things here at my small town public school are pretty good compared to other places in Korea. I get paid on time, I haven't been shafted out of any money, and the only real demand they have from me is to play volleyball once a week.

75% of my classes are canceled today and yesterday, so it's another few days of blogging, studying Korean and watching movies. On a complete aside, if you're looking for a good (though 90% depressing) movie, I just finished Children of Men in my spare time here. It's a gloomy, dystopian film, but it's wonderfully made and holds a glimmer of hope throughout it that doesn't make you feel entirely sad. Anyway, it's time to "hangug mal kongbu hae" (study Korea). Till the next blog, take care! Oh, and here's some photos from Halloween too, where plenty of hours building my costume ended with great results.