August is drawing to a close and so, therefore, are my holidays. As I understand it, I have the month of August off, which means I will be returning to work on Sept. 1, a Wednesday. I've been told, not by my supervisors or anyone who works at my place of employment whose duties might include assuring that there will be a teacher in the classroom or in the Zoom room for all of the English language classes that will be the foreign teacher's responsibility to teach, but by a guy who teaches in a different department, that classes actually START on Sept. 1. Well, not for this ranchero. I'll be using Sept. 1-3 to design my curriculum and that, I assume, will include making my lessons. If there are plans of using a text, teaching face-to-face, starting on Sept. 1, moving to a new office, using new classrooms, or any semblance of a schedule, I have not been informed of those plans yet. So I will do what I ASSUME I am supposed to do. Not an uncommon thing around these here parts.
I told you last post that I asked for help getting vaccinated and none was forthcoming from any member of administration at the unigwan where I work. If you don't know what unigwan means, and can't guess, I will explain that word as we go here. I also asked for some idea of what I will be expected to do in the upcoming semester and, in typical unigwan fashion, no response was forthcoming. I have been lucky enough to have friends who have given me what meagre information I have, and who helped me get vaccinated. What I'm saying is I'm on my own here. Expect no help and management will not disappoint. That sort of thing. The same as it was in Gongju Dae Cheonan.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are definitely positives to that! Full autonomy is the dream of a lot of ESL teachers in Korea who work at hagwans (private cram schools) where owners (of the hagwan and teacher) are constantly changing schedules, class content, students, even contractual obligations, often at the whim of one pushy parent (I could have said mother) of one student. I already have the HUGE boon of not posting grades, marking tests or evaluating my students. My classes are already very casual. So if you add to this the advent of being completely ignored by management and administration, it's a dream ESL job in Korea! So, if I am ignored during the upcoming semester the same way I've been ignored when asking for help getting vaxxed and with schedule information, it will have been worth it. But as you might guess, from the tone of this post, past experience, or just my luck, I don't expect that to be the case.
We'll find out soon, but so far my predictions about this university posted to this blog have been outrageously accurate. I hope that changes, but... sigh... it won't. This "school" has behaved as a hagwan on each occasion. It's proven to be a hagwan posing as a university, or, a unigwan. The only slight surprise was the success of my campaign to cut out the desk-warming, and if you recall, "success" is a bit of an overstatement, "conditional success" would have been better. The other problems with this job, I'll have less success at changing. But again, don't get me wrong, if these problems were enough to make this a bad job, I'd go somewhere else. Having said that, sure, this job could be, and really ought to be, a durn sight better.
I am ever mindful of improving my lot in life and if that seems like I am always complaining, a Negative Nathan (or whatever), well I'll gladly put up with your derision, but I will not say I'm full when I'm hungry. I shall not accept as the crown of my desires a big tenement block with flats for impoverished tenants on thousand-year leases! May my hand fall off if I carry one brick to that tenement! Lots of folks get the impression that maybe I'm just fond of sticking out my tongue or cocking a snook at ESL jobs in Korea, but I've lived here long enough to say with confidence that if the position existed worthy of no snook cocking or tongue sticking outing, I'd cut off my tongue and my... umm - er - nose and never again have to urge to do either. Look up "cocking a snook" and you'll see why I didn't offer to cut off another appendage you might have expected. Ahem.
I love me some Dostoyevsky! Anyhoo, unlike old Fyodor, I won't be put in front of a fake firing squad then have my sentence commuted to hard labour in Omsk, Siberia if my protests are discovered. Probably just relegated to job hunting again or sent back home to hard labour in northern Canadia. And so, I will record in this very blog, the inevitable conditions of my "conditional success" getting desk-warming cut down. One I am already aware of and hopefully it will not prove to be the hagwan-esque micromanagement that it threatens to be, but from experience, not negativity, I am predicting that it will be. I have been informed that I will need to write out daily reports of every hour I spend on the job, who I am with, what I am teaching, sign them and turn them in once a week. Format and detail will likely be micromanaged within this micromanagement. It will just add some extra, tedious busywork to each day that I feel the right to protest. If they don't care enough to get me vaccinated or give me my schedule, then it would seem in character for them not to care enough to expect neat, detailed and frequent reports of my classroom activity. But I fear it is coming.
I feel some history is needed here lest you take me for an ingrate. I have a job doing less work, making more money and enjoying more vacation time than any I could hope to have in Canada. I've given my country more chances than enough to demonstrate the superior employment market all my friends and family seem to be convinced exists there and while it was good to see those friends and family members while I was there, apart from that and a few cultural indulgences, I count those years as wasted time. However, the situation in Korea has steadily deteriorated, at least in the ESL racket, in a very familiar worldwide economic way. And it has a great deal to do with the inherent weakness in the occupation, which I've talked about before: teachers are nice. Nobody wants someone who isn't nice spending time with their children. It's a must in the profession. "Nice" is scoffed at as weakness in the business world and since education is now just business, teachers are being punished for their kindness. We won't unionize or demand fair conditions, we're too "nice." We won't even try to get cost of living adjustments. We're too "nice." We'll basically take any shit the hagwan bosses and university administrators can come up with in their limited, but diabolical business brains.
The list is endless, but I'll point out a few that the administration of Gongju U. where I work now, has gotten away with piling on the "nice" teachers who came before me. Basically, this job has been stripped of almost all the good stuff it almost certainly USED to have. The salary of 2.1 million per month is bare minimum. It was probably competitive or even superior at one point, but hasn't changed since that point. "Nice" teachers, rather than being negative, have moved on to higher paying jobs away from here most likely.
University jobs are sweet because they have two semester breaks that are two months long. That's a lot of vacation and it's paid. Those jobs are quickly disappearing. A lot of unis give teachers optional or mandatory "camps" during that time now. Teaching kids, teachers or administrative staff. The better (or slower to take advantage of "nice" teachers) schools pay their teachers over and above their regular salaries since these camps are not part of their regular salary, but paid holidays ARE. And, you guessed it, some places give the "nice" teachers mandatory camps with no extra pay. That's what I did in the month of July. So not only was I working for free, I was also given the worst schedule imaginable, one that actually breached my contract, AND told to do attendance AFTER the camp had finished. You can see how the month of July for me could have been considered just a part of the contract if I were ignorant of the past in Korea when universities just didn't do this. But I know about it. I just have to pretend I don't. Undoubtedly they've had a string of teachers here who either don't know that these two camps a year should be extra pay or vacation, or they've had teachers like me acting like they don't know this. And I have done many of these camps. They average close to a million won a week. Some I've done have paid more. That's 8 million won of free labour I am giving my employers. Per year. But are they satisfied with that much "niceness?" Oh no.
I said "per year," last paragraph, but to be exact, my contract is 11 months. This was a fad at hagwans and universities that I thought I'd seen the last of till I got here. It's done because of the Korean severance pay law. Employers must give employees the equivalent of a month's salary after a year of work. Private schools have screwed "nice" teachers legally by adjusting laws to consider pension and severance the same thing. They couldn't just eliminate the severance, they just act like they've never heard the word. (in Korean or English) But public schools, including national universities (Gongju National University) employed the 11-month contract to screw the "nice" teachers. I asked about that at contract signing time and was lied to. As explained before, I didn't expect them to pay my severance even after I was told they would. I knew they were lying, but it was an acceptable loss. Of 2.1 million. So where are we now, about 10 million won I am knowingly being gauged here. A young, inexperienced teacher might not realize this. "Nice." That's what management think. But is that nice enough for them? Oh no!
The main "niceness" was the one I had removed. I was spending conservatively half of my time in the office not teaching. What that amounts to is an entire salary I was not receiving due to the mandatory office hours. That brought our total of free money for the uni up to an astounding over 35 million won. That's a savings of over 38 thousand dollars per year (or per 11-month contract)!!!
Now you begin to see how management around here all consider the teachers, or at least the ones they can screw like this, to be STUPID, not nice. But I'm STILL not finished.
Housing is expected to be provided on an E-2 visa contract. That's what the majority of teachers get here if they are not Korean, married to Koreans, teaching fully qualified positions, or some other ways to get a better visa. Universities and hagwons have largely switched to housing allowance instead of housing for their teachers. It has allowed them to provide the same amount of money to teachers while landlords have consistently raised rents throughout Korea. There's no way of proving this, but I'm absolutely convinced the landlords and schools conspired together on this. Landlords KNOW how much housing allowance you are getting. They use it against you when you are looking for apartments. They'll say, "You are getting 300,000 a month housing allowance, so you can easily afford 500,000 won for this 200,000 won apartment I am trying to fuck you into renting." Teachers, not the hagwans and unigwans, have been forced to endure the rising housing prices. And we won't ask for higher housing stipends because??? Now you're getting it! We're too "nice/stupid." But if you think anybody is finished taking advantage of that niceness, OH NO!!! I'm not finished yet.
The good contracts for university jobs used to be like the REAL university jobs around the world that require minimal hours of teaching per week in order to allow you to publish papers and books in your field of choice. You know, like a dozen hours a week or so. I had some of these sweet jobs before! But since most of us aren't publishing works in the ESL field, and since the amount of money charged for an hour of ESL teaching has gone up by a factor of 10 or so in the last 20 years, universities too are getting as many hours out of their ESL livestock as the hagwans do. There are actually a few remaining places where they expect publications from teachers, but in most places, just more teaching. Public classes, kids classes, English cafes, teacher training, and camps.
And along with 12-hour weeks, full vacation is destined to become a thing of the past here in university ESL gigs. Two other phenomena are cropping up: 1. Refusal to grant permission to teach elsewhere (camps for a million a week) during vacation, and 2. Difficulty in doing immigration paperwork for the private camps has increased. I wouldn't be surprised if you need more than a letter of permission from your current employer nowadays. Not to mention salaries for the private camps are rarely a million a week any more. Though the cost for students attending the camps has steadily risen.
Relocation allowance (moving expenses), travel allowance (for commute to and from work), annual air tickets home, Chuseok bonuses, Christmas parties/presents, performance rewards, Korean classes, communication with department heads, communication with supervisors/buffers, and any number of other perks are disappearing too. Immigration is constantly becoming more tedious, difficult and expensive. Application processes and interviews are too. And both are becoming more like hostile spy interrogation than the start of an overseas adventure it once felt like.
As far back as I can remember teaching ESL in Korea (1997) people have been saying that the industry is going to be gone in 2 years. I have to give Koreans credit for not just dumping it in 2 years. They've strategically (diabolically) made it more profitable for Korea, and less profitable for teachers. And who can blame them if the teachers are nice/dumb enough to keep accepting crappier and crappier jobs?
I have little doubt that my job was a whole lot better than it is now. And there are still a few ways it could be made worse. I wrote this because it's probably difficult for most of my readers to understand why I complain about my job, but still stay. I will be back teaching, most likely by the 6th of September, although, as I said, I still have no idea. But I will be happy to be working a job I know I couldn't match in Canada. It could be, and once was, much better, and I will continue to complain and try to improve my work situation as much as I can, but inevitably, it will get worse and worse until I change jobs and/or go back to Canada.
I shouldn't say, "inevitably," since there is a shinier endgame to my employment over here in Korea. It is possible for me to save here, unlike anywhere else I've worked. This means a very modest retirement, not in Canada, but in a cheaper, probably Asian country is a possibility. And it's not far away for me, a single, aging dude with very few needs in life.
Dang, the weather is getting better, sports is getting more interesting, my favourite month of the year, the glorious month of October, is approaching, and in a lot of ways, I'm actually looking forward to getting back to work. I hadn't planned on this being such a bummer of a post.
As the saying goes, life is suffering. Every day I manage to find ways to take joy in my suffering. I suppose this blog being an attempt at self-therapy, more of the suffering than the joy tends to find its way into it. But, to end on a happy note, don't worry, I'm not gonna blow my head off or anything. Dark humour. Come on! Things are pretty good. Seriously! As I've railed against before, I refuse to say, "Well at least I..." and pretend to be deliriously happy in everything. For example at least I didn't get hired for 12 months only to be fired at the 11 month point.
It happens in Korea. I didn't make that meme. Or, at least I ALMOST had to do mandatory Covid testing, one of the times Koreans panicked about the filthy foreigners spreading Covid. But I didn't. Also I didn't make THIS meme:
In both cases, the Korean characters mean "hagwan." And I was ordered by Gongju University to get tested immediately, just didn't go. The response was, "Oh, so you are not going to do what the directors told you to do? Do you want me to tell them that?" I said, "Yup. Please tell them that." The next day I called the Covid hotline and was informed that without symptoms, I shouldn't be tested, nor would I have been able to get a test when I was ordered to "by the directors" at 9:30 PM. This, as I'm sure you know by now, is probably the worst of the things that is increasing every year: the discrimination and general anti-foreigner sentiment that comes with the gig.
All that being said, things are tough all over but not as tough here, trust me. September will mark the beginning of 8 or 9 straight months of weather I like in Korea, possibly a new (full-year this time) contract here in Gongju, maybe a better apartment and with any luck the end to Covid and the return of really great vacationing. Although, I can only imagine how expensive things will be with airlines and all things tourism trying to make up for Covid losses.
The future will contain more complaining about my job, but the future is bright. Now at least you have a better understanding of perspective. If I've given you that, this post was a success. Further complaints as events warrant...
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