Google "don't teach" and what comes up on auto-complete? "Don't teach in South Korea" meaning that it's a pretty widely searched for statement. Although this is not evidence of anything it's not difficult to find horror stories on the net relating to teaching in Korea. So is teaching in Korea really so bad?
At the start of this blog it’s probably
best to say that I’ve never taught English in Korea
and to also add that I’m sure there are plenty of people teaching in Korea who are
having or have had a really great time there.
However, the shocking regularity of unsavory stories about the EFL world
in Korea
has always made me wonder just what the attraction of teaching there is.
The first time Korea popped onto my radar was while I was teaching in Japan and I read a US government warning to avoid teaching in Korea. The warning has since been removed but it was up for a fairly long time ( a couple of years at least) and reads as follows:
Despite contracts promising good
salaries, furnished apartments and other amenities, many teachers find they
actually receive much less than they
were promised; some do not even receive benefits
required by Korean law, such as health insurance and severance pay. Teachers' complaints
range from simple contract violations through non-payment of salary for months
at a time, to dramatic incidents of severe sexual harassment, intimidation, threats
of arrest/deportation, and physical assault.
Now this is a pretty spectacular message
for anyone in the EFL world. We all know
about dodgy schools that illegally employ uncertified English teachers,
and we sometimes hear stories of schools conning teachers or teachers leaving
early, or behaving in an inappropriate or even illegal way. These things do happen from time to
time. However this is something quite
different. This isn't just a warning
about some schools but the US government were pretty much saying "just say
no kids!" Not even in the hallowed
halls of universities were foreign teachers safe from being ripped off.
I started to notice a pattern when I went
to daveeslcafe job hunting in 2003 and found something quite odd. Not only did
Dave have a separate section for 'Korea Jobs' (distinct from the Asian jobs
section) but there was also a separate section called something like
"complaints about Korea". Now
things have changed in the 10 years since I started teaching and there is a
separate section for Chinese jobs as well now but the Korea complaints section
under the guise of "Korean job discussion". click the link though and you'll find several
stickied threads with some very telling titles (see picture). It is also relatively easy to find some horror stories if you scroll down a bit further, like this one. So many complaints and enough job offers to warrant a separate section...clearly something was going wrong!
Yet it seems like there is a almost a perfect mirror of this situation among Koreans themselves. That is to say that while Koreans are getting a bad rap for their treatment of foreigners, the Korea press seems to take great delight in bashing foreigners. While I suppose foreigner bashing sells papers in any country, it seems to be somewhat more pronounced in Korea.
So rather than sympathy for foreign English
teachers who are being exploited and abused by Koreans (to the extent that the
US government tells people not to go there) many people seem to hold a
massively negative view of the English teachers themselves. The most shocking manifestation of this
phenomena can be seen in this story about a Korean man who spends his free time
tracking (stalking?) English teachers. The chap in question believes he is
protecting Korea from dodgy foreigners, though how he manages to spot the dodgy
ones is anyone's guess though he claims he has this ability. Some believe that the group's activities lead to the compulsory HIV testing of foreigners working in Korea.
I've always felt when reading these stories
the best thing for both parties would be to just stop seeing each other. Korea's relationship with its English teachers
seems to be like a failed marriage that continues "for the sake of the
kids". If some Koreans abuse English
teachers and believe that they are all lazy sexual predators, the best thing to
do would be for teachers to stop going.
Of course, the problem is that what tends to happen is that the 'good'
teachers will find work elsewhere in Asia and the very worst teachers who can't
manage to get work anywhere else may drift to Korea where teachers are in short supply (that's not to say teachers in Korea are all 'the very worst'). These are just the kind of people that the
Koreans seem to be worried about and yet they are creating the perfect
conditions for them.
Luckily help seems to be at hand! Engbots!
The article notes that " unlike human teachers robots
don’t need salaries or benefits." which is perfect as by all accounts the some Koreans
don't like providing them. (edit: check comments -Mike tells me the Engbots thing is a bit of a myth.)
As noted at the start I have never taught in Korea, so if you feel some of the information here is wrong or misleading please get in touch or comment and I'll make every effort to change it.