Question & Answer

Why did you make this website?

In America, I would be considered a whistle blower for revealing gross misconduct. In Korea, I am considered a nonconformist. Only in Korea am I treated as a miscreant because I choose to speak out about injustice. I often felt the need to write about my experiences and what I saw occurring to me and others on a constant basis; it was my outlet when Korea provided no other way to cope.

I wrote this to tell others, lest they find out the hard way, like most. People have to be warned.

When and how did you begin the blog?

I was writing randomly throughout the year as a way of de-stressing. I probably began around the 3 month point; that’s when the newness wears off and the realization kicks in. It is also when the stresses begin to overwhelm you. It’s not culture-shock, mind you; it’s how everything is so deceptive and illogical when working at a school in Korea.

The blogging began as a letter to the next native English teacher at my school and grew into two separate blogs. I think that writing a letter to the next teacher is such a simple gesture, hell, any introduction is better than none when you first come to Korea.

Nothing says welcome to Korea than being thrown into teaching a classroom, without any preparation, while you’re still jet lagged. Orientation is worthless, not to mention the fact that it should given soon after you arrive not at the 4 or 8 month, or even later, mark – by then, it’s even more useless.

It shouldn’t be Korean teachers meeting you when you first get off the plane, it should be the last native teacher at your school. But, schools would rather hide their inadequacies than correct them. They’d rather have their teachers ignorant than knowledgeable; new people will work hard when they first arrive, until the realization hits them – nothing matters here. Teaching English in Korea is a vicious cycle.

Are all schools bad in Korea?

No. Some are better, but spinning the wheel of misfortune is not a great way to spend the next year of your life. Many differ in various ways, but a lot of similarities exist in the mistreatment of native teachers.

Are you well educated?

Yes. I have a B.A. and a M.S.

Would you suggest coming to Korea?

No. Go teach somewhere else, where your efforts might actually be valued, where people are true to their word, where you are treated well, where you might be trained, to a country that is diverse. You will be happier elsewhere even if you have less money to show for it.

Do you think Korea will get better?

No. Not in my lifetime. It will take a very long time for Korea to change for the better. That’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of my mother who is full Korean.

Why didn’t you leave earlier if you hated it so much?

I came here with someone and wasn’t going to leave without them. They disliked their job as well, not as much as me, but that’s not saying much. I came to mainly pay off student loans, in a poor U.S. job market, and I managed to do that albeit at a cost. Even if I wanted to leave, leaving your job mid-contract in Korea is not easy or recommended; it’s similar to running for the border – don’t get caught, don’t come back. Who wouldn’t want to leave their sweatshop though?

Like most people, although it’s traumatic, the thought is generally one of “well, I’ve gotten this far and there’s only so much left to endure before I get my end-of-contract bonus.” There are a bunch of ‘native teachers’ that are just ‘vegging’ in Korea. They don’t have any growth prospects here, they don’t gain any skills, they don’t find Korea to be that interesting, they are purposefully kept idle (seat-warming for at least half of your workday), they aren’t acknowledged, and they don’t exist in Korea; they can’t wait to leave. Korea is successfully promoting its anti-tourism campaign through the mistreatment of native teachers.

Did you research about teaching English in Korea before you left America?

Yes. But, it was, apparently, not nearly enough. Good blogs detailing the ins and outs of teaching ESL in Korea are barely starting to appear. There are many disgruntled people that post on Dave’s ESL, but they don’t seem to have cohesion – I wish they would each create a blog about their experiences instead of letting their ideas and thoughts vanish within the depths of a forum or possibly censored therein. It’s one thing to flame a forum, it’s another thing entirely to create a blog explaining various details.

Korea is Great(ly Confused)

This mistreatment of native teachers in various ways is too widespread, too undocumented, and too distressing for words to express fully.

Not only is it unethical. It is also a striking example of a lingering paternalism that is still all-too-present in Korean culture – this notion that “certain people do things however they want and the details are no one else’s business.”

What else can be expected when you put all the power: the money, the contract, the visa, the work, the rules, the overall treatment, of a native teacher into the hands of a few people without any way of checking to make sure those people are being true to their word?

It’s definitely the parents’ business to know who teaches what, and how it is taught, to their children. It is definitely a native teacher’s right as a person to be treated with equal and just rights, and not be demoralized and disregarded by traditional Korean methods of tyranny. Such methods should not persist in modern society, or at least in a country that pretends to be one.

How can Korea, or the Ministry of Education, continue to allow or promote such malevolence? How can education take on such a grotesquely underdeveloped shape even after years of time, money, and effort? How can bad schools be allowed to continue and the native teachers, within them, have so little they can do to reach out for help?

It’s time for Korea to shed its cloak of invincibility; it is not as great as it has pretended for so long.

Korea is not, nor has it ever been, ready to take care of native teachers. There is no real system of trust.

Quantity vs Quality

I see this time and time again. Education in Korea is not about quality, it is about quantity. If there are 800 students in a school, those 800 students must all have English education – the same English education. This flies in the face of logic, since the large majority doesn’t want to learn and have been taught to not care since an early age.

When I was teaching the first level of middle school which is like the U.S. equivalent of 7th grade, I was told (a few times) to try to make the lessons more fun. Now, I can understand having an entertaining and interactive lesson, but I can’t understand the practice of continuing to use the English classroom and native English teacher as a source of games.

This practice is started at an early age. Students are taught that English class is a time for fun, not a time for real learning… When they get to middle school, it has already been deeply ingrained into their minds and they don’t want to learn.

The native English teacher is here to ‘play’ with the students. It is not so much of an English class as it is a cultural awareness class. Hence, why native teachers are here in Korea; they prefer people without skills. They want more pawns to do their bidding. The younger and less educated the native teachers, the more ripe for manipulation they are.

The standards for teaching in Korea have slowly been reducing over time. It once was a four year degree (in anything) was all that was necessary. Now, even that one restriction has been whittled down to two years. An example of this is the TALK (Teach and Learn in Korea) program that tries to target college students. Also, recent pay scales have been allowing people with two years to ‘teach’ with lower pay.

Korea has been relying on the influx of job seekers coming from other countries to fill its native teacher ranks. Due to the economic rut, Korea had, recently for the first time, an over abundance of applicants. Korea is still doing what it does well – throw money in the air.

Why No Change?

Why hasn’t it been fixed? Why do the horror stories continue?

The current system benefits the Korean English teacher. They get held in high regard for ‘helping’ to provide the English education to Korea’s children that it desperately wants. They don’t want anyone to see the dark underbelly, what happens behind closed doors. Native teachers don’t ask for unfair advantage, they ask for transparency. Even just saying things upfront without withholding issues until the last minute would be a step in the right direction. Native teachers want what they were promised.

The schools retain ‘power’ over the native English teachers under the grossly false assumption that they will use their leeway for the greater good. The native teachers remain ‘powerless’ against the machine that whispers, “this is how it’s done at all the schools, this is how it will always be done.” We, the native English teachers either submit to their gross negligence or become an unwitting foe to their machinations.

Where do you turn to when you want to change any part of it? What is your lifeline when you want to speak out about the oppression? The Ministry of Education (MOE)? GEPIK / EPIC / SMOE? The school? Your Korean co-teachers? All of the above? They don’t want to change, they fear change. Right now, they’re cozy; they might actually have to do what they’re supposed to for the first time ever. They’ll try to shut you up, cover up anything that makes them seem dysfunctional. They don’t want to look bad or appear to not be able to handle their subordinates in front of their superiors. They want to pretend that everything is fine and dandy.

After each semester, I was asked to submit the lesson plans/worksheets/etc that I had used to teach. I refused – I lost them spontaneously. It wasn’t in the contract that I had to submit ‘my’ ideas/lesson plans to some unknown source (possibly the MOE) for them to do who knows what with it. I wouldn’t just hand over my stuff to Korean co-teacher for them to hoard and later pretend was their own creation. I wouldn’t roll over and play dumb to their flawed system in which corruption was a way of life.

I’m pretty sure the Korean co-teachers submitted something because they had to, which had nothing to do with what I actually taught. But, that’s how it goes here, if things aren’t right, make it seem right on the surface. It’s a common motif in Korea to pretend the problems don’t exist. Korean people are happy in the illusion that their kids are getting the ‘best’ education. The public knows virtually nothing about what actually occurs in the classroom. Even if they did see a demonstration, it has almost no real bearing on what actually occurs from day to day.

No one wants to admit they aren’t capable of doing their job correctly. With billions of USD spent and almost 20 years of trying, Korea had better have results. The education system mirrors the human stem cell research disaster that occurred in 2005.

Results are wanted so badly, at any cost, in Korea that the head of the stem cell research in Korea thought it prudent to fake stem cell research results favorably so that he could bring fame and large funding his way. Even before this horrendous situation was brought to light, the Korean government’s stance as said by the 16th President of Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, "it is not possible nor desirable to prohibit research, just because there are concerns that it may lead to a direction that is deemed unethical." This still mantra holds true in every facet of Korean society.

There is no reason to stop, or fix, the English education program even if it is unethical.

Exploitation

It’s modern day slavery. Feel like you’re being mistreated? Too bad, all roads lead to “shut the fuck up and take it.”

As an example of this, I’ll show you some emails I received regarding my problems.

Me:

…I do 100% of the lesson
planning/teaching all of the time. The 4 co-teachers that I teach
with separately don't plan anything nor do much of anything during the
classes (other than the ever-rare translation).

My question is this... Am I forced to make all of the lesson plans,
all of the time, to fulfill every minute of every class?

Or am I, as per contract, supposed to "do lesson planning and develop
teaching materials with a Korean co-teacher."…

Mark Merzweiler – Gepik Representative

You really need to do these by yourself...not fair...but better than the hassle of involving your co-teacher...

Me:

Mark Merzweiler said this when I asked the same question, Apr 20 (a month ago):
"You really need to do these by yourself...not fair...but better than
the hassle of involving your co-teacher... "

Thinking about his answer kind of made me think that it goes against
what they were trying to teach us about co-teaching at orientation.
Isn't the co-teacher(s) supposed to help us make lesson plans and
teach? ...

Simon Stawski – Gepik Representative (www.eatyourkimchi.com)

Join the club. … Our co-teachers don't even come to class, for that matter, so we're purely on our own. The only time we don't make lessons on our own is for the open/demo classes, but those are a sham.

I think the implicit understanding of the co-working with co-workers is that they won't step on any toes. That's their contribution. Ideally, I think Gepik would like to work towards incorporating the co-teachers into the lessons and planning of lessons, but that's probably not going to happen anytime soon. …

Martina Stawski – Gepik Representative (www.eatyourkimchi.com)

…The problem is there is no training manual created to help new teachers create lessons, so we feel frustrated and confused. …

… If you really want your teacher's involved, you should make a meeting with them and give them your lesson plans and prepare them for the upcoming classes. …

* * * * * * * *

I did try to take Martina’s advice, by the way. My 4+ Korean co-teachers were dead-set against giving me any of their time. Their excuse, which is fairly common and you’ll hear a lot, “we’re very busy.” Even trying to get Korean teachers to show up on time to your class (they usually walk in 3-5 min after the bell rings) is nearly impossible. Not to mention the fact that my classroom is only a 10-15 second walk down the hall.

I find the ‘busy’ excuse extremely impossible to believe. Given that if you ask native teachers we can verify that the Korean co-teachers are seen goofing off at their desks from time to time, everything from sleeping, eating snacks, talking/joking about non-school topics with other teachers, to internet shopping and browsing. So, for them to say that they can’t spare the time to even go over the material that we created without them is a lie of epic proportions.

After expending a large amount of energy to get them to finally try to meet me to talk about my lesson, only one (of 6) co-teacher came for 5 minutes, exactly before class started, to look at my material. She did this for about one month and stopped. During this time after some pseudo-meetings/confrontations, I realized that in their minds, they think it’s not their duty whatsoever. Strangely enough, Korean teachers have a totally different understanding of what co-teaching means; it’s not logical, that’s for sure.

Keep in mind Simon and Martina Stawski have a skewed view of teaching in Korea. They were teachers in Canada before coming, they have training and certificates, they like their schools (or should I say their schools like them). They are an example of an uncommon scenario in Korea where most people that come here have no training, and are fresh off the boat. Mark Merzweiler has taught here for many years, he must either like Korea or not have any other options of work.

Their advice is common here, “shut up, do everything, take the exploitation, don’t complain.” It is the modern form of slavery.