You’ll be happy to know that the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education plans to increase the number of native English speaking teachers from 362 to 480.
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Seoul Plans to Increase Foreign Teachers
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on January 4, 2008 at 8:52 am, filed under Asides, Ministry of Barbarian Affairs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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12 Comments
Well, depending on the pay, housing, working conditions, and vacation - somewhat important factors in choosing one’s place of work - I’d have no problem with living/teaching English immersion up in Gapyeong. (Almost as nice as Danyang and a lot closer to Seoul.) My guess - and forgive me in advance for being a little cynical - is that the package ain’t that great.
That’ll be (480 - 362 = 118) 118 less teachers suffering in Hagwon Hell with broken promises and questionable business ethics.
So, this is good news indeed.
Your computation having demonstrated that teachers are countable, I’m sure you mean “118 fewer teachers”.
really!?? which particular ass do they expect to draw these people from?
lotsa luck to them …
Read the reports on Dave’s ESL about GEPIK/EPIK and how much nonsense is involved in those programs, before you start cheering. Broken promises and questionable ethics are not confined to the private-sector academy.
What Brendon said.
The comments at the bottom of the article are worth a good laugh, especially the ones who complain about ‘white privilege’ (”where in the article does it say ‘whites only’?”, as one person replied).
So, there are very few Korean Canadians and Korean Americans who work here as teachers? Isn’t that to be expected since there are so few of them back home? I’m not saying that they aren’t discriminated against by Korean employers (sometimes, they are), but statistically speaking it’s to be expected. Don’t know about Korean Americans, but there are only about 150 000 Korean Canadians. In other words, Korean Canadians make up about 0.5% of the population of Canada—it’s a very small minority. On top of that, few Canadians are willing to come to Korea to teach English…and I bet even fewer Korean Canadian are willing to come to Korea to teach English (after all, many of them have left Korea to live in Canada).
PS. Strangely enough, there are nearly as many Koreans living illegally in Canada as there are living legally there (something a I like to remember whenever the Korean media claims that a few thousand Canadians taking advantage of the 6 month tourist visas to teach here illegally is an epidemic (the vastly more numerous Koreans living illegally in Canada probably don’t even bother to renew their tourist visas))
http://www.asianpacificpost.co.....03.do.html
#7
183,000 in US
100,000 in Canada
46,500 in Japan
10,000 in the Philippines…
That’s alot of illegal Koreans, I had no idea. Just a thought, what would happen in the US if we decided to implement stronger immigration laws, and fine, jail, and deport the illegals. Or how about this: send all the legal Koreans back to Korea for a 3 month background check, you have until March. I think someone would be getting sued.
#5
It’s not so bad as ESL jobs in Korea go. One of the big points of contention is that the contract says you’ll have 22 teaching hours a week. Unfortunately, there’s also a clause buried deep within that says the principal can require you to work overtime. Which means most folks will work more like 24 - 26 hrs a week. They’ll also screw you nice and hard in the summer and winter programs.
But speaking from my own experience, and that of other SMOE teachers I know, paychecks have always come on time and in the proper amount, including overtime, and vacation time never has to be haggled over.
“Just a thought, what would happen in the US if we decided to implement stronger immigration laws, and fine, jail, and deport the illegals.”
You’d have a sudden labor shortage. Immediately there would be a glaring absence of people willing to clean your houses and pools, trim your shrubs and trees, pick your fruit and vegetables, cook your french fries and wash the plates they were served on. (Just like Korean industry would be suddenly screwed if they really tried doing the same.)
“Or how about this: send all the legal Koreans back to Korea for a 3 month background check, you have until March. I think someone would be getting sued.”
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but I can see where you’re coming from. Take comfort in the fact that many of them are probably given a hard time by Homeland Security when they come and go.
It all makes you wonder why hiring a few dozen extra English teachers is newsworthy.
Yeah, in reality, it ain’t newsworthy.