I am a bit of a lurker. My son was adopted from Korea, so I have a personal interest in Korean culture. We have not yet traveled to Korea as a family, but plan to do so in a few more years. I recently learned about the opportunity to teach English at a one of the language-immersion summer camps in Jeollandam-do. I’m hoping that I’ll be selected through my grad school and will get to experience the Korean culture and people, as well as teaching.

I don’t recall you posting before. Are you a lurker or did you google upon this blog?

And BTW, you misspelled my username again. It’s Sonagi. It is a Korean weather word for a sudden downpour of rain. It is also the name of a novel that is included in Korean secondary school anthologies.

Finding a companion will be extremely challenging as most Korean men around the same age or older are married and the ones that aren’t probably aren’t a good fit for a Western woman. I and other foreign women who lived in Seoul did date younger men, but we had to search through a large haystack; foreign men definitely have more choices.

I don’t think there will be a mad rush towards those positions.

The organization of the KORETA program was a legendary failure, mostly because the government didn’t see the importance of an extensive orientation program (I believe one week or something ludicrously short before sending these young kids into the countryside), and with regard to exploitation or bad behavior by the schools, the program wasn’t an advocate for the foreign teacher, but rather in cahoots with the overall goal of exploiting maximally.

But at the time, there were no foreigners in schools, and the laws only allowed them to (via cities, do’s and then individual schools being allowed to hire foreigners directly) from the late 90’s, if memory serves.

So given the state of the market, and the fact that Koreams, at least, tend to have inside news or connections on some tutoring or at least know how much there is to be made, it might be hard to recruit.

Even Fulbright won’t expand past the 70’s or so when it comes to numbers, since the applicant pool doesn’t get above the few hundreds, and logistically, handling that many new foreigners’ visa issues, travel plans, dietary needs, problems that crop up, medical issues, and on and on… that headache is pretty minor at around 30, but rises exponentially, it seems, after around 50 or 60.

After being through or assisting in several ETA orientations purposely held in sequestered Kangwon National University in Chuncheon from 1994 to now, I’ll say that whomever gets hired to be staff for that first orientation of 500 Americans being shipped off to the countryside — whew. As Billy from my favorite movie, Predator, lamented: “I wouldn’t wish that on a broke-dick dog.”

And if they have the orientation program in Seoul? God help them. Seoul has enough modern delights to bring down morning workshop attendance to around 1/4 of total capacity. And if the Korean administrative tendency to not plan or think ahead is any indication, along with the disastrous beginning of the KORETA/EPIK program (which started with only around 200), this is going to be a disaster of legendary proportions.

Still, perhaps there has been some instititutional knowledge gained from the mistakes of the past with EPIK (unlikely, though), or the simple fact that I doubt they can even fill 100 spots might make this entire question moot.

The local thinking is that if the EFL teachers benefit, then the locals must be losing somehow. Instead, they make regulations of such paternalism, near serfdom, that the teachers lose, and the locals then lose too. Instead of a win-win situation, you get a lose-lose situation. Not letting the foreigner have job advancement within the Korean management structure is a symptom of all this.

FREE THE MARKET!