Need to Know – #4 This Contract is Not Binding

January 4, 2012 4 Comments

I was told by a fellow who had taught in Korea for about 10 years, that Koreans consider the employment contract the “beginning of negotiations, not the end.”  I didn’t believe him.  I was an idiot.

I’ve heard horror stories of people not being paid on time or at all, unlivable accommodations or a work load that bore only a vague resemblance to their contracted workload.  I know two teachers who are treated shamefully by the Korean staff at their school because they agitated about getting *half* of their contracted lunch break.  I have suffered nothing like that.  The company I work for has a chain of schools and is a multimillion dollar enterprise, so getting paid has never been a problem.  My initial accommodations were fine but then I was moved a few weeks ago (albeit incredibly inconveniently–I was told Thursday at 9:45pm to be ready to move by Friday at 1:00pm) to a much better, newer, cleaner apartment with an eat-in kitchen and heat that works properly.  Definitely a win.  My workload hasn’t ever been out of control (though I can’t say the same for all the teachers here–there’s one middle school teacher, Mike, who teaches a third more classes than almost anyone on staff).  Mostly I don’t have any contract issues but a couple things have come up:  working hours and vacation time.

According to my contract I work Monday to Friday 2:30-10:30.  In real life I now work some Saturdays as well.  The middle school department doesn’t have enough foreign teachers (or teachers period, it seems) and so instead of being allowed to hire another teacher, the director is trying to cut costs by using the manpower he has on the ground.  At first they (I say “they” because our director doesn’t speak any English so it’s never clear who’s making decisions) tried to wrangle one of us foreign teachers into working every Saturday for three months and we all balked at that.  We don’t have much of a social life apart from the weekends and working every Saturday would effectively cut all of us off from most of the other people we’ve met in Korea.  So we managed to push back a bit and say we would rotate the schedule so each of us worked one or two Saturdays a month.  The $15 an hour (or something like that) we’ll be paid really doesn’t compensate for the hole that’s blown into prime weekend time though.

Vacation time is another weird issue.  Contractually we all get 10 vacation days with 3 of those being during the time when the school is closed for summer break.  So essentially you’re left with 7.  But you can’t take any more than 3 days at a time.  So unless you can combine them with a holiday it really doesn’t give you a lot of time to go anywhere far.  One of my colleagues asked to take off her 3 days in conjunction with the Lunar New Year only to have the director say no, based on the fact that the kids would be doing term testing.  I don’t know if he’s been paying attention but that’s actually the easiest time to have a teacher away because we don’t need all of the staff on duty to do the testing.  We actually all got a free day off during the last testing period.  Eventually he reversed his decision and said yes but that took three weeks while the cost of her plane ticket increased steadily.  Watching that craziness unfold I’m not sure if I should bother trying to book vacation time or just avoid the debacle and make sure that I get paid out for it at the end of my contract.

These aren’t massive encroachments but I do fear that the fact that we’ve kind of “taken it” on these issues means it’s going to get worse in the next seven months.  At just under five months in we’ve already been pushed on this stuff and I wonder how much more we’ll let them push on.  It doesn’t feel like we have much leverage though.  If we want to work elsewhere and we break our contracts we do need the school to sign a release to move our visa to another employer.  It doesn’t seem like breaking one’s contract is a great idea unless you plan to leave the country.  At the end of the day threatening to quit does seem to be one’s only recourse and that would be pretty financially risky for me (read: disastrous) so there’s not much point in my making a threat on which I can’t or won’t follow through.

I’m not up nights worrying about how things will go for the next seven months.  But maybe some nights I fall asleep more slowly wondering what things will be like by the time I leave this place…

That last sentence was actually written about a week ago.  I started drafting this post around December 15th and I still felt the same way on December 27th, even after the text-book writing insanity (producing multiple 25-page texts in a week during Christmas).  But I’m adding to this post because today they managed to finally push enough to piss me off.  Not just annoy me or irritate me, but royally piss me off.

As of this week we start a month of classes during which the kids are on vacation from school.  We start earlier in the day and offer extra classes (the ones we had to write the texts for–oh and the Korean staff just photocopied their pages out of existing books–nice job).  Our schedule for this month is 1:00-9:00pm which I actually prefer.  I find it easier to get to bed at a reasonable hour even if I have less time in the morning to get things done.  I was here for this type of work load and schedule in the summer so I know what’s coming and I’m ready for it.

When I came in today I saw the lead (Korean) middle school teacher, James, talking extensively to the lead (Korean) elementary teacher, Cathy (to whom I generally report).  As soon as I saw that I thought “that’s not a good thing.”  And I say that because James is a manager of the worst type.  He teaches fewer classes than any of his staff but doesn’t seem to make up the extra time doing anything to support his staff.  The one foreign teacher who works full time in middle school, Mike, teaches about 28 classes a week compared to about 20 for all the other–read Korean–middle school staff.  Two of us elementary foreign teachers have had to cover some middle school classes during the week and all of us are pitching in on Saturdays and still, James sees no reason to increase his own workload.  He’s the guy who yells at teachers for letting out students five minutes early when he’s the one who gave you a schedule with incorrect times.  He’s the guy who seems to genuinely enjoy meting out corporal punishment with the kids.  While most Koreans avoid conflict like the plague as a cultural thing, this guy is just kind of a two-faced asshole.  He’s worked for years outside of Korea so he gets foreigners better than most, but he certainly doesn’t act like it.

Anyway, I saw them conversing at 1:00pm and heard nothing so I forgot about it.  At 9:00pm, as we’re all getting on the elevator to leave, Mike tells the rest of us foreign staff that we’re now expected to come in from 12:30-9:00 for the month, as of tomorrow.  This is what that conversation between Cathy and James was about.  Already seething, I asked why.  The reasoning:  we need more prep time.

Really?  See that’s funny because no one asked me about my prep time needs.  I came in early on Monday, of my own volition, to prep because we weren’t given our new class schedule until 9:30 Thursday night last week (we weren’t in on Friday) so there was no time to plan for Monday’s classes.  But I haven’t come in early for the past two days because I haven’t needed to.  For James to suddenly start deciding my prep time needs when it means I have to now work more hours, makes no bloody sense to me.  And the fact that Cathy knew all this at 1:00pm this afternoon but avoided the conflict all day, telling Mike to tell us as we’re walking out the door, utterly chaps my ass.

I think when I wrote the first part of this post, part of my fear was that that I’d never push back on anything; that I’d walk away from this experience feeling as pushed around as I have felt my entire life.  I think I feared that I’d end this year feeling as powerless as I’ve always felt in every conflict situation.  And the first couple times that they pushed on the contract and I didn’t come out swinging, made me feel a little freaked out inside.  I wondered if I wasn’t so much “picking my battles” as much as just avoiding a scary conflict.  But what I’d forgotten was that I have a deep, deep well of rage that tells me when I need to push back.  A rage that sometimes comes in very, very handy.  And one of those times is now.

So my plan is to talk to James and Cathy tomorrow and sort this shit out.  Because that half hour is worth more than $7.50 to me.  One of my foreign colleagues has kind of backed away from the whole thing–ironic, since she’s the one staff member who has commitments every day before work and if the schedule starts any earlier she’s screwed.  But I’ve started to get the impression she likes conflict even less than Koreans do.  The other foreign elementary teacher was screaming bloody murder with me all the way home tonight about this issue and then texted me later to say he didn’t think this was a battle we should pick.  I think his sudden fear comes from the fact that, even though he thinks he led the charge to make sure we didn’t have to work every Saturday, he didn’t, and this would really be the first battle that we’ve picked (though amusingly, he was gung ho about my talking to the Korean lead teachers solo).  I texted back that I’d be certain to mention that I was only speaking for myself.

I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll wimp out or maybe I’ll go in guns blazing.  Ideally I’ll calmly draw a line in the sand and they’ll respect it even if they don’t respect me.  One thing I think I can say with sad certainty, I’m sure this won’t be the last attempt at a breach of contract.

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Dancing Queen

January 4, 2012 2 Comments

This post is about the most epic work party I’ve ever attended.  Now that’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed works parties past–many of them were fantastic affairs, lasting late into the night, during which I got just tipsy enough to have a lot of fun without embarrassing myself too much.  But this party was on a whole different plane.  It was just…epic.

I was dreading this party.  The week had been awful.  It had become clear that while just about every other foreign teacher working in a hagwon (private academy) in my neighbourhood had three days to a week off for Christmas, our school cheaped out and gave us no time off.  In addition, after having been asked about what kind of texts we’d like to use for winter elective classes back in October, it was sprung on us on December 19th that we actually had to*create* said texts ourselves by the next Monday (the 26th).  What followed was a week of being completely stressed out about it, ending with all us foreign teachers working through the Christmas weekend to finish these books.  I’ve never gone into Christmas day quite so angry in my life.

So that was the lead up to the party.  Now, I’ve heard that at the end of every year, the teachers usually put on some inane talent show for the kids that is both humiliating and exhausting. We were lucky; instead we were given a day off and told to be at the office dressed in our finest by 5:00pm on Friday, the 30th for a booze cruise.  While I had no desire–zero, zilch, nada–to do a talent show, I can’t say I was much enthused about hanging out with my co-workers either.  There’s been a fair bit of static between the Korean middle school staff and us foreign teachers of late for utterly stupid reasons and I’m feeling less and less love for our esteemed director every day.  As such, I just really didn’t want to spend more time with them, especially when I was being forced to dress up on a crazy cold day.  The only thing that took some of the edge off was that I figured I might meet some other foreigners at the party, as it was a company wide event.

So we get to the office and of course we leave late so all that rushing I did to be on time–yeah, unnecessary.  And as if Murphy’s Law had been waiting for weeks to strike, I got my period as I headed out the door.  Now I had cramps to contend with for the evening.  Eventually we boarded a bus to head to the pier and it was so hot on that vehicle I thought I would be ill.   It seemed the evening was going from bad to worse.  But then we got the pier and things started to look up.

First of all we got off the bus at this seaside boardwalk deal where there were rides and food stalls.  The food stalls were all open for business and the rides were lit up, but the place was deserted.  It felt like something right out of the prologue of a Stephen King novel.

(This is a tiny album but I put it on facebook because wordpress nearly made me throw my laptop across the room tonight trying to load these pictures as a group–so click here).

There was a bit more action further along but it still had this utterly creepy fun house feel to it.  We were then ushered into one of the stores that doubled as a waiting room until the boat was ready to be boarded.  And my what a boat it was.

The boat that time forgot

It reminded me a bit of the casino boat from the video for Karma Chameleon.  The boat has clearly been in use since at least the 80s.  The underlying decor and design of the boat was decidedly old school but then there were LED lights *everywhere*–just everywhere.

Lights

The same lights, but from another angle

Even better lights

Some of the design elements were so out of this world I just had to take a picture.

I didn't even really understand the point of these...

We boarded magical mystery boat and were seated at our tables by school.  We never really left those tables except to get food so any chance of mingling with other foreigners pretty much disappeared after we left the holding area on the pier.

As most banquet-type parties go, the first part was mind-numbingly boring.

Part 1 of the evening

The evening opened with pledging allegiance to the Korean flag which felt vaguely weird since it’s not, you know, my flag.  Then the CEO gave an awkward speech. “Best teacher” awards were given out and that took a dog’s age.  One of the Korean teachers from my school who got one was sitting next to me.  I asked her later that night why she got the award to which she responded “I don’t know.  I got it last year too, but I don’t know why.”  There’s a morale booster for ya.

In one moment of cool, the directors cut a cake with a sword.  That’s where the cool of that part of the evening began and ended though.  And of course, all of this was done in Korean.  About one sentence was translated into English in all of this.  Kinda felt like a normal work day.

The Remembrance Video turned out to be a failure of hilarious proportions.  The name evoked visions of something that would be  a sober, yet sentimental reminder of a year of teaching gone by.  Instead there was ominous orchestral music with an intro that made you think you were about to watch teachers in a gladiatorial match.  Then pictures of kids doing work in sterile classrooms started to roll by.  It was so off kilter we couldn’t help but laugh.  Then the orchestral music cut out unceremoniously to be replaced with some sort of trance track.  And more pictures of kids doing school work.  The video looked like something a 12-year old boy would put together if he’d never been introduced to the internet.

Finally, as most of us were starting to get light-headed from hunger and my colleagues were into their second glasses of wine, they let us get up and partake of the food on the buffet tables nearby.  And then began the second, and epic, part of the evening.

First there was a terrible female duo on keyboards and guitar.  They were really, really awful.  I figured the rest of the night would be filled with such eye-rolling bad entertainment but I could not have been more wrong.  Suddenly three women and two men appeared on the stage.  An aside, when we first boarded the boat we were greeted by four white folk.  And while it may sound a bit odd to point out their race, I do so because it was so out of place to see someone non-Korean working in that capacity.  It didn’t really make a lot of sense as foreigners tend to come here for pretty specific jobs and those jobs do not include being greeters on random boats.  Well it turned out those greeters were part of the entertainment team.  They were Russian dancers.  I use the word “dancers” loosely because they were really bad.  They’re the kind of people who wouldn’t make it onto the televised auditions of So You Think You Can Dance because they had neither the talent nor the funny factor to be TV-worthy.

What they did have going for them was skimpy outfits.

It's hard to tell but there are ass cheeks hanging out

It was a bit like finding yourself at a bachelor party with your grandfather and then a stripper shows up.  It’s highly embarrassing for everyone except maybe the stripper.  I don’t know who booked this gig but I don’t think they knew what kind of entertainment “Russian dancers” entailed.  From the signage on the boat that we saw later it seemed that the troupe came with the vessel.

My colleague standing in front of the sign advertising the dance troupe

The dancers did a few terrible dances that were simultaneously amusing and horrifying.  I wanted to take them aside and tell them that they really didn’t have to move to a foreign country to hurl away their dignity so forcefully.  They could do that just fine at home.  I hope they were paid really, really well.

As awful as they were though, that definitely marked the point in the evening when things got really funny.  After the Russians finished their dances of ignominy, an mc and a dj (whose turntable really never really got the kind of use it warranted) got up to introduce the talent show.  Earlier in the evening one of the Korean teachers had asked everyone at our table, who would be willing to get up and sing later.  Ever the exhibitionist I said “sure” assuming that there would be a group of us.  Not so much.  It turned out that this was a norebang (karaoke) contest and each school entering the competition would send one lamb to the slaughter.  In  our case that lamb was me.  Well I got up there and did my level best (click here for video).

There’s even better video that includes my other foreign teacher colleagues, but one of them begged me not to post it so I refrained.  For a nation full of people weaned on norebang, our fellow Korean teachers sure were stage shy.  Instead they forced all the other foreign teachers on stage with me.  It was hilarious in the end and I even won second prize, a ₩50,000 (about $44 Canadian) gift certificate.  I kinda hoped with all the hearty congratulations I received that night, that it would garner me some sort of grudging respect/friendliness/fair treatment from the Korean staff going forward.  But as you’ll see from my next post, that was not to be.

After the winning norebang contest there was a dance contest.  I don’t want to post video of other people without their permission so I’m once again refraining, tempting though it is.  Besides I don’t have any good footage of my colleague doing this sort of strange, semi-sexual, flopping chicken dance with one of the admin staff.  Take my word for it though, it was funny as hell.  Oddly, they only won third prize.

After the talent show the mc and dj left the stage.  Again, total under-use of a turn table.  We then headed up to the deck of the boat for a fireworks show that was pretty cool.

And then we were back at the pier.  It was only a three-hour party, but between the crazy norebang and dance contests, the depressing Russian dancers and the most surreal vessel on earth, it was really a lot of fun.  Which goes to show, even when the shine has come off your work place, it’s worth showing up to the parties.

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Right Here, Right Now – Part 2

December 20, 2011 2 Comments

I have a rare break between classes and I should really be working on the 25-30 page student text I’ve suddenly been asked to whip up in a week (uhm, colour me stressed out), but it’s impossible not to write about current events here on the peninsula.

Unless you’ve had your head firmly lodged in your behind for the past couple days, you know that Kim Jong-il, the illustrious “Dear Leader” of North Korea, died on Saturday (though the news was not reported in North Korean state media until Monday).  When friends from North America asked me what the mood was like here yesterday, I wrote back basically “seems like no one gives a shit.” But I was dead wrong.

What was actually happening was my lack of Korean rearing its ugly head.  How do you know if you’re missing water cooler talk if you can’t actually understand what’s being said around the water cooler?  If I was at home and something like this happened, I’d be able to understand snippets of conversation around me and I’d get a much better sense of the “vibe,” but here I can’t get a vibe at all.

Also, I haven’t plugged in my TV since I got here.  When I was back in Toronto, the news on TV was the background noise to my getting ready for work in the morning or fixing my dinner at night.  Sometimes I’d even catch a few minutes before Letterman.  Without news being pushed to me by way of the TV, I forget to go looking for it.  And when you don’t check the news you miss a lot.

I realized this morning though, that I can ask pointed questions and when I ask enough questions of enough people I might start to get a vague sense of the mood here.  And the vague sense I’ve gotten is one cautious relief/low-level anxiety.

People are not running  in the streets freaking out and I actually saw a soldier calmly enjoying a meal yesterday while I was out at lunch.  There is a sort of happy relief that Kim Jong-il is gone.  But there’s definitely a little bit of anxiety about the unknown quantity that is his son Kim Jong-un.  Maybe the passing of the father will leave the son free to throw open the doors of the isolated nation, or maybe it’ll just be same old, same old.  Or, and this is where the anxiety comes in, the son will feel the need to rattle his sabre hard enough to cause a real conflict between the two nations.

To a certain extent none of these questions are likely to get answered until after the funeral on the 28th of December.  Right now North Korea is ostensibly in mourning for their Dear Leader.  After that though, it’s anyone’s guess.  For my part, that second year of teaching in Korea I was planning on suddenly seems a lot less certain.

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Back in the U.S.S.R.

December 16, 2011 6 Comments

Every time I think about the fact that I’m living next door to North Korea, the Beatles tune Back in the U.S.S.R. pops into my head.  It never fails to blow my mind just a little that there is a full-on communist country just a little to the north.  Whenever I’m reminded of the proximity it makes me feel like I’ve fallen into some weird Cold War rabbit hole.  Going on a tour to the demilitarized zone or the DMZ took that feeling to a whole new level.

The day of the tour dawned bright and crisp and I woke up just late enough to get really damn worried about the tour dress code.  In order not to agitate or offend anyone there is a strict dress code for the USO-run DMZ tour.  This dress code is set by the UNCMAC–the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission.  The no-nos included:  sleeveless tops, tops exposing the midriff, shirts with “insulting, profane, provocative or demeaning representations,” short pants or skirts, sheer clothing, “sports uniforms or athletic clothing of any kind including track pants or other stretch pants or warm-ups,” flip-flops, “high hill [sic],” (snicker, obviously no high heels), sandals, “items of military clothing not worn as an integral part of a prescribed service uniform,” and my favourite, “oversize clothing, commonly referred to as ‘gangster’ clothes, including oversize baggy/long pants, t-shirts, or sweatshirts, and ‘biker’ dress such as leather vests and leather riding chaps.”  I want to meet the dude who’s coming to a DMZ tour in riding chaps.

The friend I went with on the tour had also said jeans with frayed bottoms might be a problem (this is her second DMZ tour), but in my morning stupor I managed to forget that I owned a pair of perfectly new jeans and put on the jeans with the frayed bottoms.  Then I spent the entire cab ride into Seoul freaking out about being late (we had the slowest driver in all of Korea) and the prospect of being sent home because of my jeans.  In any case we made it to the USO office in Seoul with enough time to even make a bathroom stop and it turned out that my jeans were okay.

The first thing that struck me as I got on the tour bus was that I hadn’t seen this many non-Koreans congregated in one spot in four months.  It actually felt really weird at first.  And then when I realized that I understood nearly every conversation going on around me I came to realize the blissful state that it is to not understand anything being said in your environment.  It’s like this protective cocoon that allows you to always be in your own head no matter where you are–it’s no wonder that I feel like I’ve done years of therapy in a few months.  I have tons of time to think.

We started off promptly at 9:00am heading towards our first stop on the tour, the Third Tunnel.  Since November of 1974 South Korea has discovered four incursion tunnels made by the North attempting to cross the DMZ.  The direction of the tunnels is proven by the blast patterns which the South takes pains to make sure you know.  The North has claimed that the tunnels were for coal mining but no coal has ever been found in them so that’s pretty unlikely.  While four tunnels have been turned up so far it’s believed by most that there are more yet to be discovered.  A small museum and DMZ Welcome Center has been built at the site of the Third Tunnel.

The DMZ Welcome Center

When we arrived we watched a brief, cheesy video about the DMZ and how it’s some massive buffer for peace and home to so much wonderful wildlife including that “prehistoric animal, the goat.”  We all had a good giggle about that one.  Then our Korean tour guide led us on a quick walk through the wee museum where there were old artillery shells and models of the Joint Security Area (JSA).  After that we were taken to the entrance to the third tunnel.  We were warned that it’s a long walk back up (the tunnel slopes pretty steeply) and anyone with medical issues should not head down there.  Then they gave us hard hats (at which I scoffed) and off we went.

Pictures aren’t allowed in the tunnel but there’s not much to take a picture of to be honest.  You head down a steep incline which is all nice and padded and comfortable with high ceilings and you wonder why in the hell they gave you the hard hat.   And then you get down to the tunnel proper and realize you have left the comforts of a tourist trap.  In the part of the tunnel that was obviously blasted away one painful metre at a time, the ceilings are low enough that I bumped my protective hat (and thankfully not my head) really hard about 5 or 6 times and I’m only about 5’4″.  It’s damp, hot, and with all the tourists, really crowded.  When you get to the end there’s a wall that the South has erected that blocks the actual military line of demarcation or MDL that runs through the DMZ.  It’s a touch anti-climactic but I still felt a real frisson of excitement about the fact that I was in a freaking tunnel built by one country in order to invade another.

Then there the was the climb back up.  I’ve been exercising pretty consistently for the past couple months but that climb back up made me look like some sort of poster child for sedentary living.  I literally told my friend at one point “leave me!”  And eventually she did (she’s 10 years my junior and has nearly a black belt in taekwondo–she’s in much better shape than I am).  Then I trudged the rest of the way back up, huffing and puffing.  I realized eventually that our tour guide never actually went all the way down into the tunnel.  Smart lady.  Koreans are funny breed and so they have no qualms about pointing and laughing which some of them did on the way down watching me struggle my way back up.  I hope they suffered as much on their return trip.

It actually took a relatively long time to get in and out of the tunnel because of the number of tourists and I guess this made us late for the next stop on the tour which was the 도라 (Dora) Observatory.  There you can stand on a landing and take pictures of North Korea but you can only do so from behind a certain line.  If you were to stand closer than the photo line the South Korean soldiers patrolling would snatch up your camera and make you delete the pictures.  The thinking is that you might inadvertently photograph a weakness in the South’s defenses that could be exploited by the North.  If you want to get a close-up look though there are those stationary binocular viewing deals that you put money in.  I didn’t get a chance to use one as we literally were hustled back onto the bus in 12 minutes.  In any case, I was pleasantly surprised by the shots I was able to get seeing as I just stuck my camera up in the air and hoped for the best.

That's North Korea right there

The next stop on the trip was really saddening.  There has been a rail line between North and South Korea since 1929 but it has obviously been out of use since at least the division.  We visited a train station, built by the South, that sits idle awaiting the day when there will be train service between the two nations.  It was this massive monument to the hope of reunification that managed to also be one of the most depressing places I’ve ever visited in my life.

Going north?

After a very quick lunch, we headed to the crowning jewel of this trip, but first a bit of background.  When the armistice was signed at the end of the Korean War the MDL was set at the 38th parallel–the point to which the North’s forces had been pushed back.  In the armistice agreement one of the provisions was that each side’s troops had to move back 2000 metres from the MDL, and that total 4000-metre buffer would be known as the demilitarized zone or the DMZ.  The line is shown by markers that are set every 110-220 yards with the south-facing side of the signs written in Korean and English, and the north-facing sides written in Korean and Chinese.

This is as close as I got to a marker

No fortifications can be built within the DMZ and there are specific rules of engagement for the zone.  Within the DMZ there is what’s called the Joint Security Area (JSA) which was long the only connection between the North and South.  In the JSA there are several conference buildings (referred to as Conference Row) and the MDL runs through the centre of each of those buildings.  There, representatives from North and South Korea can meet with the border running right through the middle of the room.  If you’re lucky, when you go on the tour you get to visit a conference room and step into North Korea.  Outside the rooms military personnel are not permitted to cross the line.  Unfortunately on the day I visited, the conference room shown to tourists was closed for construction.  Having said that, if you go on a DMZ tour someday, make sure you go on one that includes the JSA because that is by far the most amazing part of the trip.

Excuse my friend's arm but this was the best shot I could get of Conference Row as a whole

So before we entered the JSA, we first had to get off our tour bus and move to a USO bus.  Our passports were checked by a military guide (the dishy Lt. Harner–at least I think that was his rank).  We had to leave behind all of our belongings except cameras.  We also had to leave behind our Korean tour guide.  If I remember correctly a South Korean was killed in an incident involving the North and the result was South Koreans being disallowed from entering the JSA.  So our Korean guide and driver cooled their heels and the US and Korean military took us the rest of the way. 

After we signed a waiver indicating that neither the South Korean nor US military nor the UN would be responsible in the event of our unfortunate demise, dishy Lt. Harner gave us a presentation regarding the history of the DMZ.  Then we hopped back on the bus and headed to the big leagues:  the conference rooms that sit between Panmun Hall on the North side and Freedom House on the South.  We entered Conference Row by way of Freedom House but were only allowed to point our cameras towards Panmun Hall to the north.  Again, it’s a military issue to point them south at Freedom House. 

It’s here where you see the view of the DMZ you’ve seen before.  South Korean soldiers on one side watching North Korean soldiers on the other side.  The DPRK soldier usually stands behind a pillar on the top step of Panmun Hall, but came out to look at us through his binoculars a few times.  And with him moving around, the ROK soldiers on our side became more animated.  We were forbidden to gesture towards the North at all but we could take as many pictures as we liked.  We had to enter in two lines and leave the same way.  Also our group could not exceed a certain size; another group waited inside for our return before they could come out.  It was utterly surreal.

After that we got on the bus and went to another look out point.  This was near the site of the 1976 Ax Murder Incident in which two US soldiers were killed by North Korean soldiers while trying to chop down a tree that obstructed their view of the other South Korean look out posts.  This incident actually happened quite close to the Bridge of No Return where North and South Korea exchanged prisoners after the war.  From this look out we had a really incredible view into North Korea and we could see the North’s peace village–Kijong-dong, also referred to as Propaganda Village.  Both the North and South have one village situated in the DMZ and they are both meant to represent the goodness of each side.  The village in the North has brightly painted buildings and a super tall flagpole (the two sides competed on this for a while) with a 600lb flag that takes 30 people to raise.  It was dubbed Propaganda Village because of the loud speakers delivering broadcasts from the north for hours a day.  However no one lives in the village.  It’s truly all for show. 

The South Korean peace village, Daeseong-dong, is actually inhabited and is a pretty good deal if you can get in on it.  People whose ancestors lived in the village before the war can live there and women can marry into the village (men cannot).  They don’t pay taxes, the men are not required to do military service, they are all land-rich rice farmers and the government buys any rice they don’t sell every year at inflated prices.  So in its own way, a bit of a propaganda village as well.

On our way up to the look out Lt. Harner pointed out anti-tank walls and these other walls that would detonate and block the road in the case of a Northern incursion.  The creepiest part was when he told us that on either side of us were active mine fields.   Suddenly that waiver seemed a lot more real.

Soon all thoughts of active mine fields and empty villages were put out of my head though, because we had found our way back to the gift shop!  I picked up a couple of cool hats trivializing the entire experience just a wee bit.  I apologize for the length of this post but I didn’t want to leave anything out.  It was a really incredible day and I totally wanted to share it.  For the full album of pictures click here!

Souvenirs baby!


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Say My Name

December 1, 2011 3 Comments

I realized during my walk this morning that it’s been far too long since I posted about my students.  We start a new term tomorrow though, so this seems like an appropriate time to write a tribute of sorts to the kids who have inspired, amused and driven me nuts for the past three months.

As I mentioned in a previous post, most of the elementary students choose an English name and some of those names are all kinds of awesome.  Some are spectacular choices while others are just spectacular failures. Some kids choose a name and then never bother to check into common spellings for that name.  They proceed to spell the name both incorrectly and strangely and will not budge when you suggest a more common spelling.  Some kids simply can’t pronounce their English names very well and I’ve spent a lot of time in classes having a student repeat their name over and over again, only to realize it’s something really basic like Brad or Amy.  What I find super odd is their propensity to choose names that include sounds that don’t exist in Korean.  Most kids find the consonant sound “v” difficult to say but lo and behold there’s an Elvin in one of my classes (and no he will not spell his name “Alvin”).  The letter “r” is also a challenge and yet there are no shortage of Rachels, Richards and Brians.

I find all of this so amusing that I’ve actually picked my three favourite English names out of my 40-odd students.

In third place, Rubby. This is one of my favourites mostly because the child in question considers her name to be “Ruby.” When I first read her name on an attendance sheet it was well after I’d heard her pronounce her name aloud so I assumed I was seeing a typo. Not so much. I soon noticed that whenever she handed in work, “Rubby” was emblazoned across the top of it. I conceded defeat. I won’t lie though; I chuckle “rubby” to myself when I’m marking pretty often.

The runner up, Captain. Do I really need to say anything about this? He’s a cool kid with an even cooler name. He makes me want to name my future son Captain. I also like to call him “Cap-i-tane” when the mood strikes. He seems to enjoy it. I’m not sure if his name entirely suits him or not, but he takes the prize for sheer cool factor.

And the winner: Yetty! Now Yetty is probably my very brightest student.  So bright that she’s being moved to a level in which she’s the only student in the class. I’ll be teaching her again (yay!!). She knows what a Yeti is. She still rocks the name. She used to actually have another far more conventional English name but she decided it was too common, too plain. She wanted something unique, so she cast off Sally and took up Yetty. She has, by far, the most amusing and yet awesome name of all my students.

In a sea of Kevins, Sallys, Jennys, Lenas (not sure why that’s so common), Kellys, and Harrys, and at least one kid who asks to be called Harry Potter specifically, there are also some stand out selections that impressed me when I first heard them.  In no particular order they are:

Lance
Duke
Eva
Dana
Clara
Scarlet
Ty

Tomorrow I get a crop of new kids. Who knows what names await!

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Do The Right Thing

September 29, 2011 10 Comments

This blog post has been on my brain, waiting to be written for a while now.  Today has been a bit bleak, so it seemed the time to write it.

You may remember a teacher I mentioned a few posts back–the one who is seemingly ill-equipped to be living alone in a foreign country.  Well the plot surrounding her has thickened.  In addition to not being very independent, Mona–her name for the purposes of this blog–is also a pretty piss poor English teacher.  Apparently she has a masters in electrical engineering and was a TA in some prestigious schools (I’ve heard Oxford mentioned in the rumor mill), but this has not translated into teaching English or children well.

To begin with, Mona’s first language is not English.  She speaks English relatively fluently but I believe, from the blank stare she sometimes gives me after I’ve explained something, that her English comprehension could use some work.  She also has a pretty strong accent from her native language, so it is not in any way, possible for her to teach someone how to speak English like a native English speaker.   There are plenty of people who come to Korea to teach English who don’t have any great love for kids and who will never teach children again.  But for a year or two they fake it.  They’ve got the native English speaker thing nailed down already.  For Mona she’s got a two fold issue in that the kids find her hard to understand and her classes are apparently mind numbingly boring.  The material we teach can be pretty soul destroying without massaging, so it is up to the teacher to make it halfway interesting for the kids.  Mona doesn’t seem to be able to pull this off.

Here’s the kicker–Mona was never interviewed for this job.  I had a phone interview like every other foreign teacher at my work place.  But Mona’s recruiter got her a contract on his word that she was suitable.  Because she was already in the country and the school had several positions they needed to fill in a hurry, they let it slide.  To be fair, this isn’t entirely uncommon.  I had to insist upon an interview.  My recruiter was going to get me in on his word as well.  The former director of the school–who quit at the end of August–seemed to play things a little fast and loose.  She also only showed up at the office about twice a week.  The new guy is much more hands on and he wants Mona out. The problem is that Mona’s got a one year contract with the school.  So I think his plan is to drive her out.

At the moment, Mona’s just getting hammered with criticisms of her classes and admonishments to make them better.  Her classes being boring is a valid criticism and something she can work on.  The other major criticism though–her pronunciation–is asinine.  That’s like asking one of our students to attain the pronunciation of a native English speaker within a week.  There’s a reason I give my kids consistent feedback on pronunciation–because it has to be learned and it’s not learned all at once.  Mona can no more improve her pronunciation in any meaningful way with any speed than any of our students can.

You might wonder how I know all this.  Well that’s another part of this shit sandwich–everyone on staff knows that Mona’s under scrutiny–except Mona.  Meetings of all the foreign teachers are held without her and information about her situation is divulged.  Then we all get caught in the crossfire of trying to cover when she asks if there was a meeting held without her.  When the school was involved in a fair to promote English academies, all of us foreign teachers attended except her.  She’s required to perform a mock class in a meeting that the director will attend.  So far no one else has had to do that.  Oddly, Mona has more classes than any of the other foreign teachers.  My impression is that the director is trying to set up a situation in which she is bound to fail so he can fire her without too much hooplah.  But I also think he wants to cover his ass because they tried really hard once she arrived (and they figured out what they had on their hands) not to give her a copy of her contract and she would not let it lie.  And frankly who would?

I don’t actually disagree that Mona needs to go.  But the way the school is going about it is awful.  The fair way to deal with this would be to sit her down, tell her that her English isn’t good enough to be teaching here and that they made an error in not interviewing her, pay her for the month and give her airfare home.  The situation would be done and she probably wouldn’t try to sue (not common but it happens).  Instead, because they want to save face and hold on to the mere $3000 it would take to get rid of this problem (I guess the $2200/month they’re paying her doesn’t matter), they’ve created this situation where she’s becoming more and more settled in Korea and the kids who are stuck with her as a teacher are not getting anything out of it.

So this is bad right?  But it’s not all of it.

I can’t stand Mona and no one else likes her much either.  I’ll cop to it, she’s one of those people I didn’t feel great about from the moment I first met her (five-hour shopping experience notwithstanding).  When she first arrived, the guys in the office looked at her face first and surmised she was older (she is a year older than I am).  When we girls first took a gander, we looked at her clothes and decided she must be in her early twenties.  She enjoys sporting what I like to think of as stripper heels, lace-bottomed, way too sheer leggings with wee skirts that barely cover her ass, and bodice hugging shirts.  One day she came to school in a get-up so work-unfriendly that even the guys commented–and that’s saying a lot because our Korean co-teachers can really bat it out of the park for inappropriate work wear (clear heels anyone).

I think Mona’s wardrobe alone, seemed to indicate such bad judgment that I was already put off.  Then she started with the questions.  I didn’t get hit with it right away.  At first she directed all her questions at Mike and Sam but then Sam quit and Mike moved to a different department.  He also gave her a bit of a talking to one day when he got frustrated with her.  Now I’m her target.  One day I actually realized that between her questions and those of other teachers, I’d been at work for 90 minutes and hadn’t touched any of my own work yet.  I managed to get the other teachers to back off, but she doesn’t take the hint despite my telling her that she needs to figure things out on her own in case I get hit by a truck.  For most people, that would sink in.  Not Mona.

And it’s not just work related questions.  It’s questions about every possible thing that she needs to know about living in Korea.  From what she can do without her alien registration number (nothing) to if she can use her iPhone from Canada here (not without great difficulty and expense–as she realized when she left her phone with some shady dude in Seoul, was frightened that he was going to hawk it, and he still didn’t crack it for her).  She almost never asks a question just once, but asks it over and over again.  I assume she’s looking for a specific answer and she figures if she just keeps asking, she’ll get that answer.  By the time we’ve arrived at the third or fourth permutation of the same question, I’m usually well into rude asshole mode and then I put in my earbuds and don’t talk to anyone until I have classes to teach.  It’s like this almost every day.  She’s actually tried to stop me within the 5-minute window that I have between classes when I literally have time to drop off one stack of books, pee and pick up another, to try to ask some involved totally not urgent thing.  It’s just relentless.

In general she’s annoying enough to everyone that she’s been frozen out socially by all of us.  I’m so done with her by the end of a work day that I have zero desire to be around her after work.  It’s gotten so bad that, since we all leave work at the same time, we’ve devised these elaborate ways to ditch her in order to not have to include her in after work plans.  There’s actually a rule about this sort of behaviour among kids at school because there’s an expression in Korean for completely ostracizing someone:  wahng ddah.  We got a major case of wahng ddah on our hands.

I know how awful this sounds and I’m not proud of it.  Two of the other teachers (the ones who tend to make me do the dirty work of the ditching her frankly) have started saying they feel bad now.  And we all should.  Because Mona’s not a bad person–that would make this easy.  She’s just unbelievably annoying.  But I still have to admit, none of us would want to be in this position–maybe about to get fired from a job to which your visa is attached, in a foreign country, with no friends and family and no one at work willing to be honest with you or even friendly towards you.  It’s an awful position.  Having said that, those same compassionate souls made sure to leave me with her tonight on the walk home–because I guess a five minute walk is too much for them after answering exactly none of her questions all day.  Admittedly I’m feeling like a bit of a martyr right now.

It’s an awful situation and there’s a part of me that feels like someone, if not me, needs to do the right thing:  tell her frankly that her job is on the line and there’s even a chance there’s nothing she can do to save that job and let her know if she doesn’t tone down the questions at work she will have a very hard time making any friends.  And then there’s part of me that kinda feels like her job situation is something no one should touch with a ten-foot pole despite the fact that we all know about it and that maybe this is one of those hard lessons she’s going to learn about being a workplace pariah.

What I do know is that I don’t like the person I am when it comes to her and I feel like I need to figure out how to change that for my own good.  But as to her situation overall, I’m at a loss.  What do you think?  Watch this while you think about the answer to that question.

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A Belated Happy Chuseok!

September 13, 2011 9 Comments

This is a little late as yesterday was Chuseok, but better late than never.  Chuseok is like Thanksgiving here in Korea but it’s a really big deal of a holiday here.  People travel to be with family and it far outweighs Christmas in terms of  importance.  A for time off work, one gets Chuseok off plus the days before and after. This has resulted in a four-day weekend for me. Can’t sneeze at that.

As is the custom, we get a small monetary bonus at work as well something that is considered kind of a cool thing here:  Spam. People love it here and it is a completely appropriate gift. This gift box of Spam and oil pictured below probably ran about $30 and everyone at the office got one. I’ve never actually eaten Spam in my life so if I ever crack one of these cans open it will count as a new cultural experience.

The Spam in its own gift bag

The lovely gift box

The Spam motherlode and special oils

Happy Chuseok!

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The Kids Are Alright

September 9, 2011 10 Comments

In fact, the kids are mostly pretty awesome.

I realized that in all my postings, I haven’t said much about the actual students that I teach and I think I’ve been remiss.  Today I had some enormous, storming-out-of-the-office, silent-treatment-inducing drama with one of my co-workers.  I’m still annoyed, but the day wasn’t a total write off, and that’s entirely because of my students and how much fun I have teaching them.

I teach three levels of proficiency–Crawl, Walk and Gallop–and each level is broken down into beginner, intermediate and advanced.  The levels may have age ranges of up to four years in them but mostly you get kids around 7 or 8 in Crawl, 9 or 10 in Walk and 11 or 12 in Gallop.

The challenge with kids in Crawl is that they are young, they’ve already been at school all day and then they come to me at 4:30 in the afternoon for more information to be crammed into their brains.  In another language.  They can be at school until 9:00 or 10:00 if they’re cursed with a detention.  They’re obviously tired and getting restless, but what makes them easy to teach is that they are still wide-eyed and curious and just a joy to engage with.

Since I’m still learning names, I carry around a class list.  On the first day of term I wrote next to the name of a Crawl student, Larry, “instigator.”  I know, terrible.  But I was trying to figure out the dynamics that were going to play out in the class.  What I quickly discovered with Larry though, is that while he has a hard time staying quiet when he’s asked to do so, he is probably one of the most engaged kids in the room.  When I was trying to explain the word “different” to the class, and said “opposite of same,” he stuck up his hand and said “Teacher, what is same?”  And it turned out, no one in the class knew the word “same.”  Because of Larry the whole class learned “same” and “different” and I’m sure we were all saved a lot of frustration in the ensuing activities.  Also, when he understands Larry does this adorable thing where he says, “Ahhh, Teacher, understand.”  When Larry gets something, it melts my heart.

The intermediate and advanced levels of Gallop classes are pretty much a pure joy because the kids are relatively proficient by then.  At that point we can get into some really amazing discussions.  We’re forced to do these awful debate classes that are really kind of make work and we have to choose our topics from a magazine that we get every month.  It’s almost always a slog for us teachers to pick topics from the magazine (and we nearly came to blows about it this week) but we muddle through.  This week, we had to read an article about the American Civil War and in the course of explaining the vocab words that the kids didn’t know in class, we ended up having a lively discussion about discrimination, mostly spearheaded by this girl Jinny.  I had Jinny in another class briefly last term and I never realized what a curious kid she was.  The other kids got engaged in the class because she really moved the discussion forward with her questions.

When it came time to do the debate topic, we teachers had chosen the dry “Should other countries get involved in civil wars” but my group wasn’t having that.  We talked and decided on something even closer to home for them–the re-unification of North and South Korea.  We were short a student so, with only three kids in class, I had them form a team to prepare one side of the debate and I did the other side.  Mostly when I’ve had to sit through the kids’ debates, they’ve been patently awful.  The arguments are weak, the kids mumble their way through presenting them and it’s a pain for all of us.  I’ve mostly hated debate class.  But this time, it was magic.  The topic was relevant to them, they put forward really smart arguments for having done no real research on it and it was one of the most successful classes I’ve run.

There’s one boy in that class, Andy, who literally says everything in a whisper.  He’s super bright, his grasp of English is good, but he does not speak above a whisper.  I hear he’s quite loud in Korean though.  All the other students in that class are girls so he’s usually pretty disengaged, but he was laughing as they worked on their debate points and it was just so cool to seem them all enjoying class.

Walk level is like the puberty of the proficiency levels.  Some of the kids have been “leveled up” too quickly.  Others are not sufficiently challenged.  The girls in that level tend to give a lot of attitude and the boys can really be smartasses too.  I don’t know what it is about Walk.  However, in one of my Walk class there is this absolutely *tiny* little girl named Cathy who brings up all my maternal instincts.  She honestly looks like a cross between a Korean fairy and a field mouse.  I have never seen a child who looks so much like something out of a Disney drawing.  I have a feeling she is either new to the school or has just leveled up because she has a bit of trouble with the material in a way that makes me think she’s not accustomed to the drill yet.  Watching her little brow furrow is just about the cutest thing on earth.  She works hard though and I think she’ll be fine.  Sometimes she even shouts the answers with the boys and I can see a competitive streak in her that will probably help her go the distance.

In that same Walk class, there are two Kevins.  Because asking Kevin 1 to answer question 2 or Kevin 2 to answer question 1 starts to get confusing and annoying, I now call Kevin 2 by his Korean name.  I can tell you the class got a good kick out of trying to teach me how to say his name.  The poor kid gets chosen for answers more than his share now, just so I can learn how to say his name properly.  He’s a great kid though and he really took the ignominy of my butchering his name well.

It ain’t all roses.  My other Walk class makes me crazy.   There are three girls in the class who I have to give many a stern stare.  I had to give some kids detention today because of undone homework and I felt terrible because I know they were mostly just confused about the due date.  On the other hand, I don’t see myself feeling bad the first time I give those three girls detention for disrupting the class.  It’s a mixed bag, but mostly, the time flies when I’m in class.

Not a bad way to make a living at all.

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Need to Know – #1 Currency Exchange

September 9, 2011 2 Comments

Because I couldn’t come up with a song title to match this concept (though I’m sure there’s one out there), and it’s always good to pay homage to PBS, Need to Know seemed to be an apt name for what will be an ongoing series of short posts.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve been struck by all the things I needed to know before I ever hit the ground.  There are many questions that you don’t even think to ask, so you can’t possibly get answers.  I’m only one person, in one city at one school, so this isn’t going to be a brush with which you can paint all ESL teaching in all of Korea, but it’ll at least be true to my experience.  This first installment is about currency exchange.

This is not a major issue, but it turned out to be a bit of a pain in my ass.  The director of the recruiting firm that I used assured me that I’d be able to get money changed with no problem when I got here and not to do so at the airport because the rates would be high.  At first I decided to be all proactive, so before I left Toronto I tried to change $1000 Canadian for Korean won.  Not as easy as it sounds.  My bank (Royal Bank) doesn’t keep anything but Canadian and US dollars at the branch I used.  It would have taken three business days to get that much won but I was in visa limbo so I had no idea if I had three business days to wait (in the end, I didn’t).  I went to a small currency exchange in my neighbourhood and they only had $200 worth of won.  Some of the bigger currency exchange firms may have more won on hand, but call and confirm before you spend your time trekking to them.  I ended up coming to Korea with only $200 worth of won, but I’m glad I had at least that much without being charged airport rates.

I was lucky in that my neighbour took me to a local bank on my second day here and I was able to change my money.  You just have to bring your passport with you and they’ll hook you up.  You don’t have to have an account or anything.  However, he did the entire transaction in Korean for me.  I probably could have muddled through with a Korean phrase book, but it certainly made things go more smoothly to have someone with me because I would not have known to take a number or which wicket to go to otherwise.  So yeah, if you want to avoid the hassle, change your money at home.  Well in advance.


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