Hi all.

I have a very bad hagwon experience to relate, and am writing this in the hope that sharing this information with the foreign teacher community in Korea might prevent the same people from damaging other peoples lives.

In october 2012 I signed a terrible contract with a [edited] guy [edited] called M[edited]. I was a first time teacher and pretty naïve, but even at that stage I knew it was a bad deal. The pay was 1.8 million per month, and the hours were full time. I was kinda desperate for the job, so I signed. The school was a small independent Hagwon in in Gihueng-gu, Yongin-si called Creative English.

After about 5 weeks in Korea, M[edited] still hadnt gotten me my health insurance, which was a clause in my contract, and I broke my finger. At this point I was still pretty naïve and still trusted M[edited] to a certain extent. M[edited] said I could use his insurance but insisted on taking me to a hospital in Suwon which he assured me was excellent. The operation was a disaster. The anaesthetic didnt fully work (they literally strapped me down to the table, and I still had plenty of feeling in my hand) the finger got infected and then lated the bone slipped again. If I had had my own health insurance like I was supposed to this might never of happened. My finger never recovered and I still cant bend it.

In the middle of June they asked me if I would consider extending my contract with them. I said I didnt want to resign for a year, but I needed money to pay for a Spanish language course I was aiming to do and we arranged that I would stay until the following February, with a pay rise to the standard 2.1million effective from october. In late June/early July (cant remember exactly) they approached me at the end of the day and said they had sold the school. I didnt realise it at the time, but this selling of the school was a direct breach of the terms of our contract, which explains why they kept it secret until the last minute and then tried to cover up what they were doing. They did assure me however that the arrangement I made with them had been explained to the new owner who was ok with it.

The new owner introduced himself as Mr Choi, but said his English name was Henry. I sat him down and went through my contract with him, and it was soon clear he had no experience in the hagwon business. He actually thought I was joking when I told him I was due a severance upon completion of my contract. In august he went back on his word to keep me on until feb when he found out there was paper work involved. I subsequently found out Id been working for him for a few months and he had given me a false name. His real name is Sun-hee Seong.

On my final day he paid me everything that was owed to me except my severance, which he only ever reluctantly acknowledged he was responsible for paying as the current owner of the school. He assured me it would be two weeks until I got it and there was no need to worry. I didnt trust him, but even the labour board told me there is nothing they can do until the payment is at least two weeks overdue. I had already booked a flight, so I had little choice but to hope he would do the right thing.

He never paid, and I found in March that he actually sold the school again and went completely of the radar, a la M[edited]. These [edited] people are liars and frauds and are only interested in ripping people off. Never have anything to do with them, they will rob you blind. All three of them have fairly disarming personalities and seem reasonably trustworthy at first, but I just wanted to put this info out there, in the hope that there is a slim possibility that any of them or any one thinking of working for them will read it.

[edited]

Best regards, Joe