Clara Kim wrote:
"Recruiter 45, pls doa better job checking the mental state of the teachers before you bring them to Korea or suggest their docs to any school, specially the male ones. We're talking here of the well-being of little children in the hands of impatience - syckos."

Yeah, and recruiters, while you're at it, check the mental state of the directors and staff personnel at the hagwons. Try to get an idea of whether the owner/director of a given hagwon has enough sense to park a bicycle, much less run a school. Check the school out, too, to see if it's anything more than a babysitting service that gives its foreign teachers no disciplinary backup whatever.

On my third day of teaching in Korea, I walked into a class of 11-year-olds, and in the midst of all the madness of children running back and forth, chatting, shouting, and throwing things, one of the male students was leaning out the third-floor window, shouting to someone below, "I f*** your mother!" My Korean co-teacher, the one who told me I was hired for my white face, told me after that class that these kids weren't responsive because "they are very shy."

I put the potty-mouthed kid outside. At a faculty meeting a few days later, we were told that we could never put students outside for any reason. In effect, we couldn't do anything to enforce discipline in class.

Clara Kim is right about one thing, though: a great deal of patience is required in that kind of job. But you don't have to be a criminal or a bum not to last very long in a situation like that.