I have worked at Yoon's English Forest (영어 숲 ) in Jecheon, South Korea for the past 10.5 months. It was obvious from the beginning that the company was going to be difficult to work for, but I chalked it up to cultural differences, but I shouldn't have. The director's English name is Julia Lee. There are three campuses in Jecheon (Haso-dong, Sinback-dong, and Goam/Jangnak-dong).

Our director threatened to terminate our employment starting when we were 8 months into our contracts. It reached it's peak then when they gave us a letter stating that we would be terminated if our "performance" did not improve in two weeks time. While this warning came as a shock to us (we had had a couple rough meetings with our director before then in which she was unhappy with one or two small things, but the overall feeling was that we were doing well), we took it very seriously and worked very hard (putting in extra hours and showing a lot of submission to our director) to show that we were serious about keeping our jobs.

Two weeks later, in a meeting to discuss whether we would, in fact, be terminated, our director told us that we seemed to be "doing our best" and that if we kept that up, everything should be fine.

Then, two weeks before the end of our third term with this hagwon our director made some changes to our schedules, switching the campuses that we worked at and such, and told us that if enrollment didn't improve in two weeks that we would be terminated (this time with no letter). Again, two weeks later our director told us that if we kept up the good work that our jobs were not in jeopardy (she seemed happy with our performance at this point and said that the "switch" was a very good idea).

Then, two weeks into the term, she called another meeting. She stated that she was very unhappy with our performance and said that our teaching skills were not up to par with what she had hoped for. The meeting ended with nothing concrete being said about our employment. The next week our director failed to show up to our meeting. Instead, it was conducted by our translator/supervisor. He told us that the company had decided to let us go and gave us a letter listing the reasons (which included ludicrous claims of inappropriate language and behavior in the classroom and poor class preparation [we have folders and folders of lesson plans, activities and worksheets to prove otherwise]). We have little room for legal action because they gave us four weeks notice (meaning we'd have to wait until we were no longer employed and housed to make a claim).

Please, do your research. There are plenty of great schools and great people in Jecheon. Just DO NOT work for Yoon's.

*** Update: We found out this morning (via the National Pension Scheme) that the company registered us as "self employed" to get around tax, healthcare and pension laws. As we came over under contract, this is illegal. We are know in the process of turning them in for pension and possible tax fraud.