Perhaps they thought you a tall poppy to be trimmed down, very common in confucian societies where individualism is seen as some kind of evil.

Individualism is indeed seen as a kind of evil by the de facto conclusion of what compromises Confucianism. The way it has been implemented in the societies in which it has flourished in is nothing but a heretic grouping of society into strict hierarchies which have ruined countless lives and will continue to create problems for freedom loving folks who live in these countries due to its vices being incredibly vague and unable to be defined unless it comes out of the woodwork when used by folks with wicked agendas in a more or less improvised way. Unfortunately when you apply this to money making practices as well as politicking both of which are not always concrete even in the most lawful societies you can have problems on an immense level. It can even be contagious, and it forms barriers within the brain which enact as more or less anti-intelligence and marginalize important things such as good conscious as well as common sense.

Deviant people will always try to hide things as well as they can, so the best resolution to this is to establish defined boundaries of morals, ethics, and laws which everyone in a country must follow no matter how much power or money they may have. China and the Koreas still have a long long way to go before they can call themselves consistent, civilized, conscious folks. I must stop before I sound like I'm toting slogans as is too common with these places. Idealization before doing! Can't say I miss that at all.

Wow. Sounds like things really went downhill after I left. I worked there from 08-09. I got to live in Yeonggwang, though, so that helped, but they started tightening the purse-strings as the year went on. Not as bad as what you described, but that's likely because there were different teachers then. :-( Sorry you had such a horrible experience.

My year at the Hong-Nong Middle School finally ended, and what a wild ride it was. No newbie to the ESL field, that school was the nineteenth Korean public school in which I have taught. Despite the effort that I made, the treatment I was accorded was nothing short of abusive. Though I decided not to renew my contract at that school, I have decided to publicize their behavior both to deter other foreigners from applying and suffering similar abuse and to encourage the Korean administrators to change their wicked, wicked ways.

After having accepted an attractive contract, my first surprise came when I got my passport back with my E-2 visa. A bait-and-switch had been pulled on me with my working location. Although I was led to believe that I would be living and working in Yeonggwang, the county seat, I ended up living in Beopseong and working in Hong-nong. After flying over and taking the bus down to Gwangju, I was picked up from a dictated rendezvous point by a Gwangju administrator. A meeting with her, my schools finance officer, and a few other suits followed. The first item on their agenda was my salary. They pulled yet another bait-and-switch on me, and a second contract with a lower salary was placed in front of me. If you dont sign it, you wont work for us! This was a hint of things to come, and it was sadly indicative of the way things have gone in South Korea. In the bad old days (i.e. the nineties), only the sleaziest of hagwons would attempt such antics. However, the government has made it clear to all citizens that the judiciary will not punish them for anything. So, it is not surprising that fraud, corruption, and violent crime have all skyrocketed.

Got settled into my apartment, and though it was large enough, it presented its own challenges. Beyond dirty, but despite my cleaning, I still got a spider bite that put me in agony and sent me to the hospital. The utility bills were outrageous, and some months cost me 500 000 won, though the apartment was always an icebox in the winter and a sauna in the summer. To boot, my upstairs neighbor hammered incessantly on his concrete floor, my ceiling. He eventually broke his ondol (radiant floor heating system), and it started raining in my bedroom. Apprising the apartment guards and my schools administration led to exactly no response. Soon, blue, green, and black mold grew in profusion in the master bedroom, the only room with an air conditioner, so I moved into a smaller bedroom. Other neighbors earned my ire (and a good cursing-out in both Korean and English) for being too noisy and inconsiderate. Where is Joe Pesci when you need him?

Since I began teaching in July, English camps at the school were what filled my days. Those co-ed camps were comprised of Einstein classes and Genius classes. Left to my own devices, I gave all of the students a good workout in pronunciation, listening comprehension (including partner activities, card games, and board games), grammar, writing, vocabulary, and discussion. Many students enjoyed the variety and the pace. A few didnt. The vice-principal, one Jeong Jeong Seong, was among those who didnt like my classes. He would come up to my classroom and storm that my class should be quiet. A silent language classroom.

That must be a first. Since he complained about everything that I did, the ties that I wore, and the photocopies that I made, I decided to write him off as yet another Korean xenophobe. In my classes, a number of male students were obsessed with their cell phones and their Sony PSPs and simply refused to stop playing with them during class. If I took them away or tried to take them away, those boys wanted to fight with me. One boy, the office secretarys son, even threw a desk at me. Attempts to get these boys back on track often led to F*ck you! or Suck my c*ck! favored expressions that lasted all year. On the other hand, many of the girls were ideal students: bright, attentive, and respectful. The gender divide in Korean behavior is a grand canyon. Some students accused me of sexism, but many boys with a proper attitude also enjoyed much of my consideration.

One of the female Korean English teachers, Choi Eun-ji, adopted the role of critic and began complaining about everything that I did. According to her, I had to change everything that I did in the classroom and everything about the way I taught. Advice to file. When the regular semester started, I could not help but notice that she was late to every class, often without chalk, and that she did the same thing in every class: she taught the textbook (Min-ji has a pet munky) and one sheet, thirty entries of transformational grammar. Still, I tried to get off to a good start with her. For her and many other English teachers at that school, I bought English resource books, novels, anthologies, all types of practical resources. Needless to say, no one, save the students, ever expressed the slightest gratitude.

Both Hong-nong and Beopseong are not so far from the coast, so the humidity and the heat were significant. Every public school in Korea has an exercise room stocked with equipment for the teachers use. This was also true of the Hong-nong Middle School. I like logging in miles on the treadmill, though the two at my school topped out at a mere 12 km/h, and 60 minutes was the longest that a cycle could be. Always an early riser, I would arrive at the school around seven, get the key from the night guard, and get a satisfying cardio workout. Doing so enraged everyone. The principal, Lee Se Won, wanted that room locked and off-limits at all times. Some fellow teachers and students could not believe that I sweated when pushed. They stood on the sidelines and complained about my smell, and screamed at me to shower, pig! Although I had workout clothes and showered twice a day, used body soap, shampoo, deodorant, after-shave, toothpaste, mouthwash, clean clothes daily, my foreigners stench was apparently ineradicable.

Another female Korean English teacher, Choi Yeon-ok, found it especially satisfying to attack me every day for being such a smelly foreigner. Every morning, she would come to my desk to harass me about my smell. She told me that I should not use the exercise room and should instead just run the seven or so kilometers from Beopseong to Hong-nong. Seeing that it was such an agony to gain access to the exercise room, that is what I decided to do. Also worth considering was the fact that I did not receive the transportation allowance, despite living and working in two of the provinces remotest outposts. Teachers in the county seat, Yeonggwang, got the transportation allowance. Go figure. My early morning and late afternoon walks satisfied my cardio needs, though the route presented its own challenges. Many Korean drivers are afflicted with that less than laudable but often defining Korean characteristic of impatience. So, I saw the not infrequent accident on a basically straight stretch of road, and though I always walked on the shoulder facing traffic, I was often brushed by cars passing illegally.

Back to the classroom with Choi Yeon-ok. Despite the fact that she arrived late to every one of my classes, she still complained bitterly in my classes about what I taught the students. Too many page!!! What mean?!!! and my favorite, Can you explain in Korean?!!! Small wonder that her classes ended up doing maybe half of the work that I taught the other classes at the same level.

A few months into the fall semester, it was decided that a select group of students were to be given training for the TOEIC test. At stake was the provincial competition, and the winner of that would receive an all expenses paid European vacation. Since I had taught all sections on both of those tests for almost a decade, I was told to start teaching that supplemental class every weekday morning. Not a problem, for I was in the habit of arriving at the school at seven every morning, and I had scads of test resources. I put together quality lesson plans, xeroxed reams of paper to ensure that the students got sufficient practice, and I began teaching them. Soon after I began teaching that supplemental class, Choi Yeon-ok began appearing in the classroom, albeit fifteen minutes late every day. Right away, she began bitching a blue streak about what I was teaching the students. So, she ran to the principal, derided me, slagging my efforts, and was given control of my class. Odd that she prepared nothing and just continued using my material, though her estimation of their worth changed 180 degrees. All of a sudden, the activities that I had selected and copied were nothing short of fantastic. Still, if I had not been there every day, the class would not have had a lesson plan, nor would it have started on time. A final insult for my work in those classes came in the form of my supplementary pay. All other foreign teachers received 20 000 won per additional class (which is still no great shakes), but the principal at my school, Lee Se-won, decided that my efforts were only worth 9000 won per class. Complaining to the powers in Gwangju did me no good, for they replied that whatever the principal does is right.

This principal, Lee Se-won, had a burning desire to control and micromanage all underlings. The issue of hours of work and holidays will provide insight into his character. My contract said that I had to work eight hours per day, and I had no problem with that. Even though I arrived at the school at seven or so every morning, the first class started at eight-fifty, at ten to nine. Simple math tells us that departure should be possible at 16:50, at ten to five, and some teachers did leave the school around then. However, if I tried to leave the school at 16:59, he had a hissy fit, threw a temper tantrum, and had a complete meltdown. Always the first in the staffroom, I was also often the last to leave it.

My contract said that I got ten vacation days, but an explanation of it revealed that Saturdays and Sundays were also included, days that I never worked. Once when there was a statutory holiday on a Thursday, the principal decreed that everyone at my school was also going to take Friday off and use it as a holiday. My handler, Mr. Han, put a blank form in front of me to sign. This is proof that you used one of your holidays. Later in the year during the winter session break, I was informed that I had already used up all of my holidays. We have your signature! That one day had oddly transformed into six days plus Saturday and Sunday plus Saturday and Sunday. I learned my lesson and refused to sign any more blank forms, even though I had no days left to lose.

The principals lack of respect for anyone and anything filtered down the ranks. When I first met my handler, he told me that he was told at his last P.D. session that he needed to accumulate more ESL resources. I gladly gave him copies of everything that I used with his classes. However, he insisted on throwing them away right in front of me and often in front of the students. The wrong attitude and the wrong message. I asked him to return his copies to me if he didnt want to keep them. He adamantly refused. As if I needed more proof of his ingratitude and contempt, he began belching and farting up a storm at his desk. Sometimes he would stand, point his ass at me, and push out a fart. Whenever students came to visit me at my desk (one of the highlights of my day), he would scare them away in the most caustic terms possible. When the time for formal testing of the students arrived, I volunteered to read and edit the test questions composed by the Korean English teachers. This offer was usually rejected, for they were all so confident of their ability. However, when I read their questions, I usually didnt have a clue what they wanted the students to do. Overconfidence is a huge problem in Korea. Odd that it is so rarely paired with ability.

The boys displayed behavior that will prime them to become Korean men. For starters, and the scope is wide here, these middle school students try a lot of stunts that they would never attempt with a Korean teacher. Open defiance of the foreign teachers authority in the classroom, even when there is a Korean teacher in the classroom. Some students would just not shut up when I was giving a cloze dictation, thus ruining the listening environment for all the students who wanted to progress in their English ability. I have never been late to a class in my teaching career, but many second- and third-year students are always five to ten minutes late. Of course, they are never reprimanded, for that is prohibited in Korea, and Seoul always sends word down to never punish the students. It is no wonder that many Koreans become shameless world-class criminals. Every day, I set my watch to the schools master clock, so I knew when the bells would go to within five seconds. Still, in many classes, five or ten minutes before the end of the class, some students started screaming out, Time! End! or Hurry up! Typically impatient Koreans. Everyone else should run for them and sweat. Some Korean teachers in this school let their classes out five or ten minutes early, so the students ran up and down the halls, screaming all the way. What is worse, though, is that they opened the doors and windows to classes still in session and disrupted classes or just screamed at me to end. Of course, they would never do this to a Korean teacher. Interestingly, they did try such antics with substitute teachers during the winter session break. One of them had her fill, and she got the offending boy to tent his ass on the staffroom floor, and she beat it till she was damned good and tired. Good for her, but I dont want to conclude that maybe that is why she is a substitute teacher and not a regular teacher. Many regular teachers just let their students and classes run wild. It is debatable whether or not anything is learned. As stated, though, the principals mandate is that all teachers should try to make the students happy. Real leadership with a vision . . . or a gong show. but I have to go with the gong show label. Will someone please hit the gong?

In the session break, I taught the supplementary English camps to a select group of students from each grade. Those co-ed classes were still entitled the Einstein classes and the Genius classes. Not my choice, but Koreans are overly fond of grandiose titles. Even the swamper on the garbage truck drives a car called a Chairman. All of those supplemental classes got a daily workout in all aspects of the English language. However, there is a huge gender gap in ability and humility. The girls usually listen and pay attention; the boys usually refuse to concentrate, believing that they already know everything, and the teacher has some nerve trying to get them to stop playing with their cell phones and PSPs. There is a dish that I like serving cold, and I had the perfect opportunity to dish it up at the end of those camps. Always a fan of Jeopardy!, I created my own version of it with twelve categories and ten questions in each category. Questions worth 100 points were easy, and questions worth 1000 points were more challenging. Groups would choose a category and a question for so many points, then I would read it out twice to all of the students. Only the group whose turn it was could answer. Team members had fifteen seconds to consult and then provide an answer. A correct answer netted the points and the right to choose another question. Silence just meant the loss of the groups turn, but a wrong answer resulted in negative points. In one class, a group of loud boys didnt heed my advice. One member always called out an incorrect answer without consulting his teammates, so they earned negative points. One group of girls performed wonderfully: they listened attentively, consulted, and cleaned up. For example, one question in the Famous Persons category was easy for them. Which scientist is famous for the equation E=mc2? The correct answer of Einstein was one of the many answers that the girls could and the boys could not provide. At the end of that class when the dust had settled, that group of girls easily won with more than 14 000 points. One group of loudmouth boys ended up with negative 600 points. Since I always give contest winners a small prize, I gave that group of girls two bags of ABC chocolates. This so enraged the boys, who screamed that I wasnt fair, that the order of team play, which had been decided by rock, scissors, paper, also wasnt fair. A chorus of F*ck you! and I hate you! erupted from the boys. I told them that they had lost fair and square and that the girls just knew more than them and were better students.

Why is the behavior from Korean males so objectionable? They learn it from their elders. Korean law also favors the bullies and the criminals and often punishes the victims, who are usually blamed for causing the crime. The defamation laws in Korea belong in a country with a hardline communist dictatorship. You are guilty of defaming someone even if what you say about that person is true.

In my school, the male teachers washroom is located right across from the staffroom. Many male teachers take a special delight in spraying shit everywhere, never flushing, and certainly never washing their hands. Naturally, it is someone else who has to clean up their messes every day. Needless to say, I refused to eat with those male teachers, though that action was interpreted as decidedly anti-social. Even in the cafeteria, some male Korean English teachers enjoyed themselves in befouling the food for the others. One male teacher would constantly sneeze on the food trays set out by the cafeteria ladies. So, I tried to be in the cafeteria as early as possible every lunchtime to ensure that I would be able to serve myself uncontaminated food. An absolute lack of manners at the table was also displayed by many female teachers as well. Perhaps it is a regional quirk, but most stuffed their cheeks full and then started shouting, spraying grains of rice and exposing the whole unsightly vortex to all while making more noise than a dog eating peanut butter. Some of these same female teachers displayed behavior that usually comes from Kim Jong-il. In the cleaning time at the school, five mousy and meek first-grade girls cleaned the staffroom, and I liked both to help them and to reward them for their effort. Every day, I gave them a small drink and a box of cookies to share. No big expense, and I was glad to let them know that their effort was appreciated. Twice female teachers have shaken down these girls for their cookies, just taken them and eaten them. I strenuously objected and called them on their behavior, and they always answered with What? So, I spelled it out for them. Who the hell do you think you are? You have some nerve! I didnt buy those cookies for you! What else do you do for fun? Steal from blind beggars and trip cripples? Korea is nothing is not the land of ironies. There are so many churches and so many loud self-professed Christians, yet few know how to act. Those teachers were morally unsuited to their job and made poor role models.

Near the end of my contract, the principal had another teacher accuse me point-blank of stealing one of the guitars from the school. The principal fancied himself a classical guitarist, so there were supplemental music classes for students with a musical bent. The twenty or so classical guitars were in sore need of restringing and tuning, so I did that. There were also three steel string acoustic guitars, but their ancient brown strings were deader than Elvis. So, I bought new strings, adjusted the action on the guitars, and re-strung and tuned them. One student made off with one of the now playable and sweet-sounding guitars, so the principal had me accused of stealing it.

And that is about it for the Hong-nong Middle School in Yeonggwang County, Jeollanamdo, South Korea. Such abuse is not limited to that school, for other schools in that town have principals who cheat their foreign teachers, denigrate them, give them substandard accommodation, and refuse to provide them with the right to use a desk, a computer, a printer, the photocopier. There were foreign teachers there who finished their contract but still didnt receive the completion bonus, the refund of the housing deposit, or any help in getting a refund of the pension plan contributions made.