Big Changes

Big changes is a challenging title for this post, because I'm not sure it completely encompasses the recent situation. The short story here is that our contract was mutually agreed upon to end early and that we have returned home to the states. The longer version is a bit more complicated and extensive, however.

Moving to and living/working in Korea can be a bit of a gamble and you can't always be sure that you're going to get a good deal. In our case, things were okay on some fronts, but not others. I think things ended up working out in our favor, but things were rather stressful and hectic there for a time. Due to this reason there were updates that weren't made, which I may retroactively add at a later time.

As far as our hagwon was concerned, our director was kind of shady from the start. Friendly most times, but she was not without her ulterior motives. Passive aggressiveness was not uncommon, especially when she wasn't pleased with something related to us. Despite having a conversation initially about health insurance where we said yes, we wanted it, she did not actually get us health insurance (in the contract); she was not paying into pension, which is illegal (also in the contract); we lived above the school and she was taking extra money from us by way of utilities; she owed me more than 2 million won in overtime pay and then later said I was a liar and that the overtime pay rate was lower than I had calculated (in the contract at 20,000 won per hour). In short, there was a lot going on.

All of the above culminated into a confrontational situation after I confronted her about her trying to skimp out on the flight costs that had been reserved. She didn't like the numbers, so I presented her with more and included the words "illegal", "labor board" and "lawyer". She didn't like it much at first, but then she must have realized that she was in way over her head and we had a very touching conversation. By touching I mean that she said that the trust is broken and she's sorry about the health insurance and the pension (which she also "mistakenly" thought we said "no" to when we apparently said no to the health insurance) and that it's better to just end things. She wanted us out by the weekend, so we rushed to book flights home in 2 days time and we managed to swing that somehow. She actually paid for things she wasn't obligated to pay for (part of the severance and the flight), but I think I made a point and she realized that she can pay us what we're owed and try to make things right, or we can cause a whole lot of trouble for her.

So what happened? We completed ten and a half months at the school and got sent home early. After more than 25 hours of travel by car, bus, and plane we made it back to the states. It would have been nice to complete the contract, but I think we came out on top overall. Needless to say, having a terrible hagwon owner can really make a person's life hell. So please use caution. I'll try to post later about some steps you can take and other info that I've learned.

In closing, we have arrived back home and some things have been kind of different to readjust to. Zach and I will be both posting updates about our experiences upon returning, which has been its own unique experience as well.