Bad business in Korea – truth or is it my imagination?

The experience of Teaching and living in Korea is a rewarding one for those who have a drive for adventure, taste for a different culture and a strong personality to deal with the crap found in hagwons. And if you are coming to Korea to learn something about how to conduct a business, you should go somewhere else.

Although there are dishonest, foolish, unfair and unreasonable business men everywhere, Korea seems to have a lot of them. I don’t know if Korean business schools are just really bad or if the people who start business are just really dumb. The lack of business knowledge in a culture that has been around for 5 thousand years plus is brain shattering. The lack of judgment and honest dealing in business relationships and dumb witted business decisions are eye popping. Now it all makes sense why Korea has been in isolation in the global market with the exception of a few companies. One of the things that irks me the most when it comes to dealing with these business men is when you do them a favor and the favor is seen or taken as part of your duties. This may work with the Koreans who bend over willingly and do the bidden of these less than impressive business men but for foreigners, this is an insult of not just ones intelligence but of ones importance.

Foreign Teachers and Korean Teachers who come to their sense after several ill-treatments quit left and right. But the management and those who carelessly cause this injuries do not bother to learn from their mistakes. They walk about the institution looking for pity for what they cause upon themselves from the same Teachers their blunders affect. Is this foolishness at its best or foolishness at its best? There was a teacher who worked with us for two weeks because she was promised housing as all Teachers are guaranteed, when she arrived for employment she was told there was no housing for her and she was forced to live with another Teacher for the two weeks she worked. And then when she quit she was not paid for the time she worked.

There was another Teacher who worked for nearly three months and she was not paid for the entire time. She was told to continue to work and that she would be paid the next pay period and so forth and so forth and in the end she wasn’t paid at all. Obviously this would never happen in U.S and many other countries because of laws set in place for this sort of ill-treatment but in Korea I am not sure if there are such laws or the people being mistreated just refuse to use them. As a result, the cycle continues.

Not only that, when pay day arrives, less than honest mistakes are made so that you have to go and ask for the rest of your money. Once or twice you can categorize and dismiss such an act as an honest mistake but continually and just not to one Teacher, your suspicion is bound to be aroused.

If you want to work for a hagwon in Korea, choose wisely. If you can avoid working for a franchise and work for the main company, do that instead, perhaps the situation might be better there. I have seen a lot of things happen at the franchise I work for and heard stories about others. My particular franchise at the same time has become so concerned with petty matters such as Teachers sitting arrangement that clorox bleach cannot take out the bad taste in my mouth.

These are just a few incidents from a multitude of others and they continue to pile up day in and day out. Your experience could be better. What have you experienced?

Tagged as: avoid hagwons if you can, some hagwons are terrible