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AHH F/UGH posted:Holy loving poo poo call your friend tomorrow morning and tell him to set you up with that job immediately. Yeah this. There's no downside to trying. That's an absurd amount of money in Korea and you'll never have to deal with most of the most annoying parts of living there.
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Oct 10, 2020 18:12
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah this. There's no downside to trying. That's an absurd amount of money in Korea and you'll never have to deal with most of the most annoying parts of living there. What are the annoying parts of living in Korea?
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Oct 10, 2020 19:13
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punk rebel ecks posted:What are the annoying parts of living in Korea? 
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Oct 10, 2020 19:56
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punk rebel ecks posted:What are the annoying parts of living in Korea? You won't have to deal with most of them, but imo: Listening in Korean language. Reading, writing and speaking it is quite easy but it's a very mumbly language when spoken by natives. I assume you'll be living and working near or on either the Osan or Humphrey bases, which means getting to Pyeongtaek proper will require a car (not a big deal) but also means going to Seoul (for pleasure or for travel) will take longer than the 50 minutes you might have thought. Nationalism. Life in general can seem very face saving/shallow/surface level and style-over-substance in a lot of aspects. This includes how people act, what the cities feel like to live in, the media and pop culture. I feel like Koreans place excessive value on newness and have very little interest in preservation of the past, but considering their history of being poo poo on by everyone from all sides, you might understand how they think the past blows and want to get rid of it. The summer weather is pretty gross, but you'll be indoors/in a car and air conditioned most of the time - Still, the benefits of the lifestyle, money, and experience you'll have will far, far, far outweigh any of these negatives, should you run across them, which you likely won't. As others said, the salary you'll receive will allow you to save thousands of dollars a month even while living in a pretty lavish and comfortable lifestyle, and not being a dancing monkey for children is a huge, huge plus. If someone offered me the job you're being offered right now, I'd move back in a heartbeat.
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Oct 10, 2020 23:25
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punk rebel ecks posted:At least $66,000 USD. Put in for it anyway. Most GS job requirements might as well be written in chalk.
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Oct 11, 2020 01:04
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punk rebel ecks posted:What are the annoying parts of living in Korea? There's all kinds of everyday frustrations like any country, but like I said the biggest, by far worst part of Korea is the working environment. The vast majority of teaching jobs in Korea suck. Korean work expectations suck. If you can get any kind of real job where you don't have to do that and get weird perks like good pay or more than three days a year of vacation, you've won Korea.
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Oct 11, 2020 01:19
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Grand Fromage posted:There's all kinds of everyday frustrations like any country, but like I said the biggest, by far worst part of Korea is the working environment. The vast majority of teaching jobs in Korea suck. Korean work expectations suck. If you can get any kind of real job where you don't have to do that and get weird perks like good pay or more than three days a year of vacation, you've won Korea. This is by far the most annoying part, and I have a relatively good job teaching I actually enjoy with good coworkers and get to take several weeks off during school breaks. But most work environments and expectations here are absolutely awful, having gone through several to get to my current job, and if you can skip straight past that to good pay and not the stupid work environment, you've won.
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Oct 13, 2020 08:10
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AHH F/UGH posted:Nationalism. It shocks me that these things can be worse than America. Grand Fromage posted:There's all kinds of everyday frustrations like any country, but like I said the biggest, by far worst part of Korea is the working environment. The vast majority of teaching jobs in Korea suck. Korean work expectations suck. If you can get any kind of real job where you don't have to do that and get weird perks like good pay or more than three days a year of vacation, you've won Korea. Korean jobs sound horrible. Like US "contractor" jobs.
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Oct 13, 2020 08:38
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punk rebel ecks posted:It shocks me that these things can be worse than America. Vastly worse. The US can only dream of being as out of its mind nationalist as Korea (or its neighbors, to be fair--it's not only Korea). They fortunately don't affect your day to day life that much. The face saving is the biggest problem as that will 100% gently caress your life up at work at some point if you're in a Korean work environment. And if you teach English you eventually come to the existential moment when you realize the entire English education system in Korea is fake and you're just there to be white in public, and you choose whether you're okay with that or not. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Oct 13, 2020 |
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Oct 13, 2020 20:44
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Grand Fromage posted:Vastly worse. The US can only dream of being as out of its mind nationalist as Korea (or its neighbors, to be fair--it's not only Korea). They fortunately don't affect your day to day life that much. The face saving is the biggest problem as that will 100% gently caress your life up at work at some point if you're in a Korean work environment. "Face saving"? Also I'd like to hear how nationalist these countries are compared to America, but I'm worried that I'm sounding like I'm fetishizing/exoticizing the region.
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Oct 13, 2020 20:50
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punk rebel ecks posted:Personally I'm leaning not wanting to move there. As crazy as America is, I like it here, plus I'm not white in the US so I'm not sure how well I'll fit in there. And I don't know I'm worried that I may be treated stranger over there. Based on the experiences of my nonwhite friends, people (especially outside of Seoul) can get really weirdly fascinated by your skin, or hair, or just you in general as kind of an unusual novelty, which I imagine can feel pretty dehumanizing or at least really off putting, but you won't have to deal with the overt racial hatred or white supremacist violence that you have in America. The cops in Korea aren't going to kill you for running a stop sign while black. If you have kids, though, I hear school can be pretty brutal unless you're sending them to one of those foreigner academies. I also hear that's starting to get better, however. FWIW I miss Korea dearly and have been trying to find a way where I can move back and work remotely for an American company.
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Oct 13, 2020 21:04
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It's not easy to explain without living it for a number of years but try reading something like The Korean Mind by Boye Lafayette de Mente and The Korean Popular Culture Reader by Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe.
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Oct 13, 2020 21:05
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:If you have kids, though, I hear school can be pretty brutal unless you're sending them to one of those foreigner academies. I also hear that's starting to get better, however. My main school was the designated one for foreign/mixed race kids and it was horrifying how they were treated both by the other students and the teachers. I would under no circumstances ever send a non-Korean kid to a Korean school after experiencing that.
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Oct 13, 2020 21:08
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Korean nationalism honestly feels less like american patriotism and more like an ultra-prominence on certain aspects of history and culture, as kind of a defense against dilution by neighboring empires. It's similar to what you encounter in a lot of tiny Eurasian nations, either you stan your -Stan or you end up a vassal state of Russia. The Korean Confucian scholars I talked with were very clear that Korean NeoConfucianism is unique among other Confucian nations. Historically they would send cultural ambassadors to other countries, to show off their fancy bronze dishes and impractical skirts. The thing that struck me most my first month was how much overlap between China/Japan and Korea there wasn't. That was probably based on some racist assumptions on my part, I realized pretty quickly once I got there that Korean pride still has an air of rebellion to it, because the Japanese occupation is so close to memory for so many. They're united in this shared exploitation at the hands of a foreign colonial power, so leaning heavy into their uniqueness makes sense. Seoul and the bigger cities will have more immigrant communities than where I was. 100% don't try to form too much of an opinion just off of foreigners' experiences before you get there. And when you do get there, try and make friends with Koreans. you will probably be blown away by how hospitable folk can be. It's Nationalism, but not like you're probably expecting it to be. It's much more "a kind grandpa on the bus spends 20 minutes conversing with you, in perfect English, about the history of Japanese atrocities." And then he asks to be invited to your wedding. Pentecoastal Elites posted:Based on the experiences of my nonwhite friends, people (especially outside of Seoul) can get really weirdly fascinated by your skin, or hair, or just you in general as kind of an unusual novelty, which I imagine can feel pretty dehumanizing or at least really off putting, but you won't have to deal with the overt racial hatred or white supremacist violence that you have in America. The cops in Korea aren't going to kill you for running a stop sign while black. same. kids were super open about using the N-word (when talking about obama, but not the black teachers) and it took some work to find salons that wouldn't push skin bleaching treatments on people. There were a few pro-BLM rallies in Korea IIRC, and BTS even donated $1mil to the organization. Their fans managed to match it with an additional $1mil in donations, which is frankly staggering. It seems like things are moving in a good direction.
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Oct 13, 2020 21:36
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Oh yeah Koreans are generally nice and it's easy to make friends compared to China or Japan. But you will have people you've known for years whip out that "did you know Koreans invented tofu, rice, and also invented writing in the ancient Korean kingdom of Sumeria?" poo poo. Whether you care or not is up to you. E: My formative nationalism experience was I got there a week before the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, and seeing my students and other Koreans celebrating the deaths of thousands of Japanese was ugly and gross and it took a long time to shake that initial negative impression. Living in China definitely changed my perspective on Korea as well. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Oct 13, 2020 |
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Oct 13, 2020 21:44
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FWIW, when I was a RA in college we had a fair bit of foreign exchange students. Mostly from China and some from Korea. I found the Korean students to be far more "open" on average.Grand Fromage posted:I would under no circumstances ever send a non-Korean kid to a Korean school after experiencing that. Do kids get bullied and beat up all the time? punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Oct 13, 2020 |
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Oct 13, 2020 21:44
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punk rebel ecks posted:Do kids get bullied and beat up all the time? All day, every day, with the neglect or active aid of the teachers.
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Oct 13, 2020 21:47
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Grand Fromage posted:All day, every day, with the neglect or active aid of the teachers. Like my child will be physically assaulted daily?
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Oct 13, 2020 21:48
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punk rebel ecks posted:Like my child will be physically assaulted daily? Psychological assault daily, physical not quite as much. Also Korean kids beat each other constantly too, that part wasn't special. Casual physical violence is just kind of a thing in Korea. Fortunately they don't have guns. I'd think my school was unusually brutal but anyone I've ever talked to who had mixed race kids at their schools described the same experience. If it's a job on a US base they probably provide non-Korean schooling though.
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Oct 13, 2020 21:58
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Grand Fromage posted:Psychological assault daily, physical not quite as much. Also Korean kids beat each other constantly too, that part wasn't special. Casual physical violence is just kind of a thing in Korea. Fortunately they don't have guns. I'd think my school was unusually brutal but anyone I've ever talked to who had mixed race kids at their schools described the same experience. If I lived there a would probably want my hypothetical child to have the "full Korean experience", but these stori s are making that sound like a bad idea.
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Oct 13, 2020 22:01
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Grand Fromage posted:Oh yeah Koreans are generally nice and it's easy to make friends compared to China or Japan. But you will have people you've known for years whip out that "did you know Koreans invented tofu, rice, and also invented writing in the ancient Korean kingdom of Sumeria?" poo poo. Whether you care or not is up to you. i forget where i read this but someone said that korea's trump will rise to power on anti-japanese sentiment and it feels pretty true. also, i didn't mean to contradict the poo poo you and your kiddo went through, i'm sorry you experienced that. punk rebel ecks posted:Like my child will be physically assaulted daily? 10 years ago corporal punishment was still widely practiced. i had students come to hagwon crying because their school teachers slapped them on the face. punk rebel ecks posted:If I lived there a would probably want my hypothetical child to have the "full Korean experience", but these stori s are making that sound like a bad idea. it's 100% going to depend on the school. if you do opt up to teach them on base or do a remote learning/homeschool thing, i think you could probably work out an opportunity for your kid to join a sports team at the very least. there will be ways to get that Korean experience without lingering institutional trauma.
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Oct 13, 2020 22:01
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:i forget where i read this but someone said that korea's trump will rise to power on anti-japanese sentiment and it feels pretty true. also, i didn't mean to contradict the poo poo you and your kiddo went through, i'm sorry you experienced that. Yeah that seems possible, or a weird Christian cultist thing. I don't have kids thank christ, but I felt so bad for the "foreign" kids at my school. I tried my best to protect them but since nobody else cared there wasn't much I could do.  PHIZ KALIFA posted:10 years ago corporal punishment was still widely practiced. i had students come to hagwon crying because their school teachers slapped them on the face. They still do it past it being banned. We had one Korean teacher who would make the kid get down on all fours with their back arched, then she would get a running start and kick the kid in the stomach. None of the others were that out of their loving minds but getting slapped was still standard procedure up until I left.
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Oct 13, 2020 22:06
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I got out of public school five years ago, but even at that time corporal punishment was virtually non-existent. I would say it is something you wouldn’t have to worry about, especially with the current mom culture here. Aa for daily bullying and whatnot, again, not my experience. I have taught kids from multi-cultural families, and have friends with kids. Hell, I even taught on a Korean base and taught contractor’s kids. From what I’ve seen yes there is discrimination, and unfortunately most of it comes from ignorance, not from overt discrimination or anything. It won’t be a daily thing, but is something you will likely encounter as a parent. Phiz’s description of Korean nationalism also seems very accurate to me. No KOREA gently caress YEAH GO HOME FOREIGNER stuff like America has. Sure, those people exist, but they’re rare.
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Oct 13, 2020 23:43
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I’ve seen a dramatic decline in school violence since I’ve moved here, to the point where I don’t really encounter it at all anymore. I can’t say how much that is a result of improvements in school culture and the abolishment of corporal punishment, and how much of it is just that I’ve continually moved on to far more affluent school districts.
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Oct 14, 2020 04:56
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I hope it's a general improvement. It was a real serious problem everywhere I taught and nobody seemed to care.
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Oct 14, 2020 05:02
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The best way I've heard Korean nationalism described is "Patriots love their country, Nationalists hate everyone else's". Americans might be a 50/50 mix of patriotism (debatable, obviously, even if it's imagined/self-hypnotized) and nationalism, but Koreans find it pretty hard to praise themselves at all when they can opt to poo poo on Japan and China. Again, considering historically they've been pillaged every century over and over, you might understand how that still kind of is a thing in the national zeitgeist and pervasive for generations. Not to mention North Korea and compulsory military service, too. Korean culture and mass media seemed more insular than other East Asian countries for the most part, there's international movies and TV and music but from my experience people focus a lot more on the homegrown stuff that gets played on the radio and TV. This probably ties into the nationalism thing too, hermit kingdom, little man syndrome, etc. The big stuff is talked about of course - Avengers, Louis Vuitton, Michael Jackson - but I rarely met people who were 'citizens of the world', so to speak. It could be that they were just hiding it from me or I didn't get out and meet enough people, but that's just my take on it. I knew people in Japan who were really into Game of Thrones and punk music, and people in China who loved classic rock from the 60s and 70s and old Simpsons episodes, but I can't say I met many people like that in Seoul. As for corporal punishment - I never saw it there, even kids hitting each other was rare. punk rebel ecks - Did you talk to your friend yet about skipping the M.A. stuff and getting a recommendation? I'm curious to know if you're going to go for it.
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Oct 14, 2020 08:37
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I imagine corporal punishment is one of those habits which lingered in rural areas longer than in cities. My experiences are from a decade ago, and a city of half a million-ish. I could definitely believe that Seoul has moved past hitting in the time I've been gone. The thing about South Korean media that wows me the most is that this current wave of US K-pop fever is just the latest wave of Koreaphilia which has been rocking the region for decades. I had a copy of Making Out in Korean from the early 90s which had a word for the power Korean media held over the Phillipines. There's an almost assembly line feel to it. I often had the impression that celebrities were selling Korea to Koreans the way US celebrities sell handbags. Do y'all think it's fair to say that the average Korean knows more about their culture and history than the aveage American? Everyone I met in Korea seemed familiar with most of their cultural treasures, and were really proud of their local UNESCO World Heritage Sites. That might be selection bias for the folk I met, but I'm curious what everyone else has experienced. (PS I'm also looking for jobs please and thank you)
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Oct 14, 2020 15:53
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Equally ignorant? I never met a Korean who knew anything about Korean history. Even super recent stuff like Park Chung-hee's administration was just a pack of nationalist nonsense that didn't approach reality. And the further back you went the more wild it got. Being able to name a bunch of UNESCO sites and artifacts isn't the same as understanding history. Though, given how education works in Korea, it 100% tracks to me that people could rattle off a list of historical stuff but not understand anything they're saying.
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Oct 14, 2020 17:16
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Yeah, equally ignorant. Most of the time I heard “King Sejong invented the best writing system on earth” (actually Korean an is extremely flawed and lovely writing system) and then something about Korea invented X food or X drink and it wasn’t some other country (which is almost always not true).
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Oct 14, 2020 17:20
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FWIW I find that generally my Korean friends in my age cohort (30s) have a better grasp on their history than my American friends. I think a lot of this is probably due to Koreans having a shared national/cultural identity which is something that Americans don't really have IMO. Every American knows who eg. George Washington is, but the average person on the street probably doesn't have an emotional connection or cultural pride in him like a Korean person might have with Sejong or Yi Sun-Shin or whoever, and I think that really drives a lot of the common historical knowledge. Maybe that's changing for a certain class of Americans with the popularity of stuff like Hamilton but I don't think it really infiltrates all class strata like it does in Korea. Also the events that fundamentally shaped the peninsula into what it is today happened in living memory, so I think even the more recent history and political landscape isn't nearly as academic (and ignorable) as it is in America.
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Oct 14, 2020 17:36
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:Also the events that fundamentally shaped the peninsula into what it is today happened in living memory, so I think even the more recent history and political landscape isn't nearly as academic (and ignorable) as it is in America. this is another supremely valid point. if my math is correct, PE, the people you knew might have been involved in the literal struggle for democracy?
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Oct 14, 2020 17:44
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I'm a little young for that. My wife, who is a few months older than me, was born in the leadup to the June struggle. Her and my friends' parents, aunts, uncles, though, yeah absolutely -- they lived through a time I think that no one born and raised in America can really totally comprehend (I certainly can't). If you're my father-in-law's age you were born shortly after the nation fractured, lived through seven distinct governments, including a military junta, multiple political uprisings, two coups, and you watched Seoul go from a small capital of a forgettable east Asian country to one of the most renowned major metropolises in the world. Prior to the 1970s-80s Korea wasn't particularly economically strong, so when that took off you watched absolutely everything around you totally transform in just a few years as tons and tons of money and access to technology started pouring in. It's even more wild for someone a little older, like her grandparents, who (being from North Korea) lived through what must have felt like the loving apocalypse. e: grammar Pentecoastal Elites fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Oct 14, 2020 |
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Oct 14, 2020 18:12
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Is there a Korean word for experiencing culture shock at your own culture? I imagine that's something they've discussed. I'd also love to read up more on what folks in Korea think about the Trump situation, if any of you have links to share. edit- just to make it explicit, my opinions are formed based off interacting with people who were largely independantly wealthy, college educated, English speaking people. So that's a pretty large chunk of salt, representing a fairly specific demographic within the Korean population. I'm no kind of expert. One Historical Tidbit I picked up while traveling in Sachon, the Seonbi (scholar) class was expected to act as the intermediaries between Yangban and peasants. If conditions for the peasants got too dire, they brought letters of "Upwards Appeal" (I don't remember the specific phrase) tied around the handles of axes. The message being, "either respond to the complaints in this letter or chop my head off with this axe." I think that's a really cool way to make the violence inherent in leadership explicit and immediate. OP, if you're interested in community as resistance or labor activism or mutual aid or other community organizer type things, Korea has an exceptionally rich tradition and you should deffo deep dive into it while you're over there. PHIZ KALIFA fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Oct 14, 2020 |
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Oct 14, 2020 18:56
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Yeah. Korea went from being like Subsahara Africa to United States in thirty years.
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Oct 14, 2020 19:30
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In my experience (which is mostly better off young Seoulites), there's a lot of disregard/shame for their history and cultural stuff, which keeps a lot of people from being interested in it too deeply. You get exceptions though; I've met a bunch personally, altho since my interest is history that skews it a lot. I've also met a few people that have taken that course some people do so they can put "knows about Korean history" on their resume. I think a lot of expats have a bit of a warped take on the nationalist stuff though. Just about everyone will react very negatively if you as a foreigner have something bad to say about Korean historical/cultural thing; it doesn't necessarily mean their actual opinion, that they'd share with other Koreans, isn't a lot more nuanced. AHH F/UGH posted:Most of the time I heard “King Sejong invented the best writing system on earth” (actually Korean an is extremely flawed and lovely writing system) korean nationalism about hangeul takes it over the top for sure, but this kind of expat anti-take is just as stupid
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Oct 14, 2020 19:32
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It's got it's good points, but it's also incredibly stupid and lazy how close they were to doing things in an objectively better and logical way but gave up because everyone was so used to Chinese script and stroke system.
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Oct 14, 2020 19:39
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I think Hangeul is cool  and far better than English's shambolic, schizophrenic frankenstein's monster
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Oct 14, 2020 20:14
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:I think Hangeul is cool Hangeul is fine for writing Korean. It's just horribly inflexible and doesn't work when it encounters any other language. You can vaguely write other East Asian languages with similarly restrictive syllables in it but even that gets dicey. Roman script has far more flexibility, both because it lacks the restrictions on syllable construction and that languages using Roman letters are willing to change their pronunciation to the sounds of the local language. Where it gets silly is claiming Hangeul is the most "scientific" writing system or it perfectly reflects spoken Korean or any of the other nonsense. It's an alphabet. It works for its language. It has flaws like anything else does. It's truly terrible at trying to write other languages in, but I also don't think you can fault an alphabet too much for being bad at writing languages it was not designed to be used for. Koramei posted:I think a lot of expats have a bit of a warped take on the nationalist stuff though. Just about everyone will react very negatively if you as a foreigner have something bad to say about Korean historical/cultural thing; it doesn't necessarily mean their actual opinion, that they'd share with other Koreans, isn't a lot more nuanced. I would argue the flip out reaction to "a foreigner" saying something negative about your country is very much in line with extreme nationalism and works as part of the definition. Someone who is more secure would be able to admit to fault. You see it in Americans--the nationalists do the LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT poo poo and the non-nationalists will take more of a "yeah, that does suck" angle. The need to reflexively defend everything is a sign of the deep insecurity that underlies a lot of Korean culture. I also found it interesting that a lot of the expats in Korea end up adopting that reflexively defensive posture. I didn't encounter that as much in China (though whoo boy when you meet a real pro-PRC laowai) and even less in my admittedly less extensive time in Japan. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Oct 14, 2020 |
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Oct 14, 2020 20:52
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Grand Fromage posted:I would argue the flip out reaction to "a foreigner" saying something negative about your country is very much in line with extreme nationalism and works as part of the definition. Someone who is more secure would be able to admit to fault. You see it in Americans--the nationalists do the LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT poo poo and the non-nationalists will take more of a "yeah, that does suck" angle. The need to reflexively defend everything is a sign of the deep insecurity that underlies a lot of Korean culture. I agree you have a bit of a point, but considering Korea's history as a colonized nation I don't think it's fair to "but in America/Europe we're fine doing it this way"; the situations are radically different, and the way Korea is thought of still largely diminutively kinda reinforces the defensiveness in a way that just doesn't apply to western countries/Japan. Now the fact the wounds are so raw in Korea is definitely also partially a Korean problem, but still. It's like this kind of thing: AHH F/UGH posted:then something about Korea invented X food or X drink and it wasn’t some other country (which is almost always not true). Anyway I definitely am guilty of being one of the reflexively defensive expats, but I feel like you just don't get the same kind of contempt for the host country in the other two places (although I might be wrong on that; I haven't spent much time in them). Korea history discussions especially get me though, as you are no doubt aware from my posts in the ancient history thread.
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Oct 14, 2020 23:17
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I'd agree about Japan, but in my experience the contempt is much greater in China. Not unjustified, given how deeply hosed a society China is in so many ways. I also found that people who only lived in Seoul were more defensive, and I wonder if some of it wasn't from how insulated you can be from the worse parts of Korea by living there. People in Ulsan were a lot more willing to entertain that Korea might not actually be a perfect land of sparkling magic at all times. Korea has a lot of cool poo poo, but my position about that is they've hosed themselves by lying about it so much. How many times can you build a museum about how Koreans invented whaling 12,000 years ago before everyone just starts rolling their eyes when they see "Korea invented X"? You can't cry Han so much and expect anything different. Though to the initial point of all this, I have my issues with Korea but if there was a button I could push to be living there right and making good money not teaching kids I'd be  ing that thing so hard my hand would go through the desk. If you're a straight white dude there's not a lot in Korea that goes above the level of annoyance.E: It's also sad how all the East Asian countries have held their own history in contempt for so long. It seems like it's changing, which is nice, but thinking of their own histories as backward and primitive must have contributed to the fervent nonsense about all the amazing fake achievements. Also a factor in happily destroying historical sites for the New Modern Progress of Big Ugly Concrete Boxes. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Oct 14, 2020 |
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Oct 14, 2020 23:27
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