I never have and never would judge a man's value based on his net worth. Money is so fleeting and at the end of days the only thing that matters is how much enjoyment you wrung out of every second of your life. That being said there is a meme in the kimchi cheerleader community that foreign teachers are some sort of loser population unfit to find gainful employment in the U.S. I agree with my kimchi fueled critics. I am a loser I mean who in their right mind would come to Korea; the inbred backwater of East Asia whose main claim to fame is a world class airport that can efficiently shuttle people to better places around the globe, when I already live in America. Well I am a Loser. I got tired of making significantly more than my current Korean bosses in America so I decided to come to Korea and make significantly more than the general population.
According to the Korea National Statistical Office the average income per household is 3.45 million won per month. Now for comparison I make 2.75 million won per month. If you deduct non-consumable expenditures that brings down the income to 2.835 mil won. My disposable income is slightly north of 2.4 million won. But when you dig a little deeper you find that about 75% of Korean households contain at least two people. So it takes at least two Koreans to equal one of me. Hasa! But I am still a foreign loser and I shouldn't compare myself to the entire population. So let's move on to the school house since I am in the education industry.
Teaching Korean students is a ridiculous undertaking that should only be undertaken by societal losers. I agree with this observation so I am going to go to my elementary school and inform all the teachers and the staff that they are collectively bigger losers than yours truly. Even though they are smart, dedicated young people who love children it is clear to me that they are losers because I make much more money than they do. The elementary teachers make between 1.3 and 1.5 million won which is about a 1/3rd less than me after taxes. And considering they teach every class all day every day and I teach 4 classes and leave their hourly is much lower than mine.
The middle school is a bastion of losers. The nice office manager who is responsible for occasionally fucking up my losers pittance receives the miserly sum of 1 mil won per month. After taxes she makes 800,000 which makes her 3x the loser I am. My co-teachers average about 20 years experience and I would be shocked if any of them cracked 3.0 million won. My boss makes 4 mil won for the dual position of vice-principal and science teacher. Two jobs to make 4 million won what a loser considering I made more than that in America when I was 25 and though it is hard to tell with the dye job I think he is in his late 40's. There are other losers involved with the education of Korean kids such as bus drivers, kitchen staff, janitors etc. but suffice to say they are all at least 2x and some as much as 6x the loser I am.
Some kimchi cheerleaders have written that we are economic refugees completely unable to find gainful employment in our home countries. I agree totally it is very difficult to be a college graduate in America and not have the ability to live with one's parents until their early thirties eating kimchi chigae in their underoos in their bedroom playing WOW pretending to study for exams. But the reality is there are only 8,000 or so American teachers in Korea. 8,000 where did I hear that number before, I forget . Anyway 8,000 jobs would be statistically irrelevant job growth for the state of Ohio let alone the entire United States so the idea that Korea is providing large scale work opportunities for a large number of unemployables is rigoddamndiculous. Oh yeah, I remember 8,000 teachers roughly equals the number of Korean prostitutes working in the L.A. area.So America has provided at least as much work for Koreans as Koreans have provided for Americans. It is funny while we are a bunch of losers spreading English across the peninsula America received a bunch of whores at Korean rub and tugs spreading...
I've decided to embrace my loser status here , as I am part of the dregs of American society I do make a pretty good middle class Korean.
Dictated not Read
Well said! We should all embrace our loserness. :)
ReplyDeleteWell you make more than this loser. According to whthe at the immigration dept. told us, the average korean family makes $20,000 US a year. Which makes them even bigger losers than previously believed.
ReplyDeleteThey can call me a loser all they want as long as they keep paying me 60,000/hr.
ReplyDeleteJust read your whole blog. Great reading! It's right to the point with not a word wasted.
ReplyDeleteI'm learning Korean for business and reading you and Korean Rum Diary and Lousy Korea I'm wondering what I'm gotten myself into.
My jaw fell open when I read about the immigration swat team accosting you, and medical results that you paid for getting shared, and people changing seats so that they don't have to sit next to you, and so on. Also: two stalkers already? That must be a record of some sort.
By the way, some dogs raised by whites just bark at blacks for reasons of their own. I know a couple of people who are mortified by their dogs doing this. So don't assume we've trained our dogs this way. That being said, I did meet a surgeon in rural Alabama who bragged about how his doberman hates niggers, so you never know for sure.
The one story about how your dad told you to give back the $100 to that criminal brought back a lot of memories. Every black man I know from my hometown in backwoods Alabama who made a life for himself had at least one parent who was made of steel. But even that's not enough; I knew three black brothers who had two great parents, but the middle one was doomed from the start anyway, whereas the other two were level-headed and got the hell out of there. I had pretty good parents and some common sense, but if I had been born black I would have sunk like a stone.
Anyway, that's my initial impressions. More later probably. Hope you keep at it!
they don't know how overqualified many of us are, or the work we gave up to travel and have a cultural experience. for those of us, korea was really a poor choice. Any other place I have travelled to (with the exception of Myanmar... wasn't cool) I would have enjoyed more. This place should be covered with a big warning label.
ReplyDelete8,000 Korean hookers for 8,000 loser English teachers. Korea came out sparkling on that trade.
ReplyDeleteOK, you are better looking than I am, look better in a suit than I do and even write better than I do. Now you have to after my issue with the Korean hookers and teh sex trafficking. Boy, you want everything don't you? Kidding around. You do a darn good job and if I knew you were out there, I would have never of started my blog. I am glad you are telling it like it is. Somebody needs to say what goes on in that part of Korea. Random bus days should not be taken by single non-white non-koreans.
ReplyDeleteI love this blog, it's fantastic. I'm curious where you got the 8000 from? Do you know how many total teachers there are?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliment you can go Korea Times to get the exact number of e-2 visa holders but it is around 20,000 and change generally 40% come from America.
ReplyDeleteMike, Koreans know that they couldn't get any English speakers to go to Korea unless they paid more than what you'd make in the States. What they are paying you is the bare minimum it takes to recruit people who can't find jobs in America/British Commonwealth to Korea. Sounded attractive at the start, didn't it? Decent salary? Nice place to live? Foreign land? They didn't tell you the culture shock and mistreatment you'd get from locals. They've been doing the same thing for 20+years. What amazes me is that there isn't more information out there warning people not to go.
ReplyDeleteKoreans can be taught English via webcam, online, telepresence in the future. No need for hakwons at all. Be enterprising...
The Americans got way more Korean hookers than that. They have more in Dallas, Atlanta, DC, Maryland, Vermont and PA. So what do you think about 2 and 3/4 Korean hookers for one Engish teacher is the norm? Now are these the Korean only hookers or I wil do anyone Korean hooker?
ReplyDeleteWith Korean hookers, don't forget Hawaii. There are a ton of them there. The funny thing about Hawaii is that there is Japanese writing on the signs for all the Korean rub and tugs that you see scattered throughout Waikiki. Irony.
ReplyDeleteLots of Korean hookers in most major U.S. metropolitan areas. Lots of black hookers too. Lots of Russian and Mexican ones too. So....what's your point?
ReplyDeleteIt is mind boggling that some of these "losers" still lounge around in Korea for nearly a decade (despite the fact that they are not even married to the locals there). If they think that they have way more to offer then they should move back to their own countries. Some of the employers (non-Asians) that I had dealt with in the US were just plain crooks. They came in two different colors white and black. No, I'm not a kimchi cheerleader.
ReplyDeleteSure they were
ReplyDelete