Well, in case we wondered before, we got his attention. Jon Huer has been reading your blog, and he wants to know why there seem to be so many unhappy expats online. His Korea Times column boils it down to expectations vs. reality, and suggests that many English speaking expats (English speaking first-world expats, to be more specific) expect to be treated as tourists, and instead get treated like foreign workers (and we all know Korea’s reputation for treating foreign workers) and/or have to deal with the same workplace bull-dookie that Koreans have to deal with, and get disenchanted.
The complaining expat has been covered at length on the K-blogs already (and continues to be), but it’s interesting hearing one sociologist’s approach to it, and frankly, I’m ready to accept a number of his points.
Some of his better bits:
To read [some Expats'] descriptions of life here is to read some of the most negative and unhappiest of human evaluations and social experiences.
…Most thinking people would say the experience is molded by the foreigner’s own personality…
Although I like this personality model…I want something based on social factors and conditions, not just individual personality typologies.
…For all economic intents and purposes, they are like ordinary Koreans. …their most compelling feature is that they are workers in Korea.
I’ve found the life experiences of those who come to Korea to be English teachers, although they think of themselves as “foreigners” and expect to be treated as “foreigners” by the Koreans they encounter, are really closer to being ordinary working Koreans.
Korea’s treatment of foreign workers from poorer countries is legendary, and those from the United States and Canada gradually lose their visitors privilege and rank. … This naturally conflicts with the somewhat grandiose expectations…that some…may have prior to their arrival in Korea.
Most of our human disappointments occur when our expectations and results do not match. Poverty is bearable if one doesn’t expect to get rich. But third-class treatment is painful if a first-class reception was expected.
…The Korean employer, quite ready to exploit anyone for his or her profit … when he sees this ordinary foreigner, mostly a backpacked unemployed job seeker at his doorstep, looking for work in Korea, it is not the same Western visitor that he has admired and respected.
It’s a totally different ball game that both the Korean employer and the ordinary working foreigner now face. From here on, it’s nothing but a struggle for survival and advantage for both of them. The resulting feeling is naturally nasty, brutish, solitary and short…
…the bitterness and rancor among this group can only be explained by the cold sociological factor of expectations vis-a-vis results.
From the manpower perspective of Korea, the unhappy English-teaching foreigners’ population in Korea is insignificant, …but they sure make a lot of noise in the cyber community, where they seem to congregate to vent their unhappiness.
Well, English teachers, you got his attention.
I have half a mind not to post this, because I don’t really think the world needs another pile-on comment board where everybody congregates to confirm Mr. Huer’s suspicions about bile-filled expats (especially given that chances are, he’ll read it) – there are enough of those already. I’ve received e-mails from someone who knows him, saying that he comes across much better in real life, or in a format where word-count limits don’t force him to condense his thoughts so much that they lose a lot of their original development, and that picking on him is a bit unfair, but on the other hand, he’s writing about the expat experience in Korea, which is what The Hub of Sparkle is for… so let’s talk about expectation vs. reality, and try to be nice. Who knows. If this comment board remains civil, Mr. Huer himself might weigh in. He’s commented on other blogs, it seems.
18/04/2009 at 1:25 pm Permalink
He has a lot of good points, and I agree with them. Kinda put off by the tone of English teachers with superiority complexes. I think the break in expectations is that in college and in our work lives we are trained in our culture to have some sort of professional behavior, even Wal-Mart workers. We don’t always do it, but professional behavior is considered a virtue.
Aside from the handful of social retards, English teachers at least start off with a professional outlook to their jobs. Their jobs are to teach English and to uphold their parts of their contracts. When their bosses don’t reciprocate said professional behavior and disregard the terms on the contracts that they themselves wrote and signed, the negativity starts–avalanches.
So, it’s not a matter of English teachers being upset because their bosses don’t treat them as “superior” westerners. It’s because they just don’t fit the English teachers’ expectations for professionalism.
Yet again, if you ask people involved in other businesses here (Tom Coyner comes to mind) this view of unprofessionalism recurs as an undying theme in Korean industries.
18/04/2009 at 1:27 pm Permalink
A recent example:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70377768302
18/04/2009 at 2:51 pm Permalink
I agree ZK, he has a lot of good points.
Mr Huer is taking a courageous stand. I applaud him for his thoughtful and insightful comments on E2ers (English talking teachers).
18/04/2009 at 4:24 pm Permalink
Hmmmm, perhaps ex-pats should be considered fickle rather than complaining? Case and point: Is this not the same Jon Heur we roundly lambasted only last week?!
18/04/2009 at 7:17 pm Permalink
Korean employers looking for native English speakers need to do a better job of understanding that a contract in The West (speaking as an American) is binding. I think Mr. Huer makes some good points, but he’s also trying to say that there are only super-happy wayguk saram in Korea and super-depressed/bitter ones, and nobody in between.
I happen to be a fairly happy English teacher who, despite the treatment I received at my last hagwon regarding 3 to 5 million won that was owed to me and that I’ll never receive, soldiered on and is how happily teaching at another school in Seoul. I’d like to think KoreaSparkle is representative of a “happy medium” of folks who understand that there are cultural differences here that need to be handled, but at the same time aren’t dumb enough to roll over and accept the so-called “Korean” management style when it comes to being cheated out of money, expecting to work a reasonable amount of hours as written in the contract, etc.
Recruiters share a lot of blame for this, IMO. Why advertise a job for 2.7 million won per month and only 20 hours a week “classroom” teaching, when in fact that jobs pays far less and requires a lot more labor? Just be honest about the whole shebang up front. Call it a “cultural difference” regarding contracts and labor relations all you want, but it’s ultimately a question of honesty. Lots of Korean employers hiring foreigners simply aren’t capable of it. And this reflects upon the entire nation in the long-run.
18/04/2009 at 10:50 pm Permalink
I think the best points in the article are in regard to the people from poor countries who come here. Indeed many English teachers get a bum wrap, but I have never heard of any English teachers living in shipping containers as some south East Asian factory workers (and some Korean seagull fathers)
But yeah the different expectations in professionalism can be disarming. My EPIK orientation was one of those experiences. They assembled everyone in a big room, and people who were already EPIK teachers had a panel discussion where everyone asked questions where the answer was always, “ask your co-teacher.” And then whenever it was a Korean administrator’s turn to talk they would just welcome us and thank us for being there, when people really wanted to know important things like if they had a place to live or where the hell were they. If you had never been in a foreign country before and you make a decision to work in one for a year, it is always a little stressful when the people who hired you don’t know anything, or pretend not to.
But that being said I believe myself to be one of the happy people here. In my post college years I have never been this comfortable, and I feel like I am doing something with my life. Where in the states (especially Michigan where I’m from) there is a lot of fear of living because jobs that pay well are hard to come by, and the expenses of having a car and insurance can be troublesome. American culture I feel also forces people to want to be the best at something, or become a self made person. Now Korea too is ridiculously competitive, but not being Korean and living outside of the Korean culture frees people like me from having to worry about petty things that Koreans might have to worry about, or the petty things that I’d have to worry about back home, and that in a way is a sort of freedom.
19/04/2009 at 6:35 am Permalink
For my part, I have been working at a school I really love. What I don’t love is that anytime I make a comment that seems to be even slightly negative, i.e. the students don’t get enough sleep, a couple of my students in X class were rude/disrespectful, I am reminded that I am a foreigner and as such, am not entitled to an opinion. I believe that if NETs were treated as part of the group, with valid opinions, there would be a whole lot less complaining.
But because we are NOT allowed to say our peace in the work environment, we vent on the blogs. All that pressure building up has to be released somewhere.
I forget who said it, but I read a quote once that said: When the men stop complaining, that is when I get nervous.
19/04/2009 at 5:05 pm Permalink
Why are you even bothering to dissect his points? He’s garbage, his articles are garbage, end of story.
19/04/2009 at 11:34 pm Permalink
Allegedly, Huer has lived in Korea for a decade and he still seems not to understand “the foreigners”. It may have something to do with living at the garrison and not actually ever meeting with or having anything to do with the foreigners living in Korea (by his own admission he doesn’t have any contact with us).
On another board, someone made the observation that he describes Korea and the foreigners working here as if it were the 90′s, where backpackers were pretty much the norm, wandering around Korea looking for a job. That is simply not the situation these days. One wonders what he’s done while living here for the last 10 years to be so completely out of touch.
I’m with ZenKimchi on his last point about professionalism and I would add in as well an expectation by foreigners that contracts and laws would be followed. We come here with our ideas about what a teacher should be, and what an employer should be, then have those ideas dashed when they meet the reality here.
I would like Huer, rather than point out that foreign teachers are unhappy (this can be seen on any board or blog), but why not go out and investigate WHY there is unhappiness with Korea. Is that not what sociologists do? Ask the whys of societal behaviours? He claims to be a sociologist and social critic, no?
I would bet that many people who say they are unhappy, would point the finger at being treated like an indentured servant (the way the visas are set up); or unhappy not knowing from month to month if they will be paid or not; or being constantly told we are not Korean will never be Korean and will never be a part of Korean society, then told in the next breath “When in Rome, do as the Romans”.
Plenty of things in Korea can disenchant a bright-eyed newbie, almost all of them to do with employment conditions. It’s hard to be happy in your everyday life when you can’t stand your job. Many people, after they hear how many times I’ve been forced to go to the various labour/pension/whatever boards and of the various lawsuits I’ve filed over the years (totaling well over 25 million won all told), they can’t understand why I don’t completely loathe Korea and Koreans. My answer: I simply don’t generalize to the general populace or to the country as a whole the illegal, immoral, disingenuous, dishonest, and abusive actions of a corrupt industry. I think this is where much of the anger and unhappiness comes from: people who can’t compartmentalize like that.