FYinSK - Dec 2013

December 2013

Monica and snow

According to the Korean law, all hagwon (private schools) are in the obligation to give money for the national pension for each of their teachers. Teachers put half, and the school pays the other half. At the end of a contract, when the teacher goes back to his country, he gets all the money (both paid by them and the school) in full - well Canadians do. The money amounts to something like $90CAD/month that you double up at the end. As a teacher, you can choose not to give the pension money, but then, you basically lose in the end, and the school basically makes money on you, so it’s never a good idea to decide not to pay pension.

I had the genius idea to teach Jingle Bells to my kids
Result: everytime it'd start snowing they'd burst out
singing it happily as then went on working. I love 'em

In December, we realized something: while money for the pension had been deducted from each of our pay check, it was never paid to the pension: the school had been keeping both our pension money, and not paid their own due money. Decidedly, this year was a year for me to get fu*ked over with by money. Now people wonder why I hate money so much…

(I will actually go to the pension office tomorrow to let the pension office know of it and will get my money eventually. It’s just bothersome to have to get to do those procedures. Why the hell do people take advantage of others… It’s really hard not to become cynical at this point…)

Tik Tok Tik Tok...

Anyways. 

It was also the period to think about resigning a new contract if I wanted to stay with the school. The president had made bad business decisions and did not really treat us employees with as much loyalty as we have had worked for him, but the new owner, so far, had been very transparent, had paid our pension, had paid us on time, and had talked about everything that went on with the school since he got there, and we had had meetings every week to stay updated. 

I did like NGLOW: 

Dongtan is a beautiful place and the liberal way of dealing with our respective classrooms in NGLOW was something I really liked. I liked the people I was working with (tho at the end of the year, most of them were planing on going back to their countries…) and I loved the kids that were in the 6 years old class, that I would get to teach if I stayed. All in all, it seemed a decent plan. I had made a deal to have longer summer vacations to get back to Canada for two weeks instead of one, and had a little raise.

I said I’d re-sign if they were to keep their promise for the year-end bonus of my previous contract, and the flight ticket that they were supposed to pay by the end of the year (I’d get the flight back home paid as my previous contract stipulated, and get my flight back to Korea paid with my new contact with NGLOW).

So I re-signed.

Tik Tok Tik Tok...