The English Academy - Part One
By Becky 베키
Preface:
This series is not a How-to guide
on becoming an English teacher in Korea.
It’s going to be significantly more
dramatic than that.
Strap in.
If you want to live in Korea and can claim the following:
a bachelor’s degree
native English fluency
an ESL teaching certificate
an inhuman level of patience
then working at an English-teaching academy in Korea is a viable option for you.
If you go through the right channels, you may find an academy willing to pay for your airplane flight, sponsor your visa, support your housing, provide training before you officially begin work and give you decent pay - which, you will find out, may be higher than what the average Korean worker is earning. Sounds good, right?
If you are like me and have an F-4 visa (Overseas Korean), you don’t have to be tied to a specific job, so if something goes awry you’re free to leave your place of employment without fear of being deported from the country. This is another wonderful thing to remember.
When I officially moved to Korea, I decided to go the commonly chosen route of teaching English for a year, despite my visa and having flexibility of job choice. By signing up to teach at an English teaching academy
(or 학원/hagwon), I would have a place to live and a stream of income right when I arrived in Korea. From there, I’d have time to figure out how to pursue my own passions.
It’s important for me to tell you that I don’t know about the ‘approved’ ways to become an English teacher in Korea. You would have to ask my fiance about that. (He’s also posted many useful and interesting videos on his youtube channel ‘Skycedi’ that takes you right through the whole process.) Cedric went through the program that took care of him from beginning to end.
But not me.
Anxious to get to Korea and just start my life right away, I searched online on somewhat sketchy job boards, found a few offers that paid higher than others and sent my resume out, explaining that I already had an F-4 visa and could begin as soon as I arrived.
At the time, I was living in the US, doing a church internship that worked with the unhoused, low-income families and kids in the foster care system in the city. It was work that I loved and taught me so much, but the Ex-Boyfriend was going to Korean military in a year and I wanted to be in the same country during his service. By then, we had been dating for two years.
I was turned down from a few academies on the grounds that I wasn’t ‘foreign-looking’ enough to teach their students. This, I learned later, means ‘people as close to blonde-haired and blue-eyed as possible.’ If you look too Korean, the students might try to speak Korean to you instead of English. And the Korean parents love white teachers, even if they’re completely unqualified and hate children (this, unfortunately, is not a libelous description of many English teachers in Asia.)
However, I was determined. When I finally landed an interview with one good-sized academy, I leapt at the chance. It was located in Suwon, a smaller city an hour out from Seoul, paid about 2,200 USD a month, provided an apartment and worked from Monday to Friday, 9:30 to 5:30 pm. It had pretty, child-friendly facilities that were split according to age range - one building for the two to four year olds, another for the six and seven year olds, then the downstairs floors for the older kids. The high schoolers came late at night, classes I wouldn’t be required to cover. Yet.
I sat before my laptop, feeling excited and nervous when the video call screen popped open and I saw the face of my potential employer appear. She had a sharp face with eyes that were constantly narrowed into a frown, as though she were squinting hard at something. Her expression was distinctly shrewd, diametrically opposed to the sort of lovely, open, smiley faces I associated with school teachers.
She didn’t waste a single moment. Once I greeted her, she said, “Hello. Introduce yourself,” and crossed her arms.
It was an abrupt start that prefaced how the rest of the interview went. She was aggressively brief with her questions and interjected constantly with “응”s and “어”s as I replied with a bright smile and carefully practiced answers. After about fifteen minutes, she said, “알겠습니다. I’ll send you an email soon. 감사합니다,” and ended the call.
I was bewildered and elated. It seemed like I was hired but it had happened so quickly it hardly felt real. When the email appeared in my inbox a few days later with a message of congratulations and a contract, I was ready to sign and hop on a plane.
The summer passed in a blur and in September I found myself greeted at the airport by the Ex-Boyfriend. He helped me with my two suitcases as we took a bus from Incheon all the way to my new academy. The Ex-Boyfriend waited at a cafe nearby while I went to the school according to the instructions I had received via email just a few days before my arrival.
Keeping in accordance to everything else so far, my welcome was slapdash and done in a hurry. The academy 원장님 (her English name was Hattie*) met me at the elevator before I even entered the main floor and ushered me back outside. She was very skinny, to the point of skeletal, which contradicted her iron-like grip with which she grabbed my elbow.
“I’ll take you to your apartment,” she said, walking quickly down the sidewalk, “You can get settled in today.” I hurried along after her, two steps behind in every sense of the meaning. The housing was about fifteen minutes from the school, a typical side street with run-down villas, telephone wires strung across above in a hopelessly tangled mess. I felt some apprehension as Hattie led me inside and directly downstairs to the semi-basement level.
If I had been a little bit older, a little bit braver, a little bit wiser, no doubt I would have quit then and there.
However, I was a lot like many other young women seeking their first job in Korea - fresh out of college with a secret anxiety to make it work with as little disturbance as possible. Maybe this was the Korean side in me - unwilling to speak up for myself when faced with a person of greater power, privately vowing to work hard instead of complain. This mindset has gotten me through many tough times. It has also made me feel sorry for the younger Becky who suffered needlessly.
The room was one of those infamous
반지하. Though not as bad as the one portrayed in Parasite, it had only one, tiny window with bars like a jail cell that looked out into a narrow alley, nearly pressed up against the neighboring building which blocked the sun. A long, neon bulb above lit the room with an uncomfortable electric glare, revealing a single bed, a wardrobe and a small, dented fridge. Old-fashioned, brown and maroon wallpaper made the room even more drab. In a word, it was awful.
Hattie turned around and said, “where are your suitcases?”
I swallowed the objections that threatened to rise out of my throat and said, “my boyfriend has them with him. He’ll help me move in later.”
She nodded, showed me how to change the door code and said, “I’ll see you in two days,” and left without a second glance. At the time, I was glad to let her leave as I didn’t want her to see the disappointment that spread across my face as I scanned the unpleasant one-room.
Now I know why Hattie was so careless when I first arrived - this academy had a track record of newly hired teachers making a run for it almost immediately. After I quit and moved out, two other teachers were hired in my stead, taking up residence in the cell-like room, one after another. The first teacher quit after a week and the other bolted overnight without a word. Of course, I didn’t know this when I became the first unlucky inhabitant.
When the Ex-Boyfriend dragged my suitcases inside and saw my face, he made a valiant effort to cheer me up.
“축하해!” He said, smiling widely. “너 이제 신입 사원이네. 방은, 뭐, 예쁘게 데코레이트하면 되겠지.
혼자 살 수 있어서 좋겠다!”
He was living with his parents until he had to report for the army and couldn’t wait to move out. I gave him a brave smile in return. We wiped down every inch of the room, unpacked my sparse belongings, made the bed using the ugly purple and green blankets the school had provided (don’t even think about the color scheme of my room overall) and finished off with a round of celebratory 떡볶이 and 칠성.
떡볶이 and 칠성 has become my traditional meal after every move to a new home; it reminds me of my first place I lived by myself in Korea and the determination I had back then. I was barely 22, working my first real job, one that I had sought out and got for myself, and successfully claimed a tiny corner of Korea for my own.
When I ate 떡볶이 with the flimsy wooden chopsticks and drank the fizzy 칠성 cider from the small, convenience store paper cup, I felt immensely proud of myself. Today, the taste reminds me of all the things I’ve overcome so far. And come to think of it, it makes me proud of myself, still.
A few characters you’ll meet in Part Two:
Rita, the horrible one
Freya, the fake one
Evie, the helpless one
Sunny, my angel
and Monica. She’s… well, you’ll always have Monica.
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*All names have been changed