What the Job Is – Part 3 - Summing Up, Giving Up

Leaving Korea

Yesterday I had my first classes in two months. In the time between my English camp (a week of unsupervised, self-devised material in the first week of January) and now, I have prepared absolutely nothing for my students. I simply couldn't motivate myself to plan the lessons. Much to my chagrin, I also couldn't motivate myself to commit to my writing, instead using this extended period of time to surf the internet and watch as many movies as I could from the Oscar 2011 nominees.

Imagine my surprise then to find that yesterday was actually a joy – that my first year classes lifted my spirits even though the new found effort completely exhausted me. They laughed, they smiled, they gasped on queue. When they asked:

“Teacher? You have girlfriend?” I would reply, yes, I do, and the class as one would make 'wooo' noises, the girls giggling behind their hands and going on to ask is she pretty, what is my dream girlfriend, what do I like in a girlfriend. When the boys asked:

“Teacher? You have six-pack?” They would shriek and cry “no teacher no” when I made a motion to show my belly. I knew enough now to limit my answers about music and movies to things the students knew – Michael Jackson, Korean movies and K-pop groups which I have never listened to. My first years were interested in my answers, asked questions without prompting and had such a high level of English that I was completely shocked. One student, when told I was from Australia, asked why I sounded English.

“You know accent?”

“Yes.” he replied, in a way I think meant to imply 'derr'.

“My accent is light. Not strong. So I sound a little British.”

He nodded sagely. And it was only later, when I compared the questions of the first years with the interest shown by my Korean co-teachers that I realised – in twelve months my co-workers have not shown as much interest in me as just one of these new classes.

Coming to Conclusions

I've been trying to write this article for some time now. I started it several times in February, trying to reach a unified conclusion about my teaching experience. Over the course of the last eleven months I have written about engagement with the job, my unforeseen capacity for racism, criticisms of the ex-pat community and some misconceptions I had concerning bilingualism. But what was my beef? What was my final conclusion on this failed job?

Because this is a failed job. It is a bull shit job. It is a go-nowhere, play-act fake job. I do not know one teacher in Korea who values the job above the lifestyle teaching ESL in Korea allows. This seems the norm until you realise that the community is completely disenfranchised with the sole profession which defines it. This disenchanted mindset is not solely due to the unrest of the highly educated men and women who cannot find work back home, but it does factor in. Neither are the students to blame for, as is illustrated above, when you have learnt how to handle a class the students can be an absolute joy. I think even the grumpiest of ex-pats over here would admit that the difficulties of the classroom are part and parcel of any teaching job.

What makes this job difficult and frustrating, what makes it seem fake and saps your confidence is the relationship (or lack of one) with your co-teachers and your school. Strangely enough, I have come to agree with a quote from the blog of a foreign ESL teacher that I criticised earlier in the year. I use it again now, still highly critical of his rants but begrudgingly in accord with his opinion of the Korean teaching situation:

“I came here with good intentions. Something changes over time. Your belief that you are making a difference in the students’ lives turns into a lost cause. Your belief that they (students/teachers/admin) give a rat’s ass – disappears. Your belief that they are actually capable teachers – vanishes. You will remain, alone, to spend your year in purgatory. Teaching in South Korea is the midway point of nowhere.”

Just now, a particularly difficult student came into the staffroom with a senior English teacher. Upon seeing me (as he has in class many times) he said,

“Oh! Herro Danrel!” The teacher he is with, with whom I have never had any classes nor spoken with at all, laughs as she goes to her desk, not bothering to look over towards me as the student has. Perhaps I am being too sensitive to the student's greeting, reading explicit sarcasm where there is none. Then again, when the teacher's attitude towards me is so openly dismissive, it is easy to insert an insult where none is intended.

Being Nowhere, Being Ignored

They've remodelled the cafeteria at school. The wooden stools have been replaced with plastic molded chairs and the walls bear fresh paint and new cupboards. Like everything else at school, no one told me this was happening, nor did I have the slightest inkling that it was going to happen. Being within weeks of my contract's termination, my visibility has reduced to near zero – teachers ignore me when I arrive at school in the morning and do not invite me to come with them for lunch. I come to school late, leave early, take sick days that no one notices. I have become invisible, of no real worth and a burden not to be bothered with.

One of the best examples of this occurred during the deskwarming period over the winter. There were no Korean English teachers present so a younger Korean teacher was sent over to ask me what I would like for lunch. At this point I had begun eating by myself, often overlooked when it came time to order for the other teachers. So when I said that I did not want to eat lunch with my co-workers, that I was “okay”, she seemed inordinately confused. She left my desk and returned five minutes later.

“I think maybe you should eat lunch with us.”

“It is too expensive. I'm not hungry. I'll eat later.”

“I'm sorry, but I think you should eat lunch with us.” Relenting, asking for bibimbap, I returned to my movie and was tapped on the shoulder a half hour later. I understood what the problem was when I sat down and saw that the principal of the school was present. My food was put in front of me, unwrapped as if I didn't know how to do so, and then when we had all been seated the conversation went on without me. No one looked at me, or acknowledged me in any way. When I had finished my meal a lively conversation was going on and I thought it might be nice to try and make an effort – so when the chosen co-teacher asked,

“Are you finished?” (meaning, you can go) I said

“That's okay. I was wondering what you were talking about. I caught something about Korea? Or something about numbers?”

The Korean teacher looked around, terrified. “No no. It's okay. You can go.”

“But maybe I could stay? I'd like to know what you are talking about?”

“No no. It's okay. Maybe I think you should go.”

I left the school an hour after that. I didn't show up to deskwarm for the week. No one commented.

But my attitude has gotten worse too. My attempts at learning Korean have all but reversed themselves, with even the most elementary of words and phrases forgotten as I mumble my way from restaurant to pub to supermarket. Last weekend I went with my neighbours to Chuncheon, a rural area a few hours out of the city. We took taxis a lot, and I began to prefer the drivers with no English to the few that attempted to engage with us – a cabbie with some English asked me the same four or five questions I've answered a hundred times. A driver who does his job in silence allows me to ignore them, to pretend as if they don't exist. The streets, the Korean language and the Korean people have begun to form one fixed backdrop. They ignore me, I ignore them.

Overpaid, Overlooked

There are reports within the community of right wing Koreans who dislike foreign teachers in their schools. They say they are overpaid, under qualified and a disruptive influence within the community. I cannot speak to the last point except to realise that with a little research all racism sounds the same and is used to the same political ends. What I will say is that I completely agree with the first and second points – we are overpaid and most (not all) of the teachers who come here are unprepared for the job. But this is because we are an unused resource.

We are supposed to be co-teachers, helping to supplement course material and assist our Korean teachers. Instead, we teach self-devised lessons with no input given or offered by our co-teachers. We are supposed to be ambassadors, aware of the cultural differences and understanding of our host nation's ways. But this is the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. The cultural 'awareness' that the GEPIK program promotes in its orientation is a way to mask the uncomfortable reality of being at the bottom of the social pecking order.

We are supposed to be helping teach English. How can we when confronted by so little English comprehension in our staff rooms? Just yesterday, in my very first lesson back, with a class I had from last year (who were thus immune to my celebrity) a co-teacher asked a student to explain to her the instructions I had given to the class. When the bell rang and we returned to the staffroom she said she was very “embarrassed” because she could not understand. Yes, I thought, and incompetent. If she could not understand the activity, and would prefer to ask another student rather than the foreign teacher, why should any other student do anything differently?

What the Job Is

I have loved my time in Korea. Even at my job I am aware of being present at a very unique, very special thing. But if there was one way of describing the conditions I have faced, the position that I think all GEPIK and EPIK teachers face in public schools it is this: This job is institutionalised alienation. It's a lie perpetuated by overseas recruiters and Korean bureaucrats.

The recruiters say, “It's a dream job! You'll get to see the world! What an amazing cultural experience!”

The GEPIK co-ordinators say, “It's important to understand our culture! Try to be a good sport! You'll have a great time!”

The schools say, “Look. We have foreign teachers. They are not cheap. We are a good school.”

But the truth is that without the support of the teachers in the staff room, your job winds up being a joke. There's some great teachers, both foreign and Korean, that work together and dispel this myth in some places – but their work is hampered by a dialogue of cultural dissidence. The school pushes you, you push back, they put you behind a desk, you don't show up. This is a broken system. Someone needs to fix it.

My advice if you wanted to come to Korea? Do it. Definitely. But don't believe the hype. Prepare yourself to learn Korean. Prepare yourself for loneliness and uncomfortable working conditions. And most of all, be prepared to be rude. A language barrier and a cultural barrier is no excuse for being treated as burdens by teachers who studiously ignore us.

But me? I'll let someone else fix it. If there's one thing I've learnt this year its this – I'm not cut out for the ESL profession. I can't stand acting like I care when no one else does.

Daniel East is a centralised, low pressure front English teacher.

Notes From the Desperate Capitol of Somnopolis

“It reeked of sleep … because we are all poets or babies in the middle of the night, struggling with being.” Martin Amis, London Fields

Because with a suddenness, you are at the airport. Oh sure, you could recollect the pre-dawn of the traveller moving through empty suburban stations with bleary expectation. But this isn't Somnopolis. The stone-faced check-in chicks, the avenue of surly security guards, the glistening valleys of duty free goods you never expect to buy but hope, someday, to take advantage of – these are the forgotten suburbs of Somnopolis that demarcate the approach to the capitol. It is my intention with the notes that follow to capture some of the inner quarters of this well-lit, desperate city. To portray like deja vu the strange quarters of this secret metropolis.

The Lightness of the Waiting Lounge

We all have everyday luggage. Not just our keys, wallet and phone – we wheel around our culture and our language as if they were backpacks full of curios and unwashed jeans. This is why sitting at the airport cafe in Phnom Penh I so understand the French couple twisted over their coffee and carry-ons. Somnopolis makes real a weight you have felt all your life and unburdens you from it at entry. We watched them, Lara and I, these ancient twenty-somethings as they bickered about what to remove from their taped trunks to squeeze under the twenty kilo limit. They were sharply dressed but their well chosen ensemble was slung from their shoulders in disrepair. In the waiting lounge I watched them drift at hands length but without touching, tender faces turned to each pictorial menu in turn. Hungry. Broke. Zombified.

Meanwhile Lara complains about the cost of her food, the duty free, etc. and I agree with her in a far-off way. Our clothes and books were squashed against our ankles as we ate. We work together as good travellers do – taking turns to break down or complain, cheering the other up. But here, in the departure lounge, we are wilfully and painlessly delayed. And why? For our lack of responsibilities, for our lack of baggage. It's all there in that French couple staring at a silent TV sipping their black coffee, waiting out their weightlessness.

Which Airport is This Again?

It was in Kuala Lumpur this time that it struck me – the approach to the airport, the method of transportation, even the gates outside bespeak the land you are in. But within the food court, looking towards arrivals there is a simulacrum of airports. I look at my tuna salad sandwich and the plastic triangle casing and think, where am I? Where am I going? I look over to Lara and she is not as lost as I, pointing out a man unceremoniously driving a cherry picker through the crowd, stopping to change some light bulbs in a departures/arrivals sign.

Short on cash but big on hunger, we crawl through security and scan the Duty Free Shops, broke but with nothing else to do. We come across a candy store that prices by 100 gram increments. Lara and I pace up and down the frosted displays picking from the sampler trays, circulating into the dried fruit and herbal jelly section (dried rose sap? Ginger flavoured dates?). At last we weigh a woefully small amount of candy and Lara heads to the counter. What seemed like seconds later she returned.

“Sorry that took so long. The guy in front of me was taking forever. I think he was arguing about the price at first, and then about his card.”

“He was?”

“You didn't notice?”

“No. I was just standing here. Eating candy.”

Lara had most of the jubes to herself. I was full.

A World Lost to the Earth's Dimension

Above the world and through a porthole the red wing-tip dipping as a bubble in a level gauge. The clouds iridescent below mapping undreamt of lands – of a forest whose tops are freshly crowned with snow, sloping down to frozen rivers; of fire, fine finger-like tendrils of ash thrown over the earth; of river deltas choked with alluvial mud, broad fans mixing into the dark blue deeps below; of dunes of purest white sand in endless coruscations reaching to a horizon shielded by alabaster peaks. The clearest sensation of passing above a bright map below.

Fury Like a Line of Distant Mountains

Lara is stopped for a search at security, her bag picked like fish at a corpse, and I watch a young Korean woman lose her shit entirely at the carry-on counter. Toting a massive army-green gym sack she is waving her arms back and forth at her two friends whilst a massive security guard stands behind.

I have no idea what she is saying but it is clear she has been pushed beyond the edge. Her friends try to take her arms, hold her shoulders down but they are flung up like banners above a crowd of fingers. I do not bother to hide my interest like the family climbing the escalator, keeping their curious toddler in front of them. The girls are looking around for somebody clearly lost and a second security guard comes to join the first, shrugging his shoulders in an impassive semaphore.

“Doesn't look like she's getting that on,” Lara says beside me.

“Look at the size of it though. Unless she was preparing to stow herself in the overhead locker, I don't see how she thought she could get it on.”

“Maybe she could climb inside it, like a sleeping bag.”

“What, and sit on the seat like that policeman from Noddy? Mr Glob?”

“Mr Plod.”

The security guard approaches us, I flash him my ticket and he takes one look at my backpack and waves me along. We watch the scene sinking below as we rise toward departure.

That Quote From Pynchon

Earthbound, we are limited to our Horizon, which sometimes is to be measured but in inches. We are bound withal to Time, and the amounts of it spent getting from one end of a journey to another. Yet aloft, in Map-space, origins, destinations, any Termini, hardly seem to matter – one can apprehend all at once the entire plexity of possible journeys, set as one is above Distance, above Time itself. Thomas Pynchon, “Mason and Dixon”

Daniel East is a Rocket Man. And it's gonna be a long, long time.

The Water of Life

As many of you may know, The Great Affairs has been in hiatus for the last month. 'What the hell,' I hear you screaming. 'You've only been around for seven months. What lazy bums you must be.' Well now I'm going to make you feel very bad. We were in Cambodia and Malaysia trawling, suffering, expiring for stories for you, our avid readers. And boy did we find them. This first article will kick off a brand new series entirely made up of East and Lara, featuring East and Lara and threatening even more East and Lara in the future. You lucky rascals. And so:

I am not a woman who enjoys the idea of 'settling'. There are so many bad connotations related to the word: tea leaves settling in the bottom of my mug instead of floating around like happy little antioxidant motes; settling a bill that I was never really able to afford; going to a settled estate and finding absolutely nothing I want to buy. But the most frightening significance I understand is that of physically settling down. I so desperately don't want to find myself disappointed with where I find myself. There are so many options in life and only a fraction of them are concerned with where I choose to live but this just makes me panic more. How do I sift through these choices to find the one that's right for me? Is there even a right one? Why can't there be a right ten, all at once? Why can't I have all the countries?

It seems to me that the more places I go in life the more I realise that the world is, basically, fluid. Every country has the shadow of another upon it in the forms of landscape, religion, people, to the point where one piece of scenery can be completely replaced by another with barely a flicker of an eyelid. When I first touched down in Korea way back in April I looked out the airport bus window and thought, my god those trees look like the trees on the highway leaving Heathrow. East seemed excited by this proclamation, as though I'd told him that the northern hemisphere was essentially all the same and visiting one country gave you a passport to all. In reality this fact has become a worldwide phenomenon.

We had been in Cambodia for twenty minutes, long enough to hire two Khmer drivers to take us into Siem Reap proper on the back of their motorbikes. We rumbled along a newly developed strip lined with enormous hotels all called things like 'Pride of Angkor' and 'The Angkor Wat Palace' and in between asking my driver what was growing by the side of the road and him telling me he used to be a monk, I saw a billboard for Korea's KEB bank. As it flashed by I went over the Hangeul in my head and for a long second completely forgot my location. There I was, a British/Australian on holiday, riding along the outskirts of a Cambodian city and reading the language of the Asian country I call home. The stretch of the world has made everything concrete turn fluid, everything that you assume to belong to one country able to bleed into another. When we got off our bikes I told East what I'd seen and his amusement made me realise just how funny it was that I was even able to read Korean let alone read it on the back of a speeding motorcycle in Siem Reap. Thus was my first introduction to our time away. And like all enormous realisations, it came in a pair. This was the first thing I saw upon stepping off the bus at Kuala Lumpur's central station:

On our first day away I made a bet with myself that I'd meet someone who came from somewhere I once did. I managed to win this bet six days after we arrived in Battambang, a place most tourists know due to the fact that the summer season necessitates a ten hour boat trip to reach it. Before leaving this largely market-place city for Sihanoukville, we went for drinks and pool with a couple we'd met at our hostel and I asked the Australian man where he was from. It went like this:

Me: So where are you from?

New Friend: Australia.

Me: Yeah I know but where?'

New Friend: Near Sydney.

Me: Me too.

New Friend: A place called Bowral.

Me: You're kidding. I'm from Bowral.

New Friend: What school did you go to?

Me: Bowral High.

New Friend: Me too.

And yada yada yada. While we expounded on our amazement and compared who we both knew and where we both went, East and our new friend's girlfriend sat back and rolled their eyes with the boredom of not knowing who or where we were talking about. At first I thought they were bitter but then I wondered why I was making such a fuss. Is it entirely surprising that we would come across the familiar while travelling abroad? If the world is fluid and each section is now so completely diluted with another, surely there's nowhere left where we can be truly free from our home? Nowhere to really be immersed without familiarity or language?

Our trip to Nepal offered me my first experience with the English language becoming a badge of honour rather than a valid method of communication. Billboards for Coca Cola, Pantene and North Face were plastered across Kathmandu's city face and each one carried English instead of Nepali. Though the general fluency was impressively high there were still glaring errors made all the more obvious because it wasn't English I was expecting to see. Especially when compared to Korea where English is either massacred or dramatically steered away from by the general public. Cambodia took Americanisation to a whole new level. Their chief currency is still the American dollar, though all our change was given in local riel. The tourists attractions, which make up most of the activities in larger cities, are written somewhat hilariously in pieced together English. Children on the streets of Phnom Penh greeted us with a barely accented 'hello' and if we didn't answer or pretended non-comprehension they proceeded to rattle off endless greetings in a variety of other languages, just in case we heard one we recognised. What I really appreciated, however, was the comedy of the signs.

Since getting back to my comfortable little apartment in Seoul I've been thinking about what this fluidity means to my future travel plans. I want the road less travelled, the unbeaten path, the mountainside not yet logged but I'll forever find myself falling into the tourist traps. And for good reason. These hugely popular routes have been created because there are amazing things to be seen. Angkor Wat may be crowded but it's also hauntingly beautiful. There were times on the Tonle Sap that we were staring at passenger boat after passenger boat but floating all around us were houses on plastic drum rafts and children paddling in bin lids with snakes around their necks. Like all things in life, we took the good with the bad and who's to say that fluidity is one or the other? Or that we can't appreciate seeing part of ourselves everywhere we go?

Lara could travel to the moon and meet someone who went to her pre-school.

What's My Age Again?

This last year of my life feels like one long blink. Like I forgot to press the record button and thus lost everything I was suppose to remember and it all became another year relegated to the growing pile behind me. I swear I can feel my age more powerfully; not physically but as a living entity stalking by my side. My youth has become relative – there are twenty two year old television and film stars currently working who make me stop and realise that I'm no longer in the recently departed twenties; soon, I'll be closer to thirty. This idea has only disturbed me since moving to Korea and I am ready to admit this fear stems entirely from vanity. Korean women, until they reach menopause, are ageless. Porcelain skin, wrinkle-free mouths, large dark eyes – all of it makes guessing their year of birth impossible. Combined with the complicated procedure of calculating Korean age versus Westerner age, I may as well give up on understanding my current ageing experience altogether. Let the years gather without pomp or circumstance.


Koreans are beautiful, that much is instantly obvious. Standing next to them I not only feel like David's Goliath terrorising the villagers but more pockmarked than the ugly side of the moon. It's quite an intimidating position to be the tall, curvy westerner trying to buy clothes from a train station clothing store or squeeze onto the crowded bus. And I'm not even particularly curvy, let alone tall. To make it worse, my complaining doesn't make the situation any more bearable; my genes have been defeated by an ancient heritage of diet and impossibly sculpted statures. These people surrounding me barely seem human. They maintain their youth long beyond childbearing years, unmarked by fatigue or stress, completely bypassing those tell tale stages of wrinkle-forming and greying hair. East invited me to lunch with his co-worker just a few weeks ago and this woman, with her excellent English and glowing hair, mentioned she had a son. Looking at her I guessed he must be a toddler and was about to congratulate her when she said he enjoyed playing with the under 13s baseball team at his school. Furthermore she talked about when her and her husband met they were celebrating the end of university with visits to the cinema and nice dinners. This meant that she would have been at least twenty five before having her children, and a twelve year old son put her in the range of late thirties. More amazingly, she has another thirteen years before her body will show any signs of middle age. And this is where my one saving grace exists. At fifty, Korean women become old as though a switch has been thrown. All their beauty and immortality is rerouted into becoming as short, impatient and, more often than not, unfriendly as possible.


The before and after of Ok-bin's 50th birthday party.


What is more uncomfortable than a woman being asked her age? I'll tell you. A woman being asked her age and having to take the Korean system into consideration. When a baby is born, Korean culture already considers them to be one year in age and the proceeding new year after their birth denotes another year. For example, I was born in mid November 1986 so by the time January of 1987 passed, my two month old baby butt would already be considered at the age of two. Imagine my position when trying to choose which age I convey to my Korean friends. Am I my Western twenty four, appearing to them a mere twenty two year old, or do I play along and state the very frightening number of twenty six? And if I do decide to embrace my Korean age, what should I do with the extra twenty two months afforded to me? Have I wasted them living my western life, letting myself off thinking I'm too young to be disappointed by what I haven't yet achieved. Perhaps this explains the Korean work ethic; somewhere a kimchi-eating god puts babies together and sends them out into the world with the knowledge that they are perpetually two years behind where they should be. It's enough to make anyone spend ten hours a day in education. Still, I'd prefer to drink away my worries with a delicious pitcher of soju, often referred to as:



Thankfully, Lara's butt is still baby smooth and forever young.