saying hello and goodbye to the Korean teachers..... or not

About a week ago my friend David wrote a blog about the way business is done in Asia here. It was something that I can certainly relate to and it was only reinforced this week with the imminent departure of no less than three Korean teachers from the academy at the end of February (Monday is the 28th, then March 1st is a holiday, so after Monday they will be gone).

I have this information solely because one of them came and asked me for my email. She studied for four years in Toronto and did a summer programme in Vancouver and enjoys talking about Canada with me. She also teaches me a bit of Korean and has asked for my help proof reading some stuff for her. The other two, who admittedly have only been there for a couple of months, left without so much as a good-bye. This was made worse by the fact that no one in management bothered to tell us they were leaving. We just show up one day and they are gone. Now this happens all the time in Korea, and apparently one of the teachers whose last working day was Thursday (as in she's on the payroll til Monday but won't be back to the school) didn't even tell her Korean co-workers it was her last day, and no one in management mentioned anything. They just sat down to their after class meeting and she wasn't there. However, in most cases the Korean teachers all say good-bye and have a cake or something, but the westerners never seem to be invited or even told about it.

I was happy to hear from some former and soon to be former coworkers that they thought this was awful, but they are all in the 23-30 age range. The older generation seems to have no issues with the Korean workers/everyone else workers divide and it's this generation that is in power right now. Either way, for the moment it only serves to creat divisions and antagonisms that really don't need to exist.

Finally, the new teachers (some of whom I have interviewed) don't ever bother to introduce themselves or say hi once they start work. I just get a schedule at the beginning of the month with my name and a Korean teachers name. The problem is that unless it's one of the four teachers who have been there for a while I have no idea who it is.

While I think that the upcoming generation of Koreans are much smarter and more worldly that this generation, I think it'll be a while before these practices stop, to the detrement of Korea and Koreans