By The Expat at Expat Hell I recently changed gyms. The gym that I used to frequent was fairly close to my house so it was quite convenient. Due to the relatively small size of the gym, I had to plan my workout times carefully to avoid the morning, noon and evening rushes. I also [...]
By Lee Scott
As many of you may know, a major election is coming up on Wednesday, April 11. Not only is it a day off for many of us, the election itself is something that the often-times frenetic campaigning makes us aware of even if we don’t care about the vote. How does Korean style election campaigning differ from the style you are accustomed to in your own home country? What do you think of the early-morning speaker trucks blaring music and campaign slogans in your neighborhoods, or the mobile stages parked at major intersections with rival candidates’ platforms being presented simultaneously, often accompanied by middle-aged (and sometimes older) ladies, decked out in their candidate’s colors and doing “that dance” that they all seem to know? How about those same women parading around the sidewalks in packs?
By 3WM Consultants
Type ‘Doing Business in South Korea’ into a search engine and you are hit with an avalanche of largely the same responses. There are pages upon pages of ‘Must do’ lists of ten to fifteen points, or private business consultancy firms willing to set you up in your chosen field on your behalf, offering a wealth of knowledge in exchange for a wealth of cash. The ‘Must do’s’ invariably and repeatedly revolve around informing the reader that Korea has long been a Confucian-based structure and that elements like age, respect and adhering to one’s superiors are the way forward. The consultancy firms will inform you that the market can be hard to penetrate, but sure enough they know and have the how-to.
Then there can be found entries into wide elaboration on social customs all about how to pour a drink and the kind of subjects to talk about.
Whilst you can find both books and websites that explain an ‘Understanding of a country’s business’, ‘information about business culture… to help you interact more effectively’, ‘Social Culture training courses’, and a ‘guide to… key aspects of undertaking business’, the advice, as previously mentioned appears to be largely the same thing on repeat.
By Matt VanVolkenburg
It’s interesting that, according to that KBS article, the Ministry of Education plans to require foreign hagwon instructors to a take a “drug test when they are newly hired or when they renew their contracts, regardless of their visa status.” There’s nothing in the law (see above) that says anything about needing these documents when renewing their contracts – only when being hired. On the other hand, I’m not sure what the legal basis is for SMOE (and other offices of education) requiring drug and HIV tests when rehiring teachers. And, of course, with the most recent arrests, there have been editorials saying that “tests can only verify whether drugs have been used within the last two weeks,” which comes pretty close to suggesting random drug testing.
By Jesse Coy Nelson
One Drop East was supposed to start at 11. The band was already playing when we arrived. YM had made reservations for the show. We got a wristband, a token for a drink, and a neon thing that you could twist into a bracelet, only I had a neon disaster. Mine broke. Toxic neon fluid was spilling all over me. Is it toxic? Well, I certainly wouldn’t mix it into my drink.
One Drop East sounded like a gumbo of soul, reggae, ska, and blues. I recognized the godfather of soul, James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World,” sung by their female singer, who has an awesome voice. The male’s vocals are quite good as well. They take turns on songs. He sang on Bob Marley’s “Exodus,” which the band jammed on through. They did a couple pure ska numbers, one which was an original of their own. They were very tight, and being a ten-piece band (that’s how many of them I counted at this show), that’s mighty impressive.
By Iwazaru
A few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, an email came in from an acquaintance who comes into contact with most Korean-related content on the Web and then disseminates it via his blog. He’d just gotten, he wrote, “the oddest call” from a man convinced that he was about to be arrested for uncovering a “human traffiking/illegal teacher scam.” Perhaps I’d be interested in contacting the individual, was the suggestion with contact details. This began what has been a bizarre and frustrating process of trying to get to the bottom of the story.
After doing some cursory research on the individual, I called him. What followed was a manic 66-minute monologue as he explained his allegations against an English Village on Jeju Island that had left him out of several thousand dollars in pay in a scheme that stretched back at least six years and included some 60 other bereft teachers whose names are on a list at the Korean Labor Ministry. Human trafficking, fraud, foreign child labor, neglect and abuse were among the allegations mentioned during the call with numerous references to specific incidents that evidence in his possession allegedly supports.
Toon by Lee Scott, words by Iwazaru
Does justice ever come? The scores of expats scammed out of bundles of cash by crooked travel agent Kang Wan-koo have been asking this question for months and months, some longer, and with the beginning of his trial scheduled for 10:40 a.m. on Tuesday, March 13, the question is as relevant and weighted as ever.
What justice will be served by the Seoul Eastern District Court to the repeat and relentless criminal Kang who when put out of business last fall and prohibited from doing further deals, relocated, reloaded and continued to scam unsuspecting travelers out of their money? Even as he sits in jail his scam continued to play out as one traveler explained on March 7: “wow not sure how i missed all this with all the press this guy received – i showed up at the airport feb 29th was first in line for a flight i wasn’t booked for (bad news) ~ did however get a ticket from one of the agents on site and did get home (good news).”
By Lee Scott
When we arrived at the police station, the minivan’s owner had gone out to have dinner. They called him and asked him to come back as soon as he could. When he came in, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t recognize him. He was the owner of the vehicle but not the driver. The minivan was used for his business (Chinese imports). When I found out he could speak Mandarin, he and I were able to converse much more freely (I speak Mandarin much better than Korean). He was telling me a little about his business and kept apologizing over and over for the situation. I told him that of course he needn’t apologize since he hadn’t been driving, nor had he even known that his employees were mis-using his vehicle. One of the other police sergeants in the office scolded him about the siren and PA system. Apparently he had the appropriate permits for both, but the two young men who were the culprits had been mis-using them as well. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again,” the cop told the man.
By Achilles
“I don’t like teaching English!” said “Sally” to the class. “Matt” said the same. And then “Lisa.” And so it continued for an entire week.
Korean middle and high school English teachers from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) might be the most miserable people on the peninsula.
The big news for expats recently is the forthcoming move to cut hundreds of native English teachers from secondary schools here in Seoul. SMOE officials have cited budgetary issues coupled with “research” “showing” that having a native English teacher does little to improve English language skills in secondary students, as reasons for the shift in policy.
By The Expat
This morning’s early stroll around Itaewon started out peacefully. I parked my car and walked up what for lack of a better name is commonly referred to as ‘Homo-Hill’, past the “Why Not?” bar and “SoHo”. Some local heavies were cleaning out a small restaurant at the top of the hill that recently went out of business (or was ‘forced’ to close). As they finished up, the only things remaining in the empty space were a few posters on the wall.
I rounded the bend, approached the top of ‘Hooker Hill’ and began the climb downwards. A local working girl was standing near the front door of her bar, smoking a cigarette. Two large Nigerian men were walking up the hill, approaching the girl’s shop and calling out to her. She quickly ran inside and closed the door.
By Mizaru
In the basement of the apartment building I lived in is the Police Bar. My room was above it out of earshot; a 5th floor walk up to a small room of cubist angles and a skylight. TV and cable were provided and a shared public bathroom cleaned for real every morning by a Chinese woman from Szechwan who for whatever reason didn’t mind fishing used condoms out of the toilet. At three-hundred bucks a month and an around the clock bowl of rice available how could it be better?
The first few nights and for some months to come Sinchon had a helter-skelter pace to run in and the neon dreamscape of a modern Kubla Kahn to be seen in.
I’m back in again and the only thing that seems new to the neighborhood now is a quirky comic bookstore off the main road that has transfigured itself into a “Purple hair redux” boutique. And contrary to a rumor, the Police Bar has not closed. The Japanese students that I used to cohabit the building with still drop down to it at around 12 a.m. and then the Police Bar has to stay open till the sun comes up. This is still part of that Sinchon de-rigor—as long as there are customers keep the place open, almost every place open, and let them revel on the streets in the smells of the crackling pork and bubbles of far-reaching perfume.
By Lee Scott
It was a little after midnight when we heard a loud police siren coming. A black minivan came tearing down the street, headed to where we were standing near the kebab truck. The driver was veering toward crowds of people in the pedestrian street and blasting the van’s police siren. We couldn’t understand why the van had a siren or what they were doing. The driver slammed on the brakes right in front of a crowd of young men and women who scattered in a panic. All the while the guy in the passenger seat of the minivan was laughing and shouting imprecations at the pedestrians over a P.A. built into the siren system.
By Iwazaru
How do you stop a scammer? You contact the police, present evidence of the scam and wait for justice to be served, right? Unfortunately that justice may be–and usually is–slow to arrive, if it ever does. The system has to do its work as the judicial machine chugs or sputters along. Such is the current case with Wan-koo Kang (aka Wystan, aka Joseph Kim), the man behind a travel scam that appears to have stretched on over years, raking in tens of thousands of dollars, ruining people’s “scheduled” trips sometimes leaving them ticketless at the beginning of a planned journey or stranded in the middle of a trip with no return ticket. That is until victims began to mobilize and attention turned to Kang’s brazen chicanery.
That attention led to the initial September shutdown of Kang’s Zenith Travel agency and his October arrest (though the court decided not to detain him). But the snake slithered on, continuing his dirty dealings under both his original name and the pseudonym Joseph Kim–Kim worked at the new Expert Travel in the Songpa District of southern Seoul. Brazenly and some would say, stupidly, under the name Kim, Kang sent out an email advertisement for Expert Travel’s “Cheapest Air Tickets” to more than a hundred people, including people he’d scammed while working at Zenith Travel.
By Iwazaru
If you’re planning on travelling this winter pay very close attention to whom that travel agent is claiming to be able to get you “Real Cheap Travel.” The clues will be rather obvious: he goes by the name Wystan Kang or Joseph Kim; he works for Zenith Travel or Expert Travel; he promises he has a great fare lined up for you to Palau, Hanoi, Bangkok, Fukuoka…anywhere; you need to wire the amount to his bank account before you can get the ticket; days start to pass and he’s not getting back to you; The ticket may have some trouble, he tells you (or maybe he doesn’t and you end up at the airport where you’re informed the ticket has been cancelled); he can’t return your money; he’s very sorry.
This is the story that dozens of expats have to tell stretching back many months. Yet there had been a hint of justice in Ocober of 2011 when Wan-koo Kang (aka Wystan, aka Joseph Kim) was arrested, had his business license suspended by the Seocho District Office and the doors of Zenith Travel were closed. The case then went from the Seoul Metro Police Agency’s International Crime Investigation Department to the East Branch of the Seoul District Prosecutors’ Office where it is ongoing now. Reportedly, Kang was taken before a court after his arrest where the judges determined that he would be released without detention while the case proceeded.
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 Iwazaru |
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