On
Thursday, our English department head told us, laughing, that English
department heads always get cancer because foreigners give them so much stress.
Maybe, she added, I’ll get breast cancer. Ha! Ha! Ha!
We tried to smile politely because,
being veterans of Korea, we know sometimes things are lost in translation. But
still we’re not sure if it’s a joke or what the joke is or why our department
head is both laughing and why she thinks the very simple issues we’ve raised
are nuisance enough to kill her. Surely it’s more stressful for a foreigner to
live in Korea than a Korean to interact with a couple foreigners. Surely our
requests for our contract to be honored are reasonable. Surely.
Surely?
The longer I’m in Korea, the more I
see and feel Korean. Not only do I finally notice my small face and high nose; I’m
happy to have them. Although a medically dubious claim, our department head’s
stress to the point of cancer is beginning to make a lot more sense to me.
When Koreans are told to work
overtime, they do it. And they do it without overtime pay, incentives, or ill-will
toward their company. Overtime isn’t good
news to them, but there’s no furrowing of the brows that says, “Why should I?
Is this the best way to increase productivity? Have you thought about x, y, and
z?”
Time is not yours to arbitrate in
Korea; you are too far down on the totem pole for that. You may want more time to sleep or to be with
friends, but you are a student now: time is dictated by your professors. Now you’re
a company worker: time is given to you by that company. You have to earn time; it is not an essential right.
Right now the company is busy, so, company employee, you stay until 11 each
night instead of the tacitly assumed 9:30 and, for fun, we’ll have a mandatory
company retreat on Saturday and Sunday. We’ll play games and drink soju and it
will increase productivity through team spirit. You will not experience more
stress.
Why don’t you quit? I asked my
friend. She works in a hospital, and for about two months every year they work
three hours overtime every day without pay. She shrugged.
“There’s more work for the hospital at
that time,” she explained. “And if I quit . . . other companies are worse.” She
laughed. “I finish work at seven or eight on a bad day but on Facebook I see my
friends at Seoul writing ‘Early day’ and like that when they finish work so
early.”
Here at Kosin, while we foreigners
are dragging our feet on some random government or school stipulation, weighing
the benefits for our students and the logic behind the decision, the Korean
teachers don’t bat an eye. They certainly don’t raise questions like, “Is it ethical
for a Christian school to violate a contract—taking away pensions and severance—in
order to save money?”
Our department head blinks at us
when we do. “Everyone is taking a pay cut. No one gets a pension anymore. Even
Korean teachers. Actually, three art teachers were changed to part time
recently.”
“In violation of their contract?” We
are horrified.
She didn’t understand why. The next
issue—getting into the English department office when the secretary locks us
out—was similarly thorny.
“Our
secretary . . . I cannot convince her. She is stubborn. The secretary wants extra pay for coming to extra events,” our
department chair said, shaking her head in disappointed frustration.
Now
it was our turn to be baffled. Convince her? Of what? Why shouldn’t she get pay for extra work?
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| Photo unrelated except as evidence to my parents that I'm still alive. |
As
if it weren’t the known—the assumptions, the unquestioned—that was the real
problem.
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