Some clips of Flight of the Conchords. "Business Time" and "Jenny" are partcularly great. Two very talented and funny Kiwis!

Monday, November 17, 2008

EE BOO YOUNG Talking Kids Club, Korea

Surely this can't be true? Someone must be trying to wind The Inspector up. Left on the "Asta Kids Club in Incheon Korea section. The person names an EE Boo Young Club. Your noble sleuth feels it is probably E Boo Young. Any comments oh and if it's a joke own up. If it isn't then bargepoles out pronto troops.

E BOO YOUNG Talking Kids Club

Hi You are naive to assume that a bad situation in Korea is easily rectified or mediated. This is a story I heard, I will quote: " I worked at a Talking Kids Club. The day I arrived the Director met me with an anti American diatribe and went into a rage which I found very unnerving. I was dropped off in the middle of a southern city from a bus. She took me to an apartment and said we would renegotiate my contract or I could earn money on my bed. The apartment had windows facing an alley where tires were burned in trash cans regularly this ultimately made me sick. My employer's English, the employer was a woman was what I would have expected from a prostitute. Every aspect of my contract was violated, no overtime, no matress on bed, pay was late and short of overtime, I did not receive an alien registration card, without which I could not open a bank account or apply for a drivers license, I had not medical insurance (the burning tires really made me sick, I am still sick) I went to a Korean doctor who gave me a prescription which I thought was for lung and sinus infection, I looked it up on the net and it was for a tranquilizer, my boss made continued references to selling my body. She brought a man to the school and told me he would take me to his house every weekend and return me to the school for adult English classes. I had an adult class at the school. This was an illegal request, the man was weird and spoke obscene English. When I refused she threatened to take away my company paid apartment. Previously she had entered my apartment on many ocassions and remarked on my wardrobe at school.Some of my clothing vanished. I received money from home via Western Union then traveled to Seoul where I went to my recruiter who said I needed an attorney (Without a paycheck and bills back home and an infection which made me feel very ill?) When I missed a Monday I called her she told me to "eat vomit" On Tuesday she called and was very nice. I turned in a resignation to comply with the letter of the law and my boss hit me. I went to the police and she followed me there and hit me in front of the police. They said I could leave Korea. I could not prove the things she said she did not say these things in front of other people and she denied them to the police but it was obvious she broke the contract. She had a bipolar personality, was probably on alcohol, and was the most artful of liars. The woman was a maniac. No one who worked for her liked her but the depend entirely on their job. The economy in Korea is such that jobs are hard to find. When I first read these postings before going to Korea I thought just malcontents and disgruntled unhappy people were writing. IT IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY AND YOU ARE CRAZY TO THINK THEY REALLY LIKE AMERICANS WE ARE A NECESSARY EVIL. They do not have the same labor standards and employment customs we do, think Industrial Revolution conditions but apply this to the academic world. Let me also add that children are beaten at school, I don't beat children. Once after the boss argued with her husband in the office she stormed into my phonics class and hit the children with a sharp stick, tiny children. They had done nothing wrong. And let me explain something else. These students go to a public school until the afternoon. At 2 or 3 or 4 they are sent to the private school where they remain until 7 or 8 or 9 p.m. They are only 7-14 years old. Many are both tired and hungry. the parents are often working class mothers work in a store until 10:30 fathers are truck drivers or mechanics and the children are sent to a school where they parents hope to improve their futures at the worst they just want the children to have a babysitter. The children realize either they cope or they go to someplace worse than the school.
My second day I was driven to the school that night students walked me home. The next day I started out very early to find the school that night I was lost for hours with no phone trying to find my apartment which I eventually located. The people I wrote to urged me to leave but I was threatened that if I left I would be placed in jail and charges could have been trumped up. Some of the people on my incoming flight to Korea had good experiences, mine was bad and I have taught overseas before.

I never had books to take home to prepare classes. She constantly threatened me stating "If you take these books to use for private classes I will have you raped." This employer was purely evil.

I feared for my life because she was
demented and evidently very paranoid.

Also leaving was not easy, she told me she had friends at the railroad ticket office and bus station.She had threatened to invent charges. I had huge suitcases. I left without many personal things I took with me to lighten my load. And guess what, if you are in a small town and you do make it to Seoul the subway doesn't have escalators or porters.
I found a ride with a man who by the grace of God knew about this woman from a previous employee who was also in a situation similar to me. He was a man and received a text message in English from the school threatening to set him up.
I prayed I could get home. I prayed and prayed. I pray more naive people do not go to Korea.

Remember this, if you complain what are you going to do between the time the complaint is made and a court date is scheduled. My boss might have been involved in something illegal. I don't know. But this woman was not a nice person.

I left Korea in the middle of the night because I was told the woman I worked for wanted me dead rather than loose face in the community. She was sinister. The Embassy will receive your remarks and provide you with a list of attorneys, you have to remember whatever is said to you in English or at the school can be denied by your employer unless you make a tape recording.
_________________________________________________________
Inspector McHammered of the Lard in Pamplona, Spain
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