WORK WORK WORK AND CONSTRUCTION

The construction work I've witnessed here is unlike anything back at home. The first thing I noticed was that it happens all the time. I've been walking home at 2:00am on a Sunday night and I've seen construction workers busy at work with their flashlights and headlamps. Another striking difference is the lack of boundaries they use to section off the construction zones. I've seen bulldozers and other construction vehicles doing their thing on the sidewalk while kids run in between the workers and machinery trying to get across. Back home I'm used to going out of my way for a few blocks to get by whatever construction is going on in the city.

South Korea has the longest work hours amongst the OECD countries. It wasn't long ago that workers in big corporations were required to work six days a week. There was legislation passed that put an end to that, but that's only helpful for those sets of workers (some of the Korean teachers in my hagwon work seven days a week). The average Korean worker works something like 2390 hours a week (Canadian workers, on average, work 1717 hours a week). The average work day for a Korean worker is from 8:00am to 7:30pm. Apparently longer work hours raise the risk of dementia

At first I felt bad, because the Korean teachers do so much more work than me, and I got vacation time only after six months of being there (the Korean teachers in my school have to be there for three years before they can see any vacation, which usually only lasts a week.) Our pay is even significantly greater than theirs. When I go to work, I spend maybe five to 10 minutes prepping for my lessons, and then spend the remaining 45 to 50 minutes reading. As I'm doing this, the Korean teachers are busy marking, preparing lesson plans, calling the parents if a kid was missing or misbehaved, etc.

This work work work mentality starts from a young age, with kids having hours upon hours of schooling. On top of their normal schooling, several of the kids have three, four, or more academies to attend. These academies are usually for English, science, math, Chinese and music. The kids spend hours and hours and hours working on their homework after they finally manage to get home. Some of my kids go to bed at, like, midnight because of all the homework they have to finish. (This is why I rarely assign homework because, shit, I feel bad.) A lot of these kids also attend academies on Saturday, and then on Sunday some of them have to go to church. I usually let a lot of things slide in class that would never go unpunished if a Korean teacher were there because I feel that it's the only time they get to act like, well, kids. It's no wonder when they respond with "played videogames/computer games" after I ask them what they did on the weekend, 'cause that's all I'd fucking want to do if I was subjected to that much work.

My mom's friend is doing a Korean exchange, where she's housing a 13-year old boy for I think six months so he can practice his English. She was all excited about showing him all kinds of stuff about Canada (and hopefully showing him the wonders of real maple syrup), but she quickly realised the kid had no time to do so. Not only does he have to go to elementary school, he as about four hours of Korean schooling afterwords, and then several hours of homework to finish after that.

For the one class that was really pissing me off, I asked them to write out a typical day in the life of, including when they wake up, go to school, academies, etc. When they were finished, I outlined a typical Canadian students day, which usually ends at 3:00pm. They were all extremely jealous of all the free time the Canadian kids had, and one of them quipped, "wow, they must play a lot of videogames!"