The Horrors I Saw at Korean Private Schools | Informer

I used to teach at a Korean <i>hagwon</i>. A <i>hagwon</i> is a private Korean school. We were being watched 24/7.

CCTV was everywhere, in every classroom and every hallway. I also think that there was audio. We couldn’t speak freely about anything negative that was happening.

I felt very uncomfortable around my assistant director. He had brushed up against me a few times. He touched my butt a few times.

You start to think, like, not necessarily being suicidal, but what do I do? “Midnight running” is a term specifically for Korea, for English teachers who are in similar positions that I was in, who their bosses are breaking laws or breaking rules or treating them horribly, whether it be racism, sexual assault. It is for people who their last resort is leaving and not telling anyone.

[INFORMER] [HAGWON] I wanted to teach at a <i>hagwon</i> originally because my cousin has lived in Korea for over six years. Teaching or working with children, rather, was more of my passion. Working at a <i>hagwon</i> turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my life.

The children definitely are overworked. I was teaching them mostly English but also illegally was teaching them ballet. There were not enough people working in the school teaching.

I was watching multiple classrooms, like, three at a time, almost, with four-year-olds, you know, very young kids. Kids are jumping on tables. And one kid actually tried to, like, jokingly throw himself through a window.

It’s just complete madness. The Korean teachers would have far less breaks than the foreign teachers. They were way more overworked.

I’ve seen teachers running through the school, not sitting down for, like, eight hours a day. I’ve seen many of them cry. One of them would be in tears because my director just yelled at her.

And I can’t even go over there to hug her or console her because I will get yelled at not to talk to her. It was a very hostile environment. The most shocking thing that I saw was how the teachers were treated.

Within the first three days of being there, I saw my director yell at a Korean teacher and call her stupid multiple times in a row in Korean. I only knew a few Korean words, but I knew that one. And I think that is the first time where I realized, “Oh, what did I get myself into?

” I felt. . .

very uncomfortable around my assistant director. He had brushed up against me a few times. He touched my butt a few times, and he got very close to me.

And it was just me and him in the break room, and I was like, “No, I’m good. Please get away from me. ” I wanted to tell my director because I knew that that was a big deal, and especially with hearing other instances of him touching my co-workers.

And also I felt she would be understanding. She did not care that he’d done that. She basically wrote it off as not being a big deal, which was very upsetting because I thought even maybe as a woman, she’d understand that.

My co-worker found porn on my assistant director’s computer. It was in a folder on his desktop, so all you had to do was open that folder, and you would see them. And there were children around.

He teaches children. I just found it incredibly repulsive. My co-worker did report it to my director, but as usual, nothing came of it, and she shrugged it off.

This shows you the lengths that this woman is willing to go through to keep her business afloat that she does not want to fire someone that is looking at porn and sexually harassing her employees. My breaking point was when I was exposed to COVID and the school lied to our faces about it. I had to be in quarantine, and my director flew to Jeju when she knew she’d been exposed.

They lied to my face multiple times. They lied by omission multiple times. It was completely beyond upsetting, and I was definitely not OK, and I was very depressed.

Do I need to midnight run? Do I need to leave and tell no one and speak of it nowhere and just get a ticket and run? There’s all these thoughts going through my head of what should I do next?

But I couldn’t do anything because I’m stuck in a room. It was a feeling of just hopeless and being powerless and not feeling like I could do anything. I would have done it if she didn’t try to fire me and give me a way out.

My director told me, “Hey, you don’t follow me, you don’t follow me,” which I believe she meant, “You don’t do what I want all the time, so I don’t like you. ” And she said, “OK, so you’re just going to have to go. ” The experience was definitely traumatizing.

Being treated like that by people who clearly do not care about you as a person, they only care about the money that you make them, was horrible. A lot of <i>hagwons </i>are like the school that I worked for. If not, I’ve heard worse stories.

This is not rare.