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Permalink Reply by Dennis Oh on October 4, 2010 at 10:56am

I don't know exactly what foreigners feel about being in Korea. However, according to my friends who is an English teacher, complaint, being an English teacher in Korea is getting harder than last year because the benefits (Especially Offering house, their salary is getting to be similar as Korean English teacher's income even though foreigners need more living budget in Korea) from a company(학원) where he works for, continually reduced. He and I think the reason is that there are too many foreign English teachers in Korea. It makes competition. Being a foreigner is not an advantage any more he said.

저는 외국인들이 한국에서의 자신의 생활에 대해 어떻게 생각하는지는 잘 모릅니다. 그러나 제 외국인 영어 선생님의 말에 따르면, 전년도에 비해 자신이 일하고 있는 학원에서의 지원 (주거지 지원 끊김, 월급이 인상되지 않는점)이 계속 줄어들어 생활의 질이 달라졌다고 생각합니다. 제친구와 저는 한국에 외국인이 많이 있다고 생각합니다. 그리고 그는 더이상 외국인이라는 것이 큰 이점은 없다고 생각하고 있었습니다. 그만큼 경쟁이 치열하다는 것입니다.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Cornelius on October 4, 2010 at 4:17pm

The lack of affordable international schools does tend to make foreign companies think twice about locating foreign executives here long-term. It also makes it more expensive for Korean companies to hire top-quality international talent. Tuition tends to be between KRW 20 million and KRW 25 million based on discussions I've had with some execs. Comparable schools in Shanghai and Beijing cost about half as much.

That being said, I think that a major reason that there aren't many foreign professionals here is that Korean companies can find local talent who can get the job done and who are comfortable working in the Korean style. Most companies here tend to view their employees as cogs in a giant machine, in which all the parts are easily interchangeable. To extend the metaphor, you could say they see one person who graduated from Seoul National University in 1995 with a degree in marketing as being able to fit perfectly into the same spot as any other person with the same credentials (or specs to use the local parlance.)

Companies typically bring in foreign professionals to fill liaison or localization roles with their home markets. They might get placed in marketing roles or even supply chain, but seldom to the have opportunities in areas like research and development, which would leverage their different cultural perspective in a way that helps the company with its core business.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Cornelius on October 4, 2010 at 4:19pm

Oh, and if the biggest problem a person encounters is that it's hard to use the washing machine because the descriptions are in Korean, it signals to me that the person is having to reach pretty far to find something to complain about.

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Permalink Reply by vince rubino on October 11, 2010 at 4:50pm

Erik, you are spot on correct with this statement: "Companies typically bring in foreign professionals to fill liaison or localization roles with their home markets. They might get placed in marketing roles or even supply chain, but seldom to the have opportunities in areas like research and development, which would leverage their different cultural perspective in a way that helps the company with its core business.".
This is where I find the most dissatisfaction with my life in Korea and it is also where the greatest business opportunity lies. From my experience, your run-of-the-mill Korean enterprise has accepted that management and technical capability are considered distinct, and managers are not required to understand their subject matter... they just tell their technical staff what to do and report the results to the next tier of management. This is a recipe for lousy decisions. It is openly accepted for decision makers to get their positions by "beneficial" associations and unrelated certifications rather than relevant experience and a track record. This situation happens everywhere but remains openly accepted in developing nations... this is one of the reasons I have to say Korea remains in part a developing nation.
There's also a strong hubris in the general Korean management that is counterproductive. Koreans hire a foreign expert not to help them to create a workable plan, but to correct the English in an otherwise banal Korean plan. When you have received your decision maker position based on entitlement, what you really crave is acknowledgment. And what better way than to hire a proven expert to pat you on the back with nothing more than foreign language support? They put the foreign technical expert into a marketing department because they are safely out of range of real decision making in that role. The brand promise remains disconnected to brand delivery in Korea. It remains a buyer beware economy in the developing world and foreign experts have to remain wary of this situation. Once the foreign expert figures this out, they probably consider leaving. That said, I suspect this happens to many Koreans as well in a variety of permutations of the phenomena. What holds the Korean organization together is 철밥통. ㅎㅎㅎㅎ

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Permalink Reply by Lara Tosh on October 13, 2010 at 2:21pm

I couldn't agree with you MORE, Vince!

...If I had 100 won for everytime I've been consulted as an "expert", and then used as an "ego-gratifier" by the powers that be, I'd be VERY wealthy^.~

However, the following just floated to awareness:
Many humans (in general) have a hard time hearing that their "pet" ideas / work / whatever they have created & formed an attachment to (or have identified themselves with), needs to be changed if they'd like to get results that differ from what they've been experiencing to that point^.~

...perhaps this tendency simply looms as obvious here due to its distinctly cultural roots (ie: for Koreans to take being Korean EXTREMELY personally -as in an, essential aspect of their identity ...as opposed to those of us from more watered-down / mixed cultures)???

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Permalink Reply by vince rubino on October 13, 2010 at 2:53pm

Valid point, Lara. While ego certainly plays a role, the primary root cause of many lame decisions and frustrated foreign experts surrounds the openly accepted entitlement based business culture and lack of respect for the concept of "subject matter expert". I see this situation very acutely in Korea, China, and Singapore (particularly if it involves the government) and it may represent a developing nation cultural norm that may take time to pass. However, if the G20 meeting in Korea next month can't come up with solutions to the brewing trade war and currency manipulation issues, we may see big changes coming to the developing world rapidly. Efficiency and "right the first time" may actually start to become a means of survival when the playing field is leveled.

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Permalink Reply by Erik Cornelius on October 13, 2010 at 10:42pm

Just to clarify, I'm quite glad to be at my current company, where I'm actually in charge of strategic planning for our world domination scheme global expansion.

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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on October 14, 2010 at 7:51am

LOL! :-)

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Permalink Reply by vince rubino on October 14, 2010 at 10:01am

In that role you're off the hook for product quality. And if your product falters the customer just gets bad search results and moves onto the competition. Sounds like fun.. go Erik!

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Permalink Reply by Lara Tosh on October 14, 2010 at 8:32am

Well said!

re: G20...I'm looking forward to what surfaces when the post-conference dust settles^.~

Here's to change!

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Permalink Reply by Ondrej Slechta on October 4, 2010 at 4:25pm

This topic is of a great interest to me because we've been having serious discussions with my wife (who is Korean) whether we should return to Korea or rather not over past 6 years.

My wife is against mainly due to quality and cost of education and she is also afraid our daughter would be bullied because of her biracial appearance. She said our daughter wouldn't learn things she will really need later in life to be competitive and that she would effectively become a "test machine" ('시험기계) without childhood. Her another concerns are actually related to certain aspects of Korean social life but this would be for a different topic. In short Korean social life is too intense, everything is about symbols and money (i.e. everlasting categorisation by other people as to what you earn and whether you managed to get a flat without a loan). She also says that the times when one could "really" succeed in Korea are gone.

My biggest concern is actually compensation level (you simply get paid more elsewhere for the same type of job) and recently also whether Korea is the right choice in terms of career development as opposed to other financial centres in the region. When I talked to my Asia oriented peers about my plans to move back to Korea, they said "Korea? What's in Korea?" (in terms of finance).

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Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on October 4, 2010 at 4:33pm

Ondrej,

I can say emphatically that your kids are not doomed to being bullied in Korean school. In our experience, that issue (at least for Caucasian/Korean bi-racial kids) is a thing of the past. In fact, if anything, it's the other way around as my kids have had a fabulous reception in their local school, even though they are the only children there with a non-Asia parent. Case in point (let me boast a moment) http://seongpodong.koreanconsulting.com/2010/09/chairman.html :-)

Based on our experience, I also disagree that the Korean school (at least at the elementary level) is just a factory for test machines that deprives kids of their childhood. I can't comment on the suitability of middle or high school here but I suspect it's not as bad as is portrayed. Consider the many Korean kids who leave Korean school and do just fine in Western universities.

I do think that a highly-involved parent who understand the Korean way is crucial though. My wife is at the school, talking to the teacher and staying involved continuously. It's a much bigger parental burden in Korea than back in the US. In return though, the teachers have mostly gone way out of their way to help our kids beyond the normal call of duty.

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