Brian from Brian in Jeollanam-do has been covering this saga extensively.
At the beginning of this semester, Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education told roughly 100 teachers that their services were no longer needed. The argument was that the education offices always overbooks because enough teachers pull out before actually going (blaming the teachers, essentially).
Well, a month or so into the semester, people started getting calls and emails saying that the schools now have positions open.
To add to the teachers' misery is the fact that a contract change is being forced upon them. The original story was that teachers would be out of their school sponsored apartments in Gangnam by January of 2009. instead of the housing, the teachers would be given a housing allowance of 900,000 won per month and forced to find their own places. Obviously, that's a difficult task for someone in a foreign country, no matter how well they know the language. To make it more difficult, housing in Korea requires key money, which is a deposit that is usually at least 5,000,000 won. Very few teachers would have that saved up so they could afford it.
A new update on that story is that the teachers will be allowed to finish out their current contracts with their housing, but future teachers will be required to find their own.
My little summary of the events is hardly detailed, so check out a great post from Brian. He's got the entire scoop.
Check out the SMOE story from Brian here.
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