Bad News

Unfortunately I already have bad news. Heather and I just found out that our school is really shady and now we could possibly lose our jobs and get kicked out of the country. In our contract we were told that we would be given health insurance, an alien ID card, and pension. Well so far we have seen none of that. An alien registration card must be obtained within 30 days and we've already been here for two weeks and our school hasn't said anything to us about it. We don't have health insurance yet and apparently another teacher who's been at this school for seven months also doesn't have health insurance. Pension was the last thing on our minds, but now it is definitely the first.

One of girls working at our school is a Canadian Korean and is finishing up her contract. She just received a letter from the Korean government claiming that she, nor the school had paid any pension for the last 12 months. So now they are fining her and potentially kicking her out of the country. The pension office then looked into our school and realized that the school was not paying pension for anyone. This is pretty much tax fraud. So now they are going to audit and investigate our school to see what is going on. In response to this apparently our school has hired a top notch lawyer who is getting rid of all our documents to make it look like we don't officially work for the school. The school claims that they have loop holes to get everyone out of this, but that is just them lying. The Canadian Korean teacher says that for the last year the school has been trying to work these loop holes and they've barely been making it. The director of the school refuses to pay our pension and if he doesn't agree to pay pension on all the the teachers by Friday then our school will go under investigation. The first thing they will do is shut down the school's assets, meaning we won't get paid...and the monthly pay period is supposed to be next week for us. If the investigation shows the school as being guilty we could have a fine to pay, lose our jobs and possibly get kicked out of the country with no re-entry.

As of now everything is up in the air and the school is being dishonest with us. Heather and I have decided that we're going to start looking for a job at another school/hogwon. Then hopefully we can break our contract and work for a better school without going through this whole hassle. This is unless our director decided so sign us up for pension as well as health insurance. We are also hoping to get our alien registration cards by next week...now that we've taken that matter into our own hands. Our lives are about to get very complicated because even if we do find another school to work for we will have to re-do the visa process, probably leave the country temporarily and then come back on a visitors visa until a working visa has been approved. We have no idea what is going to happen...