Dongtan Wonderland, Hwaseong City, South Korea. Its students might not be well-behaved, its supervisors might be raving harpies, but gosh darn its foreigner teachers will look good on camera.

Those of you who followed my blog have probably noticed that I haven’t posted anything in a long time. You who are especially close to me have already heard a lot of the horror stories behind my lack of desire to commemorate this place in writing. I blog now only to warn potential future employees of Dongtan Wonderland. As you plan your trip to Korea, if you’re doing your research, good for you—my blog is probably the first hit on your search engine. My advice is DON'T COME TO THIS PLACE. I mean the caps.

Because the supervisors are in it for the money, everything natural and good in a workplace/school is prohibited and punished here: relationships with the parents of our students, having fun with students when the work is finished, organization, professionalism, communication between supervisors and subordinates, mutual respect, the quality of the education we attempt to give—hell, they tried to tell us we couldn’t leave the school on a daily basis for a quick walk or juice run (by the way, we have zero official breaks every day, so one of the few ways to stay sane is to leave the school for a breather in between teaching periods). The director and head teacher here do not care what they sacrifice, so long as the tuition comes in. And we foreigner teachers make crap pay out of that tuition for the hours we work. And those two women can make your life a living hell when they want a scapegoat. Speaking as the current scapegoat, I state that they will attack you both as an employee and as a person, insult your native culture, holler at you, call you names, interrupt you when you’re trying to explain yourself, smack the desk, threaten to fire you, make you write yourself senseless warning letters—all in an attempt to make you as docile as you, reader, are probably expecting a typical Korean student to be. When I say “typical,” I’m referring to students who run across the tables, smack me, and spit in my face.

I’m not asking too much (or anyway, I don’t think so). I just want to be appreciated and respected when I’m working my ass off for nine hours a day—at the very least, I’d like to be left alone. No more of this being written up or reamed until my ears are boxed for not understanding Head Teacher’s directions, written in very poor English. Or for not turning the lights on in a west-facing classroom on a very bright day an hour before sunset. Or for doing a textbook lesson the way the directions say. Or for contracting the swine flu in time to be quarantined for Christmas and (oh heaven help us) mandatorily miss a few days of work. So if you have the same kinds of employee standards, and if you want to have anything like a positive experience as an English teacher in Korea, feel free to contact me if you’re considering a contract with Dongtan Wonderland. You can ask me any question you like, and you’ll find out that I am not exaggerating.