Learning curve bends both ways

BY NIGEL COSTLEY

For Motueka's  Catriona Baillie, teaching English in South Korea is no nine-to-five handle-cranking exercise.

"I just love teaching here. I come out of every lesson thinking, 'I've learnt more than I've taught'.

"It's because I'm teaching conversation – people telling me about themselves," she says during an interview in a cafe near the traditional oriental medicine market in Daegu.

A city of 2.5 million people in the southeast of the country and with an annual international opera festival, Daegu is famous for its rich cultural life.

Subways and skyscrapers co-exist with street vendors and shops that sell a vast array of health products and services – with deer velvet in plentiful supply, some of it from New Zealand (90 per cent of our velvet goes to South Korea).

Working for the company YBM, which occupies four floors of a large building in downtown Daegu, Ms Baillie is part of a dynamic and ever-expanding industry. Her students are a mixed bunch, although all fairly affluent: teachers, businessmen and mums predominantly, looking to improve their conversational English.

To fit in with her students' work patterns, Ms Baillie does a split shift, teaching mostly in the mornings and evenings, with afternoons off.

She's amazed at the Koreans' devotion to education, irrespective of age.

"It's almost as though life isn't complete unless you're getting up at 6am to study a language or doing night classes. Whatever they're learning – English or a musical instrument – they turn up every day without fail."

Ms Baillie trained as a teacher in her home country, England, and lived in Zambia earlier in her career, where she taught English in very primitive conditions to copper mine workers.

She taught special needs students at Motueka High School until she struck a "midlife crisis", desperately wanting to teach English in Italy but finding no jobs available there.

Then in 2001, someone gave her a tip about YBM. "I looked them up online; there was a phone call, and the next thing, I got the job. It was so easy."

Her daughter Katie, who had just completed a video production course at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, came out to visit her and fell in love with the country to such an extent that she took up a degree in Korean studies at Keimyung University in Daegu.

The only native English speaker on the course, Katie took to her studies with an appetite and, immersing herself totally in Korean language and culture, lived with a Korean family for six months.

She appeared on the popular reality television show English Beauty Chatterbox and went on to become a news presenter, endearing herself to the locals by speaking Korean with a Daegu accent. Towards the end of last year, she won a part in a historical drama for Korean TV.

Her mum, on the other hand, has minimal Korean but has picked up a lot unconsciously. "Koreans always want to speak English to me," she says.

In a highly stratified society which places great status on age and the teaching profession, Catriona Baillie has always received kind and polite treatment.

"Coming from New Zealand, where there's a lot of social mobility, there's a contrast in Korea, but really the Koreans remind me more of English society. It really matters what university you went to and who you were with in the army," she says. (There is 22 months' compulsory military service for all South Korean males.)

Ms Baillie says she always feels safe in South Korea, even walking through a big carpark late at night, and is impressed with the high standards of honesty. Lost keys and a wallet have been dutifully returned.

Although economically a fiercely competitive country, in a group situation Koreans tend to be very supportive.

"Often when a student is struggling to speak, a classmate will gently lay an encouraging hand on them," she says.

Another Nelsonian teaching English in South Korea, Jamie Costley (the writer's son), came to the country without any teaching experience at all.

With a history degree from Otago University, he had started his teacher training in New Zealand, but pulled out after a month, disenchanted with the emphasis given to Maori culture.

At a lost as what to do next, he spammed his CV to English teaching recruiters in South Korea, and within 48 hours was offered a job. Mr Costley says the only prerequisite for teaching English there is a reputable degree – the subject doesn't matter.

His first job was at a privately owned school near Seoul, where he had an exhausting schedule teaching kindergarten-age children in the morning and primary-age children in the afternoon. "In private schools, the primary focus is to keep the students happy," he says.

That was six years ago and, apart from a few months teaching in China, he's been teaching in South Korea ever since.

About three years ago, he moved to Daejeon, a city of 1.5 million people in the middle of the country, known as the "Silicon Valley" of South Korea because of its concentration of advanced technology research centres.

There, he met Jeong Hee Ryu, a Korean-born English teacher who had lived for a year in Australia. They married in October 2007 in a combined Western and traditional Korean ceremony and had a daughter, Chloe, in July last year. While Jeong Hee teaches English pupils individually in the home, Mr Costley's most recent job is teaching English to prospective English teachers at Gongju University.

Mr Costley says that while the holidays are great, teaching at a university in South Korea is paid less than the equivalent job in New Zealand, but this is offset by a lower cost of living and much lower taxation.

There are three tax deductions to the weekly wage packet: income tax, health insurance and compulsory superannuation, which combined is less than 9 per cent of the gross wage.

There are several aspects of Korean culture that jar with the Kiwi egalitarian ethos, perhaps the most striking being Koreans' extreme sensitivity to criticism. "It is illegal in some circumstances to criticise the government, and the laws of libel are extreme," Mr Costley says.

Ardent nationalism and a liking for being told what to do are other Korean characters that contrast to the Kiwi ethos.

The pressure of parental expectation of academic success can be crushing, too.

My visit was shortly before the university entrance exams, which are a huge deal, because the results determine which university a student will go to. "This is one of the only exams where you don't necessarily get 100 per cent. There is a lot of praying by parents and attending Buddhist temples," Mr Costley says.

Like Ms Baillie, Mr Costley has never felt unsafe in South Korea, appreciating the well-ordered and law-abiding aspect of the culture.

"You would be incredibly unlucky to get mugged in Korea."

Relishing the professional independence and quality of family life, Mr Costley is looking at getting into a masters programme to extend his teaching options in South Korea, but when his daughter reaches school age, he suspects the family may want to come to New Zealand.

Nigel Costley travelled to South Korea courtesy of an Asia New Zealand travel grant.

- © Fairfax NZ News