Sung Seng Nim

The experiences of an English Teacher in South Korea

Dishonour, corruption, conspiracy, theft, and violence. The cautionary tale of an English instructor's experiences in South Korea. A dramatic warning to anyone considering working in Sth Korea.

Locations and Players

From my memory

I remember lying on the beach in Coogee, Sydney, working out the final details of my contract over my mobile phone, with ‘Slim’, the Korean recruiter who had been arranging work for me in Korea. (Only later did I make the connection with Eminem a.k.a Slim shady. And shady he turned out to be indeed!) He had changed his story, and his offer, several times already, but he said “trust me”, that I could either forget about the whole thing, or just trust him.

He was waiting for me at Seoul Airport, and drove me to the school, the ECC in Ya’tap . It was the first day of the Korean summer. The school, or 'Hogwan', was in Ya’Tap, on the outskirts of Seoul, what 'Slim' said was a very good suburb by Korean standards, and new. I had been promised share accommodation with a non smoker, and that I would be teaching children in the morning, and adults in the afternoon-evening. When I got there, they had no accommodation arranged for me, so they put me up, or as it was, down, in a cheap motel room. The room had curtains, but no windows. It was in fact underground.

After a few days I was moved into the apartment, with a smoker. The apartment was filthy, with a years supply of empty Pizza boxes, a broken washing machine, and all manner of other broken things filling up the balcony. It had a leaking toilet, and when you showered, at least half of the water flowed out of the sink taps, instead of out of the shower. The flyscreens were broken, and either sitting on the balcony with all the other rubbish, or hanging uselessly from the windows.

They got a woman in to clean, but we could see she wasn’t that genuine, as we had to point out everything that needed to be cleaned, when it was obvious that everything needed to be cleaned. We agreed to give her the money they had given us to give her, and I would do the job myself. I don’t like the idea of other people cleaning for me, it’s sort of slavery to me, and it was less work cleaning than having to constantly point out the obvious.

I had also made a point to Slim about the importance of my classrooms being airconditioned. I made it clear that I couldn’t accept any offer otherwise. Slim promised that the working environment was airconditioned. When I got there the airconditioning didn’t work. When I turned the fans on, to get some minimal respite from the incredible heat and humidity, the children complained that their papers flew around. Some even claimed to be cold!

On top of this, the children were extremely rude and few were interested at all in learning English. From some of the nicer ones I found out that the students were often at Hagwons and other schools until up to 12pm on weeknights. Of course some of the students were a pleasure to teach, but generally they were unwilling and disrespectful, if not downright rude. The director admitted that we were essentially babysitters. We were expected to be clowns and babysitters. It was exhausting work, for the most part. I had no adult classes. So either Slim had lied to me or the school had lied to him.

I brought up these differences with the Director, and they initially called me a liar, but eventually had to admit that I was right, when Slim admitted to them that he had promised me everything I had told them. They were unwilling to change anything, even though they did finally remove some rubbish, and fix the tap, though after stuffing it up the first time, and insisting that we didn’t need a tap in the sink in the bathroom at all. They initially demanded that we pay for the repairs. I wondered about the previous teacher who had lived there, who claimed that he had not left any pizza boxes or other junk.

They agreed that what I had been promised was not what they could offer. They agreed to free me from my contract, and let me use their phones and internet to find a new job. They paid me part of my airfare, but were damn rude to me, changing their mind constantly about when I should finish there, according to their own plans, and without interest in my inconvenience.

Remember, I had been lied to about almost everything. I had been lucky in one thing, though. The Korean American with whom I shared the apartment was actually very nice and reasonable, and agreed to smoke outside. The fridge and freezer also contained a lot of different types of ground coffee. Ground coffee was really expensive in Korea.

The ECC in Ya’tap would not provide us with copies of any of our texts. They expected us to waste an hour every day lining up and photocopying stuff. We were forced to write reports on each student every month. It was impossible to write anything meaningful, or to contradict the lovely praises of the previous teacher. Once I did comment honestly, and I was kept back until I would agree to write something more positive. The student had obvious problems and prevented the whole class from learning.

The student was taken out in the end. Other parents had complained. Apparently they all got to hear about the comments I had written. But the owners of the schools don’t care about whether the kids really learn. In fact the children learn to disrespect foreigners. The teachers are treated as slaves. You are expected to be a combination clown and babysitter, always entertaining. I wonder how much headache medication the average English teacher goes through.

I remember how I found my boss in Ya’tap smoking and watching t.v in our apartment one day. He just sat there and watched t.v and smoked as if it was his living room. He was well aware of how important it was for me to live in a smoke free home, we had discussed it many times, and had come to an agreement about it. Of course it was already in my contract, so I shouldn't have had to mention it at all, it shouldn't ever have become an issue. It was really uncomfortable to come home, wanting to relax and unwind, and have my boss sitting there smoking and watching my t.v. I didn't say anything, I was lost for words. He didn't seem to feel at all uncomfortable with the situation.

In fact another teacher, a female teacher, had told me about how the boss of her Korean friend had the habit of turning up in her apartment just as she got out of the shower, or while she was only wearing her underwear. She was scared of losing her job, and so she hadn't done anything about it. In fact Korean bosses always keep keys to the apartments they provide their workers, and seem to feel that the apartments are their homes too. I don't think many westerners would be aware of this fact, or comfortable with it!

ANYWAY

I accepted a job offer from an American, who called himself Don. He had finally made me the best offer, and agreed to an up front payment for airfares of around $1700 Australian, and to a monthly salary of 2 million won. At the time that was a good offer. I agreed to teach mornings only in the school vacation period, and for no more than 3 months in all. He came and picked me up. We got lost first, and later his aggressive personality became apparent. He drove much too quickly and aggressively, and swore a lot, insulting the Korean drivers, and Korea in general.

We got to Kumi, and I met Oo Key One for the first time. I gave him my hand, to shake, but he held onto it for many minutes as he showed me around his school. He kept smiling. He would not let go of my hand. It made me very uncomfortable. I met his receptionist too. They put me up in a cheap motel. Oo bought me a hot water kettle, so I could make coffee. This was a nice gesture. However that day we spent hours going over the contract, which Don had assured me Oo had already agreed to. I had negotiated that contract with Don over a number of days on the phone.

We wrote up the contract, which Don had convinced me had already been drawn up, and signed it. Then that very evening Oo refused to pay me the upfront airfares, claiming that he couldn’t trust me. Only after speaking with Don, and a few hours of further stressful discussions, did he agree to pay me what he had just earlier agreed to in signing the contract. He had tried to fob me off with a a few dollars, but I insisted that if Oo was going to break his promises a few hours after signing the contract, that I would not be able to trust him, and would have to accept one of the other offers that I had been made. He paid me, and I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I had been promised an airconditioned working environment. I had made it extremely clear to Don how important it was. He guaranteed me that my working environment would be airconditioned. He had also told me that my apartment was being cleaned up. I discovered that they hadn’t in fact found an apartment for me yet. There was no window let alone airconditioning in the teacher's room, and they turned on the inadequate airconditioning only after we arrived to teach. It took over half and hour for the airconditioning to make any difference at all.

With over 12 students in a very confined space, the heat and humidity were extreme. I asked Oo if the receptionist could turn on the Airconditioning around 20 minutes before we arrived, so that the airconditioners had a chance to take the sting out of the heat and humidity. He agreed. He in fact agreed over 6 times, and guaranteed me that the receptionist had done so. She hadn't, and didn't.

I had to work until 9pm, and then get up at 6am to teach a General Manager at LG Phillips. Oo drove me there, and picked me up. It was not vacation time, but I agreed to teach this student for at least 3 months, as my teaching schedule was not full. I suggested he buy me an old motor scooter for a few hundred dollars, and calculated that it would pay for itself in a few months in terms of saved petrol, and the hours he had to waste bringing me to and from the lesson. He agreed, but wanted me to pay for the scooter. I found that really rude, given that I was teaching a lesson that I had not agreed to in the contract, and that he was the one who stood to benefit so much from me riding a scooter to work. I would be taking a real risk riding in Korean traffic, which is incredibly dangerous.

After trying any number of suggestions to get some improvements, and accepting the advice of Mr Kim, my student from LG Philips, the General Manager, and being extremely humble and accepting responsibility for problems that I had in fact had no responsibility for at all, Oo Key One told me that he agreed with me that I should look for somewhere else to work. Mr Kim had offered to take me golfing, to a Zen retreat, and had actually spent a whole Saturday afternoon showing me around town, helping me to find an electric guitar. He had sent his associate a long way to pick me up in a big black car, and drive me the few hours to his home town. He was apparently too sick to drive himself. Mr Kim talked to Oo Key One and told him that we should solve the problem, and assured me that Mr Oo would continue to work with me. I very humbly told Mr Oo that I wished to stay at his school, Cambridge.

In fact I did not want to, because Mr Oo had insulted me, had broken his promises, and was a very mean spirited man, in spite of his show of going to church. But I agreed to stay there, for the sake of Mr Kim, who seemed to be a very nice man, and who ensured me that I would have trouble in Korea if I left Mr Oo and went to another school.

I had been made an offer in Kumi, but they were just playing with me. They wanted me to leave Cambridge first, before signing contracts, saying that in Korea they couldn’t sign a contract with someone who was currently working for another school. But this was just a ploy. I told them that I accepted their offer. They assumed this meant that I had quit Cambridge. They then proceeded to take advantage of the situation as they saw it. They proceeded to downgrade their offer in every way, reducing all the conditions and payments. It was a good thing I had not quit. In any case, I was now determined to make things work at Cambridge. I insisted merely that they improve the airconditioning situation, and be more professional.

Mr Oo had written a play for the students to perform. He had made many serious grammatical and language errors. He asked me to check it for him, and so I corrected the errors and gave it back to him. He threw a childish tantrum, throwing the corrected papers onto the floor, and impudently exclaiming that we would do it his way. I taught it as he had written it, and tried at least to get the children's expression, pronounciation, and enunciation right. He took over the class, and taught them his way, with his own Jacky Chan English. This was unbelievably unprofessional and childish.

In the mean time I had begun proofreading things for him, which was not in my contract, but which I did out of fairness. My teaching schedule was not full. The last document he gave me needed to be totally rewritten. I told him that I needed access to a computer with the same wordprocessing program with which the original had been written, if he wanted me to work on it.

There was also the story of the fly screen door. It was the middle of summer, and the rooms were over 40 degrees Celsius at night, with 100% humidity. I got him to put in a flyscreen door so that I could leave the door open at night (there were lots of mosquitoes) (post script: one day I noticed a dense 'fog' rising up from the street. I barely had time to notice that several trucks were pumping out a thick dense mist of what I assumed was some sort of biological agent to kill mosquitoes, maybe even DDT, before hurrying to close the windows and door. I wonder if other people had been notified about the spraying, and whether it might be harmful to humans), and get some breeze. I really had to negotiate hard for this. I told Don that it was so serious, that I might have to leave if I didn’t get the flyscreen. Eventually they did the worst possible job they could have, but I was satisfied that they had at least shown consideration for my situation, and for that of the next teacher who would inherit the apartment. Oo left my apartment pretty rudely. I remember when I had first moved in he had very rudely intimated that he was never going to do anything else for me, that the apartment exactly how it was, was all that he would do. It was a tiny apartment, but at least new, and close to the school.

Anyway, one Friday night, while I was at work, Mr Oo Key One, the Director of Cambridge English School in Kumi, changed the locks on my apartment. Oo Key One and Don told me that I could pick my things up the next Monday, when they would pay me, on the condition that I leave Korea. They told me that I was blacklisted in Korea and had to leave. I had no release letter with which to get a new job. I didn’t even have any warm clothing on, only shorts and a short sleeved shirt. All of my possessions, including my passport and money, were in the apartment. I had no money, nothing.

I could not see any justification for such extreme behaviour. They were obviously trying to intimidate me into leaving. They had obviously found a cheaper teacher to replace me, and rather than be fair, they had just hired them behind my back, and assumed they could just 'dispose' of me. I never met the new teacher, but a student informed me that they did in fact have a new teacher.

I met a teacher from New Zealand, B J Whellens, and explained my situation to her. She agreed to come to the school as my witness.

I went back to the school with Ms Whellens, to get the key to my apartment. Don was there. I told him that he was an assehole. He agressively came right up to my face, extremely angry, hoping to find some reason to attack me. I calmly told him that my comment was not an insult, merely a statement of fact. He had recruited me, and brought me here with false promises, and now he was, as a true traitor, helping Mr Oo screw me.

Later, outside, I told Mr Oo and his son that they would have a different view of Don if they had ever heard the negative things he constantly says about Korea and Koreans. This is when he rushed up, so full of rage he could hardly contain himself. Ms Whellens stated in her own words that he definitely would have hit me if she had not been sitting next to me.

I made Oo Key One an offer: that they pay me up to today,and allow me up to 14 days to find a new job, or leave. By law he could not lock me out of the apartment. By law I had a legal right of residence to an employer provided accommodation for up to one month.

I remember Mr Oo had offered to take me to Church with him every Sunday, where he went himself. What a hypocrite.

I called Mr Kim, the General Manager from LG Philips in Kumi, who had convinced me not to leave Cambridge, and who had promised to help me with Oo Key One. I explained what had happened. I asked him to help me to convince Oo Key One to agree to my reasonable offer. He replied with a fax which merely expressed that he was sorry that he would have to break his promise to me.

I spent the rest of that Friday night and the following early saturday morning going to various police stations until eventually some police at one station contacted Oo Key One and forced him to give me a key to my apartment.

That Saturday I went to the labor office, and was told they could not help me at all. Somehow I got in contact with a help line for foreigners, and the Professor of Tourism from Kumi City University helped me. We went together to the labor office, and suddenly the labor office officer, who had a few hours earlier told me he couldn’t help me, decided that he could in fact help me.

This reinforces what everyone will tell you about Korea. Always bring a Korean with you when you go to any officials, otherwise they will do nothing. They got me to agree to what I had initially proposed to Oo after he had locked me out. I would be allowed to stay in my apartment for up to 2 weeks, time to find a new job, and Oo would pay me the outstanding salary he owed me for the last month, which was already many days overdue.

So I started looking for a new job again.

That evening I heard footsteps approaching my door and I got to my security screen door just in time to see Don enter my open front door with a long black metal baton gripped in his hand. I barely had time to lock the flyscreen door. He threatened that he would knock me unconcious with the metal bar if I didn't leave Korea immediately. I don't know what would have happened if he had caught me totally off-guard.

I reported him to the police. I filed a complaint against Don. They wrote it up on the computer. They put the computer screens under the tables, so that the screen was flush with the table top. They took fingerprints, and folded the printed report and put my fingerprints on the folded edges. They said that the only way they could talk to Don and tell him to leave me alone was if I filed such a complaint. Don apparently was not registered with the police as he should have been.

I remember how Don had once 'done a runner' on the traffic police. He had gone down a one way road the wrong way, on the day he drove me to Kumi, and was showing me around town. The police had stopped him, and had gone to their car to get something, and he had just driven off with the policeman shouting and waving behind us. Don had pretended that he didn't understand what the officer wanted, when he clearly was asking for his drivers licence. Don had a Korean wife and child with her. He was going back to the U.S with them that year. He did not like Korea or the Koreans at all.

The guy who interpreted for me, who helped me make my statement, seemed unbelievably arrogant. Any time I attempted to explain anything, he would tell me to stop beating around the bush. His school Director was the head of the English School's Association in Kumi. His director had wasted a whole day of mine, pretending that they had a job for me.

One of the teachers at his school made lots of comments about how dodgy Korean schools were, and he stated that they had once told potential teachers the truth about what they could expect in Korea, and not one of them came. He had to ask the Director directly what was going on, whether they were offering me a job or not. I got the impression that one teacher who was leaving had to fight hard to get his return airfare, which was in his contract, actually payed.

The female Director of another school who seemed to be offering me work had had me picked up in her shaufered limousine, and we had lunch at a restaurant with some other people. They pretended to be concerned about how Oo Key One had treated me, when in fact allthey wanted was to make a good impression, and pretend Koreans were nice.

I was very concerned about Don, and was careful to lock my door, and was careful when I went across to the internet café to look for a new job. Anyway, I was inundated with job offers from the internet, and my phone was constantly ringing.

I had clearly stated on my internet listing what pay and conditions I would accept, but many 'recruiters' still called with lower offers. One recruiter wouldn’t accept that I wouldn’t accept his offer. I tried to politiely break off our conversation, but he wouldn't let me go. I politely hung up on him. He called back a few moments later just to swear “Fuck You” at me, and hang up.

Many of the callers were sweet sounding young Korean women who didn’t really understand English.

Some recruiters or teachers rang up and chatted for ages.

A few notes about my stay in Kumi

My next door neighbour just wandered into my apartment one afternoon to talk to me, and wouldn’t take the hint that I had things to do and wanted to be left alone. Why on earth he felt he had the right to just walk in is beyond me. At the time I was actually lying on my Korean mat in the furthest corner from the door of my tiny apartment. He just walked on in and started talking. I said I was busy but he didn't want to take the hint at all. I felt really uncomfortable. He hadn't knocked or anything.

Koreans traditionally sleep on mats on the floors, which are heated in winter, and which are sort of padded a little from the floor covering. It was so hot that I often lay directly on the lino floor, to keep as much skin exposed to whatever breeze there was as possible.

One night someone just walked into my apartment. I awoke and half asleep shouted something, and they ran off.

It was impossible to sleep with the door closed. My skin burnt from the heat Just sitting still, and I was soaked in sweat. The heat and humidity were unbearable.

One night a girl wanted to use my phone, which I don’t have, and then came back to use the toilet. She wanted to be my friend, she said. I was paranoid that she may have been sent by Don.

I remember listening, and seeing reflected in the window opposite my apartment, how a man was beating his wife. This was happening directly across from a family who were watching T.V. No one paid any attention, even though you could clearly hear the sound of his hands striking her, and everyone could see what was happening. I considered saying something but had no idea what to do or say, and considered that I could make things worse. I wondered whether perhaps this was normal behaviour in Korea. I don’t want to make any generalisations. What concerned me most of all was that the family opposite made absolutely no reaction, as if such behaviour was normal, that a husband was merely putting his wife in her right place.

Mount Kuhmo was beautiful. I walked to the top of Mount Kuhmo, and visited the Buddhist shrines. The rock formations are really beautiful. It was high summer and I ended up totally exhausted and sick. I kept having to lie down on my way home. I was close to passing out.

There were lots of lovely cool springs with cold flowing spring water, and bridges, and picnic areas.

I remember how expensive food was, especially coffee. The range was very limited, and about 3 times as expensive as in the Western Suburbs of Sydney.

I remember seeing 70 year old women, bent over at 90degrees, pushing carts and prams, collecting cardboard boxes to sell.

I remember the car drivers had absolutely no respect for the traffic rules, for red lights, or for pedestrian crossings.

I remember hearing how teachers had just left other schools, after only a few weeks, without saying anything.

I remember old women holding my hand and smiling. Apparently they thought it was good luck. I found them amazing and beautiful. They were incredibly old, and so poor they collected paper to sell to the recycling centres. But they appeared to have their dignity, and they were busy. I’m sure many rich bored westerners would envy them. They had a reason to wake up every morning.

I remember seeing the apartments below me reflected in the windows opposite my apartment. I remember a particular, absolutely gorgeous, young Korean woman. I shared a little of her life during my lonely stay there. She apparently had some trouble with her boyfriend, and I seemed to be able to see her sorrow even in the reflections. Sometimes she had a whole family visit, with a little girl, in her tiny apartment, maybe less than 20 square meters. I was too shy to ever say anything apart from "hallo". She sort of laughed at me.

I remember spending a lot of time on the roof and stairs of the building, wondering if the red star I could see was mars, and trying to catch some relief from the oppressive heat and humidity. A lovely cool breeze often blew on this side of the building. Another attractive young woman across the road would sometimes come out of the shower naked. I saw how affectionate adults were with each other and children. This is in contrast to the man beating his wife. Inscrutable?

The views offered by the buildings and the power lines, which seemed to grow on the streets like vines, were often surreal.

In Kumi you could walk a few minutes up the steep sides of a hill and gain a marvellous view of the city, with its apartment blocks nestled in steep valleys. It was definitely fascinating and beautiful at times.

I do have fond memories of some of my students too, of course. Many of them were so shy that they actually cried when I asked them questions. Many were extremely rude. Most of them were not there voluntarily. Most of them spent all their time in one form of school or another. I found that a little sad. Some of the students were absolutely adorable.

Koreans do seem to be in general more affectionate to one another than any other people I have experienced. They don’t have much idea about education, though. They appear to focus all their energies on working and drinking.

I remember asking everyone for months whether I could buy prepaid phone cards for my mobile. Of course I discovered that the Korean mobile phone network does not operate on the dual band digital system of Australia or Europe. Everyone told me that you couldn’t buy prepaid cards. I asked in the mobile phone stores and no-one could help. Getting a mobile phone contract is almost impossible for a foreigner, due to the possibility of running off and not paying your mobile phone bills. The funny thing is, you can easily buy second hand phones and prepaid cards. Only you have to speak Korean English. As the Professor of Tourism from Kumi City University told me, they call them a phone cardder.

This is typical for Korean English. In Korean the final consonant of a word is soft, and not enunciated. Koreans are so unfamiliar with the notion of enunciation of the last syllables of words, that when they come across this practice in English, they appear to get carried away. Korean English teachers therefore tend to overpronounce the last consonants when they teach english, in an effort to get their students to pronounce the last consonants at all. The result is that they then overpronounce the last letter or consonant, such as in card. They are taught to say card-der. English teachers should take care about this, and be aware of the differences between Korean and English, and the possible pitfalls that can arise because of these differences.

The Korean language is interesting. It is the only language I know of that was scientifically developed. A famous King adopted the dialects that the most educated people around Seoul spoke at the time as the official language. He then proceeded to develop a written equivalent of this spoken language. He described the positions of the tongue, mouth, and air movements, with a system of brush strokes, and combined this with oriental philosophy, to develop the Korean Script.

Korean words are made up of syllables. Each syllable is described by brush strokes within a square. So Korean words are written as discrete syllables. I had made notes about the significance of the differences between Korean and English pronounciation for teaching Koreans English, but they were stolen along with all my other possessions associates of the Jungchul English School in Daejon.

Of course you can’t drink the tapwater in Seoul without boiling it.

When you go shopping you will be overwhelmed by the number of staff working in the supermarkets and department stores. There appeared to be a uniformed member of staff about every two meters in Ya’Tap. In Kumi City at Flash, the cheaper of the supermarkets there, though exorbitant by Australian standards, there were pretty uniformed young women at every corner encouraging customers to try products, or just standing there waiting for something to do. In Korea you don’t get unemployment benefits, if I recall correctly. You are supposed to get one months salary when you are dismissed, and that’s it. So I expect that many staff are really redundant. I wonder if that is why everything was so expensive in Korea. It explains why Korean products are more expensive in Korea than Australia.

I remember that there were lots of lovely temples and palaces in Seoul. Entry cost only a few Australian Dollars. You can get on a bus for $10 and get on and off at all the attractions. Given the pollution, the dangerous traffic, and the heat, I would recommend this service. I walked around, which was exhausting. It was of course interesting. As in Daejon, in Seoul, all the little businesses conduct their business right on the pavement. I was surprised to find people welding, painting, turning metal, and taking machines apart, right in the middle of the footpath. In fact, then, there was no real footpath. You have to walk through their little factories on the sidewalk.

Korean t.v is interesting, and sometimes amusing. They like lots of activity-game shows. They had an SBS type channel in Seoul, on which I saw German, French, and Australian films. This channel is a sort of education channel, and people watch it to improve their English. There are also irritating English teaching radio programs where they chant the same lines over and over. The Director of immigration from Daejon put it on while he was driving me to Taegu.

Koreans can’t decide whether to transcribe Korean place Nam Suk Hyunes with Ts or Ds. Hence some signs and books will have Taejon, and others will have Daejon. Kumi City is alternatively signed as Gumi city. Apparently they are changing all their signs to Kumi, as some foreigners were calling it Gummi city. In some countries condoms are called gummis. Kumi city is a sort of Korean silicone valley. I noticed a lot of really rotting factory worker accomodation not far from the factories, when I was driven to work at the LG Philips plant.

Another curious, even charming sight, was the group of women I saw hand-washing clothing in the river right outside of downtown Kumi City.

The Korean music that I saw on t.v was very professionally produced and choreographed. I heard some pretty cool pop music, and a particular band called G.O.D was a sort of Death Metal boy group. Can you imagine Metallica dancing around like Back Street Boys? Some music was of course very derivative, but most of it was original. Unfortunately on the radio they play the same few top 20 songs over and over again. The few times I did get to see any sort of alternative music on t.v I was impressed. Unfortunately the state appears to control the media, and prefers simple pop music.

There are lots of brothels in Korea. Even our school building had one in the basement. They sometimes have vague signs, but usually just have two barber poles outside. I never went to one, but found it interesting that they were everywhere. The brothels leave little cards on car windows advertising their current staff. Apparently Korean men work, drink, smoke, and go to brothels. Oh, they like Karaoke too, when they are drunk.

Of all the Korean food and drink that I tried, I can say that my favourite drink was Ginseng wine, which was sort of like Lambrusco with the taste of dirty roots (which sounds yuck, but grows on you), and Ginro wine, the same wine without the rooty flavour. They were both cheap as water, and very tasty. One of the Korean spirits tastes like liquer Muscat with cherry. Most of the spirits are dirt cheap, in plastic bottles. They tasted like what turps smells like.

Korean spaghetti was also interesting. It is a sort of translucent golden slime served cold.

Korea was supposed to be a Buddhist country, but the ethics don’t seem to have had any impact. I told everyone that I was vegetarian, but they still offered me hamburgers, or only had seafood for the obligatory monthly school restaurant visit. All I had to eat was battered sweet potato. It’s interesting that you sit on the floor in front of low tables with gas stoves in the middle. All over the place you will see people preparing their meals on little portable gas stoves. I wonder how many blow up. I don’t imagine that Buddha would have been too keen on keeping fish and crabs and lobster alive in tanks, and then cooking them alive.

Apparently men eat dog to improve their potence. I wonder at Asian culture in this respect. They see some plant that looks like a penis and ascribe it potency building qualities. Dogs are so horny they root in the street, so somehow men expect they will get all excited if they eat one. It is of course a huge shame that Tigers, the ultimate symbol of power, are ground up into powder to be used as potency builders. I wonder if the term “specious correlation” comes up much in Eastern Philosophy.

Korean bathrooms are unusual too. The bathroom won’t usually have a shower screen. You just get a shower head, and stand in the middle of the tiny bathroom. How anyone can manage to shower without getting everything else, including the toilet paper, wet, is beyond me. Koreans fill a bucket up with water and sort of pour it over their heads with a cup. I wonder how expensive the water rates are. In any case, it is so absolutely hot and humid in summer that it is impossible to stay dry for even a few minutes. I couldn’t use my electric shaver without drying my face every few seconds as I was shaving.

The more established schools in Kumi had two airconditioners per small room with a maximum of around 8 students. They even had large apartments with airconditioning for their teachers. Cambridge, however, paid me a little more, and had promised that the airconditioning would be adequate. Of course it wasn’t, and they didn’t even use it properly. Oo Key One was so cheap that he wouldn’t even provide me with a fan at first, until Don explained that it was normal for the boss to provide one for their teachers.

If you teach in Korea they will expect you to teach at 7am, and then from 4 to 10pm, and then Saturday mornings.

Don’t trust any recruiter claiming merely to be a teacher, or to be helping the school. Be especially wary of anyone who has known the Director for years. Hey, if I have worked for him for 5 years then he must be O.K? Right? Only when you realise that the recruiter is an absolute assehole who is desperate for the two thousand American dollars recruiting fee, do you realise that this sort of recommendation says nothing about the Director. Such a statement merely reflects that the recruiter is as questionable a character as the Director.

I remember the sort of typical teaching aids provided to the teacher. You either spent the lesson cutting out pictures and colouring in and sticking them, or handing out objects. One of my favourites was an empty cassette case with the word ‘watermelon’ stuck to it.

Oh, and I don’t forget Oo Key One’s “Summar performance”. The guy was so arrogant he wouldn’t accept any corrections to anything he had written. He wouldn't accept any corrections to his play, and he had a huge sign made up for the summar performance of this play.

Back to the job hunting

A Charles Kang had made the best offer, including a 6month bonus of 1million won. I accepted his offer and he came and picked me up, and got the release letter Oo had promised the Professor of Tourism. Oo made me sign a statement promising not to sue him in any criminal or civil court, or to take any other public action against him. He knew that locking me out of my apartment had been illegal, and that he had broken my contract. The first school YBM ECC in Ya’tap had lied to me, but they had not broken their contract. Charles said that he wanted to break Don’s leg for having threatened me.

Charles had, on the phone, given me the impression that it was his own school that he was hiring me to teach at, that he was definitely not a recruiter. Recruiters have a terrible reputation amongst English teachers in Korea, one that they have earnt. He said that the school was regularly audited by the Human Resource Bank, which I assumed was some kind of government authority. He seemed a positive and friendly person. He said that the Director had told him, that if I didn’t like the accommodation that they had arranged for me, that he would find me something better.

I joked that the accommodation must be pretty bad if they were going to make such an offer up-front. He didn’t comment. He brought me to the school, and again we had to go over the contract, as if what he had promised me had not yet been agreed to. I told him that the contract referred to the payment of airfares, but that I had been very clear that I wanted an upfront payment of 500,000won instead of airfares, and that he had clearly promised this to me. He said that I would get my 500,000won, and not to worry what it was called in the contract. They did give me the 500,000won then and there, so I assumed everything was o.k. We drove to the accommodation that they had arranged for me. I had been promised that it was within 20 minutes walk of the school.

We drove and drove and drove and drove. We came to a rice field, and a narrow side road. We came to a big house, that looked like it had not been finished, with unsealed surfaces, rough concrete, missing tiles and bricks, and a general look of shabby work. Next to the big house was a little sort of granny flat. This was apparently my accommodation. We went in. I took my bags. Inside was a big bed. There was water dripping, no flowing, from the ceiling, and down the wall. Most of this part of the wall was covered with a green-white slime and various forms of mold and mildew. There was no shower head.

There was no hot water tap. The toilet was filthy. There were no flyscreens. There was one working light. There was no fridge. I tried for one moment to calm my thoughts and tell myself that I could stay here a few days, but I was kidding myself. I have stayed in the cheapest of backpacker accommodation in the world. I have never been spoilt. But this accommodation was totally unbearable, and I realised that I could not stay here even one night. I went to An ouk souk in the main house and asked to talk to Charles. We talked and I was offered either the best room in the main house (which was filthy and for me hardly a temptation), or a motel room. I said if it was o.k I would sleep in a motel room.

An Ouk souk insisted we go shopping first. So I went with them and ate some food with them. They bought the food I thought was good, and I assumed we would come back and cook a meal with it. But we didn’t. An ouk souk put the food in the fridge at work, and some of it I took with me. They picked me up the next day, and I went to work. They promised they would find me an apartment within 10 minutes walk of the school. They showed me an apartment which I didn’t like, and which was, in any case, 30 minutes walk from the school.

The Director said that he was a builder, and that he was in fact building a block of apartments near the school. He promised me that I would get one of them when they were finished, in around 4 weeks. In the meantime they wanted me to stay in the Yong Un Go Chng apartment we had visited. They said that I could alternatively stay in a motel room until then. Charles said it would be good of me to stay in the apartment instead, so I agreed to stay there. They promised a tv and fridge, but left me for 5 days in an empty apartment, with only a huge bed that was too big for my sheets, and an old filthy broken light fitting which hung down to chest height in the middle of the room. They disappeared over the long weekend without a word. They didn’t even show me where the supermarket was. Their behaviour really pissed me off.

The next week they brought a really old t.v, and promised to bring a new fridge and washing machine, although at first they tried to talk me into having them wash my things in their washing machine. Someone left a washing machine in my apartment while I was at work, but no-one explained how it worked. I couldn’t get it to work. Then they expected me to pay to have it repaired, and to pay to have the constantly dripping taps repaired. The bath tap dripped so much that it filled the bathtub within a few hours. They fixed this tap reluctantly, but not the kitchen taps. I took the dangerous light fitting down, and put it in the cupboard. I put the actual light itself back up.

They brought a tiny bed into the apartment. I said that it was too small. It was really narrow. Eventually they explained how to operate the washing machine, but said I had to pay to have the taps repaired, and for flyscreens for the bathroom window, which were missing. They had promised a new t.v, but apparently changed their minds. They also had decided that I was staying there for good. At the school, with Charles and his boss there, the Director stated that the apartment was only 10 minutes walk from the school.

I suggested that he start walking to my appartment now, and call us when he got there. Later they talked about some mysterious shortcut to my apartment that they would show me. They always found some excuse to avoid having to admit that there was in fact no short cut.

An ouk souk was hardly at the school. Julia and Melissa did everything, including pay the bus driver and lock up. There was often a waterfall in the toilet and stairwell, as the water stored on the roof overflowed and poured down. There was no light in the toilet, of course, or we would have been electrocuted. There was no heating. An ouk souk told me I was not allowed to sit down in class. I told her that sometimes I had to for my back. In any case as a teacher it was best to be at eye level with the students.

They constantly tried to get me to accept the apartment itself, and to forget about the furnishings that had been promised me. I was constantly ordered out of class and driven by Charles to their other school. It was then that I discovered that The Human Resource Bank was merely a recruiting and franchising agent. After long and drawn out discussions I agreed to accept the apartment and to accept the lack of furnishings, and to apologise for any cultural misunderstandings that may have arisen.

This was pure blackmail. Charles kept telling me that “it's very bad for you”. His boss kept offering me other jobs. At one point his boss called An ouk souk, apparently, and had a very long and angry argument with her. He told me that he was disappointed with the school, and that I, in his opinion, had done nothing wrong. Charles actually said to me “God Bless You”, after wondering at how I could still want to work at the school after everything that had happened. I told him that I liked the students and Julia and Melissa, and that the contract in general was one of the best available in Korea that I was aware of. He himself had written it.

I had walked with Julia and Melissa to their bus stops, and waited with them for their busses. It was after all after 10pm at night. They told me that they thought An Ouk Souk was mad, and didn’t like working for her. They both said that they had been looking for other jobs for a long time. Julia said she worked at the school because her boyfriend wanted her to. They had both apologized to me after lieing to me. An Ouk Souk had forced them to lie to me, to tell me that there was no Ministry of labor, or labor office, in Daejon.

Later I had given An ouk souk 2 weeks written notice of my intention to take one of my holidays. She gave my letter back to me with the word “NO” written on it. She took 500,.000won out of my first months pay. This was the sign on fee that they had promised me and had paid me when I had started. She said that Oo Key One had given me money for airfares, and Charles was really aggressive about this.

I didn't see what business it was of theirs. However I explained to him that Oo Key One had given me no notice, and that the money he had given me barely covered the costs of the two weeks during which I was looking for work, and the first week after the first school broke their contract. I showed him the calculations. I had not been responsible for those breaks in my employment. Both employers had either been unwilling to agree to the conditions I had been promised, or had simply broken their contracts. In any case, I said, I had asked for a sign on fee, and not for airfares, and they had agreed. A contract is a contract is a contract. His boss had to accept that a business deal is a business deal, and that I came to his school because of what they had offered. They had no legitimate right to take back the sign on fee, and I said that I would go to the labor office to seek to compel them to honour my contract. Of course they wanted to settle everything informally.

As no-one would tell me where the labor office was, I went to the local police box to get the phone number. They put me in touch, eventually, with a Mr Oo, the police officer from the District Police Agency responsible for foreign relations. Mr Oo will not give me the phone number, as he wants to settle the problem himself. He promises that if we can’t settle the problem, that he will personally arrange a meeting with the labor office, and take me there with him.

I do not want to involve the police, but he insists, and I have no choice, as he will not give me the number of the labor office. He is in fact the only person up to now who has actually admitted there actually is a labor office. He is the only person I have found who seems to know the phone number.

Later I get the call from Mr Oo telling me that An Ouk Souk was charging me with immoral behaviour, and that I was being deported. I had 7 minutes to get to the Yong Un Go Chng police box. When I arrive he denies he had called me.

What follows are notes I took either directly as things were happening, or just after. Anything I have quoted is a direct verbatim quote of what people said. Sometimes I am writing as things are occurring. Sometimes I had no chance to take notes as things were occurring, but wrote notes directly after, or the next morning, while the events were still clear in my head.

Before we enter into the world of collusion and conspiracy and intimidation, I want again to remind you that the mountain scenery and temples and shrines are often very beautiful and fascinating. It is easy to see how artists paint the misty mountain ranges as the stripes of a tigers head.The hills are steep and provide the opportunity for a birds eye view over the constellations of apartment blocks nestled into steep valleys, or spread over the open plains.

It is interesting to note that all the apartments are built to the same design. It is hard to tell if an apartment is 1 or 20 years old, as they all look the same. Grey poured concrete. I observed one being built over a few months, which is apparently how long they take to build. I remember that the stairwells of my Yong Un Go Chng Apartment block were corrupted and rotting, the edges of the stairs totally broken off.

Weather-wise, it is terribly uncomfortable in Korea for most of the year. I didn’t get to experience winter, but in the first days of Autumn the air was supercooled and virtually 'refridgerated'. I remember I slept one night with a fan directly fanning me, and that when it moved, and the stream of air it had been fanning me with moved elsewhere, I suddenly felt like my skin was burning, actually on fire. It is ridiculous that Mr Oo insisted that I should wear trousers and a tie in summer. He said that the children could not respect a teacher in shorts.

I remember that the first time I had been physically hit by students was in Korea. One particular class really hated having to have English lessons. You would not believe the things they said to me, or that a 12 year old girl would savagely hit me, and that they would attack me as a group, kicking and hitting me, and then running off. An Ouk souk did promise to talk to them, but it’s always the same story in Korean Hogwans. They are purely business ventures. The owners don’t care about anything more than making money. The teacher is seen as a clown-baby- sitter-slave.

If you do plan on going to Korea, then make sure that you have enough money to leave at short notice. Do not expect any justice if you are involved in a dispute with your school. Do not be fooled by any recruiter's promises or good impressions. Do not bother fighting.

In fact one teacher had told me that he had been totally pissed off with his Director, and had calculated how much the Director had ripped him off, and had planned to destroy the computers in their office to that value, if he wasn't paid what he was owed. That is the only sort of justice you could get in Korea. I wouldn’t recommend it though, unless you had planned your escape well.

Don’t be fooled by appearances in Korea. You are a foreigner and have no rights. The Koreans blame you for the International Monetary Fund, the IMF. They are arrogant and believe that they are being kept down by the IMF. The IMF forced them to cut their spending because the country had bankrupted itself with overconfident plans and investments. As Mr Oo, the corrupt and mad policeman responsible for foreigners in Daejon warned, Koreans can be very helpful and friendly, but if they feel slighted, be warned.

My experience is that Korea unwillingly accepted the constitution and laws imposed on them by the Americans after the Korean war. The koreans themselves have no respect for these laws or ideals. Apparently in Korea everything is negotiable, and Employers and employees have to solve things on their own, between themselves. If the number and quality of union disputes is anything to go by, then this is true. The unions have experienced what I have experienced. Employers feel they have the right to totally ignore contracts, and when the victim defends themselves, they can be confident that the police and other government authorities will collude with them to intimidate them, harass them, and deny them natural justice.

From my notes

acht Some recollections of Ouk Souk

She and her husband, the Director, had promised that the new accommodation was 10 minutes walk from the school. It was well over 30 minutes fast walk from the school. The only time Ouk souk walked even part of the distance (from the police box to the school) she gave up after 15minutes and got a taxi. The Director, the beast, later claimed there was a short cut,but that somehow it had been built over .

She told Charles that I was “unkind” to the children, and that “most of them” don’t like me because I am rude.

Often water cascaded down the stairs, and through the electric fitting for the light in the bathroom. There was no light in the Bathroom. There was no heating, but for one old small gasoline heater that looked too dangerous to trust, and some gas heaters, which she refused to refill, or allow me to use.

She told Charles that I missed lessons and was late. The only time I missed lessons was when she herself insisted that I go with Charles to the Human Resource Bank, so that he could intimidate and blackmail me into accepting conditions I had not agreed to, conditions that contradicted my contract.

She changed my teaching schedule so that I had over 2 hours with no break.

She ‘fired’ me on several occasions, without anything in writing, and without any motive. On one accasion she had gotten a friend of hers who speaks English to call me, to tell me that a new teacher was arriving on the 16th and that I was fired. Even Charles pretended not to comprehend that my contract specified that I be given, and had to give, 2 months notice in writing in advance.

She promise to bring a sofa, and to fix the taps, and then didn’t, and even stated in writing that I had to pay to fix the taps.

She got Julia and Melissa to lie to me, that there was no labor office-ministry in Daejon. They apologised later to me personally, saying that they hated the witch, and thought she was mad, but were scared of losing their jobs.

She told Mr Oo, the policeman responsible for foreign relations that I had used the F word, and had behaved immorally in front of my students in class.

She told police that I had criminally damaged her property in my apartment. She refused to lay charges. Mr Oo kept stating that my criminal damage had voided my contract. No-one would charge me. The light fitting in question was left by the previous tenant and as such, if it belonged to anyone, it belonged to me. And in any case I did not deliberately damage it. In fact I took it down because it was cracked and I didn’t want to risk being hurt by it. I took it apart and stored the undamaged glass parts in the cupboard.

Notes on my interactions with Hyon joo Lee, a Korean Attorney in Daejon

I eventually found the Public Prosecutor's Office, in the heart of Daejon. Eventually I was given a list of phone numbers and addresses of attorneys. I called the one that was the closest. In this way I came into contact with a Mr Hyon Joo Lee. I made an appointment and came to his office. He was very friendly and talkative. I was grateful that his english skills were excellent.

Hyon Joo Lee initially told me that any contract can be broken if the period of notice in the contract is given. He said this is normally One month, and that the two months notice stated in my contract was unusually generous. He didn’t consider that this was in fact in the employer's interests, to give the employer time to find a new replacement. He had said that as I had no release papers from the school, that I must leave Korea.

He claimed I had only a 50 50 chance of winning any court case, as the judge might believe any employer's claims of misconduct on my part, even without any proof at all. He told me that if I were to engage him as my lawyer, that I would have to pay him 3.3 Million Won up front, and 10% of my salary over the term of my contract. This amounted to around 7500 Australian Dollars. He said maybe it would take 4 to 5 months to get a trial. He said that if I win, I would only receive the wages lost up till the settlement of the trial, and my contract would be enforced. He said the court only might award some of my legal costs. As he had presented the situation, I would end up paying 3 months wages just to have the priveledge of working at Jongchul English school.

He said that a judge could grant a court order to evict me from the apartment in 2 to 3 months, and that after that, and up until the trial, I would have to live in a Pogwan, a cheap hotel, at over $200 a week. I calculated that the overall cost of merely having my contract enforced would be over $10,000. I had no reason to doubt the attorney. All of this, when not one charge had been laid against me, and not one iota of proof had been provided to support any specious claims of ‘improper conduct’. In spite of this, Hyon Joo had said that this was “not an easy case".

Hyon Joo told me that foreign workers, legally, have all the rights of native Korean workers. He promised to try to settle out of court for me, at no charge. I thank him for his generosity and insist he calculate a reasonable fee, as a gesture of thanks. He said he would call my boss, and then call me. He tried to contact her then, but she wouldn’t answer her phone. Hyon Joo seemed a very nice person. I said I would recommend him in my book, to anyone who should have legal trouble in Korea. He gave me his business card. We chatted a little about how his wife had studied Cello for 5 years in Germany, in Mannheim, and about the mountains in Korea. He had done the New York Bar exam. He had studied in the U.S. His English was very good. He appeared to be honest and helpful.

The official complaint I filed at Chung Nam District Police Headquarters. It details what happened to me on the 29th at the school, and on the 30th at Daejon Immigration Office

October 30

The police had taken me to some police station where I was questioned about my passport and visa. The police there tried to convince me that I was an illegal alien, that my visa was not in order. I told them that this was not true. After their bluffing and intimidation had not worked, they told me once more that this was a matter for immigration.

I told the officer that I had no idea where I was or what I was doing with him, as the police from Yong Un Dong police box had said they were taking me to Daejon Immigration Office. Some calls were made to immigration, and I was finally driven there in a police car. I had no idea where I was. The police car drove off and just left me there. This was the first time I ended up at the Immigration office.

After I left immigration I found the local police station. Eventually some police officer or other drove me back to Chung Nam Suk Hyun Police agency where I found Nam Suk Hyun, and convinced him to file a report.

That report documents what happened during the time I was at the office, and the day before, when I was back at Jungchul English School.

Nam Suk Hyun wrote down the following statements. He told me that it was an official complaint that he was filing, and would investigate.

Markus H Rehbach 016 92141383 Passport Number L9212321 Daejon-si Don gu October 20, 1968 Yong un go chng Apt 202 1002 300120

Charles Kang. Human Resource Bank (042) 361 1670, mobile 011 9403 1670 Immigration Office Staff 10:45 am, October 30. Approx 5 persons

Intimidation. No physical harm.

Charles Kang. October 29, approx. 4pm.

"I'm physically gonna drag you out of the country. You're leaving Korea tomorrow. You are illegal. If immigration charge me I will pay". At the ELC, the Jungchul English School, my workplace.

Immigration Officers. October 30, approx. 10:45am and after 11am.

Very aggressively and angrily pointing, touching, and jabbing me with his finger. "You have broken 3 contacts". "If you go to a lawyer you will lose". "You broke the light". "I think that you are a bad person". He kept putting his cigarette up to my face. A man in a suit violently and angrily grabbed the phone from me when I was talking to the police. Very angry, threatening body language. He pushed me aside violently and waved his arms menacingly. Later on the staircase he said "You are an illegal alien, we can detain you (gesturing to the detention room) lock you up, and deport you". He would not tell me where the police station was. He said "You are a criminal". At Daejon Immigration office.

I felt physically threatened by their body language. I am very worried that they will carry out their threats. I am under a lot of stress as a result and am not able to sleep, and have migraine headaches. I am worried about my personal safety. If the immigration Officers can hate me so violently after being lied to by my Director, and immediately judge me without any proof or interest in my story, then there can be no justice for me in Korea.

I hereby formally request that Charles Kang and the Immigration Department Staff be charged and punished.

October 30, 2001 Markus Rehbach

I Had to ask for a copy of this complaint. It was all handwritten.I had to insist, as Nam Suk Hyun didn't want to give me a copy.

I had to request that they be charged, otherwise the police said thatthey couldn’t investigate. Of course all I wanted was for everyone to stop intimidating and harassing me so I could get a fair hearing at the labor ministry. Nam Suk Hyun appeared to be taking everything seriously, and was sober and focussed.

I was so relieved that at least one person appeared to be honest.

Nam Suk Hyun and a friend had talked to me very professionally and friendly, and I believed they were genuine. They had bought me coffee and we had chatted about lots of different things. They wanted to buy me lunch but I had no time.

My last day at work at Jungchul English School, Daejon

October 31

5:30

Julia told me “The Director told me that you don’t work here anymore from today”. Then the Director, Charles and his boss, and Ouk Souk, force me to leave school. Ouk souk physically pushes-pulls me out of the classroom.

I arrive home to find that the locks on my door have been changed. I go to the Yong un Dong Police box. They have a notice on their bulletin board, which I get another visitor at the box to copy down for me. The notice has my apartment number 202-1002, and the telephone number of my school 274 0508, and a mobile number, 019 835 6023. Ouk Souk's husband told police previously that he had no mobile phone. So the police know already, and went along with this illegal action.

I call Hyonjoo Lee, the attorney, and tell him that I have been locked out of my apartment, and ask him to inform the police that this is illegal, as he himself had informed me previously. I had come into contact with Hyonjoo Lee through the labor ministry and then the public prosecutor's office. The police officer talks to him. He is very cheerful and laughs a lot. He hangs up without allowing me to talk to him, so I am in the dark about what they said, and what will happen next. So I have been illegally evicted, and denied access to all my belongings, including my money and passports, with police knowledge and consent. No-one has a court order.

I get the police to call the Chung Nam Police. An officer talks, laughs, and then hangs up. Again I don’t get to talk myself, to find out what’s going on. The police wouldn’t let me call the mobile number included in the bulletin board message about me.

I get them to let me call the attorney again, ten minutes later. It’s before 6pm. I’m told that he has gone home, and to call back tomorrow after 10am. The police keep asking for my passport. I tell them it’s in my apartment. They won’t let me call the interpreter service. After persisting, they let me call 1330. A female answers and tells me that the English Assistance interpreter is on holiday today. She herself speaks English well, and understands me, although she claims to be the Chinese translator. She refuses to help me, or to tell me what the police officer said to her. The police officer speaks to her again and then hangs up. I’m suspicious. I haven’t heard of Koreans taking holidays during the week, and she spoke excellent English. What did they talk about? What did the police say to the attorney?

The police constantly laugh at me as I insist to be allowed to call the number I have for the criminal investigations branch. An officer forcefully tries to stop me leaving the police station. He grabs my bag as I attempt to leave. I really have to pull very hard to get it out of his hands.

Outside the air is freezing cold. I'm writing these notes under the light of a what appears to be a used car yard. I'm hiding. I don’t know if it’s safe to go back to the police box. Maybe I should leave everything and get to the Airport and just leave. I don’t trust anyone here at all. I don’t have any idea how far they will go. What the fuck is happening? What should I do? I don’t believe it’s going to end well. Are they all fucking lawless asseholes?

I'm hiding off the street. It’s really cold, and all I have on are the summer clothes that I went to work in. The days are warm, but at night the air is like the freezer section of the supermarket, ice-chilled.

I decide to stop strangers, to find one that can translate for me, and come with me back to the police box. I wouldn’t go back there alone without a witness. The third person I stop, who looks like a university student, speaks English, and agrees to come with me to the station, even though he is on his way somewhere. He is very polite, and talks with the police, but says nothing to me at all, even though I keep trying to interrupt and ask questions. He is actually totally ignoring me. What is he doing? What are the police telling him? It’s about 6:45pm now.

I'm thinking how ironic everything is. I was planning on finding some way of helping Hyonjoo Lee for being so nice and offering to help me when I thought everything was lost and everyone had forsaken me. But he wasn’t genuine either. Like everyone here. Everyone here has two faces. They are all nice and helpful and friendly at first. As soon as there is a conflict between a foreigner and a Korean, then you see how fake and false and contrived they really are.

No-one who hasn't experienced this for themselves is going to believe me. This is why I will keep taking notes, to make sure I don’t misrepresent anything. Things are getting much more ‘interesting’ than I could have imagined. Maybe I should leave, but now that I have had this glimpse into the real Korean behaviour, I just have to see how far they will go to cover up for their fellow Koreans. Just how two faced are they? How far will they go? I have to give them a chance, in case it’s all a misunderstanding, to find out the truth. I don’t want to leave with a false impression, and spread misinformation about Korea. And if they really are as corrupt and conspiratorial as they appear, then I need to know just how corrupt, to inform others, so that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to anyone else. I am, after all, a Philosopher.

The helpful(?) stranger tells me someone is coming, and to wait at the station. He has to go. I thank him for helping me. He is incredibly polite and calm, reserved. I felt a sort of Buddhistic quality about him. Of course he has not actually helped me at all. He will not tell me anything.

The husband of An Ouk Souk, my boss, arrives. It’s 7pm. So it was he who was coming. He’s yacking away with the police and laughing. He keeps trying to take photographs of me. He is an ugly laughing monster, full of absolute aggressive arrogance and self satisfaction. I hold up a folder in front of my face, he aggressively tries to grab it. He wants me to go back to the Hogwan with him. He must be fucking mad, to think that I would go back with him. He’s fucking lost it. He is so self satisfied, and must be deluded to even consider the possibility that I would go back with him after the mad and threatening way his is behaving.

He is standing menacingly over me, trying to intimidate and frighten me, or to provoke me. The police are deliberately looking the opposite way, openly encouraging him to threaten me, and making it clear to me that they are not going to stop him, or even witness what he does. I try to reason with the police. This crazed, self satisfied monster yells at me to “shut up”, twice. This sort of language is unacceptable in Korea, I have been told. You can be charged for such behaviour. I notice that we are on the video screen, that there is a camera in the police box. Have they been recording everything? Were they hoping I would be provoked into some action, for which they could then charge me? The beast says that the apartment is “my home”, his home, and he needs to live there himself, or some sort of nonsense, to justify kicking me out. The police officers insist, as interpreted, that this madman will solve my problem. This is insane. He is the problem.

I find a book of Korean phrases, which every police box has, on the shelf. The police had told me they didn’t have one. They talk for ages, laughing at me. They tell me he will give me the key later, after I go with him. I ask why not now, then. I say I will go to the Korean Broadcasing Service. He angrily laughs and yells “go”. Of course I have no money,and the station is around 2 hours walk from here, and closed. I cannot sleep in this cold outdoors. I would catch pneumonia.

The police and the beast talk and talk, and he writes down something about Kumi, and the ECC. I ask why? And what? I wonder what ground could the police have for not letting me back into my legal home. They just ignore me. Is that the plan? I wait two and a half hours, and they do nothing. Now they keep going on about my E2 visa. What to do?

I go outside and call 112, the emergency number, three times within half an hour, between 8:10 and 8:45. Finally they tell me, and how do they know?, that the ‘academy boss’ is coming with the key. They tell me to call the embassy. I wonder, how do the emergency operators know all about me, and who told them to tell me about the key? Is there some sort of conspiracy or collusion?

I consider how unprofessional the police here in Daejon are, how they have absolutely no interest in the facts of my situation. They have lied to me, and conspired with the school to intimidate me and unlawfully lock me out of my apartment.

Koreans talk a long time. It’s impossible to get a direct response. You ask one Korean to translate a simple question for you to another, and the two rave on for ages. It’s incredibly frustrating.

It's 8:50pm

The shift is changing. The incoming shift are informed about 'Markus'. One officer directs me to go outside, so he can sit down, and so they can talk about me. It’s freezing cold outside and I have nowhere to go and no money. A cop comes from the direction of my apartment and gives me a note. I must come to the police box at 10am the next day. I write him a note stating that they need a court order to evict me, according to the labor laws and the Attorney. The beast comes in and wants to give me the key, I indicate to the police that I don’t trust him. No-one who had observed his recent behaviour could expect otherwise of a reasonable person. I indicate for him to put the key on the table.

I go home, and get off on the 8th floor. I take the stairs up the last two flights, wary of any noise or indication that anyone is waiting for me. I am very wary of attack.

In my apartment, which I enter very cautiously

I consider how I had to really insist that the labor office get my employer to give them a Korean version of my contract. The labor office investigator, Na In Ha, simply kept responding to my request by saying that the employer didn’t have a Korean version of the contract. He eventually said he would ask for one to be translated. I said he must insist, as no-one in the labor office could read the English one. It will be interesting to see if the copy is accurate! Further, they had tried to call the school and the attorney, and had claimed that no-one was answering.

How could the police expect me to leave with that madman after seeing how aggressively he had threatened me, manically running around trying to get photos of me with his camera? Surely they could see the venom in his eyes, the pure hate and vile loathing in his whole demeaneour? How did the 112 operators all know about the school and me? I consider that the advice I had received from everyone to be soft and polite was false, I had only finally gotten the key by being loud and angry and persistent, and forcing them to act at some level. Otherwise I would not have gotten anywhere with them. I wonder whether the “Chinese Translator” was lieing. Could they all possibly be conspiring? I am optimistic that the labor office will finally clear everything up, and everything will be o.k and I can get back to doing what I came here to do, to teach English.

In Kumi this had worked. The police had been ultimately fair to some extent, and had eventually begrudgingly helped me. November 1, 9:30am

The beast is at my apartment

He just tried to open the door, didn’t even knock. He keeps ringing the bell. He is trying the lock. He is ringing and ringing the bell. Luckily I had seen him coming and had put the inside lock on, so he can’t use his key to open the door from the outside, which he obviously intended to do. He can’t possibly have a court order already. What an arrogant assehole. He has absolutely no right to come into my legal home. He had planned just to walz in. He is totally off his head. What can I expect from him? Of course I am worried. He is so confident of his right to do anything he wants, with police collusion. He is talking on his mobile phone. Who is he talking to?

illegal eviction-second time locked out

November 2

7:06am

Charles Kang, An Ouk Souk, her husband, a locksmith, and the landlady, are at my door, with some police officers. They have banged the windows and banged the door. Charles tells me to let them in. I say I will talk to the police once the others have gone, that Charles can translate. He tells me his English, “is not very good”, and that he can’t translate for me. They proceed to smash the door locks. I call 112 twenty times. I demand they put me through to the National Police or Interpol, as the local police are behaving criminally. They won’t help. At first they waste my time asking for information, then just hang up every time I call.

I shout for help from my balcony. A few passers-by do pay attention, but then the building security laugh at me and talk to them and they walk away, and others just ignore me. I am losing my voice. There is a police car downstairs, but they don’t get out of their car. I am on the 10th floor and have no way of escaping. They are literally smashing the metal door down, removing every lock and the hinges. The noise is terrible. I am frightened, but still expect the police will maintain order. The police appear corrupt, but not likely to actually hurt me, directly. I have no choice but to keep calling 112, and keep calling for help. Finally they actually entirely remove the door and come in. What will happen will happen. I am absolutely powerless to stop them from whatever plans they have. I didn’t anticipate they would behave so blatantly criminally. This is really crazy.

The beast, Charles Kang, Charles' boss from the Human Resource Bank, and two police, all enter my apartment. I show the police the criminal complaint I have lodged against Charles Kang, for intimidation. The police ask Charles to translate it for them, a really ridiculous situation. I insist to the police that Charles should be asked to leave the apartment for that reason. Of course Charles isn’t willing to translate this request. He tells me his English is too bad. They put the door back in the frame, locking us all in. They can’t open it now, and bang and kick on it. The police tell me I am illegal, and get Charles to translate for them. Charles menacingly challenges me with “What’s the difference between you and me?” I respond, trying to hide my fear, with “you’re not that bright?”. He then says, evilly, “I’m Korean. You’re not!”.

The police said I had to collect all my stuff and leave. I told them that their behaviour was illegal, in fact criminal. I requested that they all take their shoes off, as they were in my home, and it was rude. They obliged, even getting Charles to do so, after he resisted. He kept smoking, and I told the police again this was my home and it was rude of him to smoke. They got him to stop. I offered to make the police coffee, and started making it. The police told me to write a statement saying that I would go to the school the next day at 2:30pm, the time I started work according to my contract.

They did this as I insisted that I was still employed by the school, and therefore the apartment was still legally my home. They accepted that I couldn’t therefore be evicted. Of course no-one did anything about putting the door back on its hinges, and replacing the locks. I was expected to live there, after all the public threats that had been made even in the presence of the police, without a door.

The situation was unbelievable. Seeing the potential of defeat, Charles and the beast and co attempted to intimidate me into leaving the apartment.

The beast violently grabbed me, and shoved me, pushing me very hard in the back , and Charles and his boss began threatening me, aggressively waving their arms about,and constantly standing menacingly right in my face. The police let them, and then consciously turned their backs on us and walked out of my apartment, clearly conveying to me that they were not going either to stop anything from happening, or to be witness to it. This is the same behaviour I experienced at the police station.

Feeling threatened by the three intimidating men, I had no choice but to leave with the police, in shorts and t-shirt, with nothing. As I went to stay with the police, who were in the doorway, for protection and to avoid further escalation, the police and my antagonists pushed me along towards the lift. They all entered the lift with me in between them, effectively forcing me into the lift. I reached to push the door open button, and Charles’ boss physically pushed me with his body, in an attempt to stop me. I reached the button and got out. I ran back to the apartment, where the locksmith was collecting his tools. I asked him to put a lock back on, that I would pay him. He refused. I left the building with him, after urgently grabbing my bag and some warmer clothing, even though he didn’t want me to walk with him. He wouldn’t take me anywhere. I asked him merely to take me a few streets. I cautiously came back to my apartment. The door had been put back on with a new lock

8:45pm

I went directly to the landladys' office. She had witnessed the whole thing. She kept playing games. You need a key? She rang Ouk Souk, so I hung up. She left, and so I left.

I walked in the direction of the Chung Nam District Police Agency. I stopped a police car. They took me back to Yong un Dong police station, to the same criminal police, even though I kept insisting to be taken to Chung Nam Police Agency. I wouldn’t get out of the police car. They talked on the car phone, laughing. I spoke on the phone. Those I spoke on the phone with appeared to speak really bad English. Either they didn’t understand me or they were conspiring against me. They kept trying to get me to leave the car. They were very aggressive and laughing loudly. At the Yong un dong police box after being forced out of the police car

On the phone from the police car, Nam Suk Hyun promises that he has cleared up everything with the police at Yong Un dong, and that they will help me get back into my apartment tonight. I get out, and go in, and the angry police there immediately tell me to go. An older cop opens the door and lets in the cold night air. They had turned off the heating earlier. It was already cold in the box.

They are claiming there is no Korean-English phrase book. They angrily tell me to go, or to sit. What's happening? There is no English translator. Nam Suk Hyun has taken his phone off the hook. This is a criminal conspiracy. The police lied to me again, directly, they said they were Nam Suk Hyun, but they were police from just another police box like Yong un Dong. Why do they bother playing such games?

9:35pm

The police tell me there is no 1330 interpreter service. Another direct lie. I picked up the phone, he didn’t stop me. Is anyone doing anything legal here? Is anyone reliable? What a fucking assehole of a place.

9.45pm

The good cop, Nam Suk Hyun rang. He had been asked to call Yong un dong police box? I spoke to him. I asked him if I should leave Korea. I said that if all the police were the same, that if there were no honest ones, then I should go, before worse happens. He agreed that the eviction was “illegal”. He would call back in 5 minutes, at Yong un Dong. I told him the police had let the three men threaten me. He said there was only a case to investigate if they had hit me. No-one had. I told him that the whole story since the beginning was one of intimidation and harassment to get me to leave Korea.

I asked a police officer how much they earn. Apparently 2 Million won a month. He says the hours are bad and the job is dangerous. He was 34 years old. I consider that maybe the police in the car did call Nam Suk Hyun, and he told them to take me back to Yong un dong police box. I want to believe the best. But???? It’s lucky that good cop, Nam Suk Hyun, is helping me, and that I was so persistent in filing a complaint and asking for his Name and so on. I have now called 112 more than 25 times, and they hang up every time. The good cop, Nam Suk Hyun, keeps trying to convice me that the police and Oo, the police officer responsible for foreigners, bear no malice towards me, that everything is just a misunderstanding.

He dismisses the idea of a conspiracy, and wants me to too. I want to too, and put my trust in this police officer who seems genuine. I don’t lay a complaint against Oo. I am in fact under so much stress and so grateful to have found one honest person that I want to reward him by being generous with everyone else. The police in the box say they will check out the situation with the lock on my apartment, to see whether I have one or not. This is absurd, given they were the ones who stood by and watched while the others literally smashed every lock and catch on my door, and then removed it from its hinges. They couldn’t promise that I would have a secure door tonight. They would investigate Charles and Ouk souk tomorrow afternoon, and the whole affair concerning my apartment. Shit I’m persistent. I keep finding myself in apparently insoluable situations here, with total resistance from everyone, but I don’t give in.

Is there really a chance for justice here? I remember Charles in my apartment the night they illegally evicted me taunting me with “Did you go to work today and yesterday?” “Why not?” What a total fucker hey. They still won’t give me anything in writing. They force me to leave the school, and tell me I’m fired, and then in front of the police try to make out that I have quit my job, that I have broken my contract. I have not broken any of the three contracts I signed. The Directors have. In Bundang ECC, at Cambridge in Kumi city, and now here Jungchul in Daejon. Each time the recruiters, and Don and Charles, had sought me out and had made me the best offers I could find. Every time they had helped the Directors break the very same contracts they themselves had written, by intimidation, and illegal eviction, and non-payment of my salary. It's 2:30am I wonder why the police think that they have the right to decide to evict me, illegally, without a court order or a warrant. It was unlawful entry. I have called 112 now 30 times, over a period of 5 hours. They respond with,“sorry, we can’t help you”, and lots of laughing and chatting. I had also flagged down a police car. They told me to get a taxi. Smug bastards, they know I have no money. I ran after them calling them fucking asseholes. They probably could have charged me for that. But I haven’t met a police officer yet in Daejon that is interested in the law. They were laughing at me. Why? And why did the good cop, Nam Suk Hyun, tell me to go back to yong un dong, that they were going to help me? Instead they call the Director. So they can fabricate some story to justify beating me up and then deporting me? The police keep playing games, telling me they are putting me through to someone on the phone and then not, or lieing about who I am speaking to, or pretending that they are helping me, and telling me just to wait. I waited 16 hours in the same seat. They kept on telling me to sit and wait. They must have found this dead amusing. 4.20am

The police gesture that they couldn’t get through to the Director, to get the key to my apartment. They tell me to go to a motel. I have no money. I was asleep on the sofa. It’s bitter cold outside. They tell me to go to the apartment. What sort of absurd sense of humour they must have. They seem to love provoking me, saying such ridiculous things. How could they just smash down the door after being told by the attorney the last time that they were breaking the law? So how do they explain this time? What is their plan? I leave the apartment, they lock me out? This is what they did. Why did the good cop, Nam suk hyun, tell me they had the key, and would let me in? 4.35amPolice tell me to “go back to Australia". 4.45amPolice keep going on about Kumi, and Bundang. I wonder what they are thinking or going on about. It is madness. Every time they mention Kumi and Bundang I try to tell them what happened there, but they are not at all interested. They just keeping ranting and raving like idiots, like Charles always saying “It’s very bad for you", without explaining anything. Do they think I have something to hide? Do they think this sort of abysmal yammering is somehow intimidating? Some of the police really hate me. Why? Some of them appear to find the whole thing great entertainment. Don’t they have any sympathy at all for foreigners? Do they blame me for Korea's problems, like they blame the IMF?

The police sleep during their shifts, at their desks. One gets me to move off the couch so he can sleep. He is on duty and he is allowed to sleep there. The police have criminally made me homeless and without any of my possessions or money, but they see no reason to let me sleep there. What the fuck Is their problem? And why did the beast, the Director, keep trying to photograph me so deranged and insanely. It appears that legally they can’t compel me to leave Korea, so they are doing everything in their power, short of physically attacking me, to intimidate me into leaving Korea without getting to my labor ministry appointment, or to the lawyer. They are intent on denying me justice.

So much for visit Korea year 2001. They invite me to come here to teach, and then again and again invite me to teach at their schools, and then totally ignore their contracts and promises.

Police Box-Where?, they keep saying. They all keep laughing and joking about how beautiful Korea is, and the World Cup

9:15pm

I spoke to the friendly criminal investigator, Nam Suk Hyun 0427 257 1929, who had 'filed' my official complaints, at the Chung Nam Police Agency District Headquarters. The Yong un Dong police box police officers took the phone off me, then talked, and then hung up. They apparently called the Australian Embassy, and then Nam Suk Hyun again. The next day

5:50pm

A stranger talked to 112 for me. They told me that they couldn’t help. The stranger got the number for the federal police 011 5848 6948, and paid for me to call. The call nearly ran out before they would agree to send the federal police. I wonder if they were genuine or not? Will anyone come or help? What will the result be?

When I called Nam Suk Hyun he wouldn’t come to the police box. He said he can’t order them, the police, to obey the law. What a joke. I look at the written complaint Nam Suk Hyun had filed for me at the Chung Nam District Policing Agency, and find it a bit ‘pretend’. Now I realise in hindsight that he hadn’t entered anything into the computer, there were no stamps or fingerprints on the complaint. The complaint I had filed in Kumi was entered on a computer, and had stamps and fingerprints, including mine, on it. How naïve of me. I want to believe in people. He was in the same building as Mr Oo. How can I be so stupid.

And to think that I had not filed a complaint against Mr Oo after the false allegations and threats he had made to me on the phone. Nam had talked me out of that, and I had felt sorry for Mr Oo, and was willing to let it go, even though his behaviour was totally out of line. He had used his power to attempt to intimidate me.

Immigration had either lied to Hyoon Joo, or the attorney is in on the conspiracy. Hyon Joo had told me that my visa was not in order, and that I had to leave Korea. What a bad dream, a nightmare. So looks like the labor ministry is my last chance.

The beast had taken pictures. For the internet?

I will put a new add on the internet and get picked up for a new job.

Why was Nam Suk Hyun at first so hesitant about giving me his Name ? I gave a guy who was here at the police box fixing their photocopier a note with my Name, asking for him to call KBS, the Korean Broadcasting service, to send a reporter. He understood me. If Nam Suk Hyun doesn’t come I will go to KBS tomorrow. Charlie had laughed when I had mentioned the attorney Hyoon Joo. Is he bluffing, or are they all colluding? I have now been illegally locked out of my apartment for 2 days. The train to Seoul takes around two hours.

Nam Suk Hyun claimed he would be making a criminal investigation. He keeps saying that the police are not corrupt in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I decide to confront him tomorrow morning. Friday

9:20pm

The police told me to use the phone outside. I said I had no money. They insisted I leave. I went outside to the phone box, and called 112 again, and again, and again. I saw a young Korean lady near the box, so I asked her if she spoke English. She spoke very good English. She was in fact on her way home from having given some private English tutoring nearby. Mi Youn Shin 016 472 5456 listened to me, then came back into the police box with me. She agreed to ask some questions for me and to tell me what the police answered, as a witness. I asked her to ask some simple questions.

As was usual for a Korean, she talked with them on and on and I had to insist politely that she ask a few simple questions and tell me their answers. It was very frustrating, as they kept talking in Korean and getting nowhere, but eventually she did tell me that they had claimed that they had broken my door down because I had threatened to kill myself, and that my boss had offered to pay for a motel for me, which even she found inconsistent. Why pay for a motel when he was already paying for the apartment? Mi Youn shin agreed that the story sounded suspicious. The police had told her that I didn’t have a work agreement anymore. Park, one of the officers, was violently angry, and wouldn't let the girl make a phone call. He stared at me angrily.

I had great respect for the calm way in which this slightly built young woman stood in the middle of a room full of large angry men and did not let them intimidate her. This is another case of how I came to observe a real dignity and composure in some of the Koreans I met, like the University student who talked to the police for me. Outside the police box, she stated that it was very hard in Korea to lodge a complaint or get an investigation into public officials. She said she would look up an internet site for me.

The police wouldn’t let me back into the apartment at all, not even to get some clothing. I have now worn the same clothing 5 days straight. I haven’t showered for 2 days. I wonder who is going to enforce the law. It is so irritating to be constantly told how helpful the police are to foreigners, especially given the level of promotion for this visit Korea year. I wonder how bad the police are normally, if this is a good year.

So, the police have successfully wasted another day for me. I should have gone directly to the labor ministry, rather than listen to the police. They are such hypocrites. When I ask for the labor office number, they say wait until they, the police, have dealt with my problem.

When I ask them to deal with my problem, they say it’s not police business. When the police behave criminally, the criminal investigation branch tell me they can’t force the police to obey the law, and lie that they are investigating. At least now I am certain about the police collusion, and have no delusions that the normal police are going to help. The angry Mr Park gave everyone a drink except me. It seems that people from the general public give the police box drinks as gestures of thanks or something.

To think that I believed what the police on the phone had told me, that the National Police would in fact send a car from Seoul to pick me up. Should I break into my own apartment to get my stuff? Should I contact the embassy? All the police and officials are such good actors, listening so sincerely. I put my hope in them as a last resort. The information desk at the Chung Nam District Police Agency pretended to call Criminal Investigations. They're all colluding against me. To think I really believed anyone was going to investigate.

I am still at the yong un dong police box. Charles keeps trying to intimidate me or provoke me. He stands right up to my face, and keeps moving forward when I back away. I ask the police to stop him from harassing me. Charlie says in Korea this is not harassment, indicating that his hands are behind his back, and laughing menacingly with the police. But he is harassing and intimidating me with police collusion. I sit behind one of the desks, in the corner of the police box. Charlie stands over me. I cross my legs, and my foot brushes his suit jacket. “I won't forget this!", he menaces threateningly, pointing to the slight dust mark left on his jacket. I wonder who the fourth man they brought with them is. He is pretty big. He just sits there and says nothing, looking at me menacingly.

It's 5:15pm

They are trying to railroad me out of town before the labor ministry meeting. They’re all so happy and laughing. They won’t send a police car for me. I had arranged a meeting with the labor office for the 5th, for them to speak with my employers and me and decide on what to do about my contract.

The police keep stopping me from contacting the labor ministry, and keep trying to get me to go back to the school. But when I ask for help they say it’s not police business. They tell me to call my embassy, then won’t give me the number or let me use the phone. I recall how they eventually took me in a police car to the labor ministry, where I made the appointment for the fifth, but only after they lied and took me to another police station where they kept implying I had to go to immigration, because I had visa problems, and talking to immigration, or pretending to, and then calling Mr Oo in Kumi, or pretending to, and intimating that I had some sort of problem with him. They keep trying to intimidate me.

I want to go to the attorneys' office, or to the Australian or German Embassy. Charlie says to me, or more for the police “Why didn’t you come to school today?" He's such a smug bastard, such an assehole. He knows that he, his boss from the HRB, and the Director, all threatened me, and forced me to leave the school. He knows that Ouk Souk physically dragged and pushed me out of the school.

But I wonder, are they all fucking mad? Charles says the police asked “why are you here?, “this is not your restroom". Fucking mad. The police criminally assisted my illegal eviction. They all know that all my possessions, money and clothing, everything, are locked in my apartment. They know these men have been threatening and intimidating me. The officer tells me to go to a hotel. He knows I have no money for a hotel. I am homeless because of police collusion and criminality. He knows that. Are they trying to drive me mad?

When I called the attorney last he said that they could deport me. But he also promised to talk to me before hanging up, and he didn’t. Is he colluding? Is the labor ministry genuine? It seems that the ‘good cop’,Nam suk hyun, who I have put my trust in, is colluding too, as he hasn't investigated anything. Is he a liar too? Is he colluding in this conspiracy? No-one told me that I had to apply for a new E2 visa. The old one was still valid. Did the attorney actually tell the police the eviction was illegal, or not? The lawyer doesn't know immigration law. I have three months after release from a contract before I have to leave Korea under my visa conditions. But let them deport me if they want to. Maybe I'll have to go without my possessions. This place seems more and more dangerous every day.

They all pretend to be nice, but are just wasting my time as usual. Is it racism? They have pretended to be nice all day just to get me to waste my time waiting for nothing. What can I do? Can I risk waiting for the labor ministry meeting? How far will they go to stop me from attending? Is this their plan, to simply avoid having to pay me at all? Why? Because this is Korea, and they can. They are simply asseholes. I have to assume that Nam Suk Hyun, the detective, has lied too. There are no ‘good’ cops in Daegon. The attorney lied too. He said he tried to call me, but my mobile hasn’t rang at all.

Either they are all stupid and insensitive to my position, or they are corrupt. But they are still determined to look good in spite of everything, to maintain the appearance of Podori police, especially helpful to foreigners in Visit Korea Year 2001. Seoul is 2 hours by train. Should I go to the embassy first? I have to photocopy these notes somewhere, in case they are taken from me. What are they willing to do to me? My heart pounds when they come near. They never let me talk, Charles and the rest. They keep asking me questions and provoking me and insulting me, but when I respond they tell me to shut up.

6.10pm

Again they are all going on about Bundang (the Ya'tap ECC Hogwan where I first worked, where my first contract was dishonoured), and Kumi. What the hell are they going on about? What is it they are trying to imply?

6:30pm

They offer me a hamburger, I tell them I am vegetarian, like the Buddhists. They give me some aspirin. The guy repairing the photocopier is listening to us. Does he understand? I told him these police are corrupt, and that I need some real police. If they can deport me then why don’t they? Can people violently and menacingly threaten, grab, and push people in Korea? Would the media investigate my claims? Would the National Police in Seoul? Would they lose face if they had to admit I was right? Would they risk that? They leave the door open and let in the bitterly cold wind. Trying to make it even more uncomfortable for me? More bullshit phone calls to Kumi. They’re fucking mad. Most of my suspicions have proven well grounded. What to do? Wait till the 5th, for the labor ministry meeting? If I am illegal then they can detain and deport me, or they can pretend. How serious are they in their collusion?. I told Nam Suk Hyun he’s colluding with them, so what next? I should photocopy and mail these notes. But to who?

If I'm right, then they won't let me be here on the fifth. But are the labor ministry colluding too? Will any Korean show up another Korean to a foreigner? I will have to survive the weekend. Is it worth risking waiting just to see what they will do, to prove whether the conspiracy is total, for the sake of knowing the truth? Remember that when I call Nam Suk Hyun, the person who answers, Nam Suk Hyun I think, pretends not to understand English at all. Also, Nam Suk Hyun sent me back to Yong un Dong police box, promising that everything had been worked out, and that they would help me now. And as soon as I arrived they tried to kick me out, and were terribly angry with me, and aggressive towards me.

Nam Suk Hyun is pretty senior. He has a lot to lose. And he knows that I’m right. He knows I know he is colluding (unless I am wrong about that, but it seems pretty clear). The attorney wouldn’t risk being involved. He wouldn’t come to the police box and he lied to me on the phone. He hasn’t checked the facts about my immigration status. He probably would have happily taken my $5000 and sat back and done nothing, but who knows for sure. So, I will risk waiting till the 5th , till Monday. Do they have collusion from the labor ministry, or a plan, or will they simply refuse to pay when the labor ministry order them to, assuming they can order them to? Is the 112 number always linked to the local police box? Will they help if I call 112 in Seoul?

Are they deliberately trying to freeze me to death here? Are they going to leave the heating off to try to get rid of me? They’re taking me to a hotel? Yeh, and tell the thugs where they can come and get me. They have my Passport, all my possessions, and my money. Charles and his mates exchange looks which indicate that they have been through all my stuff. Charles and all the others leave.

I have no choice but to leave the police box. It is too cold for me, I have to move or I will freeze. The I need to get away while Charles and all his goons are gone, otherwise I might not get another chance.

The air outside is deeply chilled. I only have very light clothing. I find a church where some workmen are working. The door is open, so I go inside the building. I go up some stairs and find a couch has been left on the stairs, lying down the staircase. I lie down on the sofa, exhausted. It's very cold. I sort of sleep a little, from sheer exhaustion. I wake up from the cold, and realise I'd better start moving or I will really get pneunonia. I get up and head off towards town, to Chung Nam District Police Agency. I warm up a little from walking, and walk through the underground mall, where it is much warmer. It is really early in the morning.

At the Chung Nam District Police Agency

Really early in the morning

I walked to the District police Agency. The civil police cadet at the gate asks me something about Yong un Dong. According to him there’s a “strange foreigner in town". I tell them that I am there to see Nam Suk Hyun. The cadet tells me that Nam Suk Hyun doesn’t work on Saturdays. Typical, Nam Suk Hyun promised that he would be investigating my complaint today. He doesn't work today,they inform me. The bastard!

They let me take a shower in their barracks, and give me their own towels, a razor, and soap to use. They buy me coffee from the automat. It is warm in the control box. They seem really concerned about me, and let me sleep there in the control box. I hope they are not like all the rest. My eyes are really sore and it's hard to see. I haven't slept properly for days now.

Have the Director and co managed to convince immigration and the labor ministry that I really am an illegal alien? Would that invalidate my contract and make it void? Or is a contract a contract? Will they use force to prevent me from getting to the labor ministry meeting?

8:05am

I managed to sleep a few hours. They kept talking to me and asking questions. They had to be up all night, I think 24 hours, or at least 12 hours. They are doing their civil service as police cadets as an alternative to military duty. ( Korea is still officially at war. Koreans are pretty pissed off at how much of their tax goes to supporting the U.S military that have a large presence, to ward off an attack from North Korea.) They have to do this for over 2 years.

They are all very affectionate, physically, to one another. I wonder if they are gay. In Thailand I saw the same sort of physical affection between soldiers. A fellow traveller insisted that they were gay, but I was not convinced. It’s possible that some cultures are more affectionate than others. The women here, for instance, touch and caress each other in ways that would be, in Australia or Germany, considered sexual, or at least too intimate for mere friends. However, the women I have talked to here insist that this behaviour is normal, and that homosexuality is really frowned upon in Korea. It is so common to see females holding hands, and males holding hands, not just children but adults.

I find this sort of affection to be one of the few positive things about Korea. I stated this to a fellow teacher who had commented that it was hard to find something good about Korea to tell their friends and family. They had stated that they couldn't find anything positive to say. A recruiter once told me that everytime they had been honest with potential teachers, the teachers had rejected their offers.

I consider that there are some beautiful places in the mountains, exceptionally low income taxes, and cheap and fast internet cafes. But when you consider the stinking hot humidity, and the dangerous traffic and pollution, the exorbitant prices for food, especially coffee, and the terribly low range of products, especially vegetables, the rude and spoilt students, and the unprofessional and dishonest managers, not to mention the terrible accommodation, and so on and so on, it is hard to be positive about Korea. And to think the Director of Immigration had asked me why I had come to Korea. To earn some money of course! Talk about living in denial. What other answer could he have expected from me? Was he like Oo, expecting me to say I was here to learn from the Koreans the lesson about how the whole world should be?

When I write this book up I will describe the more positive things, especially scenery, that I experienced in Korea. I still want the book to have a happy ending.

The Captain of the civil police bought me breakfast and coffee. He is very nice to me. One of the cadets tells me “he’s a nice man, really”. How I hate hearing that now. The cadets often hug and caress one another. Are they gay? But some have pictures of their girlfriends. The especially helpful one asks me if I have a girlfriend. He asks why not, I am “handsome". He asks me whether I have ever had a girlfriend! I write these notes in German, in case they can read them. Are they gay? Or some of them? Is that why they don’t have to do military service? Is he trying to find out if I am gay? He wants us to meet later that week.

He is really keen. Too keen, from my way of being, just as a friend. He seems to be sad about the notion that I probably won’t come. I tell him I will if I can make it. He keeps reminding me about the time and place. But he has been so nice to me that I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I am uncomfortable about the fact that he might be gay, and might be trying to pick me up. But maybe he isn’t, and I am just paranoid. It would be a shame to hurt his feelings unnecessarily, but I’m not gay, and don’t want to lead him on at all. It's interesting how, even in my desperate circumstances, something like this can become a concern for me.

It's 8:50am

Nam Suk Hyun's boss is supposed to be here at 8:40am. The cadets have finished their shift and are tired (at the railway station and the various police boxes where I had been, they told me that they work 24 hour shifts), but they are still trying to help me. I wait at the information desk at the police agency. They won’t let me call the labor ministry. Nam Suk Hyun came but wouldn’t let me call the embassy. He claims “I want to help, but I have no power". The police there all smile and laugh at me. They appear to be having a jolly good time at my expense. I asked the cadet whether Koreans have any ethics or morals. How far will they go. I will somehow make it to the labor ministry appointment, but if they play with me, what can I do?

sechs

10:05am Saturday

Hyoon Joo Lee, the attorney, said he would help. He stated that the eviction was a “criminal misdemenour”, that the police had committed a criminal misdemeanor. I reflect on the translation in the phrase book that they have at every police station, which allows police officers to say to foreigners that “you need protection. I will come with you". Hyoon Joo tells me that the public prosecutor has a duty to help people in danger, but that he himself doesn’t have to help me.

10:40am

The embassy reporter from Daejon is here? What embassy in Daejon? She goes on and on about Bundang and Kumi. She says immigration told her that I only have a “tourist visa". I insist this is a lie. She wouldn’t give me her Name. Why? She handles media enquiries for the police. Had anyone enquired about me? I ask her who told her I only had a tourist visa. I show her my E2 visa. She spends 15 minutes on the phone with immigration clearing that up.

Koreans don’t seem to be able to ask short questions and get simple answers. She won’t tell me anything, won’t answer my questions. I told her that she had come to write a story about ‘bad’ markus, the illegal alien, but had discovered police corruption and collusion and conspiracies, and criminal misdemeanors. That is not the sort of story her bosses wanted, and so they won't report on me at all now. She doesn’t respond to the fact that she has been lied to by immigration. She insists they had just made a mistake. I commented that if anyone in Korea should know what sort of visa I had, it was immigration!

She admitted that I had no visa problem, then lost interest. I told her that she probably had photos of me from the Director. The look on her face suggested this was true. She told me to go to immigration about my problems. I showed her the fake investigation sheets, and she clearly recognised them.

Finally, at least that little conundrum cleared up. NBC not embassy. The NBC are the National Broadcasting Commission.

They’re mad, to keep going on and on about my visa.

Why on earth don’t they just deport me if they can? Visas and Kumi and Bundang have nothing to do with what’s going on here, they are just trying to distract me and everyone from the real issues regarding my contract, my illegal eviction and denial of access to my belongings, police intimidation, collusion and conspiracy. They have even stolen the property of a foreign government.

11:30am

The attorney is now backtracking, telling me that I am an illegal alien now, so that my employment is illegal, and hence my contract is void, and I have no right to stay in the apartment. He’s not interested in the conspiracy. I said I hope they sue me in Korea so that I will finally get the truth out in court. He laughed. He said he had no time to talk to me. This is so typical in Korea. They will talk about you for ages amongst each other but have absolutely no interest in your side of the story. It is sheer arrogance. No matter what status they have, whether male or female, they just dismiss you as irrelevant. Only the Koreans present are considered of relevance.

11:45am

I got the lady at the reception to make a copy of my notes on her photocopier. I gave a copy of my diary to the police cadet that had been so nice to me. Just in case. I really am concerned for my well-being. I really don’t know how far they will go.

Nam Suk Hyun and Mr Oo had promised to contact the Australian and German Embassy, but I have heard nothing from them. I’m getting nervous. What will happen? Who or what is at the phone number 470 300? I really want to speak to the embassy now. The police cadets think the police are against me, but can’t do anything. They are worried about me. The police will not let me call the public prosecutor's office.

12:20am

Nam Suk Hyun has brought in a translator. Jae Soon Choi, from the Daejon Christian International School. 042 633 3633. I won't go unless I have a witness. I am scared to go off into some room of this building with these people who have been lieing and intimidating me. I had a nervous breakdown, crying. I have had too much stress and too little sleep. I feel totally helpless. They keep playing with me. They can do whatever they want and no-one will stop them or care. I won’t go unless one of the civil police cadets, the only people I trust, can come along. They say they can’t, because they are on duty here.

After 20 minutes Nam Suk Hyun agrees to let him come. He says the translator is there to make it official. How can Nam Suk Hyun possibly expect me to trust him after playing with me, and fraudulently pretending to file my first complaint, and failing to do anything about the illegal eviction? They really have no respect for foreigners. Somehow they arrogantly believe we are stupid. The Civil police cadet says he has to go. Well I’m going too then. There is no way I will stay alone in this police room with these corrupt bastards. They wouldn’t let me call the embassy, or the public prosecutors office. Why? They ask me what damage has been done. They win the prize when it comes to playing ignorant. They say they will ask questions for the judge.

3pm

The whole Immigration office arrives, and they look deadly serious. I have just filed charges (have I, or is it just a game again?), against immigration for collusion to intimidate me, and now apparently immigration are going to deport me because my employer didn't apply for a visa for me in time. They actually say that I am being deported. I told the translator who was still here, that that proves my argument about them wanting to deport me to avoid me filing charges against them. I tell them that surely it must look at least suspicious. I say that it must be illegal to deport someone who has filed a complaint against immigration.

I say they are welcome to deport me, but that I will come back and check to see if my complaints had been investigated. Nam Suk Hyun seems a bit disconcerted or caught off guard. I tell him that it will be easy to prove if he doesn’t investigate. It looks like every official from Daejon Immigration Office is here, about ten men in suits, and one with a camera with a big zoom and flash. They all look deadly serious, like workers in a gas chamber. They are really scary. I wonder why on earth they are all here, so many people for one little powerless illegal alien.

The man who talks to me has a jaw set like a professional killer, and he looks at me and talks to me as if he was going to shoot me himself, or at least sign the firing squad orders. I still haven’t been paid my salary. I say that they will have to charge my boss An Ouk Souk for hiring me illegally, then.

They say they're charging An Ouk Souk and Oo Key One. Bullshit! They say that immigration don’t have to inform me of my obligations. I am supposed to know myself. I tell Nam Suk Hyun that he called immigration just before he agreed to let me finally file charges (supposedly for real this time). I tell Nam Suk Hyun that this is the only reason he agreed to let me file a complaint, because they were going to deport me. Nam Suk Hyun was smiling as he walked away. They say I can go to Taegu immigration and apply for legal alien status.

Note: apparently you need to register as an alien within 90 days of changing your employer, without a new E2 visa. If you don’t, then you have to leave the country before applying for a new E2 visa. They say I have to go to Taegu to register for alien status, to solve my legal status. My status was illegal. He had handcuffs. He said he was not threatening me, it was a simple fact that I was illegal.

The man sitting to my right, who hadn't said anything, offers to take me to Taegu today, and let me stay with him, "I live in Taegu, you can stay with me, and I will bring you back on Monday in time for my Labor Minstry appointment". I had a strong sense of deja vous. He seems genuine. They are going to help me solve my visa problems. I am genuinely grateful, and almost start crying again. I feel terrible to have thought such terrible things about these people. But remember I felt guilty earlier when I had accused Nam Suk Hyun of faking his report, and later found out my fears were true!

I say goodbye to the Civil police cadets and leave with all these Immigration people. Why does that guy have such a big camera? I get in the van with them. Then I suddenly am struck by fear and think how stupid I must be to get into a van with all these men who had previously threatened me, and against whom I have filed an official complaint. One of the men who had shown such hate for me when I was at immigration is now sitting opposite me.

Is this all part of some plan? I can imagine what terrible things they have in mind for me. For some reason I get the horrific scenario of them cutting my hands off, so I can never play the new fender guitar I have been saving for, and so I can never write the book I tell them I have no choice but to write now. The man who invited me to stay with him tells me that I am "a very beautiful man". He is newly married, apparently. As long as they only deport me, I will consider myself lucky. Of course I think I am stupid for always trusting these people, but what choice do I have?

At Daejon Immigration Office for the second time

I am writing these notes in German. I am at the Immigration Office. The young guy who shows so much venomous hatred for me is standing over me, smiling, and cracking his knuckles. He seems really aggressive. The other guy who talked to me at the station now shows a totally different face. Now he has the face of a friendly, good natured uncle. His smile seems as genuine now as his sinister death-row-gas-chamber-operator face did at the police station. These people really do have two faces. If you had never seen both faces, you would never believe it possible for them to be so extremely two faced. The young man appears to be trying to scare me. I wonder what terrible problems I have gotten into now. But the other men seem really genuinely jovial and friendly and benevolent. The young man is laughing. “You are stoney broke?”

4:05pm

I am terrified. I am really scared. What do these men have planned for me. I feel terribly stupid for having left the police station with them. One of them looked at me with so much hate it burnt on his face. Or was that a cultural misunderstanding?

All the immigration workers, including the Director, had all looked so hard and dangerous. Now many of them are smiling so warm and apparently genuinely friendly. a

In the car of the Director of Daejon Immigration

9pm

It turns out that the man who offered to take me to Taegu is the Director of Immigration in Daejon. He has a new four wheel drive. We chat away very friendly like. I feel like an idiot for my previous ideas about these people. I almost cry apologizing. We talk about general stuff, really relaxed, like he wants to be my friend.

His wife had studied Cello in Mannheim, in Germany, for four years. He has studied philosophy for six years. He had just married but had to live 200kms separated from his wife because of his job, and only got to see her on the weekends. She had just moved out of his families home into her-their own apartment.

He had a masters degree in Philosophy. He had studied Buddhism, Socrates, Plato, and Kant. He had done his Public Service Directors exams. He was very proud of being a Director. He was around my age.

He promised to contact the Australian Embassy for me.

I asked about the man with the camera and he explained that the man with the camera was a hobby photographer, and keeps his camera with him in case he can photograph something interesting. ( I had imagined that he was going to take photos of me, that they would somehow provoke me so they could charge me with something, and he would be there to take photos as proof.)

We stop at a big roadside rest place, really big like in Germany. He buys me some potatoes, but says I already have some water to drink. A previously very famous comedian, who was now an old has been, has a show there. He used to be very popular, apparently.

We get back in the car and drive off, chatting relaxedly and positively. The trees on the hills were full of splashes of autumn color. I would rather have looked at the scenery, or slept, than talk, but I felt indebted to the Director for being so nice and helping me. I had been really moved.

I had almost, or did, cry, from sheer exhaustion and relief that finally everything was coming to a reasonable conclusion. When I thanked him for helping me, he answered “I have no power, just law".

Then about half way through our trip, he suddenly becomes very dark and negative and threatening, extremely intimidating. He has loosened me up by being friendly. I am now so relaxed that now that he is so intimidating, it has an even greater impact on me. He begins, in a totally negative and aggressive tone, very loudly; “Frankly, you should go back to Australia. No-one likes you in Korea. You make problems. Other teachers don’t need so much money. You are wrong. Where’s the 500,000won Oo Key One gave you? How much money do you have? Oh, in your apartment? You demanded a motorbike and a computer. No other teachers demand a computer or motorbike But I take you to Daejon because it's my job".

I had tried to explain the ridiculous story about the motorbike and computer, but he just ignored my explanation.

I was shaking with a combination of sheer exhaustion, and fear. I was so tired and this obviously magnified my emotions and physical response.

He went on with questions including,"what will you do when you get paid? You go back to Australia? Everyone hates you in Korea. You like Australia? “You don’t like the people there?” All very aggressively and angrily and loudly, as if interrogating me and charging me with some sort of crime against nationalism or for being a traitor to my own country, Australia. He spat “Australian immigration are racist” out, as if trying to provoke me.

He was looking for a fight, for a reason to go ballistic. He promised (sinisterly and threateningly), to get me to Daegu in one piece. He keeps spitting angrily-aggressively out the car window. “Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? You have friends in Korea?" I lie and tell him I have friends in Taegu and Kumi City, so that he might be a little more careful. If he thinks I have friends in Korea then it might positively influence whatever plans he is considering, has made, or might make regarding me.

I consider that the car probably has central locking. I plan to jump out if it looks like we are heading for Kumi city, and my enemies Oo Key One and Don. I have terrific visions of what they plan for me.

We seem to be driving into Kumi city, but I remember there is road work, so traffic has to go this way. I am determined that if we actually appear to be going into Kumi city, that I will jump out and run for it, and just get to the airport somehow and get out of here. I keep bluffing, and not answering his questions about whether I am scared to be meeting Oo Key One again. I don’t want him to know how scared I am, or that I am even thinking about Don and Oo, in case he takes advantage of that, in case he is undecided about whether to take me to Don or not. I can’t risk directly answering his questions, or giving him some excuse to go ballistic, so I pretend he is talking about something else, and so don't answer the question he is trying to ask, and try to keep my voice calm. My legs and body are actually shaking with fear. I am terrified. We drive through, past the Kumi City turnoff, and I am greatly relieved.

The cars in front suddenly stop. The Director hits the brakes hard. I can feel the brakes pumping on and off, and the car wobbles a bit left and right as the ABS stops the wheels from locking. We stop just in time. It was really close. The Director was obviously relieved. He appeared to think that we were going to hit the car. He tells me that I had ABS to thank that I would get to Taegu in one piece.

Taegu

We arrive in Taegu, and now it seems he is going to leave me at a motel opposite the Immigration office. He won’t give me any money for food. He says I should call my friends. He drives past the immigration office so I know where to go tomorrow. I have to be sure to be there at 9am. The motel is the worst one I have seen in Korea. We walk down the corridor to the room at the end. He gives me the key and leaves. I go inside and notice that the bathroom window can’t be closed, let alone locked, and there is a hall outside the window. It would be dead easy just to climb into the room any time. I check out the room next door, and see no-one is there, so I just change rooms. I wonder if the window was part of a plan. Did they plan on breaking into my apartment, or was it just a co-incidence.

I wasn't prepared to take the chance, and was nervous all day and night at any noise from the hallway. I consider how fatuous everything here is. Nam Suk Hyun said he couldn’t let me back into the apartment in case Ouk Souk did charge me with damaging something. If I had damaged school property, he explains, then my contract would be void and that would me I had no right to the apartment. The sheer stubborn stupidity of even considering to say such a stupid thing is exasperating. How do you deal with people who can say such things to you with a straight face? I had told the immigration men that I would be glad to be deported, as this town was dangerous for me.

I had asked the immigration executioner if it had been illegal for the Jungchul ELC to hire me. He said yes, that he would charge the ELC, Jungchul English School Director with up to 10, 000 won, and up to 3 years imprisonment. I promised that I would return if they deported me, to check that he had charged them.

I recall that I signed a document which was supposed to be a Korean translation of the complaint that I had filed (?) with Nam Suk Hyun. What did it actually say? I recall that my handwritten document, which contained my complaints against the police, in particular against Mr Oo, were merely stuck to the back of the typed document, and could (would) be easily removed. Was it all a ploy, to get me out of town?

Nam Suk Hyun had given the interpeter 10, 000won to buy me something to eat. The interpreter then offered to buy me something to eat. I declined, and he probably kept the money. Did the girl at immigration keep the 5000won taxi change? I consider that no-one would help me, and ask myself, whether I would risk becoming a target by helping a target. Why should anyone here risk getting into trouble themselves for a stranger?

Taegu

Sunday,Monday 5th

9am, in the crappy motel

I recall that Nam Suk Hyun had said they were too busy to investigate my case. They had caught a big drug dealer. He said it was in all the newspapers. He said that the Korean kidnapping was a fraud. Apparently some Koreans in the Phillipines faked their own kidnapping to get the government to send money, and then had changed their minds, and given themselves up.

I don’t leave the room at all. I have only a few Korean baked ginger snacks to eat. I watch t.v, and wash my clothing by hand in the bath. I have sores on my butt from not washing, and a terrible rash from sweat and chaffing. I wonder why they are going to such great lengths to intimidate and harass me. Are An ouk souk, Charles, and the Director really in trouble?

Taegu immigration

November 5th, the day of my Labor office appointment

Arrived 8:55am

Looked around. Asked questions. Found waiting room. No information. Asked at a few places until I found someone who seemed familiar with my situation. Told to sit and wait 10 minutes. Officer asked-stated something about Kumi and complaints. I will talk softly and stay calm. If this is bullshit then I will call the police and demand to be put through to the embassy. I am glad I got to wash myself. The wounds on my hands were growing scary after 3 days without washing or sleeping properly. Now they are healing.

Blisters and sores had started appearing on my butt from sweating, sitting, and walking 5 days without washing, and two days without sleeping. What game are they playing? Just wasting my time so that I can’t make my labor ministry meeting? I washed my clothes in the bathtub with just water. They are far from clean, but a little more comfortable than before. I’m cold. I spent the whole weekend in the cheap crappy motel room, with only a few old dry Korean snack things to eat, continually nervous to any noise, always on edge, with a headache. They are smoking in the office.

9:40am

The Director from Daegon is here. He says that Mr Oo, from Cambridge English School in Taegu, had cancelled my E2 visa. When? On the 8th of September. So I have 14 days to leave Korea. The officials went into a cubicle to discuss something amongst themselves Just after 10am. The Director from Daegon, who had promised to take me back with him so I would get back in time for my Labor Ministry appointment, leaves the office.

I reflect on how Charles had sincerely said to me “god bless you” after I had been willing to go back to work for Ouk Souk after everything that had happened. Charles and his boss had both argued with Ouk Souk that she was wrong. Of course they sided with the school in the end out of pure unscrupulous greed for money, for the thousands of dollars they earnt as recruiters, or as the franchisers of the schools. They avoided defining their relationship with the school, trying to give the impression they had no financial interest, and were only helping the school out.

11:10am

Given a plum drink. The Koreans love these little glass bottles of various kinds of fruit drink, or herbal tonics. The Director from Daejon shakes everyone's hands. Is he leaving? He has some photocopied stuff in his hands with my writing, including the complaint. There's no chance of making that labor ministry appointment now. The Director has gone without saying a word to me. Liar. So much for his word. So much for being able to trust any Korean. What’s happening with me? Am I going to be deported? I ask what’s happening. Told that the Director of Cambridge is coming. I ask why I was told to be here at 9am, and Mr Oo can come at 12am. They ask me to wait, to sit, real friendly. He says he is a counsellor here. Who is going to interpret?

11:55

Called 112. They said no-one spoke English. I told them I had no money. They gave me a freecall 1330 number. I couldn’t call it. They said they would send a car, but no English speaker. I asked to call from immigration. They wouldn’t let me. I had now gone around 40 hours with no food. Is the Director gone? How will I get back to Daejon now? I have no money.

12am

I'm hungry, tired, and dirty. I will miss the labor ministry appointment that I fought so hard to get. Everyone from the beginning has been conspiring against me to stop me from getting my case investigated. I insist they let me call the labor ministry and explain, and make a new appointment. The manager of the department called for me. He promised the labor ministry will call at 1pm. They’re talking in Korean. I don’t have a copy of my contract.

1pm

Had nice big lunch, with coffee. The manager told me my problem is that I demand too much, that Korea is different from Australia. I asked him if a contract was a contract. He spoke of inconveniences in Korea for English teachers. I demand too much. Why was the Cambridge Oo here? It was all irrelevant. No Korean cares about what happened to me, or whether they have been lied to about me. No one is interested in allowing me to prove my case, to prove the others have lied. Suddenly, from nowhere, the question from the manager-or as he claims, counsellor. "What do you want?" So they're not deporting me.

They're just trying to keep me from getting justice, just trying to get rid of me without honouring the contract, or admitting anything wrong was done to me. Was the meeting with Oo supposed to be intimidation? Was I supposed to be afraid of him? During our brief meeting we said virtually nothing. The manager tells me the Director, the beast, doesn’t want me. So I'm apparently just supposed to ignore the contract? The manager was smiling sincerely, but he asked me, with a straight face “Why didn’t you go to the labor ministry?" This is the height of absurdity. That they use threats to bring me over 200kms away from Daejon so that I miss the meeting everyone had tried so hard to prevent me from arranging in the first place, and then pose such a fatuous question. I wonder, however, whether it was language problem, or was he taking the piss.

I felt like I was in Orwells 1984. He made a great effort not to smile when I calmly stated that this whole thing was a conspiracy. He claimed that we couldn’t solve the problem in Daejon, so they brought me here. He said it's very complicated. I said it's very simple, they just want to complicate it. They said they will make a new appointment for me for tomorrow morning at the labor ministry. He said my contract salary was too high. He mentioned complaints about me. Then why did the Human Resource Bank fight with the school about taking me back? I remember the manager of the HRB was really pissed off with the Director and his wife, really pissed off. More to the point, why did they offer me a better job, with a new apartment, though at lesser pay, if anyone had authentically made complaints?

He said, quite clearly, "you'd better go back to your country". I was told I had to solve the problem within 15 days. They would not let me complete my alien registration. “What do you want from her now? “This is not a matter for the police”. I said do what you want, as long as you don’t hurt me, it's O.K. It will make my book more interesting. I have no clothing, no money, nowhere to live, and the court cannot act within 15 days. I asked to have my actual legal status confirmed in writing. They are just trying to get rid of me without having to investigate my complaints. Then, almost angry, he states, in contradiction to his last comments, "You will solve this problem here!". "This is not a problem for the court!" Then "You must leave Korea!" He couldn't seem to make up his mind either to intimidate me into leaving, or to encourage me to make an offer. It was clear he would accept either responses from me, anything except actually letting me get natural justice. I asked if he was threatening me. "Are you going to hurt me, to deport me?" I asked.

1:40pm, third floor immigration office, in Taegu

The counsellor, as he claimed to be, or manager, as he appeared to be, threatened to deport me when I said I was going to the public prosecutor's office. Then he said this was not a problem to be solved in Taegu. I would have to solve it tomorrow at 10am in Daejon, at the labor ministry. The constant changes in approach on his part made it clear to me that this whole exercise was aimed at intimidating me to leave Korea, or at blackmailing me to give up on gaining justice. He said he would give me some money for the train to get back. I asked him where I was supposed to sleep, and who was going to protect me from the many men who had threatened and physically attacked me.

So the Director of immigration at Daejon had lied about everything. He had promised he would contact the labor ministry , that he would bring me here, that we would stay with his family, and that he would solve my visa problems so I could stay in Korea, and bring me back in time for the labor ministry appointment. He had, instead, left me over the weekend in a terribly cheap motel room, with no money, and nothing to eat or drink, and had then just left without having the guts or honor to even tell me to my face. The Buddhism and Philosophy he had studied at University obviously had little impact on him. I asked for an application for an alien card as the Director in Daejon had promised. He spoke with his director, and in typical Korean intimidation-blackmail fashion told me that “it looks really bad for you". He was very aggressive.

2pm

"You have to leave Korea and then come back, to renew your visa". He had previously said that I need a release letter from my current employer ( a clever ploy, for then I would no longer have a right to the apartment, and no court case!), and now he insisted that I couldn’t change employers with this visa. He said he would give me one more chance. I asked whether he cared about all the children who have no English teachers, given the huge demand for teachers. He said I have to leave the country first. Of course, once out, they could easily stop me from getting a new visa, without stating any grounds. He said that if I came back again he wouldn’t help me. To be denied the help of Korean Officials. Whether that is a promise or a threat? “You have to solve this problem in Daejon” he said. If only they would let me, I thought. Hadn’t he just recently stated the exact opposite?

Lucky I had decided to start taking notes. Otherwise they could drive you crazy with their games, lies, intimidation, threats, collusion and conspiracies. He said that it wasn’t his problem that I had nowhere to live, and no money, or clothing. I said it would represent a breach of human rights to deport me in the middle of a criminal investigation, that the immigration office would at very least appear very suspicious. He claimed that he had never threatened to deport me. My notes prove otherwise.

2:30pm

He ‘lent' me 20,000 won, then a few moments later, took it back. He wouldn't let me call the police or the embassy. “I’m very sorry” he said. I called 112 twice. The operator continued to deliberately misspell embassy, mbc? Australian Embassy?

2:55pm

Called 1330. They seemed to want to help. They asked for the phone number of the public phone I was using, so they could give it to the embassy to call me. Will she? Will they?

3:45 pm

The 1330 operator said she had given the number to the embassy, but they had tried to call and couldn’t get through. Was this a lie too? Found a terminal in the waiting room with email access, and emailed everyone I could think of to call the embassy to help me. I was really getting worried. I had no idea how far they would go. I had already experienced how far they would go, and feared at how far further they might go. I now knew that immigration and the police and the school had been colluding to conspire against me, to get me to give up on my contract and complaints. I really just wanted to get my things and get out, or if I couldn’t get my things, just to get out before anything really bad happened.

Chung Nam Police Agency, the police, immigration, and 112, have all told me that there are no Federal or National police. They give me dramatical quizzical looks. “What’s that?” "No, there are no National police in Korea!" But, the 112 operator had pretended to put me through to the National police, and some police had then pretended(?) to be National police. And the police tell me to call 112 and to ask immigration for help. Has it all been bluff and lies? Who will come and what will happen?

It’s 5pm

When does this office close? Will anyone come? The people on the phone who said they were the Federal Police said they would send a car to pick me up and investigate. It’s very cold outside. A stranger offered me 5000 won to make phone calls with, but 112 appeared to help me this time. Normal people seem so helpful. But the officials are all corrupt. At one point I was sure the immigration officer was going to deport me. Was the meeting with Oo from Cambridge supposed to intimidate me? The official gave me 2 weeks to sort out my problems. They keep lieing, bluffing, and trying to intimidate me. And they keep judging me. He wouldn’t give me a copy of my contract. You don't have a copy of your contract? He looked very devious, and I was sure he was about to follow up that comment with, well, then you have no case!, so I bluffed, and pretended I did.

I hope the labor office is honest, or that the attorney still has the copy he made of my contract.

6.30pm

No sign of anyone. Called 112 and they just hang up. The immigration officer told me to go to level 2, yeh right, and pretended he didn’t understand me. He told the woman who had been helping me to go. I told him I have emailed 10 people to contact the embassy for me. 112 would not give me the phone number of the embassy. The immigration officers wouldn’t let me call them. He won’t let me call the number 112 gave me. I tell him “It’s not the number of the Korean Federal police, is it?” What should I do? Everyone has gone, and they are closing the office. An officer angrily confronts me, telling me to go, and telling me I’m a grown up and it’s my problem. I tell him that I am not responsible for being illegally evicted, and for Immigration bringing me here and leaving me here, and for all the conspiracy and collusion. He is really pissed. I don’t take it from him, and tell him that if his officials weren’t so corrupt I wouldn’t have any problem at all. He told me “you’re not Korean, the police won’t help you!” And this from an immigration official! He tells me “You’re not a child, you are a grown up!” .He is either really dumb, or a total assehole

The original officer, or counsellor, as he claimed, comes down and tells him to leave me alone. He tells me that “he’s not my friend”, referring to the guy that has just aggressively insulted me, and tells me he will bring me to the train station. To think that the immigration guy originally gave me 20,000won, when I had no money at all because of the police and was there because of immigration, and he knew it was all collusion and conspiracy, but felt no shame or guilt or sympathy. He calls a taxi. In the taxi I ask him if I can speak with Mr Kim. Maybe he will be able to help me, or at least make the officials uncomfortable. He had pretended to be my friend, and he was after all a general manager. Maybe he has a conscience after all.

7:20pm

Called Mr Kim from the officer's mobile, in the Taxi, but the immigration guy spoke most, and then hang up. At the Taegu train station, the immigration officer gives me his hand, and wants to make a positive public show, after all the lieing and intimidation. He is a little concerned that I might attract attention in the train station. He wants everyone to think we are parting as friends. The immigration Officer tells me “You have done nothing wrong. I hope your stay in Korea is a long, pleasant, and successful one”.

I confronted him about the Federal police, and he admitted that they were not coming, and that the telephone number 112 had given me was not the Korean National Police. He told me that my problem was a simple one, and only between me and An Ouk souk. How many times have officials intervened, unwelcomed, into my affairs, and then told me it was not their business? He told me I had a new appointment at 10am tomorrow morning, and that Ouk Souk would be there. He says he will buy me a ticket to Seoul or Daejon. I tell him I don’t know where to go.

He eventually gives me an envelope with some money, 50,000won, and says it is an official loan. He said I had to promise to pay it back! A loan, I consider; they bring me over 200kms under false pretences, leave me in a crappy motel, lie to me, intimidate me, threaten me, and then have the hide to ‘lend’ me money for the train back to nowhere, to homelessness and threats and intimidation. He told me my visa had been extended, but gave me no paperwork or stamp. He said that he had spoken to a Ms Kim at the Embassy about me. Then why wouldn’t he let me speak to them? It’s infuriating. The Koreans talk amongst each other and never let me say anything. He also told me that the Korean Federal police can’t help. But they don’t even exist, do they?

7:50pm

I talk to a man at the mobile phone recharging station. There are chargers for every type of phone there. A good idea, and good for the phone companies! He won’t call 144 for me to get the number of the Korean National Police. It’s a real comedy as I try to explain that the police are playing games with me. He takes me instead to the station manager. There is a really loud fight at the station police box, so the station manager takes me to his office. He says he’ll call 114 for me and get the number. But why not here from his phone on the desk there? My story sounds crazy but I think all the officials know it’s true and are just taking the piss. This is all maddening. They will probably say I am crazy. He puts me on the phone to someone he says is the National police. They pretend they don’t understand me, and put me back to someone else.

Who is he talking to? 9830112. Is he taking the piss? He tells me that the Korean Federal Police in Seoul Closed at 6pm. Yeh, I’m that naïve! Lucky I had that big lunch at immigration. I ate more than I wanted to, but I didn’t know when my next meal would be. If I had not taken notes I would never have been able to remember the twists and turns of this game they are playing with me. I have direct quotes to prove I am not crazy.

The station asks me if I want to tell the Federal police about the police here. Has he been listening? Without a clear record of the facts I won’t be able to judge later which events were deliberate and which could have been misunderstandings. I don’t want to be unfair to anyone. I can compare their behaviour, their statements, and their actions. He told me to stop saying ‘bullshit’ (I’m way beyond merely being fed up and frustrated now), and should be nicer to him because he’s helping me.

Yeh, now, after realising his lies and games won’t work! He wants me to walk out of the station to the local police box. Yeh, I’ll walk alone in the night to a police station where they have already lied to me, and where they don’t even speak English. “You want the Korean Federal Police?” He tells me their office is around the corner. So the station manager is a liar too. “Do you want to solve your problem?” My problem is the police, and immigration. If they would only just stay out of my problems and let me solve them! “You have to come here to speak to the Federal police”. He says the police are coming here to take me to their station. I said “no”. “Are they going to charge me with something?”, I ask. They’ll just waste my time or worse threaten and intimidate me further. I need some real police who speak English, and who can investigate the local state police. Do they really think I will drop my charges? They’re fucking mad. 760 0112 Provincial police? This is supposed to be the number of the Korean Federal Police.

He takes me to the station police box. I try to get them to call the number 112 gave me to prove that it’s not the real number, that the police and 112 have been lieing to me. The station manager calls a number, and tells me it is the National police. The person who answers tells me that they are the Korean National police. They say to come over to their office, it’s just around the corner. I say I want to speak to the National Police in Seoul. The station manager tries to convince me that the police box around the corner is the National Police, but it doesn’t make sense and I insist I be allowed to talk to the National Police in seoul. He gives me a small bottle of Korean Ginseng tonic. The more I drink these little bottles the less unappealing the taste. It actually tastes nice this time.

9pm

Korean National Police in Seoul? , or 02 313 0842?

9:35pm

The police in the railway station police box have given me these numbers. They call, and write down a fax number. I write a statement, and they go off to fax it. They return shortly and claim that the fax at the train station doesn’t work. 02 365 5797. I speak on 02 313 0842 and the person claiming to be from the Korean National Police tells me that they can’t help me. I should go to the Taegu Police agency, Mr Lee 02 313 0850. I speak to someone on the phone but can’t understand. He tells me “you betta go to Seoul, to your embassy. We can’t help you”. I argue that the embassy has no jurisdiction in this matter, that it is a police matter. Then he says “o.k”. Mr Lee will begin tomorrow at 9am. “You stay in Motel there”, the man says. He mentioned “Interpol”. Did someone contact the police for me? I tell the civi police cadet to remember my face, in case I disappear. I’m getting really careful now, because I know for a fact they are out to get me.

Mention of Interpol has given me courage. I feel that the cavalry are finally coming to the rescue. Interpol will investigate my case and everything will be o.k. I feel elated at the thought of Interpol. Who contacted them for me? The first guy on the phone had had the nerve to tell me to go to Taegu immigration, that they’d help me! And after everything immigration have done to me, all the games and lies and intimidation and threats. Had he read my fax in the meantime? Had someone from Interpol called him? 011 544 7871 Mr Kim. Again I wonder at my persistence, which seems finally to have paid off. Five minutes ago I was ready to give up and just head for the airport without any of my things, just to get out of here. It sure pays to be persistent! I hope! They keep referring to ‘my’ problem. I continued to insist that they are my problem, the corrupt officials.

The civi police cadet, Ch Jang-rae, [email protected], gives me some interesting wheat drink, that tastes like a combination of cola and sausage, and an excellent chocolate cookie. He explains to me that the first time you take something offered by someone, such as a visiting card, or anything, that you take it with both hands. After that, you take anything they give you with two hands if they are older than you, as a sign of respect. I have noticed that people often take money from me with one hand, but still hold the other hand out, sort of on their wrist. I like this custom. It is polite and cultured. I try to remember to do the same. I reflect on how two faced the Koreans I have dealt with up to now have been.

The station manager seemed to tell me that they work 24 hour shifts. The motel is actually the best I have seen. Very nice, with a porn channel. Korean porn movies are typically Korean, I think. They show lots of panty action-no actual penetration or pubic hair or actual explicit sex organs or sex. But the people in the video seem to be authentically enjoying themselves, and so it is very erotic. The couple are very attractive, the woman the sort of dream Korean woman, very slender, lovely brown skin, and white panties. Western porn could learn something from this. I sleep well. There are some small bottles of drink in the fridge, and instant coffee. The coffee is very welcome. I wash, and wash my filthy clothes again, and put them on the floor to dry. The floor is heated. It is too hot in some places to walk on!

I consider that, as a philosopher,I will have to insist on charges being laid against those who have behaved corruptly and criminally, in order to get these people to have respect for their laws, and how they treat people. Markus as a person is too nice and seeks harmony. I personally don’t want anyone to get into trouble. I just want justice. But I have to go against my personal niceness in principle, to prevent these officials from treating other people the same way as they have treated me. And who knows how far things could have gone! I have a social obligation to report everything and seek justice. At least, now that Interpol are involved, I should be able to get my things and leave without being hurt.

I am sure that Charles and co want to harm me now. Things have gone way too far. I wonder why on earth they bother going to such extremes. They are so fucking hypocritical these Koreans. They break their own laws, treat people abysmally, use all their power and influence to deny them justice, threaten and intimidate them, leave them homeless and penniless with no concern for their wellbeing, but still want to maintain the impression, the image, the reputation, of being nice to foreigners. They have absolutely no genuine concern for me. They have this insane belief that somehow they can do all this to me and then still look like nice guys. They must be mad. I remember I should call that girl to tell her I am o.k, and to thank her for talking to the police for me, so I could find out what lies they would tell. I reflect on how I sat 16hours in the same chair, as the police constantly assured me someone was coming with my key, and I was told to “sit”, and “wait”.

I consider that if they could have deported me, that they would have. The last bluff seemed final. ´He had clearly stated that I was being deported, and when I didn’t respond as he expected, he didn’t mention it ever again, after he came back from talking to some other officials there. When he shook my hand, he appeared resigned that their intimidation was not going to work. He had, just a few minutes previously, very gravely and sincerely stated that I was an illegal alien and they were going to deport me, they had no choice. My suspicions were right, it was all threats and intimidation.

Are they really so insanely idiotically determined that they can get away with looking like nice guys? How mad are they? How stupid do they think foreigners are? Will I stay here if things work out? There is still a chance they will hurt me. The girl at the labor ministry who was helping translate for me had said that my situation could be dangerous. Maybe she was threatening me or warning me. But she was so pretty and seemed wounded when I had criticised her, really human. Probably just trying to manipulate me like all the others.

Tuesday 6th at Taegu train station police box: no cavalry

I leave at 8:50am, though I was so exhausted I could have slept all day. I take the paper cup of instant coffee to drink on the way. The same police are at the police box as last night. They apparently work 24 hour shifts, from 9am to 9am. So, INTERPOL. Is this for real? What now? I am offered a cup of coffee, and the policeman buys me some fresh baked-fried little cakes with some liquid filling. They are nice. I think he bought them with his own money! So many apparent contradictions. They don’t want to hurt me, but they are determined to intimidate me into leaving Korea, and not getting paid. They want me to leave and believe that they are not corrupt.

9:07

The Station manager tells me “You’re very handsome”. I reflect on how often I am told by Korean Police that “you look like an action movie hero”, or “You are very handsome man”. It reminds me of the Southpark episode where the Japanese manage to manipulate the Americans by constantly telling them that they have big penises. Do Asians believe we are so vain? Or do they really think that I am handsome? Pity the beautiful Korean women don’t appear to think so!

9:45am

They have these interesting heaters which are a pedestal fan, but with a heating element with a metal bowl behind it to reflect the heat,instead of the fan. It moves from left to right like a normal pedestal fan.

9:50am

I ask them to call the labor ministry and tell them I am here and won’t be able to make the 10am meeting apparently arranged for me. I reflect on how the labor ministry first told me they couldn’t help me, then didn’t demand a copy of my contract in Korean until I insisted, and how the translator they promised never turned up ever, and how simple my case was, and how they had done nothing at all. I don’t trust them. I remember how everyone insisted that there was no labor ministry in Daejon, from An ouk souk, to the two teachers, to all the police including Mr Oo who was responsible for foreigners. That Oo just talked idiotically without ever listening. I remember how he had called me on my mobile telling me to be at the police box within a few minutes as I was being charged with something and then deported. When I got to the station he had attempted to convince that it was a misunderstanding. Lucky I was keeping notes!

Labor Ministry Daejon (042) 480 6297

10:20am

Ouk souk was at the labor ministry and wanted to talk to me. Yeh, right. So now they can all say markus didn’t come. Fucking conspiracy. “Why weren’t you at the apartment-school?” The wind is so cold now. Could winter in Korea really be as bad as summer?. The other teacher told me that winter was worse. I didn’t comprehend that. I assumed that all buildings would have central heating, given the extremely low winter temperatures. But she was right. The school was even more unbearable when it was cold than when it was hot.

How can they expect the children to learn English when they are literally freezing. Julia says that in winter it is really unbearably cold in the school. I believe her. How can they bring professional teachers out here and then expect them to live and work under such primitive conditions? If they were honest at least. But as one teacher-recruiter once said, every time they had told potential teachers anything even approaching the truth about Korea, they declined to come here.

Why don’t they just get their act together and aircondition and central heat the classrooms, and honor their contracts? What do they hope to gain? So many teachers leave after a few months without saying anything. This is understandable. When you are lied to and treated so badly then you can hardly have any trust or confidence in your employer. I should have just left at the first signs of trouble, but liked the students so much that I stayed. I had even received a job offer from a proper elementary school with 2 months payed holidays, and refused because I felt it would be dishonourable and unfair. How naïve of me to consider such notions in Korea!

I ask myself, could I possibly still work at Jungchul after everything that has happened? The betrayal of my co-workers (in Korea foreigners apparently are not co-workers, merely teachers), the appalling treatment at the hands of my employer and recruitment agency. They all keep derisively laughing at me and spreading lies about me, and colluding in an absurdly overdone conspiracy.

10.40am

Is this just another game too? Why should it be true this time? My skin is burning from the chlorine in the water. I see an add for skin whitener.

11:05

Korean Interpol, on the phone. Kim. Laughing. “What were you doing in Daejon?“ He’s Korean. He’s not from interpol. He’s not serious. “If you like, we will look into it”. “Why don’t you call the Australian Embassy?” She’ll give me the number. Yeh, I’m fucking stupid. She says she’ll inform the Embassy for me. Laughing at me. Fucking laughing. “Which police station” she mockingly asks. The whole fucking system! They’re not investigating anything.

11.15am

They’re fucking mad. The book will not have a happy ending! I imagine the cavalry coming to rescue me and get this dum, patronising, derisive bullshit.

11:23am

She hangs up. Did they call the embassy? Some older police come in, laughing. At me? “What are you doing in Daejon”. Again the same provocatingly infuriating games. I say that Kim, at Korean Interpol (?), has my fax, and can verify everything I wrote. They’re all laughing. I ask for the embassy number and they write it down. Ho ju. Dae sak wan. 02 2003 0100. I call the embassy. I finally get to talk to an Australian from the Embassy. She tells me that they have no legal rights to intervene. She agrees that my situation sounds scary. She, says that my experience is not uncommon in Korea, it is in fact “very common”. She will share some stories with me later for my book if I contact her.

She tells me that sometimes it helps if the embassy intervenes, but that sometimes it makes things worse. I am determined now to publish my story, and collect other stories, to prevent such things happening again to others who travel to, work in, or have to deal with, Korea. So, as predicted, they can’t help. So it happens a lot! So much for the cavalry. The police wanted me to hang up, after they themselves have wasted so much time talking to Koreans at the embassy. The police here apologise for the behaviour of the other Koreans. This is typical. Somehow they hope that I will believe that my bad experience is not representative of Korea, even while they themselves are conspiring and colluding. Are they mad? How stupid do they think I am? According to someone interpreting for me, Interpol said they cannot help me. They offer me a ticket to Seoul-standing. After all they have done to me they have the nerve to force me to stand for over 3.5 hours on a train to Seoul. I insist that ‘interpol’ fax me, and put in writing that they won’t help me.

So now this theatre of the absurd goes on, only now I know Godot’s not coming, I know I can’t win. This system is totally corrupt. I want proof in writing so they cannot pretend it never happened. So it had all been futile. I never stood a chance.

12:20am

Interpol have gone to lunch. He wants to take me to the regional police station. He’ll call after 1pm? "Koreans are honest people". "My boss is a very honest man, you can trust him". How often do I have to hear such bullshit? Do they think that just by constantly repeating such phrases they can brainwash me? 011 584 8694. Federal police? Staying in box until 1pm. I’ll go to Daejon if INERPOL won’t investigate, and formally file charges.

The fermented wheat sauce we had with lunch yesterday was very nice. They have to ferment it at least one year. I äm obviously just wasting time now. I won't get anywhere. How arrogant of the Director. “We can’t work in Australia”. Of course he doesn’t listen to anything at all. I had been invited to come and teach here. Three times! The world really is a dangerous place. People do really suck badly. The world and people and everything sucks. It may be interesting, but, it's an ugly, vicious, treacherous, and fucking bizarre end game. I know I should try to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble but people are so provocative. How can you stay human and let people lie to you, about you, and intimidate you. It’s not my nature. I wonder how others manage. But then of course they get drunk, take other drugs, beat their wives and girlfriends, and lie to themselves.

It’s not my nature to not respond, to not try to improve things, to not try to be human. Is evolution heading anywhere ‘better’, or just blind. But I’m the product of evolution and I try to make the universe more moral. Such intentions may be the only morality in the universe. But would such intentions ultimately lead to armegeddon? Is that the only solution? Are we trapped by egos, ambition, fear and hope? I’m finally getting a cold, after being around so many people with such strong coughs, and being so stressed out, cold, filthy, and hungry.

1:25pm

The police call the number and say it’s Interpol, but when they give me the phone there is no-one there,nothing. 02 313 0850. He’s smoking. What’s going on? I’m getting a terrible cluster headache over my eye. I’ve had so many different headaches lately.

1:30pm

What’s happening? I was calling the labor ministry when two suits arrive, give us cough lollies. He hangs up the phone. Mr Kim, a police officer, agreed that this sort of thing happens all the time. He laughs, especially at the part about me calling 112 over 40 times. He tells me to go to Taegu police. Now he’s talking about Kumi and Cambridge. I still want this story to have a happy ending, but how?

2:30pm

He says that the Director in Daejon has paid money into my Hanna account-only I don’t have one anymore! She has had a change of mind? According to him. Bullshit, it’s all lies as usual. Have the authorities once told me the truth since I have been here? Has any employer or recruiter? He talks about a motorbike and a computer. I can’t help but laugh everytime I here about that. They keep saying I demanded a motorbike and a computer at Cambridge. I had merely offered to ride a motor scooter to my Philips lesson, to save Oo the time and petrol, and therefore lots of money. And the computer. Oo had kept giving me proof reading to do, even though it was not in my contract, and I kept doing it, because my teaching schedule was not full, and so I thought it only fair. The last document he gave me needed to be totally re-written, and I told him that if he wanted me to re-write it I would need access to a computer with the same word processing program as the original he gave me was written in. Whether Oo had exaggerated, or whether the police and immigration merely exaggerated for their own purpose, I can’t say. The two suits want to smile and shake my hand. “Nice meeting you”, they say. “We tried to help you. We have to go back to work” He admitted the police in Korea were corrupt, adding, “You’re Australian police are corrupt too, aren’t they?”.

Now the Labor ministry investigator will meet me. And now I can sit down on the train to Daejon. They said they will tell the police there to help me, to be nicer to me. Again I am asked a fatuous, not possibly genuous, question, "why didn’t I go to the 10am meeting?" This is pure farce. There’s lots of smoke here. I asked where I was supposed to sleep in Daejon. They’re apparently trying to arrange a meeting for today, but it’s already 3pm. They give me some coffee. They want me to give up trying to get justice. But I’ve lost.

I had lost even before I had started, without realising it. I didn’t want to think bad things about people. The policeman buys me some Korean snack cake things. He gave me the number of the girl from the Labor ministry. I can call here from the police box in Daejon. I arrive at 5pm. What now? I hope my things are o.k. The police are unlikely to help if they’re not. The police are corrupt through and through, but still nice and polite. Why did they bother going to such lengths? There is no jsutice here for foreigners, only Koreans count.

6th

At the Labor office in Daejon

5:40pm

I called from the tourist desk at the station. The girl from the labor office talked with the tourist desk woman, and then told me the woman would give me money to pay for a taxi to the labor office. I am told to get in the cab and give the driver the money the lady at the counter will give me. The taxi drivers are the only honest people I have met in Korea. They wouldn’t even take a tip. I find the girl. She says, with a straight face “Why are you here?” Are they trying to drive me mad? What sort of fucking game are they playing with me. Na In Ha is there, the guy supposed to be investigating my case. She tells me I have a new appointment for the 8th. Very funny. Daegu police sent me here. The girl herself paid my cab fare. (I even gave her the change, even though I have no money). She’s laughing. What’s so funny?

Daegu Interpol had told me that the Director had had a change of mind. He wants to speak to me on the 8th? Na In Ha leaves. Just goes home to his comfortable appartment with absolutely no comment to me, or concern. What a prick. The people here are fucking mad. I have been hijacked by immigration, left in Taegu to miss my original appointment. This is a fucking conspiracy. Is the labor Ministry involved? This is fucking crazy. This is deliberate. They are trying to wear me down. I need a statement from Both? They hope I’ll snap. I will. Should I break into my apartment? Jung Soo Young. 042 480 6317. She’s looking at a Dictionary. “We cant solve your problem now”.

So this is a set up. How can I deal with it? The labor ministry was my only hope the whole time, and it seems that they had never intended to help me at all. I remember they originally told me there was no Labor ministry, even as I was standing in the actual building where they are, and then they said they couldn’t help me, and only let me fill out an investigation form when I persisted. “Your Director wants to talk to you on the 8th” So fucking what, I think, I’m the complainant, the victim. Why should the Director determine when our meetings take place. I consider that I never got the original notice from the labor ministry about the orginal meeting. Did they send one? The guy doesn’t even have my complaint on file. That was a clever trick from ‘INTERPOL’, to put me up in a motel and give me false confidence. The situation is a total farce. Neither Na In Ha nor Jung Soo Young understand English. Na In Ha had promised a translator would be present at our meeting, but I have never seen one here. It’s as if they think it’s high impudence for a foreigner to dare seek justice in Korea.

6:05pm

It’s dark and cold and I’m sitting alone at the desk. The girl and Na Hin have left. I hear her laughing in another part of the building. How can they continue to laugh at me? Don’t they have any sympathy or guilt at all? She says “go”. Yeh, where. They all smile and laugh. It’s a complete conspiracy. She says “You want to go to Police?” Yeh, right, I think, fucking funny, ha ha, you Koreans just crack me up. They’re playing outside, sort of a combination of tennis and soccer.

6:10pm

She’s just walked off. What to do? On the 8th I will know for sure. Where can I sleep tonight?

6:30pm

I go up to Na In’s office.

6:45pm

Called 016472 5456. Mi Youn Shin. Told her a little. She said a Newspaper friend of hers called the police for me. I told her where I was.

7:10pm

I said I was "serious, remember my face, something might happen". She agreed!

7:25pm

Go home and come back. The interpreter, Jung Soo, left. Where to go? Same police place? What if they say no? They are definitely conspiring together. Will Youn Shin and the Newspaper help? I remember Jung Soo Young told me “it’s not your apartment now”. So it looks clear that I will never get back into my apartment. They are trying to break my spirit. They invite me here and then just leave. This is fucking madness. I called Mi Youn Shin again. I told her what had been going on. She said that I’m crazy if I think that. The truth is often the hardest thing to get anyone to believe. Good that I took notes, or I might not believe it myself!

7:50pm

Jung Soo is back again, laughing. The guy on the phone is talking to someone about me.

8pm

Jung Soo is back again, only to stop me using the phone, and to tell others to stop me, who otherwise would have paid me no attention. So she is a bitch. Beautiful, but a bitch. “Why are you here?”. Again! Cos you invited me, I reply, totally appalled. She argues with me. Why? I said that either you are stupid or your English is bad. She is upset, seems really wounded. It makes her even more attractive. But she persists to tell me to go, when she herself should be home already. So she is going out of her way to make things even more difficult for me. She is conspiring against me in collusion with all the others. Or she just doesn’t comprehend what’s happening. Hard to say which.

8:15pm

I called the interpreters number on the card he gave me, but the person who answers keeps claiming not to speak English and hangs up three times. Have they been told to? Or did he just come to the conclusion alone, that he’d better not get involved?

8:20pm

They asked me to go, and then turned off the lights and left. Now they are back. Three men. If they call the Director or Charles Kang, then I’ve had it. They say they can’t let me stay. It’s terribly cold. I have the Embassy number for Canberra.

9pm

I decide to go outside, in case the men call Charles or any of the other goons. It would be too dangerous to risk. They lock the doors behind me. They wouldn’t let me use the phones inside and directed me to the ones just outside the door, just so they could lock me out. Jung Soo is laughing inside the building. They work 24 hour shifts, so there would have been people in the office all night. They didn’t have to lock me out. They know how cold it is outside, and that I have nowhere to go. How can they be so cold and nasty? And why go to such extremes just over a lousy contract.

I call the embassy from the pay phone, and they put me through to my mother in Australia. There is no answer. Maybe no-one can help, so I will have to leave everything here. The Labor office is obviously colluding with the conspiracy. I went to where the attorney’s office was, but ended up in some sort of post office. The guy there was nice and let me use the phone. I asked him where the lawyer's office was and he directed me to the 6th floor. The lift wouldn’t open on the 6th floor, so I get off at the 5th and walk. At the attorney’s office a young lawyer let me use the email. He calls Youn Shin, and they’re talking in Korean. He laughed a bit. I only asked him to leave his number with her, But it’s impossible for Koreans to just ask simple questions without raving on for ages. I wonder what they were saying all those times? They talk for ages. I don’t think he believes her either. I will probably have to leave Korea without any of my possessions. Canberra said they can’t do anything until tomorrow morning.

I wanted to call 112 so the young lawyer could witness how they respond to me, but he wouldn’t. No Korean will say anything bad about another korean for a foreigner. He hung up without letting me speak to Youn Shin. They always do that, they never let me speak, so I have no idea what they have said, or if they have said what I asked them to. Will either of them help? Does she believe me? We talk but he doesn’t tell me what they talked about. He says he has to go. He wants to lend me some money, but he won’t help me. He runs off, saying he will come back. He says she explained my situation, and still no-one will help. I remember how I have sweared, and how I was told earlier that you can be charged for swearing in Korea. The police can break the law and your boss and recruiter can threaten you, and Immigration Directors can intimidate and threaten you, but you shouldn’t swear. I decide not to swear again.

I recall that I don’t have my German Passport or personalausweiss, so that I can’t actually use my ticket to fly to Germany, even if I can get one reissued. They have my ticket with all my stuff. I consider here how everyone wants to shake my hand and for me to pretend to everyone else that they are nice guys, while stabbing me in the back. They are trying to drive me insane with all their games and laughing, or to provoke me. But I consider how boring and mundane everyday life will be after all this distraction. I will have to face the music. I will have to finally work on my music and find out once and for all (that I don’t have any talent?) whether I can do anything with it or not.

Public Prosecutor's office

11pm

The young lawyer was happy to see me go. At the prosecutor's office they ask me if I am drunk. Two police arrive. They want to take me away. Apparently withholding my passport from me is serious, so I will call the German Embassy. A guy at the public prosecutor's office pretends to offer me a drink, but he is taking the piss. I tried to get my Australian passport back from them but they won’t give it to me. A young civil police cadet explains to me that asking about whether I was drunk was normal, as they get lots of drunks there, that the police weren’t taking the piss.

They let me call the German Embassy. I talk to the man in German, and then the Koreans talk to him in English. Why didn’t I? The police are taking the piss. They want me to go with them. They will find me a place to sleep. Yeh, after I came here to escape the police and have them investigated. The man at the Prosecutor's office tells me to come back tomorrow. Yeh, and where do I sleep tonight?

11:30pm

I called the number in Canberra, and told them that I was in real danger, and the silly cow said that I shouldn’t wake my mother up at 1:30am. I asked what would happen if they didn’t give me back my passport, and only then did she show any interest in taking down my details. 7th, at a police station in town

7:25am

They seemed nice again. They promised tomorrow I will get the keys to my apartment, then spoke of a paper (court order). Then the translator continued to translate, that it would take 7 months-fucking bastards-no-one could sit and smile and pretend to be helping with such an offer. I had spent the night here. I slept a few hours on the couch. I had told them everything, and they had gained my trust, and I believed they were really going to help me, that everything would be o.k. So, looks like I will just have to sleep in police stations for 7 months. No problem. Everything is cool bananas, hey! The policeman even got me to write some statements out, about what I wanted from the police and the Director.

I wrote some stuff about 112, and they all laughed, because they all knew about me, and about 112, and it was all a big joke. Last night I had almost passed out. They had given me coffee, but I was totally exhausted, physically and mentally. I had gone back to the police car after they brought me to the station and showed me where I could sleep on the floor upstairs. They came to the car and promised to stop smoking, that smoking was bad, if I came back inside. That impressed me, I thought it was a sincerely nice gesture, and so uncommon for smokers to make any accommodation for non smokers, so I came back inside, and sat down on the couch.

The young trees lining the streets of Daejon look like jets of crimson-gorgeous-pink-orange-red-green flame rushing to the sky.

What will happen this time at the labor ministry? They haven’t done anything. They are either stupid-incompetent, or conspiring, or both. They invited me to eat lunch with them, they have chicken, but I tell them I am vegetarian. Why do people think that fish is not meat? I remember how they told me last night that I looked like an action movie star. This is an odd occurrence here in Korea. Why do they say such things?

The air outside is freezing. I have to go along with anyone who may be helping me because otherwise no-one is helping me. The young lawyer had let me photocopy my notes, and kept an envelope with the copies, and gave me his number, in case my notes are taken from me.

He let me start entering my notes onto a PC, but then I realised how long this would take and gave up. I think that the the girl who was helping me thinks I’m crazy. Of course my story sounds crazy. Only other English teachers with experience would believe me. That’s why it’s so important that I keep these detailed notes, and don’t just make general comments about what happened.

I remember how aggressive the Director of Immigration from Daejon had gotten in his car, and his comment “you like noodles?”, really aggressive and antagonistic, and derisive. “You’re a loner?” This sounded like the worst accusation that he could think of, the worst crime someone could be charged with. I remember also that the young lawyer had given me a little bottle of ginseng tonic, and smoked outside, a nice gesture. These little bottles of ginseng tonic and fruit juice keep turning up. If I find a new job, will they issue me a new visa? Or were they lieing? My ears are starting to become a problem again. If they get infected I won’t be able to fly.

8:45am

They won’t let me sleep. What is so totally absurd, is that after everything they have done to me, unless I state that I want to continue working at the school, then I have no legal right to my apartment, as it is provided as a condition of employment. That they can demand I state that, with a straight face, is high absurdity. I have to remember that, however absurd it sounds, I have to maintain that I wish to work for those evil bastards, otherwise they will twist this whole fucking madness around to claim that I have no right to the apartment as I don’t want to work for those evil asseholes. Charles and the others have consistently asked such inane questions as “Why weren’t you at work?”. That they could ask such questions shows how cunning and treacherous they are.

9am

They move me to an uncomfortable seat. The sky outside is blue. It will be warm in the sun. I consider where I could lie down somewhere in the sun. I am really cold and weak.

9:35am

The police put me on the phone. The man speaks German, so I talk in German, assuming it is the German Embassy, but it’s the Austrian Embassy, which I find really ironic, given that I am by pure chance actually German and can talk to him in German. This is the oldest sort of joke, confusing Austria with Australia.

10:30am

Was at Public prosecutors office and National Security office with the police. Everyone had laughed and joked about me, and some gave me really dirty looks. Given a drink. Offered food. Contradictions! The police will break the law and evict you and never investigate anything, and play games with you, but then they act real nice. This is real mind game stuff. Their tactics are of soft-gentle coercion and intimidation. They are wearing me down. It is working. I accept any help as the alternative is none. Even if they did lie about finding me a motel room, the coffee that they did give me was better than nothing. Better here than cold and hungry nowhere. Maybe something will happen. Maybe at least I will get to leave in one piece. Once again I am told that I am "handsome".

12:15am

They brought in a tour guide to translate, but she’s stressed out, and finding it too hard. But I think they have said that I’m getting the keys to my apartment. They’re getting a more capable translator, and lunch. She was nervous, and left without saying goodbye to me. But is this real? It seems that they will get me the keys to my apartment if I don’t (can’t anyway) charge the police or file a complaint (which no-one will anyway). They give me a little bottle of ‘pine needle drink’. They said I have to wait. They’re bringing the keys. I will believe it when I see it. I have to go along with their game, I have no alternative.

12:45am

Lunch was O.K. They brush their teeth at work. They work 24 hour shifts. They get me to brush my teeth too. They give me some toothpaste. Soon there’ll be a glitch, and I won’t get my apartment keys. Some excuse…”We can’t force them”, or something.

1:25pm

What a load of rubbish. Now they can’t help. What the fuck were they doing all the time. Now they will only let me get my things. They said "go to immigration". They said it was Korean law-custom. Bullshit. It was criminal and still is. I’ve been talking for hours. I have lost my voice. They said that in Korea the police can break in with the owner. They won't call the attorney for me. They are just wasting my time as always. They always act as if they are going to help, promising everything is o.k, get me to talk forever, they write something, and then they do nothing.

The Director apparently told him that he’d given me the key. Well then why am I homeless, if I have a nice warm apartment to sleep in? Why on earth would he give me the key if he won’t let me live there? Why on earth doesn’t anyone consider how insane all the comments people here make are?

Why won’t anyone simply listen to me for a moment, translate a few questions, and then see how absurdly ludicrous the answers they get are? Ms Min. 016 451 8947, tells me that in Korea the Employee and Employer settle problems between themselves. Absolute bullshit. Everyone is ignoring the facts. They pretend they can’t help. They just won’t help. Just wasteing my time. I asked where I could go. They tell me Yong un dong are investigating. Fucking joke. The criminals investigating themselves? She walks off like all Koreans do, without listening or reasoning at all. They are so fucking arrogant and smug. She wouldn’t tell me where I could go to charge the police. She works for an English school.

2pm

This whole set up is one bad fucking joke. Bullshit.

2:40pm

Na In Ha won’t give me a copy of my complaint. Now he doesn’t understand “court order”.etc. Na In Ha is the investigating officer, with power to prosecute employers. I am at Dong gu police station. Apparently some Koreans have been kidnapped in the Phillipines, so Nam Suk Hyun is too busy to investigate my case.

Back at Chung Nam District Police Agency, in Daejon

6pm

I am speaking with Nam Suk Hyun on the phone, and call him a fucking assehole, after some stupid and provoctive comments from him. I tell him he should be careful, that they might just push me too far. He asks if I just called him a "fucking assehole". I remember that that could be a crime here, so I bluff, and ask him “did you just call me a fucking assehole,?” adding “isn’t that a crime?”. Yeh, but fraud, corruption, intimidation, collusion, and threatening foreigners is fine. I’m getting a nasty cough. It’s seriously cold outside. The civil police cadet who had been helping me is too friendly. I write notes about this in German so he can’t read them. He keeps repeating that I have promised to meet him on Saturday, at 9:50am, near the traffic lights.

My clothes are sticking to me. Nam Suk Hyun was a real prick to me. For seven days I have been wearing the same clothing. Nam Suk Hyun admitted that the eviction was illegal. He’s just a fucking assehole.

So it looks like I will go to the Labor office tomorrow, then get my stuff and leave. I hope I can get a flight easily. But then it’s Korean Air, hardly likely to be booked out after the U.S government downgraded their rating and made it illegal for U.S officials to travel on official business using them. There is no point being angry, it could just get me into further trouble. I have done absolutely nothing wrong and look what they can get away with. My skin itches form not having washed since Monday night. Should I bother looking for another job here? The train is emptier on weekdays, so I should leave on Friday. Don’t get tied up anymore trying to get these people to help. Don’t forget that these people are pure evil, and enjoy it. I am a fun game for them. Torture the foreigner, watch his discomfort. Remember they keep live fish and lobster and crayfish in tanks, and then cook them alive. They enjoy cruelty. I’m told that I am handsome again. They’re calling the Director.

After Nam Suk Hyun had said on phone to go back to Yong un Go Chng police box, as they were going to give me my key and help me.

September 2nd

I will demand that the landlady, the neighbours, and security, and all the police in the area be told that my eviction was unlawful. Did the attorney inform the police that such an act was unlawful? What justification did the police have then?

7:10am

I’ve been told 3 times now to "go". They won’t call the Director. My eyes ache, my head hurts, I’m totally exhausted. What now? The police didn’t do what the good cop said they would. What will he do? Misunderstanding? He promised they would take me back to my apartment. Instead they abuse me and kick me out. I’ve been homeless over 9 hours now. The cop Nam Suk Hyuned Park said “fuck” to me, and then wouldn’t let me see his Nam Suk Hyune badge. Who talked to the good cop then, and promised to help me?

7:30am

No-one is trying to call the Director. They give me a little bottle of some juice or tonic. It tastes nice. But what’s happening?

8:45am

They keep calling out my Name. I’m sitting quietly in a corner trying to rest. I have had no sleep for over 24 hours. They tell me to go to the Hagwon. Who the fuck talked to the good cop and said they were going to help me? They just keep fucking me around, and now and again tell me to leave. Where am I supposed to go? One cop really got on my nerves. I pointed at him and shouted at him to stop laughing at me. What the fuck is their problem? The police smoke a lot. They are changing shift, and laughing at me. They’re fucking mad. “Go to Hagwon”. They don’t listen to me, the attorney, or the detective. I haven’t had anything to eat for over 17 hours. The ‘good’ cop claims that there is no problem, that it’s just a matter of “cultural differences”.

I ask the officer on duty for some Kopi, coffee, and he offered to get me some. He goes out and returns with some milk and a hamburger. I tell him I don’t eat meat. He goes and comes back with a sandwich. A girl comes with a thermos of hot water and instant coffee, wrapped in a cloth. The cups are tiny and taste crap, but it is an interesting experience. The cop pays her about $3. That’s the worst value coffee I’ve ever had. But it was better than nothing, in my condition, and it was nice of him, and interesting. He looked shocked when he saw me on the phone talking to the good cop, who tells me that they will try “other means” to contact the Director, whose phone, according to him, has been off the hook. He told me to wait at the box.

(post script: I was informed years later by a korean that at least in the past, the 'coffee girls' were actually prostitutes. Apparently it was common practise for prostitutes to be called on the ruse of calling for coffee. I don't think this was the case, but as I said, I was surprised by how attractive the young lady was, and how sexily she was dressed.) (post script: something about the weather and humidity or who knows what means that you perspire, but don't smell. I had brought a large supply of deodorant with me after having been warned by 'slim' the first recruiter that it was really expensive in Korea because Korean's didn't use it. I jokingly speculated then that either something about the weather or food meant people didn't smell, or that they simply did smell but didn't bother about it! I never used it as I found that I actually didn't smell the whole time I was in Korea. Interesting. Anyone have an explanation?. Slim and his mates stole my large supply of deodorant along with all the other stuff they stole from me.)

10:15am

They find a copy of the English-Korean police phrase book, which they had denied had existed. The Yung un dong police box officer called the good cop, (Nam Suk Hyun). At first he looked at me normally, and then he became quiet, and looked at me differently, nicer, and almost concerned. It seems the good cop has explained my situation to him. I look up the Korean symbols for conspiracy and intimidation, and write them in my notes. I insist that 112 be directed to respond to me if I call. I promise I will only call to avert another unlawful entry or assault.

11am

The policeman is friendly, but what’s happening? I have a terrible migraine, and my nose is burning, my eyes are dried out. Last night they tell me to go, and this morning they invite me to lunch and get coffee, apparently sincerely nice.

I consider how gutless it is of Charles and his mates to gang up on me in a foreign country where no-one will help me. If I respond to their provocations and defend myself, they can just claim I attacked them, and I’ll end up beaten up and in jail. How tough to hit you when you are down. How did I become big bad Markus? Why did Oo say “you’re wrong”. What have they been saying about me? Melissa and Julia won’t help! The good cop is only helping me because I am doggedly persistent. Are Charles and co still trying to get me deported somehow? How can I go back to work after Melissa and Julia have betrayed me, and Charles and An Ouk souk, and her husband, and Charles’ manager have all been such cowardly and treacherous backstabbing asseholes?

12:25am

There is still no word about my key. What’s going on? I take my last codeine tablet. I am invited to eat lunch. Nice.

4:55pm

The goons arrive. The police want me to go with them to immigration. Are they insane? So they have just been pretending to help me. The same old story.

5:10pm

The good cop, Nam Suk Hyun, is playing games. He is colluding with the others against me. He won’t give me the number of the embassy. He said he is investigating tomorrow afternoon. They want to take me to immigration. They should give me the key to my apartment. Are my things still in there? The police have told me to “go back to Australia”.

6:20pm when?

It’s really cold. My skin is crawling and itching, and my clothes stick to me. Nam Suk Hyun doesn’t give a shit. He’s the one I kept thinking of as the ‘good’ cop. But he’s an assehole. He’s a smug bastard and a lieing prick. I asked him just to have a few days to pack my stuff and go. The labor Ministry can’t be sincere. They actually told me I had a key to my apartment already. So! 8th

7:05am

I walked back from Yong un dong police box to Chung Nam District Police Headquarters, which I keep calling Chung Nam District Police Agency. The Civi police cadet friend is really concerned about me. It is late and very cold. He takes me across the road to another police box. He talks to the police there, to try to find somewhere for me to sleep. He says they have arranged something, and we go outside to wait. The air outside is chilled as if from a freezer. Oo drives up in a nice new car. He says that I can stay at his home. Was this a ploy too? I don’t trust him at all, of course I know he is a lieing bastard, but I have no choice, I have nowhere else to go, and this may be interesting.

In the car I thank him. He begins to interrogate me. “Do you really love Korea?”. He keeps asking questions which are absurd, to which I am expected to continually answer in the positive, to prove I am infatuated with Korea, and that Korea is, as he quotes someone from the past “The light of the world”. I have no choice but to talk with him, even though I am absolutely totally beyond even exhaustion. I have to convince him that the whole world has everything to learn from Korea. I can honestly say that Koreans are very affectionate and warm to one another, which is something lacking in the places I have lived previously. But he is a madman. To him Korea is the most perfect culture in the world.

It must have been obvious to him how painful it was for me to talk. I had almost totally lost my voice. My voice came out as a squeak, and I kept coughing and swallowing in pain. But he kept forcing me to answer his interrogations. I was expected to prove to him for some unknown reason that I was as mad about Korea as he was. What do Koreans expect from foreigners who come to work here? Of course we come here to earn money. No-one would come here for more than a short visit for any other reason. What is it Oo expected of me? How unfair of him to force me to answer his interrogations in my condition, and to make his assistance conditional upon being in love with a country whose people and officials had done so many bad things to me. And above all, he himself was responsible for it having gone so far. If he had stayed out of my affairs in the first place, and just given me the number for the labor office, and made an appointment for me as he had promised, then probably most of this drama and damage to me could have been avoided. I knew he was a liar, but had thought he was just genuinely misguided and well intentioned, if not too clever, and an appalling listener. I had been willing to forgive and forget, and be grateful that the police had anyone who could translate English at all.

11:30pm

He still doesn’t get my story, even though he makes out that he is trying to understand me. He keeps blaming me. He says that 3 employers don’t want me. (not true, they want me, but don’t want to honor their contract conditions). He expects me to wear long pants and a tie in these stinking humid conditions. He’s a god botherer. We get to his apartment. It’s messy but nice, and large, not just by Korean standards, but by any standard. He has some framed statements outside his sons room, urging his son to love god, and stating that god loves him. Apparently his son is not as keen on religion as Oo himself claims to be.

I am totally ill and exhausted, and can hardly talk, but Oo insists on showing me his life's work. He has been trying to contact Noam Chomsky about it. He has developed a new alphabet which is made up of lines in a circle. He has all these graphs showing the relationship between god and man and culture and language. The strange thing is that I know and like Noam Chomsky, and can sort of comprehend what Oo has done, without being able to see why he’d bother. I am so sick I just want to sleep, but Oo has no sensitivity to other people. He is just over the moon to have an audience to tell his life's vision to.

Ironic, this treacherous liar, who is to a great extent responsible for my predicament, including that I am so sick, is now telling me about his dream for the world, to bring it a common alphabet, one that can be used for every language, to bring love to the world. What a fucking hypocrite. Eventually I get to shower, and sleep.

At Oo’s apartment

Thursday November 9 First thing in the morning, my eyes, my throat, and my head all ache, and my nose and ears are blocked. I am desperate for a cup of coffee and codeine, but what does Oo do? First thing in the morning and Oo wants to continue talking. I think about these old men with no wives. Their wives left them because they were so self-centred, and they love nothing more than a captive audience to rave at. It’s hot in the apartment. Oo is cheerful and sits next to me, continuing to chat, oblivious to my pain and discomfort, and his own guilt for my predicament. I asked him what purpose it had served locking me out of my apartment, which no-one else could use? He gave me one cup of coffee, then said he had none left, and would have to go to the shop to buy more. He kept raving on about povir or some word he had heard.

I’ve got a high fever and can hardly talk. I consider how insensitive people can be. I told him that the 11th of September and the Anthrax attacks were a wake-up call to all those people in positions of power who think they can ignore justice and fairness because they have conventional power. From now on people can’t be so smug and complacent. There are more and more alternatives for people to strike back and get revenge. I asked for aspirin, but he didn’t respond. What’s people's problem? I sick you fucker, get me an aspirin, I thought.

7:30am

Last night he said they left for school and work at 6am. He had asked me if I hadn’t had the same problems with the police in Australia or Germany. Of course fucking not! I recall his comments in the car from last night. Of course I couldn’t take notes at the time. He had gone on about how Koreans love the world, but if they feel even a minor slight, they are deeply insulted. This would include not wearing a tie and trousers to work, even in 40 degree heat with 100% humidity. He has no aspirin. He tells me to eat. He has a big apartment in the center of town, so he must be doing well. He kept blaming me and spreading the lies he was told, without listening to me at all. He wasn’t interested.

Anything I had to say was insignificant compared to what other Koreans had said. He himself had lied to me and knows that my boss lied to him, from the very beginning. He had rung me up on my mobile, before the first time I was locked out, and told me that I was being charged with using the F word and behaving immorally in front of my students, and could be deported for that. He told me that I had to present myself to the police station within a few minutes. The police box was right near my apartment.

He had raved on and on during the phone call, and I had actually given my mobile to some small school children to talk to him because he just damn well wouldn’t listen to me at all. When they gave the phone back to me after a few minutes he was still raving on and on. When I got to the police box An ouk souk arrived and wanted to take me back to the school. Oo then denied what he had told me, and ouk souk said nothing I could make out (she ran the school but spoke little English). The whole scam had been aimed at getting me to accept the loss of my sign on fee, and to accept the loss of the other conditions regarding accommodation specified in my contract.

Later I found that this included the loss of all my paid holidays, and furnishings, and airfares. He never listens. I am sick and can’t eat. “Why don’t you have” something to eat. I have to be supplicant the whole time he raves on, as I have nowhere else to go, and want to see what he will do. He’s an old crazy desperate for an audience.

So I played the part demanded of me. He just wanted to talk. He didn’t stop to really explain, he just had the need to rave on and show someone his stuff.

8am

We are close to the labor ministry, assuming I can find it. What if they stall? Do I have anything to prove now? If they do nothing now then it’s reasonable to assume that they are all corrupt, every last one of the officials, police, employers, recruiters, NBC reporters, everyone here. Oo said he had talked to the German Embassy, and they had asked me if I wanted someone to come to help me. I said that if the police and labor ministry are not fair and won’t help me then that of course I do. He said that the German embassy had asked him to help me. Please guys, anyone out there, if a foreigner is having a problem in Korea, then demand to speak with that person.

No sane person would trust a Korean to care about the interests of a foreigner. If you don’t demand to speak with the person directly then you are not doing your duty. Never trust what a Korean, especially a Korean official, tells you. Oo wants me to go now, which will mean I will have to wait at the labor ministry. Let’s Go. “ I have to go!” We left at 8:20am. I had stalled. My socks are still wet. I had washed them the night before and left them on the warm patches on the floor to dry.

At the Labor Ministry Offices in Daejon

The 8th

8:30am

Oo says I can get my “packages” any time? So they have touched my things. No-one could use the apartment still, so what did they achieve? I asked who pays for me if I get deported. Oo smiled. The assehole who locked me out is here. Oo says that the police want to help but don’t understand. Last night Oo told me that he is beginning to understand that I am not wrong, and will help me find a job in Daejon. He says that I can live with him if the new school doesn’t have an apartment, in his other sons’ room. He seems genuine, although the last thing I would want to do is live with this madman.

He says the police just don’t understand. I think, what don’t they understand? Their own lawyers? Their own legal system? Basic human rights? Oo says that the case Nam Suk Hyun was investigating turned out to be fraud, that there was no kidnapping. Some Koreans had pretended to be kidnapped to get the ransom money for themselves.

I remember that Oo had expected me to have a cold shower. I asked him how to turn on the hot water,and he says, “oh, do you want a hot shower?”. “Then I’ll have to turn on the boiler!” I was as sick as a dog, and he had for some reason expected me to have a cold shower. Remember it was freezing cold outside. He said there was no more of that coffee at the store.

Don’t waste time with people pretending to understand or trying to help. What bullshit. I am constantly promised help and get none. Don’t bother getting angry. It’s wasted on them. They are smug complacent pricks. Did the attorney really want to help? It was interesting at the police station to see people expressing an obvious hatred for cigarette smoke, opening the doors wide open and waving their arms to get the smoke out of their faces, but not saying anything, or complaining. No-one would dare say “please don’t smoke”.

8:55am

Na In Ha is there. The bastard who just dissappeared the last time. He directs me-takes me, to a freezing cold, smoke stinking, waiting room. Nice, hey. I come back into the main office. It’s warmer and there’s no smoke. Now he’s looking at my contract, probably for the first time. After 2 weeks he hasn’t done anything. He doesn’t even understand English. There’s a box on the wall marked “descending lifeline”. He is looking at my untouched file. Oo said that the traditional culture in Korea is to settle employment problems between the employer and the employee. In other words the boss dictates. Would Oo help me again? To sleep, change my ticket, and to pack? There is no translator. Na Hin is on the phone. Ouk souk is probably not coming. I recall how Oo had asked me in the car about why I don’t work in Australia. Its past 9am. From where I stand, I either have no contract because I broke it myself, which I didn’t, and therefore I do, or I do have a contract and they have to enforce it. Which I do, so they do. What’s left to discuss? Do I need to have any doubts any more about how bad people are? Why do I bother giving people the chance only to prove the worst? It’s just a waste of time. It is of course a distraction and engagement, with some possible benefit, but. It’s cold in the office but they don’t open the blinds to let in the warm sunshine.

9:20am

Na In is apparently ringing, trying to contact the Director. I gave him the Directors mobile. I got it off the whiteboard the first time I was at the Yong un go chng police box. He’s calling it now. Will they act if they don’t come, don’t answer? Other workers in the office smile conspiratorially at Na In. I’m treated as a joke. He’s calling from a different phone.

9:25am

He has a file in Korean. There is no translator here. How can they proceed? The bitch that locked me out last night is here again. She looks pleased with herself. They have no compassion or sympathy for me at all. Do they think all foreigners are rich or something? She’s laughing and smiling and translating my notes concerning Korean Employment law. By pure chance I saw a book on Employment Law in English, and read it over the 10 or so hours they had left me waiting. The only problem is, as I only found out after being so excited and happy to have found out Korean employment law, is that it only applies to people who work for an employer with at least five employees. This is the written law, but it actually contradicts the constitution on which the labor laws are based.

In this sense the labor laws explicitly contradict the spirit of the constitution. Of course the constitution and the laws were imposed on Korea by the American-United nations who had freed South Korea from the communist North.

This is something a westerner should understand before they go to Korea. The Koreans have wonderful western democratic laws, but a Korean mentality which has not regard for them. So in practise, your contracts and rights, are valueless. I wonder what sort of experiences business people have had here. They are looking at my contract as if (who am I kidding) for the first time. They are still laughing and joking. They call the ELC number and I tell them that no-one will be there until after 1pm. I tell the Korean girl she is beautiful. A few minutes later she asks me if I have had breakfast. I ask for, and get, a cup of coffee.

She doesn’t appreciate my situation. I ask her if the Labor Ministry have any power. Apparently the Director is in the shower. Nice. I have been waiting 90 minutes and they are just getting out of bed. They drink little paper cups only half full with very strong coffee. I fill the rest of the cup up with hot water. They ask me to wait in the waiting room, but I say it’s too cold there and full of smoke. She asks if I am allowed-I am apparently-to wait at the conference table at the side of the office.

She is lovely. She seemed genuinely hurt when I implied she must be dumm, or not understand English. Maybe she is not laughing at me, but at the situation, which for me is bad, but for an outsider could seem comic. Some of her behaviours could be explained by misunderstanding or non comprehension of my situation, and the belief of lies that may have been told about me. Unfortunately it is also typical of humans to not look at the available facts and interrogate them.

There’s always the illusion that things might be o.k. Is this a lesson? Life will never be o.k. I’m just kidding myself? I can appreciate that. She even pulled out a chair for me, and explained some Korean terms from my contract. They had translated my complaint.

I consider that Oo might be a little mad. He might even possibly be a genius. I would like to see actual sentences and phrases, using his alphabet, but Oo never actually explained anything. Maybe he knows it’s a failure, but can’t face letting go, so avoids confronting the final analysis.

9.30am

I have been wearing the same clothing and have not been allowed to get my money or things from my apartment for 8 days. I worked from the 18th to the 31st, that is 13 days for which I have not been paid. On top of that they took out 500,000Won from my last salary, so in effect I am owed at least 1.5 Million Won, not to mention two months pay for the 2months advance notice in writing they have to give me, according to my contract. They have not shown any grounds at all for their behaviour. I assume they merely found a cheaper teacher. I gave Ouk Souk two weeks written notice of my intention to take one days holiday, and she merely wrote “no”. They managed to get me to miss the labor office appointment by leaving me in Taegu, and not letting me go until it was too late to get back in time. I write this down for the ‘investigator’. He shows no interest at all. I have be homeless now since October 31.

10:35am

There’s no sign of anyone here. I am all alone in the office.

10:35am

So the Director can turn up as and when he pleases. If he doesn’t, then what?

10:40am

I think the guy on the phone is talking about my apartment and eviction. Maybe.

11am

I stink of cigarettes. Or is it just this room? The Director’s 2 hours late now. What is their plan? Oo said that Korean civil law is still behind the west. I tell him I know more about Korean law than about Australian law, which is true. The Korean laws are fine, only the police and immigration, and every government officical I have dealt with, and every employer and recruiter, are corrupt.

11:20am

I think he was talking to someone about my visa and October. 12am. They’re 3 hours late. They knew the date and time. They have a car and phone and money. How dare they wait until the ELC opens, after keeping me here waiting since 9am. But anyway, it’s probably a game. They’re just trying to wear me out. Or I’m simply irrelevant and they don’t care either way. I’m here, they pretend to be nice, they leave me waiting all day and night. They will go home, and leave me? How dare people use the word investigation when they do nothing. I am always expected to wait forever with not action.

12:25

I hear laughing again. 3.5 hours and nothing. Will they say Oh, she’s busy, and couldn’t come? I should have listened the first time and believed them that they wouldn’t help. They’re playing sport outside, a cross between soccer and volleyball. There’s only one guy here, on the PC. Soon he’ll go.

12:40am

I'm taken downstairs to lunch in the cafeteria. Nice. Offered coffee. They’ll say, sorry, but we can’t help you, or we’re investigating, or waiting to speak to the Director, we’ll make a new meeting for, whatever. Oo had admitted that some Korean Directors do take advantage of their teachers. They are playing in business shoes and suits. It’s good to watch. I found a book titled labor in Korea, in the bookshelf. I open the cabinet and take it out. Found some important constitutional rights. Lets see if I can get ‘legal relief’? I go over to the window to find some warmth from the sun. After lunch they didn’t seem to be malicious anymore, so I risked walking across the office to get some more sun. It’s 1:35pm now, and still no sign of the Director or any decision from In Ha.

2:05pm

I gave Na In Ha my formal request stating the exact articles and acts which cover my situation. He sort of read it before photocopying it.

When I gave him the copy he snatched it from my hand with a sort of rude look on his face. According to the labor laws I will have to get a minimum of 70% of my wages until I am formally discharged, and then a months severance pay, in my case 2million won. Bummer! The school has less than 5 workers, so the Labor Standards Act doesn’t apply. (in 1993) Oh, well, it was at least a distraction. This is typical of my experience. All hope is false. Is the bus driver an employee? Is An ouk souk, the assistant director? Then there’s Melissa and Julia, and me. Oh well, it looks like I’m done for. They can’t be genuine if they leave me waiting 4.5 hours. So never work for a school in Korea with less than 5 employees. Cambridge only had four too. But this means that the Labor Standards Act breaches the intention of the Constitution. I go over to the sunshine again, and get more than just sunshine. The Director is waiting in the car park, apparently going upstairs. He’s 4.5 hours late.

2:37

The goons are here, Charles, the Director-beast, and the Human Resource Bank manager. The beast has a camera again. He just took another photo. He’s fucking stark raving mad. I’m scared and nervous. I feel the reaction in my stomach, arms, and my heartrate. I am scared of them, physically. They’re so confident. The police and immigration have emboldened them. They’re talking really fast as if they are happy, prepared, and confident. I want to go to the toilet but won’t risk having them follow me. They sound cheerful. Where is the interpreter Na In Ha keeps promising? Have to stop my hands from trembling. If they know that I am scared they would be even more emboldened. I want to see if the Korean version of my contract is accurate. An ouk souk is not here. She is my boss. She signed the contract. I have a contractual agreement with her, and no-one else. Charles makes the smart comment "hey, there’s the big guy”. The Director always makes sounds like Er er er er er er oer oer oer oer over and over again. He has a triple chin, and his chin is drawn in and quivering. They’re laughing, joking, jovial. This is good fun for them. Why is the Director allowed to bring his mates? Why is my actual employer not here?

3:05pm

I went to the toilet, sitting in the cubicle. Someone knocked on the door, then put their foot under it. They banged hard on the toilet door. Markus, Markus, Markus. I was lucky it was only Na In Ha. But why was he banging on the door so agressively? The look on his face and his whole attitude and behaviour indicate that he is not independent, as he is supposed to be. The person against whom I filed a complaint, and whom he is supposed to be investigating, is not here. Charles came over and spoke very rudely in Korean to me. He seemed very pleased with himself. I didn’t even look at him.

3:10pm

I ask Oo if he can bring me to the apartment to get my stuff, and if I can stay with him for a few days. I can’t see anything good coming from the labor ministry. Now the Director is talking about Ya’tap again. Aren’t they going to do anything? They’re just playing. Well, that’s how it is here. I have to accept the facts. But I am interested what possible connection other schools could possibly have with my contract with this one. I haven't brokent any contract, and have done absolutely nothing I wouldn’t happily tell anyone about. Now they’re on about Cambridge, in Kumi. I wait 5 hours, 3 weeks, and on an on, just to experience another farce. But now I know for sure that there is no natural justice, probably anywhere. Charles and his boss must have left just after me. I will stay here until Oo picks me up. There is no-one here to interpret. Why am I here. Surely they can’t expect me to let Charles interpret. The people here are either stupid, incompetent, and-or colluding in spirit and-or deed.

3:20pm

Why did Na In Ha care if I’d left, in that he came looking for me in the toilets, and was angry? Why am I here? My employer, who I filed the complaint against, is not here. There is no interpreter. The law is clear. I have the contracts. Why are they bothering with this masquerade? Do they think I am stupid? Are they doing this to claim that they have officially done their job? They were nice to me, but no-one spoke English, so why was I here? Three talking at once. How dare Charles approach me after I have lodged a formal complaint against him with the police, and while he is supposedly being investigated! But he knows that they won’t investigate him, he's korean.

3:25pm

Another guy from the Human Resource Bank in Daejon has turned up. How dare the Human Resource Bank manager have the hide to talk to me. He tells me that we have another appointment for tomorrow, at 3pm.

What the fuck is going on? I wait 5 hours. They come and stay 30minutes then tell me to come back again tomorrow. Charles, his boss, and the other guy from the Human Resource Bank, circle me menacingly, even though I moved over here to this chair to avoid their intimidations and threats. They shouldn’t be allowed to intimidate me like this. I moved, and Na In Ha got them to leave me alone. I get mean looks because I sat in one of the chairs in the office. I say that I didn’t send my wife to solve my problems, so what is An ouk souk’s husband doing here solving hers? I said that under Korean law, the Director of Cambridge in Kumi city, Oo Key One, owes me a months severance pay.

The Human Resource Bank manager decides to change his mask again, from angry to friendly, and comes over. He asks me what I want. I tell him I what justice. I want the labor laws to be enforced. I showed him the book. He said he knew the labor law. Bullshit. He was clueless. I tell him that, he is an assehole, using the word in the technical sense. I ask him if he would like someone to treat his own children the way they have been treating me. I ask him what is the point of all this. Why all this drama over a simple contract dispute?

4:55pm

I ask the girl to translate for me, to tell the inspector that if my Boss sends her husband today, then I will send my mother tomorrow.

4:20pm

The Director went apeshit, frothing at the mout, stamping his fists, waving his arms, abusing me, violently jabbing me. He is out of his head. They were laughing at him. I asked for 50, 000 won for a motel. I said that’s 10,000won for each picture he took of me. He thought I had asked for airfare. Now I find out the appointment is for 10am. The other goon had said 3pm. Was he trying to trick me? Na in Ha said he would make a decision. The Director had totally lost it. The girl and Na In Ha told me to sit down. They actually looked worried. They weren’t laughing anymore.

The Director, and ouk souk, always make dry wretching sounds before they start to talk. He told them that I smash everything. He is a great actor. Maybe they’ll smash up my apartment and say it was me. The girl sweetly asked me “please, come back tomorrow”. I ask about tonight. They don’t seem to care about me being homeless, or about my problems, or the danger I am in. She wouldn’t ask him a question for me. They don’t want him to lose it again! Why won’t he pay me 50, 000 won. I won’t leave this building tonight unless Oo helps me. I asked them to visit the school, the apartment, and check my claims. Ouk Souk “absent”. This is ridiculous. They told me to sit down. I said that I had been here almost 8 hours, and Na In Ha has not talked to me at all.

4:45pm

She’s translating one of my notes.

5pm

Na In Ha won’t listen to me. Why the fuck did I come? 8 hours, and I have done nothing. I showed him the labor law book. He won’t look at anything I give him to read. The girl says he will decide tomorrow. Decide what, and how? She just walked away from me. He had seen how aggressive they are to me. He doesn’t give a damn. I realise now that giving me lunch is just a cultural ritual. They do not care at all about me. He had never once approached me to talk, to ask questions, or to clarify anything. The ministry should be open all night, so I will just stay here. If no-one helps me now, then they will have proven that they are all conspiring together. The bastards don’t want to do their jobs, or do the right thing. No-on will be here tomorrow and nothing will happen. They tell me to come, to go, lock me out, 8 hours nothing, they won’t go the school or anything, so they can’t comment on anything, and have to assume that I am innocent.

But what will Na In Ha do? Someone tried to come in the side door here, where I am sitting at the conference table, so I lock it to prevent a sneak attack, in case they steal these notes. If Oo won’t help then I will have to stay here, or downstairs, but I certainly won’t leave this building. It’s too cold and I have nowhere to go. I don’t want to have to walk back here in the morning.

5:10pm

Call Oo? He’s fucking mad, talking to Na In Ha now, who’s laughing. Oo says another of these famous Korean Fatuosities “Why don’t you go back to your apartment?” Is he mad? He’s fucking mad. “Don’t you have any packages in your apartment?” “Why don’t you call your Director?” I had told him everything. He knows everything. Hours of talking. I’m put back on the phone to Oo. First he says to go to his home and wait. He says he’ll be home late, so his son can let me in. He would’t give me his home phone number. First he says I should just wait for his son, and then he says “You should go to your apartment”. “I don’t have the key”, I say. Of course he fucking knows everything, he has been in on it from the very beginning, and has more responsibility for what has happened than anyone, in that he conspired with An ouk souk and emboldened them all. “You don’t have the key?” “Why don’t you get the key from your Director?”. I ponder how they manage to say such fatuous things to me, how they can act so naïve and innocent.

They are maddening. Are they specially trained? This is really Pythonesque. “He wont give it to me”, I answer. I can’t say anything else, he is my only possible help at the moment. It’s no point getting excited at his game playing and inane stupidity and pretense. “Won’t he give it to you?” What can I say, he is either stark raving mad or trying to provoke me, or as arrogant as he is, to drive me crazy. Nam Suk Hyun asks me for my passport. Then Oo says “tomorrow you’d better meet with your embassy”. Like I haven’t been demanding that for days now! They’re all stark raving. I have Oo’s phone number. I won’t leave until someone answers, otherwise I could be waiting for ages outside, and maybe Oo has told the goons where I will be. 486 3270. 101 308.

Then Oo asks “Why don’t you use your cell phone?” Because it’s fucking locked up in my apartment, like I have told you so many times and like you don’t know, I think, but don't dare say!. I simply calmly respond that I don’t have it, and don’t let myself get excited. “Why don’t you have it?”, he asks. I simply respond calmy that it’s in my apartment, though of course I could scream!

I ask Na In Ha why no interpreter is here today. Na In Ha claims that he can only deal with the money side of things, that he has no say about accommodation. Bullshit. The accommodation is as much a condition of employment, a form or compensation, as wages are. I tell the girl how strange her behaviour is. She admitted by default, it seems, even smiling conspiratorially, when I say that they are playing with me.

I told her and Na In Ha that no interpreter has ever been here, that he talks to others for hours, but never to me. I appear totally irrelevant to them. In 9 hours he didn’t even read my brief notes. He kept saying that I have to sue for damages. Bullshit. I said he has to charge the employer for their employment violations, their violation of the labor law, which it is his job to enforce. The girl says that it his duty to protect employees. What a fucking joke.

9:31pm

Oo’s son has gone off with his girlfriend. I washed my clothes in the machine first, and then again by hand. I hope they somehow dry. I have had only these clothes for the past 2 weeks. Last night Oo had asked me why I hadn’t paid to fix the taps and plumbing in my apartment, which were broken before I moved in. He asks lots of other really unreasonably stupid questions, especially given that I had been so sick, and anyone could hear how much effort and pain it took for me to talk at all, and would have recognised how exhausted I was. I have so many aches and pains and rashes. It’s really chill outside, like superchilled air in a freezer.

Is this what people mean when they say that Asians are inscrutable? Oo conspires against me, but lets me actually sleep in his house? I think it is simple, like with the confusing practise of denying me justice but feeding me. It is extremely important for them to make a good impression, to pretend that Koreans are nice people. This is, after all, 2001, Visit Korea Year. How would they normally respond, I wonder. They are not at all really concerned about me, only about impressions. Thursday November 9

11:23am

Last night-morning, Oo had tried to convince me not to take any actions against the Director or the school. I am coughing and sneezing. The son and his girlfriend had bought me a little Tigger doll, which is really cool. Oo offered to find me a job, yeh, and cash in on the situation he helped engineer, a cool thousand US dollars recruitment fee. My clothing is dry. I had put it on the floor, over the hot spots. Korean apartments have the heating in the floor. I check the internet, and see that two friends have responded, and called the embassy for me.

I check an internet site. One of the ads says that they started their agency in response to all the horror stories they have heard from English teachers working in Korea. A friend in Australia tells me that the Federal police there and the media have no interest in my story. Oo wants me to apply for a job at the Mormon school. He even says that if they don’t have any accommodation for me, that I can live with him and his son. Oo says “God will punish the ELC”. He says it is not for us to. God will punish them! That sort of takes a load of responsibility from the police and labor ministry!

He asks me how much money I got paid, and how long I had worked for the ELC.

I wonder why Na In Ha had banged on the toilet door, worrying about whether I had gone, when the whole day he did nothing, and then simply told me to go. Why did they want to keep me there all day? Did Charles and his goons run after me after I had left? Was Na In Ha worried that they were going to attack me?

Oo speaks in monologues. I learn’t that anything I add to his speeches is irrelevant. I remember the first time he spoke at me on the mobile, and I had given the phone to some children on the street to talk to him for a few minutes, and when I got the phone back he had still been raving on. Oo tells me that ”the ELC and the Director, are bad people”.I asked him what will happen if my stuff has been damaged or stolen. He doesn’t respond. He merely continues his monologue.

12:10am

I am watching a really entertaining movie on Oos big-wide screen cable t.v. The labor Ministry call and ask me why I am not there. I didn’t bother going on time, given that every time I have been there they have done nothing but waste my time, and the film was really good. I figure they will call me if and when An Ouk Souk turns up. They call. I ask whether the Director is there. I’m not going to wait all day again for them to arrive. I say I will be there in 10 minutes. I am really nervous and scared. Will the goons be waiting for me? What will happen? They have kept me waiting weeks, and totally fucked me around. How dare they act so sanctimonious and self-righteous, calling me and asking why I was not there. I got to watch futurama this morning on cable. Cool.

12:15am

O.K. Lets go. I decide to leave my notes in the drawer in the room I had slept in, for safe keeping.

Back at the Ministry of Labor

I realise now that my things were never in the apartment. Where will they be, and how will they be packed?

12:30am

I arrive at the Labor Ministry. Na In Ha is at “lunchy”. Today it’s warm in here, or am I just healthier? I will wait until 1pm. and then go. I am not waiting all day again, and again, and again. An ouk souk was apparently here, but left after waiting 30minutes. I have waited whole days for her, but she can go after 30minutes. She’s not here.

12:35am

Na In Ha is back. He walks off, smiling, obviously amused and happy with himself, or is it a conspiratorial smile? I will wait no more than 90 minutes. My case is so simple. Was An ouk souk actually here? They apparently went to lunch, and will be back at 1:30pm. They could have told me to come until 1:30 pm on the phone. They are playing with me. They have absolutely no respect.

12:50pm

Out of the wind the sun is strong and warm.

1:20pm

The men play soccer-volleyball during 'lunchy', and the females play shuttle cock. They do not play together. When the wind dies down and the sun is out, it is actually hot again. I sit in the park. I consider that there is lots of vacant space in Korea, and that townhouses cover much more land than the 25 storey apartment blocks do. They could therefore keep doubling their population. But whether that land is suitably stable for apartment blocks?

Oo told me that his apartment was standard for Korea, but I doubt it. It was very big, and in the centre of all the nice new modern government complexes. Oo says I can cook noodles or make coffee whenever I want to. His English is terrible, and he may be really thick, but maybe his heart is good. He has lied to me at least twice, and I have forgiven him twice. I originally tried to file charges against him, but didn’t, after Nam Suk Hyun told me that Oo had just made a mistake, and felt bad now. I didn’t want to do anything to hurt anyone. I just wanted the truth. Oo had admitted to Nam Suk Hyun that he had lied to me. Maybe Oo now understands my situation, and believes me. Maybe he realises that An Ouk Souk had lied to him, or tried to use him. Maybe he just wants to cash in on a headhunters fee for recruiting me for another school. Maybe he wants to improve his English. Maybe he will kick me out.

The trees, from above, are incredibly beautiful crimson sunbursts, like fire burning from green to crimson. The trees are all young, and have been planted along all the streets in town. The other, older, oaks, are yellow, and not so beautiful. But together, the trees create a lovely perspective when you look down the street.

I email one guy on the internet about a possible job. Mr Oo says I can use the internet to look for a new job, so I do. The guy is Australian, and eloquently describes how he managed to find a teacher for his school, and the owners were very happy, until they asked for a picture and discovered that he was black, and then refused. Sort of ironic, Asians being racist against black skinned people! Typical hypocrisy I suppose.

Another agency reflected my views on Korea, stating clearly that teachers must demand very specific and detailed contracts, because School Directors are Bastards in Korea, and treat their teachers horrifically. I wonder why, after spending thousands of dollars on recruiters, and having so much trouble finding teachers, they don’t just treat them fairly and reasonably. What is it about Hagwon Directors?

In the Labor Ministry building in Daejon

1:15pm

Oo and the Director-beast are upstairs. There are loud demonstrations going on somewhere near here, but I can’t see any people, just hear them. The sun is lovely. It is just a little too warm. At least it is good for my cough and congestion. Oo is not friendly to me. I showed him the Tigger his son had bought me. So it’s a plot? Oo had been helping them to get me to accept being blackmailed, and not to insist on anything being investigated. His promises of help were probably also lies. Na In Ha motions for me to sit next to the beast-director. He must be fucking mad. I heard the word ‘interpol’. Will Nam Suk Hyun harass me? Na In Ha is looking at the screen. The beast always makes the same gutteral sounds before he says anything.

Charles’s Boss, from the Human Resource Bank, is here. Why? No-one has asked me anything yet. Why are we all here? This is a simple dispute. Anything that is not hard proof should be irrelevant. Na In Ha has investigated nothing. He has not asked Julia or Melissa anything. I can’t defend myself. What is Oo doing here? Trying to save face? Charles and his boss are laughing. Oo says that I lied to him. “Why didn’t you give the director your passport?”

This is high idiocy. He tells me that the police in Taegu gave me 100,000won. That’s not true. Oo wouldn’t give me back the card with the schools phone number. He only has to ask Julia and Melissa and they would tell him I did give them my passport twice, and the Director did nothing with it. It is against Australian law to let someone have your passport. Oo tells me that I am lieing.

Oo is playing his idiot game. Somehow now by asserting something about me he knows is not true he feels he can absolve himself of responsibility. If he really thinks he can reconcile his behaviour with his religious beliefs, which he constantly emphasises, then he is a fucking deluded lunatic. Which he is. Na In Ha says he won’t investigate. Oo says he “can’t help me any longer”.

I have been set up. They are all laughing. I feel stupid that I left my notes at Oo’s, for ‘safe keeping’. Charles and the goons threaten me again. No-one does anything. Charles grabbed me, pushed me, and ripped my jacket trying to force me away from behind the desk where I had sought refuge from the threats of the beast, Charles, and his boss. I young guy luckily stopped Charles from attacking me further. Na In Ha is trying to push me out too. No-one would call the police.

Charles swears “you motherfucker” at me. The beast keeps shadow boxing saying “one on one”. He wants to fight me. Fucking lunatic. Just me against him, the police, immigration, the labor ministry, Charles, His Boss, and all of fucking south korea. Anway, he is too ugly, you never fight someone so ugly. They have nothing to lose! None of the office staff sitting around will help. They’re all laughing. Oo fucking set me up, the prick. One of the workers here angrily tells me to “go”. How can I get help? How do I manage to get out of here without being injured? They won’t let me call the police, or anyone. They are apparently planning something nasty for me. Every-one is in on it. It’s 1:45pm. I don’t have my plane ticket or my German Passport or Personalausweis. How can I fly to Germany? Na In Ha is talking on the phone.

This is really dangerous. Maybe he is calling security to evict me. What then? This is becoming a real nightmare. How can I escape? How could these people be so fucking mad as to expect me to go back to the school with them. It is ineffable to me, that they could even think to say such a fatuous thing to me after everything. They are totally fucked in the head.

2:30pm

I pick up the phone and call. The Australian I get on the phone is talking to the mayor of Ipswich? He believes me that I am in serious trouble, and he is trying to get someone to respond. Did someone actually say “sorry, we can’t help now”? A guy comes over and violently rips the phone out. An older woman in the office is shouting at me. Why won’t anyone help. The guy tries to grab me and pull me out. Why? On the phone they said that they will call back. Will they? They are all still laughing. If no-one comes I am really in trouble. What is their motivation? Hate? We saved them from the communists!

I put the phone back together again, and call everyone who’s number I have, including the Bank manager, and Mi Youn Shin. They say they can’t help me now. Bullshit. They could simply call a taxi for me to pick me up. Mi Youn Shin put some other people on the phone, some Koreans. Why didn’t she help?

This is such a bad dream. The worst possible scenario is coming true. I have to stay here. This is the only contact point I have, if anyone does try to help me. If anyone comes! Why does the middle aged office worker here hate me? I need to contact Oo’s son, to get him to bring my notes to me here. It was a bad choice, to leave them with Oo, for safe-keeping. But then I could never have expected Oo to be such a backstabbing prick. It seems unbelievable that he could be so two faced. His son will be home at 3pm. I hope he is home, and does help me.

Na In Ha lies on the phone about me again. What a lieing prick. The police will probably come and make everything even worse. People here are smiling and laughing.

What is it that they believe about me here? Na In Ha has done nothing at all. Did he call the police? They must all be in this together. But why? There is a loud demonstration outside, some union demonstrating about their conditions. As long as the young women are still in the office I should be o.k. I told Jung Soo Young that they are evil, and that Korea is the most evil place I have ever been. She does know. This is a full scale conspiracy. If no-one comes to help? Will I survive to write up these notes? The last person I was talking to on the phone must have heard how they pulled the handset out of the phone. Will they realise that it is serious?

The demonstrators are right outside the building now. I need to get to somewhere safe, but how? Will the goons be waiting at the train station for me? Will a taxi come if I call? What number? Someone is trying the side door again. Some smiling guy arrives, and they all shake hands with one another. Julia and Melissa suck.

They wouldn’t let me use the phone. Lucky I found this one in the corner, and at least got a chance to call anybody that could or might help me. How long would I have to wait for a taxi? Are the goons waiting outside? Anyone else? Of course the Korean on the phone wouldn’t help. Koreans are evil.

Has anyone called here about me? If Na In Ha lies and tells them that I have left, will they believe him? No-one up to now has asked to speak to me, they have merely talked to the Koreans involved. This is not how I want to die! It’s not even worth being injured for. The Guy who had stopped Charles from attacking me further won’t help. Oo is mad! Someone will call this phone, and someone here will just lie. They’re evil. This is how wars, terrorism, and hate grow. Again they tell me to go home. They know I have no home.

The Director is mad. He expects me to go to the school with him to pick up my things. Charles got really aggressive, grabbing me so forcefully that he ripped my nylon jacket. Lucky it is slippery nylon so he couldn’t really get a good grip. If no-one comes then I will have to escape through the kitchen window downstairs, and hope no-one realises and follows me. I will try to stop a taxi, if I am lucky.

3:25pm

Soon the young female workers will leave. They will call, and Charles and his goons will come back. Not one Korean, outside of the Professor of Tourism at Kumi City, has really helped me, or will help. The embassy had asked for so many details. They didn’t seem to be interested in me as a person, just protocol.

At any moment someone could have grabbed the phone from my hand and I would not have had a chance to tell them where I was. It was really frustrating knowing any minute the line would go dead, and the Embassy officials were wasting the precious opportunity asking for irrelevant details. How dare they leave me in the end with a Korean on the phone. Will the Australian Guy I spoke to help? He seemed genuine, and seemed to comprehend the danger I am in. He is the only one who had any sense of the urgency of the matter, of the potential danger I was in. But he had been replaced on the phone by a Korean woman, who displayed the typical Korean response. The phone I have been using rang, but someone else picked it up before I could. If it was for me,then they are being lied to.

All my notes for my other book and music are in the apartment. I’m sure the phone call was for me. If anyone who calls does not insist on speaking to me then they are either stupid, naïve, or not genuine. I can’t risk running over and speaking. Lucky I was organised, or I would have had no chance. Lucky I had that list of phone numbers. I still don’t know, and I’m not confident, whether anyone will actually help. If I do get out, will anyone publish my story?

Will Koreans in other countries attack or threaten me? The Embassy had asked me for my next of kin! Shit! Who to send the body to! I’m running out of water, but I can’t risk moving from her to the water cooler. I have absolutely no idea what to do. Charles had attacked me and only one person had stopped him. I couldn’t do anything, as anything I did would backfire on me. It’s not worth going to jail for, and they’d love an excuse to beat me up.

I can’t risk going to the toilet. The Koreans here would lock me out, and no-one would help me, and the three men here, though hardly what one could call men, rather thugs and liars, would be able to get away with anything. They know it. The Australian had mentioned the mayor of Ipswich!

Why wouldn’t Mi Youn Shin help me? She had witnessed the police lieing to her. Is she worried about her own safety? I couldn’t blame her. I have experienced myself how totally corrupt the officials and police here are. Oo had said that he would speak to the embassy. Why wouldn’t they let me call the embassy from here? The Director wanted to fight me,”one on one” he said. Yeh, me one, against the Director-beast, Charles, his boss, the beast-director himself, and the whole of Korea. What brave little thugs they are. Charlie said “I never lose”. Of course not. He knows how corrupt his police and immigration and Labor Ministry are. So it has obviously happened before, that is why he was always so confident.

I offered to leave 3 days ago, but they wouldn’t give me my things. Why not? What do they have planned for me? The embassy will be closed tomorrow. I wonder what international agreements are in place. Was it worth being assertive and trying to get some justice? First I have to see the outcome. “This is not your home”, they tell me. How true. It’s almost 4pm. I called at 2pm. They are laughing again. Try to be calm. If I fight it will be worse. I can’t possibly win. I feel totally helpless. I am crouching on the floor, behind one of the office desks, pretending to be thinking, to be making notes and plans, when I am totally at a loss as to what I can possibly do. I can't let them see that. It would embolden them. I will only fight trying to escape. The embassy know about me already. Soon it will become even more dangerous, as the office workers are leaving. I couldn’t risk going to the toilet, so I piss in one of the water bottles I have in my bag, as I crouch behind the table.

Do I have any chance of getting my notes back? They told Oo that I wouldn’t give them my passport, so that they couldn’t get a visa for me. Oo asks me “Why wouldn’t you give them your passport?”. I tell him that Julia and Melissa both witnessed me giving An Ouk Souk my passport. I had made a point of drawing their attention to the fact that I was giving her my passport, in case I didn’t get it back, and because she had claimed before that I wouldn’t give it to her, when in fact she had it for over a week with all my other documents, and I had asked for them back, as she had no right to keep them. Oo was not the slightest bit interested. I got the business card from the school out, so he could call Melissa and Julia now, to verify what I had told him. He grabbed the card out of my hand, and gave it to An Ouk Souk.

Now it was 100% clear that he was colluding with them all along. He just used any pretense to pretend that he had believed me, but now An Ouk Souk had 'proved' I was lieing to him. His little act was so transparent, like all of their games, that I wonder how arrogant they are to think I am so stupid, that anyone could be so stupid. He’s evil. The little mad Christian hypocrite. Like Oo Key One in Kumi. Why do they bother going to church, and talking about god, and love. I called The attorney’s number, and swear that it was Hyun Joon Lee, though he pretended to be someone else, and told me that Mr Lee was not there.

I called the bank manager, whose card I happen to have. He was nice when I had talked to him at the bank. He agreed that my situation sounded dangerous, but wouldn’t help me. He has called back. They’re talking and laughing. He told me that he may finish work at 7pm, but didn’t know for sure when he would be free. I tell him that I am in real danger, and he agreed. But he wouldn’t send a taxi to pick me up. So not one Korean will help. I remember how Oo had referred to Ghandi, and that Ghandi had gotten his ideas from another guy, the guy who had supposedly described Korea as “the light of the world”.

Charles called me a “motherfucker”. He says something to someone about a “visa”. Why do Koreans waste so much time talking about me, and never to me. Of course I am not referring to the ones who don’t understand English, but all those who do, and have been involved in my story. Na In Ha won’t let me use the phone. What does ‘Honju’ mean? I have run out of paper. Na In Ha is talking to someone again about “Visa”, and laughing. Why are people just talking to other people here, and not coming to help me?

6pm

Thank Godot the Australian Embassy are sending a car to pick me up. I hope this is true! They let me make coffee. The angry young man comes over to see what I am doing. I am writing. I hope they don’t steal my notes from me. Luckily Oos son answered the phone when I called, and brought the notes over to me. Lucky at least one Korean I have met here is honest and genuine. He told me that he didn’t like or trust the officials in Daejon either. I give him my email address. On the phone the embassy had asked me why I had not done what they had told me the first time I spoke with them, which I remember was to just leave. I didn’t have my ticket, any clothing, or any of my possessions. The police had promised to help me, and I had had no reason to doubt that the labor ministry would investigate my claims. I had no idea how corrupt Korean officials are, or how criminal their police are. The embassy should have warned me. In fact, the embassy should warn all Australians not to go to Korea to work, and to warn them of the corruption they would experience if they ever got into a conflict with a Korean.

The embassy had also told me that they couldn’t help. I ask Na In Ha for an official investigation report and judgement, and for a copy of my original complaint. He did nothing. Further, he had nothing from the schoolin writing at all. I have never been given a formal notice of termination. They will just claim that ‘officially’, I broke the contract, and just left.

I really hope that the embassy car is really coming, and this is not some trick. Not one Korean has actually helped me, and no-one here I have called takes me seriously or will help me. If the Embassy car does not come then I am done for. I will make sure to check the drivers credentials, and stay calm.

I remember the first time the police took me to some sort of police headquarters and left me there, telling me that the police there would sort out my problem. After lots of waiting and confusion I was driven in a police car to the Labor office in Daejon. The police just left me there. I had had no idea of where I was or how I would get back to my apartment. Initially no-one from the Labor office would help me at all. I insisted, and eventually they got someone to translate for me.

7:45pm

They pulled the phone line out of the phone while I was talking to my mother, through Canberra. They were really angry at me. I told them the phone call cost them nothing. But that is not what they are worried about.

My brother in Sydney told me that the Australian Federal Police had been convinced by the Korean Police that I needed psychiatric treatment. He says that they asked for my mother to send them 100 dollars a day to pay to have me locked up in a psychiatric hospital. My brother says to be careful that they take me to a hotel, and not to a hospital. If they can claim that I am crazy, then no-one will have to investigate my claims of conspiracy, collusion, and criminal behaviour. If the car doesn’t come, then I will have to somehow get to the train, and to the airport, and get a new ticket issued. Was Oo coming? Hopefully he brings all my stuff.

One of the office workers had tried to grab my list of telephone numbers out of my hand. It’s lucky I had all the phone numbers written down. I just have to pray that the embassy car does come, and that my mother and brother were overexcited and had exaggerated the story about the psychiatric hospital.

8pm

The water in the water cooler tastes strange. I hope it’s not just tap water. If my brother is right, then who knows what they may have put in the water. I go to the toilet, and Na In Ha tells me to leave my bag. Why?

In the YMCA hotel in Seoul

November 10, 2001

9pm

This is the crappiest room I have ever had in Korea, and the most expensive, although apparently the cheapest in the city. If ever you come to Seoul, get on a train for a few dollars and travel out of the city. The motels are heaps cheaper and much better. They have no toothbrush even. Not even a water bubbler. The drinks in the bar fridge are covered in dust. The heater didn’t work in the night. During the day I couldn’t turn it off, it had no control, and the room was stinking hot. At night I froze. I hope they don’t charge for the drinks in the fridge. In the morning I found a bubbler outside in the hall. The water pressure was so low it was almost impossible to use. I write a list of all the things they stole from me. They stole my Alesis SR16 16bit Drum computer, my Braun shaver, my guitar tuner, my brand new Nokia Mobile phone (which will be useless to them as it operates on a different system to that in Korea), my battery charger and batteries, and the notes I had been writing for various projects. They have stolen lots of things of value to me, like a silver ring of great sentimental value, and my favourite spoon, all my pens and materials, and all my toiletries.

I recall the night before, when the car had picked me up. Earlier someone had delivered some of my things, and I had to pack them. The embassy had told me that the driver would take me to the school to pick my things up. They had stated clearly that I was to stay in the car, that the driver would pick my things up from the school. When the car got here, Na In Ha came with us to show the driver the way. The Director was there, and the driver told me I had to go into the school to identify my things. I told him that the embassy had explicity told me to stay in the car. The driver would not give in. He and Na In Ha told me I was safe with them, and that I had to go into the school to identify and collect my things. This made little sense, but I had not choice, as usual. Either go along with their stupid ideas and hope for the best, or give up hope. So I went up the stairs to the school.

They are stark raving bonkers totally fucking mad. They take me to my workdesk, and the fucking mad-man Director indicates for me to take my things. The table is absolutely vacant of anything. There is absolutely nothing on the absolutely empty desk.

He is fucking mad. What the fuck did they bring me here for? To look at an empty table? I recall that Na In Ha and the driver had been talking. I had asked the driver to refrain from talking to Na In Ha, as he was here to pick me up, to help me, and that it was rude to talk about me in Korean. I reminded him that he worked for my government, and that his employer had asked him to come a long way to get me, and that there must be a reason for this. The driver, in that totally unbelievable fatuous manner these Koreans have, this total arrogant lack of any respect for foreigners, told me that I "should trust Na In Ha".

I wonder what was going on in this mans head. He had been sent over 2 hours drive to pick me up. What did he think the reason for that might be? And after we come back from the school, after viewing the empty desk, I ask him whether it didn’t seem a little absurd to him, to drag us over one hours drive across the city to look at an empty desk? But of course he didn’t respond. I just don't get it. Why get us to drive all that way? Why not just say that there is nothing to pick up? Why on earth do they bother with such games? The look on the Directors face was unbearably stupid. Does showing someone an empty desk demonstrate anything except how wildly insane he is? And the fact that no-one else here appeared to see how insane the whole thing was! So Charles and co are not just liars, they are simple petty thieves.

At least this puts the seal on the whole thing. They are simply thieves. Nothing complicated to consider. They simply steal from their employees, don’t pay them their wages, and intimidate them to leave. They are nothing more than cheap con men and thieves. And the corrupt officials are criminals to.

The police I speak to later in Germany joke that the police and labor ministry and immigration probably took a share of my unpaid wages and stolen property. Based on my experiences in Korea, I see know doubt to question this opinion.

I would recommend that no-one go to Korea for any reason. My experience is that when any conflict arises between a foreigner and a Korean, that every Korean will do whatever is in their power to deny the foreigner justice. Worse than that, they will try to make you think everyone is really nice, and totally fuck you around for as long as you keep seeking any justice.

I can imagine what would happen if a tourist was run over at a pedestrian crossing by a car running a red light. Car drivers in Korea have no respect for pedestrians. I once attempted to cross at a pedestrian crossing. The oncoming car had a lot of time to see me, and to see that I was crossing the road. It was a woman even. She did not make the slightest effort to slow down at all. If I had not jumped back, she would have simply run over me. I saw her again in the car park, and she just laughed at me. It is impossible to catch your breath on the street.

If you take the risk of walking anywhere, which Koreans themselves rarely do, you will have to endure the constant fragrant attacks of pollution, sewerage, and rotting garbage.

I wonder how many pedestrians are run over every year.

I wonder how many foreigners have ever gotten justice in Korea.

My last morning in Korea

November 11, 2001The official from the Embassy arrives, and pays the hotel bill, and about four Australian dollars for every tiny little dirty can I drank. (My mother later repays this money to the embassy official). This is a total ripoff. I give her my Korean mobile phone, as it will be of no use to me, and maybe someone else can use it. We go downstairs to the bus stop,and she gives me enough money to pay for the Bus. She gives me her business card. I am finally on my way to the airport, and out of Korea.

As I am finally leaving on the bus to the airport, I look out across the tidal flats, at the bright crimson weed that covers large areas of it.

At the airport, as we are boarding, the stewardess says “GO”. So the conspiracy is total, I joke to myself.

List of stolen items

Brand New Nokia mobile phone with charger
Silver Mag lite with rechargeable batteries and charger
Braun electric shaver
Alesis SR16 16bit Electronic Drum Computer
All my personal toiletries
All my personal cooking items, cups, spoon
My food and drink
My collection of pens
A silver ring
My notes for a book and some songs
Any possible hope of justice in South Korea
Electronic guitar tuner
My pillows etc
Travel alarm clock

A message for the Korean Government. Don’t you ever consider the damage done to Korea’s reputation by the sort of people I came into contact with? How many foreigners leave Korea thinking the country is abysmally and hopelessly corrupt and criminal?

I would recommend that an independent agency be set up. All Directors would have to lodge bonds covering airfares and a few months salary, to be paid to teachers when their Directors break their contracts.

It is clear to me now why Charles never admitted to being a Recruiter. Recruiters have such a bad reputation in Korea that no-one trusts them. So be wary of any one claiming to be merely helping a school, or who says they are a friend or teacher there. Charles claimed that the Human Resource Bank was an independent consulting agency that would audit the school and solve any problems that arose. This is bullshit. They are merely in it for the money and will screw over anyone any way they can, and they can.

I did not find one government official in Korea who was not corrupt. You can decide for yourself. The document you have just read is mostly a transcription of notes that I kept over the last two weeks of my ‘Korean Experience’. I started keeping them as a record. I wanted to be sure that there was no misunderstanding. I didn’t believe what was happening myself.

I stayed because I was too damn curious as to what they would do. I recommend to you, that if you do decide to go to Korea, and you are unlucky enough to discover the two faces of Koreans, that you cut your losses and get out. You have absolutely no chance of winning in a dispute with a Korean. Get out, and tell as many people as you can about your experiences.

This will eventually put pressure on the Koreans to change.

At all times I wanted my experience of Korea to be a positive one. I constantly deluded myself that this story would have a happy ending. Don’t delude yourself in the same way. It is hard to reconcile the negative face of Korea with the positive one, without having experienced both sides fully. You make up your own mind. If you go there and never get involved in any sort of conflict with the Koreans, then you will tell your friends about the wonderfully friendly and charming Koreans. Only when there is any conflict of interests, will you experience how suddenly these friendly charming people turn into unscrupulous, conniving, corrupt and nasty criminals.

Of course I would love to hear their side of the story. I would love for them to be honest and explain their behaviour. But that would be totally naïve. They would present their charming masks, and make small gestures, and give the impression that it was all a misunderstanding.

As things developed, I had genuinely thought that this must have been the case. I think, however, that the events and quotes speak for themselves.

Why did I write this up? Because the truth has to be said. People should be warned. Because I am fed up hearing from some naïve people that they couldn’t believe me, that I must have done something to deserve such treatment, that I must be failing to tell the whole story. Well what you have read is the whole story.

I reflect on how often I have heard in Korea, that “My boss is an honest man”, of how nice people are, and how I must have misunderstood. BULLSHIT. It is really irritating to be constantly invalidated by people. No one here wants my story to be true. Worse, they want me to believe none of it actually took place. They want everyone to think that Koreans are so nice and honest.

I would be happy for the opportunity to face my Korean conspirators in a court of law, and to have everything investigated.

In a court of law in a country that has respect for its laws.

Post-script: in the meantime I have had responses to this story with accounts of similarly atrocious treatment of english teachers in Korea. I would be happy to collate such stories if you have them.

Someone hacked into my webpage and infected the original of this web-page with a virus which destroyed much of it. I have replaced that infected copy with a back-up copy. I have kept the original for later analysis. I have also received a large number of emails containing viruses. I assume that Charles Kang or one of his associates responsible for infecting my web-page, and seeking to do more damage with newer viruses.

Players and locations

Oo Key One. Owner, Cambridge Language School, Kumi. 257 1929.

Don ………. Recruiter for Oo Key One, Cambridge Language School, Kumi.

Mr Kim. Student. General Manager at LG-Phillips, Kumi (lives in Taegu)

An, Ouk Souk, Assistant Director, Jungchul English School, Daejon. 042 274 0508 mobile 019 835 6023.

Melissa and Julia. Korean English Teachers, Jungchul English School. Daejon.

Mr Oo, Police Officer from Chung Nam District Police Agency in Daejon. 042 257 1929.

Nam Suk Hyun Suk Hyun. Inspector, Chung-Nam Police Agency, Daejon.

Mi Youn Shin.mobile 016 472 5456, young woman.Witness, Daejon.

Charles Kang: RECRUITER for Human Resource Bank, Daejon. 042 361 1670 mobile 011 9403 1670

Na In Ha. 042 480 6297. Labor Ministry Investigator, Daejon.

Jung Soo Young. 042 480 6317. Lovely young woman at the Labor Ministry in Daejon who translated for Na In Ha.

Hyonjoo Lee. Attorney at Law. Daejon. 042 472 3197.

The Director of Immigration in Daejon.

Korean Interpol 02 748 4114?

Korean Tourism Interpreter Service 1330.

Korean National Police Agency? 02 313 0842.

Podori ‘new intelligent people’. Big ears to listen. Big eyes to see. Big head to think. Big heart to care. Symbol of kindness and fairness. Mascot of the Chung Nam Police Agency. Ironic.

Police officers at Yong un Dong Police Box, including Park.

112 Police Emergency number.

Professor of Tourism at Kumi City University.

Jae Soon Choi. Translator. Taejon Christian International School. 042 633 2633. Witness. Translator at Chung Nam District Police Agency the second time Nam Suk Hyun filed my complaint, or didn't.


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