EFL Law

Working in Korea is fraught with challenges. There are many times when we’re pretty sure that we’re being ripped off or taken advantage of. Other times, simple lack of language skills can lead to problems. There are more shifty hagwons out there than Hubble could discover, and Korean law isn’t the law of our home countries.

Recently two things have opened my eyes. One was that my most recent job attempted to file my taxes, and discovered that there was no tax history of me working in the country. That was 4 years of jobs, including one major university, who took taxes off my salary, and then ‘forgot’ to pay them to the government. Quick math tells me that around five grand of my money was stolen, and I was blind.

The second was friends were leaving the country, I casually mentioned ‘pension’ and my friend replied “Aussies don’t get their pension”. 10 minutes of research, and we discovered that retroactively, all Australians can receive their pension pay-out when they leave. That’s netted a few of my friends thousands of dollars.

There is a one stop answer to these problems, and it is NOT a Korean government page. The site is called EFL Law and it has the answer to all of your questions. Included on the site is the photo by photo tour of the ‘visa run’ in Fukuoka (though I’d recommend rollerblades) to contract negotiations. I’ve known people who have used these contract samples to win themselves better accomodation, salaries and vacations.

Ignorance is not a defence, but knowledge is a brilliant offense. I highly recommend that you become familiar with their site, if I’d known 5 years ago, I’d have a nice car to go along with my motorbike.