Introduction:
Korean school owners have Hagwon Associations across Korea. It is known that at their meetings they receive advice from their legal people on ways to 'bend,' 'manipulate,' and even 'break' some laws that would otherwise give foreigner's protection. As noted in the Deceptive Practices pages, this usually results in the following situations that unscrupulous school owners will devise:-

i) By wrongfully dismissing the foreign teacher, they know that Immigration will only grant a 10 day period to stay in Korea following the dismissal. This makes it very difficult for the foreign teacher to take any serious action: Thus problems relating to final pays, non payment of wages, wrongful deductions from the last pay, becomes exacerbated.

ii) By refusing to give a Letter of Release, the school directors are able to effectively hide their wrong doing by preventing the teacher from remaining in Korea and taking some form of legal action against the school owner.

iii) To list all schools that do this would run into the multiple hundreds.

iv) Identifying who these employers are only becomes possible once they implement the above, and that is usually at the final moments of a contract. By then the wronged teacher is leaving Korea, the victim of the hagwons / employers wrong doing. Remember, if you are dismissed, you can ask Immigration for up to 4 weeks extra to stay in the country (but it is wise to show them a departure ticket) to qualify for that time extension.

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