How a Teacher Found Something Meaningful to Do in Korea

By: Malcolm Trevena | Nov. 08, 2008
Photo: Ronny Kick

malcolm@meaningfulvolunteer.org

 

I hated Korea when I first got here. I really did.

 

I had just arrived from the Philippines with a backpack on my back, a front-pack on my front and — rather unusually some business suits in zip lock bags draped over one arm. I had arrived a day earlier than expected and figured it would be good manners to ring my recruiter and tell him where I was before I found a quiet spot to settle down for the night. He insisted that he came right away to pick me up from the airport despite the ungodly hour ("Look for the unshaven guy outside McDonalds").

 

We were soon whisking away from Incheon airport in his shiny black Hyundai. I wasn't so naive as to think of South Korea as a poor country I was here earning the big bucks as a migrant worker after all but I kept on asking him questions about the poverty levels here. And he kept on not answering and responding with Koreans-as-workaholics type answers. This was a sign of things to come.

 

My hagwon put me up in a "Love Motel" for my first couple of nights. It (the love motel...) had two channels of twenty-four hour porn, a circular shaped bed and a vending machine in the corner that contained some rather odd-shaped devices that surely required some in-depth knowledge of human anatomy to operate. My teaching training consisted of watching classes for a couple of days, the proverbial slap on the bum and then sent off into my first class.

 

I soon figured out that my job wasn't to teach, but to babysit and well look like a white guy, which is something I excel at. It seemed that my Hagwon required native speakers of English to be present to keep the parents happy, but didn't actually require them to teach. What was the point of all this? How was this adding meaning to my life? I became very disillusioned.

 

It was especially frustrating because I had just started to find some meaning in my life. How did I find this meaning? (Imagine the screen goes all wobbly at this point as we go back into the past.)

 

I had been working for about ten years in the I.T. industry and by all accounts had been quite successful. I was in charge of a development division, had won national innovation awards and people seemed to enjoy throwing money at me. Something was amiss though. A combination of stress, demons from the past and an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, saw me have a complete mental breakdown. I took time off work, but things just went from bad to worse. I ended up in a psychiatric hospital for five months.

 

When you're in a place like that you start to question everything. I questioned my faith in God (which eventually dissolved away to nothing...), my marriage (which sadly ended) and just what the hell I was doing with my life. My life was my job, and the better I was at my job, the more people I put out of work. That starts to mess with one's head.

 

Almost on a whim I decided to head off to the Philippines for a six-month volunteer teacher stint. There was no great altruistic reason. I knew I liked teaching and I knew I liked living in a community environment. It seemed the perfect place for me to reassess my life. I ended up have a fantastic time. The dark clouds encircling my head began to lift and I started smiling again. I liked it so much that I wanted more and promptly signed up for a refugee program in Ghana and community outreach in Uganda.

 

I made some great friends and had some good times in Ghana, but did nothing constructive that would decrease the misery of the people there. The only mildly useful thing I did was to shout at a very fat, corrupt African man for an hour. Uganda wasn't much better. While the NGO (non-governmental organization) I was involved with was refreshingly uncorrupted, it was also quite useless. The made promise after promise to village after village with their herd of Bazungus (white people) in tow and failed to actually deliver anything.

 

Disillusionment set in and I started to question what meaningful volunteerism actually was. I had a great time in the Philippines, but all that I actually accomplished was to replace an existing Filipino teacher for six months. In Ghana, I propped up a corrupt NGO with my volunteer fees and in Uganda I was a token white person. I knew it all sounded quite sexy ("Check out these pics of me volunteering at a refugee camp. My poo must be white and not smell"), but it wasn't meaningful.

 

I decided to branch off and do my own things. I stumbled onto a technique of converting recycled poster paper into paper beads that can be used to make jewelry. They were cheap to make, and had a nice recycling vibe about them. I returned to the villages of empty promise, formed women's groups and taught the ladies how to make the paper beads. Five months later, I established an NGO called Grassroots Uganda and the money was flowing back to the ladies, many of whom are HIV+ and live in the war torn north.

 

I had found something meaningful to do in Africa and it felt good.

 

 

On the down side though, Africa had left me financially ruined and I had to get a "real" job. That job turned out to be working in a stoopid little Hagwon in Korea. And that is why I hated Korea when I first arrived. I longed to be back in Africa or the Philippines and working hard along the downtrodden. Instead I was little more than a trained monkey to keep kids amused for half hour chunks.

 

I had to find something meaningful to do here in Korea to avoid sinking in the mire of poor mental health again. I sent out some emails, did some research and even put up some posters at the local university. All came to naught. It was very frustrating.

 

I learnt about a protest outside the Burmese embassy in Seoul that was to protest against the Burmese government's crackdown on pro-democracy monks. I knew nothing about Burma, didn't have a clue who Aung San Suu Kyi was, but it did bring back memories of protests in Uganda and tear gas canisters landing outside my home, so I headed on out to the protest. The protest was low key. Some riot police did turn up, but their batons remained sheathed and there was no tear gas to cry about.

 

The big plus for me was the people I met. Some had done Peace Corps work in Africa, some were protest junkies, and all were concerned about human rights issues. They were a breath of fresh air in a stagnant Korea.

 

This led to my involvement in the 2008 production of the Vagina Monologues. They wouldn't let me act something about lacking suitable equipment but I like to think that I was an integral part to the success of the production. My previous I.T. skills saw me become the tech guy and design the website, posters, flyers, DVDs and anything else they threw at me. Being involved with such a successful production was great. The gloom I felt in Korea started to lift.

 

Many of the Vagina Monologue volunteers were involved in the House of Sharing here in Korea and it seemed like the next logical thing to do. The House of Sharing is a museum and home to seven elderly ladies, who were victims of systemized sexual slavery at the hands of the Japanese military during World War II. The halmoni (respectful term for grandmother) are fighting hard to get the Japanese government to admit their involvement and to pay them compensation. It is a worthy cause and one that I was happy to throw my weight behind. I lead ex-pat tours to the house every three weeks or so. The tours are designed to educate people about the issue as well as to celebrate all the wonderful halmoni at the house.

 

It is going to be a sad and happy day when I leave Korea. Sad, because I actually quite like the place now! I have found a community both Korean and expat that shares my ideas. And happy, because as this chapter closes of my life, another opens. I am heading back to the Philippines to launch my little baby: Meaningful Volunteer, a 100% non-profit volunteer placement organization. I hope to help empower developing communities as well as give volunteers meaningful experiences.

 

My path to meaningful activities here in Korea was somewhat circuitous, but yours doesn't have to be. Here are three ways you can get involved. December the 10th is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and coincidently the same day that the halmoni stage their weekly protest outside the Japanese embassy. There is usually a turnout of a hundred or so people, but we're hoping for five hundred for the 10th. Why not come along and make a sound for human rights? And come along to the House of Sharing while you're at it. Also, keep an eye out for Rubber Seoul: a massive fundraiser in Hongdae spread across multiple venues to raise money for victims of HIV in Africa.

 

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