Reading Town – Gangnam Daechi 1: Daechi-dong, Seoul

The comment from 28th December sums it up. Do not go to this school, the boss will ruin your time in Korea. Clearly unstable, every decision he makes merely makes the place worse to work in and makes no improvements to anything. How he is in the postition to run a school is a mystery to me. Absolutely no integrity, false promises and all the damaging effects of a ‘ruthless’ businessman with none of the skills or drive to actually make anything work.
TELL EVERYONE! Do not come to this terrible place!

Though the comments above suggest otherwise, Reading Town is actually a GREAT place to work. I’ve worked at Reading Town for two years [including 10 months at this Reading Town in Daechi, where I am now], and have nothing but positive things to say about the place. These reviews are misleading.

There are managers at the school – four of them – who report to Mr Kim. In 10 months of working for him, I’ve never had a single problem. He pays on time every month, paid for my direct flights to & from Korea, covered my Visa run to Japan in its entirety (sweet hotel, too!), and didn’t hesitate to give me advanced pay in cash while I was sorting out my Korean bank account. He also treats the 20+ staff to dinner when foreign teachers leave or sometimes when new teachers come.

The responsibilities for the teachers are minimal – we’re definitely not overloaded. We only actually teach about 5-6 hours out of a 8-hr workday. The syllabus is ready to go and the curriculum is easy. Compared with the workload at some other hagwons, it’s a piece of cake. Yes, we do have to work 3.5 hours ONE Saturday a month. It’s a drag to give up your Saturday but you’re basically just watching kids write book reports. (definitely not as labor-intensive as it sounds!)

The part about the withheld bonuses is unfortunately true. Teachers were still paid in full for that month, but weren’t paid anything extra, as promised. This obviously created some distrust, but it’s a completely isolated event. Since then, Mr Kim hasn’t reneged on any promises. And he’s given new teachers pension & healthcare.

I guess every school has it’s pros/cons ….It’s just a shame that there’s more emphasis on the one or two bad things about this school instead of the hundreds of good.

It really is a great place to work.

After hearing that my ex-school was getting a panning on here from an ex-co-worker I recently wrote on this board to share my Reading Town experience, however for some reason my message was erased almost immediately. Anyhow, I must say I had a great time working at Reading Town. I had heard about some of the issues mentioned above with Mr. Kim (although I hadn’t heard about the immediately above comment about the office relationships). From what I’ve heard from the people who were there before me: things were at one time a bit of a mess-a time from which, I think a lot of the negative comments derive from. Those troubled times are very much a thing of the past: Mr. Kim is a distant figure you never really see as there is an excellent manager and supervisor in place. I found Reading Town a very pleasant working environment, and didn’t experience any of the problems listed above: I was always paid on time, I had great co-workers who were very helpful, welcoming and friendly, and great students-many of whom had a very good grasp of the English language (several of the students have spent time living abroad). There was no issues with professionalism as perhaps suggested above.

It’s true that Reading Town had some problems in the past, but nowadays, with the new management team in place it’s a really good place to work.

I signed with readingtown in April, a month or two before five teachers left, most of who commented above I guess. Four new teachers replaced them in June.

One did a midnight run last month. I planned to leave too, and honestly, Mr. Kim was somewhat reasonable about it. I got paid for what I worked and I thought he was fair. It’s a shame he didn’t display his reasonable side a bit more before. I found myself a bit too easily encouraged by a coworker, we’ll call him The Fish [see below] and his repeated ‘They will screw you over. You don’t owe them anything. Just leave. Don’t say anything to anyone. They don’t have any loyalty to you’ etc. Odd then he should decide to tell them himself, in the end. Which brings me to my next point…

If you sign with Readingtown you will be working with some nice, decent people. You will be working with some socially challenged people. You will also be working with some people who relish in talking trash about others/each other and making the place toxic. Two of them might be people you speak to if you have a face-to-face interview. If you spoke to a native teacher, it will most likely be a guy who very much enjoys being the big fish in small, stagnant pond. The Fish has recently become champion of RT, even though he fairly often leaves work early via a 2nd floor window, stole furniture from readingtown to furnish his apartment, stole books from the library to sell to WhattheBook in Itaewon [he earns 2.5 a month!], told the manager to ‘f–k off’ several times and made two of the Korean teachers cry by calling them whores, worthless, etc and took huge pride in this as, and I quote, it ‘makes me feel powerful’. One of these Korean teachers, Drama Queen, may be the person you speak to/meet that is not the manager. Her favourite pastime is to slam things around, emit whining sounds and generally act like a 6-year-old even though she’s well into her 30s, so not much sympathy here, but I’d still say calling a coworker a whore, at work, is a bit much. She does seem to have stopped dressing like one though…

Some more facts;
Working national holidays? Yes…that happened, at a weeks notice.
Sporadic new rules such as ‘no leaving the hagwon for breaks for the whole eight hours’? Yes, enjoy your illnesses from the basement teacher’s room. You also must sign a sheet every time you leave even if it’s only for 2 minutes, and clock in and out each day.
Walkouts? Two in six months. One native teacher, one Korean.
Firings? One Korean teacher.
Intensives? Mandatory. After threatening no pay, you do get a very small bonus. I didn’t actually work these as I wasn’t a total idiot when negotiating my contract.
Random demotions/pay slashes? The head foreign teacher, Susie, wanted to finish at the end of her contract, and got her pay cut by 200,000 won immediately.
4 hours a day prep time? Some days maybe even 5!
Vacation? Only on test days and the 3 day summer break. You will never have a full week.
Saturdays? Wouldn’t be SO bad if there was some purpose. 2-3 teachers checking 10 kids book reports over two 90 minute sessions…unnecessary.
Vermin-free work environment? Metaphorically, no. Literally, also no. We twice shared our basement workspace with actual massive rats.

Another point, the positive commenter that wasn’t Susie did exist. He was a friend of Drama Queen who worked there part time for a ONE month after a former teacher quit. She asked him to write it as they were having trouble hiring teachers.

If you like being bored, teaching rubbish material, don’t mind not getting holidays and enjoy working with fake gross people, you’ve come to the right place.

I have had great jobs in Korea, I have had some bad ones. This was the worst, hands down.