u/jung-gaon

TL;DR: New hagwon director arrived, built a paper trail to push me out, used another teacher's feedback to discipline me, praised my performance six weeks before issuing a second warning letter for the same conduct, called a classroom management decision "child abuse" in a recorded meeting, accidentally admitted in writing that my warning letter was issued because I disputed their characterization. Filed MOEL Article 76-2 complaint with 344 pages of documentation. Outcome pending.

So this has been the wildest few months of my life and I need to get it out somewhere. I'm a foreign English teacher in Seoul and I recently went through a full MOEL workplace harassment investigation against my hagwon director. Finding out the result tomorrow so tonight felt like the right time to write this.

Background

I work at a private English academy in Seoul. Been here for under a year. Things were genuinely fine for most of my time there until a new director came in mid-year. Within about six weeks of her arrival things started shifting in ways I couldn't quite put my finger on at first. Lesson plan requirements for me kept changing in contradictory and nitpicky ways. A co-teacher started asking me unusual questions and reporting back to management. I found out CCTV was being used to specifically monitor my preparation time. It started feeling like I was being watched in a way that other teachers weren't.

The First Warning Letter

About two months after the new director arrived I received a formal warning letter. One of the grounds was a parent complaint about a tutoring student, essentially that his English hadn't improved and that I had given negative feedback about his behavior.

Here's the thing: I was on approved vacation when the first class with that student happened. A substitute teacher covered it and wrote the feedback under his own name. That feedback was significantly more negative than anything I had ever written. The parent received it, was upset, and management included it in my warning letter as if I had written it.

I have the feedback logs. It has the substitute's name on it. It's dated during my vacation. My supervisor essentially acknowledged in a recorded conversation that the substitute's feedback was involved. They put it in a legal disciplinary document anyway.

That was the moment I started recording everything.

The January Plot Twist

Here's where it gets genuinely bizarre. About a month after the first warning letter my director called me in and told me my teaching had improved significantly, that multiple supervisors had noticed the change, and that she wanted to renew my contract for the following year. Ten days later she met with me again and discussed specific class assignments and the contract timeline in detail.

I have both of those meetings on recording.

Six weeks after the second meeting I received a second warning letter. The same categories she praised me for in January became the basis for formal discipline in March. She never addressed the January recordings in any official communication. Not once.

The Incident That Set Everything Off

In March I had a confrontation with my director over a classroom management decision involving a difficult student. Without going into too much detail, I briefly separated a disruptive student directly outside the classroom in a supervised common area with multiple adults present. My director called this "child abuse" in a recorded meeting, I argued that it doesn't constitute child abuse by law, and later their own official response to the MOEL case confirmed that the warning letter was justifiably issued because I refused to accept that characterization. Not because of what I did. Because I disputed their description of it.

I consulted a lawyer the same day who confirmed the situation didn't meet the legal threshold for child abuse. The company's own internal investigation later reached the same conclusion.

The director also sent a school-wide notice to all teachers that same afternoon announcing this policy in writing for the very first time, and then issued me a warning letter three days later citing that conduct as a pre-existing policy violation.

Filing the MOEL Complaint

After the second warning letter I filed an Article 76-2 workplace harassment complaint with the MOEL and submitted a formal written rebuttal refusing to sign either warning letter.

By this point I had been documenting everything for months. Timestamped messages, recorded meetings, the feedback sheet with the substitute's name, a supervisory message sent the morning after my warning letter meeting, a school-wide policy notice issued three days before I was disciplined under that same policy, and recordings of my director praising my performance six weeks before disciplining me for the same conduct.

After I filed, HQ conducted an internal investigation. During the interview their HR rep apologized on behalf of the company, acknowledged the media policy had been applied inconsistently, confirmed the child abuse characterization didn't meet the legal standard, and told me I didn't need to sign the warning letters.

Eleven days later their official internal finding came back. They found that all claims I made did not constitute workplace harassment.

But here's what they accidentally wrote in their official response to the MOEL. They stated that the warning letter was issued because I refused to accept the child abuse characterization, not because of the underlying conduct. Because I disputed their description of it. They also described policy changes made after my complaint as "follow-up measures for organizational culture improvement as a result of the internal investigation," which is basically admitting those policies weren't clearly established before. And they contradicted themselves on CCTV across two separate official responses in a way that cannot be reconciled.

I submitted annotated counter-arguments to all of this directly to the MOEL investigator.

The Investigation

My interview with the MOEL investigator went well. I brought my Korean friend with me for communication. The MOEL investigator asked questions about intent rather than questioning whether events happened, which I took as a signal that the factual record had already cleared the credibility threshold in her mind.

The deadline is tomorrow.

A Few Things I Learned

Document everything in real time, not after the fact. Respond to suspicious messages in writing. Ask clarifying questions that force the other side to confirm or deny things on record.

Korean labor law has real protections for workers including foreign workers. Article 76-2 is a genuine legal tool but you have to build the case yourself.

The most important thing I did was keep showing up professionally every single day regardless of how I felt. Every time management expected me to react emotionally I didn't. That discipline is what made the documentation credible.

Being on an employer-tied visa while filing against your employer is genuinely terrifying. Plan for that emotionally if you're ever in this situation.

Where Things Stand

My contract completes in a few months. My long term visa path is on track. The result is pending.

Has anyone else gone through the MOEL complaint process? Foreign or domestic workers both welcome. Curious what other peoples' experience was like.

I am currently on an E2 visa, soon transitioning to an F2-7. I've been applying to places outside of teaching and recently landed a gig at an educational consulting firm in Apgujeong. The gist of the job was extensively helping Korean high school students get into their dream universities abroad.

My plate was already stacked. I am still working at my academy (my contract ends in June), and I take KIIP classes for 8 hours on Saturdays. But I agreed to start part-time because it seemed like a great opportunity. We settled on 3 days a week, 2 hours a day. I’d finish at the academy and immediately bolt for the subway to get to the firm.

The boss was nice, spoke fluent English, and had a very macro-managing, chill style. However, I quickly realized this job was going to be a massive adjustment. I majored in business, but the sheer volume of niche information demanded was wild. You were expected to have every major US university memorized off the top of your head: what they are known for, their enrollment numbers, their city, and whether they use the Common App. You were also expected to instantly curate custom action plans for each client, involving local/overseas competitions and academies, and oversee the entire process.

I knew it was a lot of information, and since each client was a unique case, I figured I’d get used to it with time. The problem is that the firm was tiny. It was just me, two other consultants, and the boss. The boss was constantly in and out of meetings with clientele, making it nearly impossible to get proper training. Two hours a shift goes by incredibly fast, especially when the boss is unavailable for half of it.

Before her meetings, she would assign me tasks like reviewing action plans and creating next-step lists for students. I tried my best, but I was shooting in the dark. The case notes were completely contextless, requiring 60% assumption and a 40% wild goose chase just to formulate an idea. Plainly, I didn't know what I was doing.

A month goes by, and I have clocked a grand total of 23 training hours. The other consultant usually working with me started out nice, but soon began randomly quizzing me. The day before my last day, while the boss was in a meeting, she turned to me and demanded I write a mock email to a professor to sign a client up for a course. Then, she made me roleplay a phone call for the same scenario. She proceeded to look over my shoulder at random client files and aggressively quiz me: "So? What would you do for them? What does the yellow-highlighted comments mean? Do you know what [insert competition name] is? Do you know how to apply for it?"

It was obvious she was trying to embarrass and belittle me. I lowkey shut down and I felt ashamed, but I also knew it wasn't entirely my fault. They expected me to be a seasoned pro after 23 hours of disjointed training, half of which was spent completely unsupervised.

Anyways, I just wanted to vent out this frustration here in case anyone has had a similar experience. Please don't make it weird in the comments.

The next day, the boss pulled me into a meeting and told me it wasn't a good fit. I agreed disappointedly. The timing and their expectations were severely misaligned. Overall, it was not a experience. I do appreciate that the boss was likable and treated me like a human being—a nice change of pace from the hagwon grind—but the expectations were entirely detached from reality.