hambone
Well-Known Member
A jc'er recently asked me to tell him about my time spent at KAU, and after I got done with the first 5 sentences, I went crazy and really elaborated. This needs to posted on the internet so that others who google this place will know what they might be getting into prior to responding to the climbto350 add that I keep seeing every 2 months. This is very honest. Mods, if you have an issue with anything, please ask me change whatever and allow me to repost it. I hope you guys enjoy it.
1) Well, first off, while I do recommend traveling to different parts of the world, knowing that Korean's do everything ridiculously slow by Western standards would be beneficial to someone planning on living there. It is comical at the beginning, but infuriating when you really need to get something done, and you feel like you're being ignored.
2) There is a lot of political strife within Korea Aerospace University. The president of the entire university (KAU is not just aeronautics. It is mainly engineering and science) does not want foreigners working for the school. This is not an uncommon theme among many countries who grant work visas to expats, and especially Koreans, as they are extremely nationalistic. However, most recognize the need for English speaking foreigners, as we are seen as a trophy in the eyes of the parents who pay for their child's tuition. It's a love/hate relationship. Getting to the point. The president didn't want us there. The director of the aeronautics department does want us there, however, he's not the one who pays the bills. This made improving lacking conditions very time consuming, and coupled with numero uno made things unbearable.
3) KAU does not know how to treat foreigners working for them. They had us pay for our living accommodations while we were in training. We also had to pay for our living accommodations after we moved to Uljin. I'm not the type that expects life to be handed to me on a silver platter, however, this expense is something that is taken care of by 99% of companies who employ foreigners (I've worked for 2 others). The other two American instructors who arrived with me had to make a visa run to Japan after they arrived in Korea, as KAU with all their time management skills couldn't get the visas for their prized foreign instructors until 3 (what's that Hambone? Did you says 3? Yes, I said 3 days) before our scheduled travel arrangements. 2 of those days included Saturday and Sunday (days in which the embassies do not work). The other two American instructors made a visa run to Japan. On the way to the airport, they were informed that they would be paying for the flight. How nice? You mean to tell me that it's your fault we don't have our visas AND we get to pay for our flight. Sign. Me. Up.
4) I hated the chief pilot. I should say that I'm the kind of person who wears my emotions on my sleeve, and people can misinterpret me sometimes, however, having said, this man was absolutely vile, and we did not get along. He was from Croatia, and had an issue with Americans, and most likely grouped us all in one category as being arrogant and ignorant. Well, he unfairly judged me, as I was willing to uproot my entire life to go live and work in a foreign country. His personality was that he was the best, and you were nothing. He was dismissive, condescending, insecure, and extremely arrogant. You could not have a conversation with him without him mentioning who he knew or how much he knew. We clashed a lot, and when we weren't working, we lived 300 feet from each other, and would end up drinking on our nights off. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. After a night of drinking one night, when I couldn't take his • anymore, we ended up in a screaming match and he threatened to break my neck (I backed down as he once told us a story about how he fought as an infantryman in the Bosnian War). This strained our work relationship a bit.
5) The town of Uljin is the pinnacle of boredom. If the above 3 things won't take you down. The town certainly will. I should correct myself actually. You don't live in the town of Uljin. Uljin, a town of about 15,000 people, is a metropolis compared to where you'll be living, which is called Gunsan-ri; a motherfrikkin 300 person fishing village. No one below the age of 55. No girls. In fact, forget about women if you plan on working at KAU. I could never find any Korean Vaseline either, which is surprising, as the East Asians love copying Western products. On the plus side, beer and soju is really cheap so you'll be drinking on your days off, and after you stumble off to your room, you can masturbate. Sound like fun?
6) You'll be hungry all the time as well. While some Korean food is quite tasty, especially that which is found in Seoul, the East coast of Korea, where you'll be living is renowned as having the least award winning food (to put it lightly). Let's say you like seafood eh? Well, the seafood that you've had is American seafood. American's love jiving up their food. Take baked clams for instance. Breadcrumbs, bacon bits, chives, and of course the clams themselves. Uljin clams? Clams, heated in water. Salt optional. Vomit inevitable.
7) After you go delirious from boredom, you'll make it a point to travel to Seoul. You'll make sure that you have the weekend off (sometimes you'll work on weekends, even though in your contract it says you don't have to), and you'll head over to the bus station to make the trip. You'll be taking the 5:30pm bus as you had work that day. How long is the trip you wonder? Don't worry. It's only 5 and 1/2 frikkin hours. That means you can forget about partying on Friday night (unless you can somehow score some cocaine), and also you have to travel most of the day on Sunday. Make sure you get to the bus station in time for the bus back to Gunsan-ri, otherwise you end up in the town 30 minutes north of it instead, and have to get an epically ripoff priced cab down to your home, that is if you can even communicate with the cab driver how to get home. I lived there for 7 months, and after that time, I still did not know my exact address, which caused some confusion as one might imagine. I basically had to use the ole pointing method to get home.
8) The air traffic control at Uljin airport is atrocious. The tower itself cannot handle all the general aviation aircraft in the pattern. The airport was designed to handle 1 ERJ-145 every hour. They got controllers who could handle that kind of workload, however, they got 8 C-172s practicing touch and go's, but still kept the 1 plane an hour caliber controllers. It's the only airport in the world where if it were made uncontrolled, it would be ten times safer. They clear you for a touch and go on downwind, but don't tell you how many aircraft are ahead of you, so you have to count who's still on downwind, who's on base, and who's on final. Multiple times, I had to key the frequency and make a radio call informing the unsuspecting base traffic that we were on a collision course. We made a fuss about the whole thing, and eventually got the controllers to start assigning us numbers when we made our downwind call. We wanted them to tell us how many aircraft were ahead of us (Example: "University 3271, cleared touch-and-go, runway 35, number 4"). They didn't quite get it, and instead just assigned each aircraft in the pattern a number, which meant that aircraft number 2 could be behind aircraft number 4, if that makes any sense. On a less comical note, the massive SNAFU led to a mid-air collision which killed 2 solo students. There's an approach controller outside of the tower airspace that we have to check in with when we do maneuvers. He speaks as much English as I speak Korean, and all I can say is "Hello, Thank you, and I cannot speak Korean well". The only words he knows are "Maintain VFR". We had aircraft file IFR flight plans, check in with Mr. Dodo bird, and have him tell them to maintain VFR even though they were flying in IMC conditions.
9) Speaking of IMC conditions, the weather reporting systems were nothing compared to that of American airspace. Now, this is an unfair observation because the U.S. spends a ton of money on their aviation infrastructure, and there's little reason for Korean's to spend a reasonable quantity to satisfy the needs of a few GA outfits that obviously don't have weather radar on their planes. They have TAFs and METARS. Sometimes they're accurate. Sometimes they're not. There are no PIREPs that I knew of. This led me to the scariest moment of my flying career when I flew into freezing rain in a C-172. I don't know how close to plane no longer generating lift I was, but needless to say, I needed a change of underwear after landing.
10) The promise that you get an interview with Korean Air is ambiguous at best. Now, while I did hear that the aforementioned chief pilot did get into their Citation jet training program, it is hard to say whether or not you, as a regular flight instructor would make it. When we were there, we had befriended a Western 777 captain who did some research into whether or not there was an expat training program for First Officers (after we got suspicious of the Koreans). He spoke to to 5 reliable sources (2 of which worked in KAL management) who all told him that such a program did not exist. I can't speak on this subject too much more as I don't know the whole story, and we did not complete 2 years which was the required time that they said we needed in order to get said interview.
Good things. You'll get a lot of flight time. They also raised the pay since we left. When we were working there, we got 30k gross, and had to pay 15% Korean taxes which worked out to $25,500 net, plus we had to pay to housing. Another good thing is that being a pilot in the eyes of Korean women is very sexy. Koreans conform, so jobs that are not entrepreneurial are revered. Doctors, lawyers, pilots. Also, your job is massive contributor to who you are as person. In the west, people are looked for more than what they do for a living. A janitor will never get a 10 in Korea, yet I know many men in the U.S. who are broke as a joke but still have a good love life. Oh, but you don't need to worry about that cause you won't be getting laid. See number 5 and number 7. Living in Gunsan-ri and going to Seoul 1 weekend a month,and seeing all the pretty ladies is like that Got Milk? commercial where the guy gets hit by a truck and goes to what he thinks is heaven because he see's the piles of chocolate chip cookies, only to find out that the refrigerators are all stocked to the brim with empty milk cartons.
I have more that I may think of in time. Is all this worth 40k/year (new salary apparently)? You can be the judge.
Cheers,
Hambone
1) Well, first off, while I do recommend traveling to different parts of the world, knowing that Korean's do everything ridiculously slow by Western standards would be beneficial to someone planning on living there. It is comical at the beginning, but infuriating when you really need to get something done, and you feel like you're being ignored.
2) There is a lot of political strife within Korea Aerospace University. The president of the entire university (KAU is not just aeronautics. It is mainly engineering and science) does not want foreigners working for the school. This is not an uncommon theme among many countries who grant work visas to expats, and especially Koreans, as they are extremely nationalistic. However, most recognize the need for English speaking foreigners, as we are seen as a trophy in the eyes of the parents who pay for their child's tuition. It's a love/hate relationship. Getting to the point. The president didn't want us there. The director of the aeronautics department does want us there, however, he's not the one who pays the bills. This made improving lacking conditions very time consuming, and coupled with numero uno made things unbearable.
3) KAU does not know how to treat foreigners working for them. They had us pay for our living accommodations while we were in training. We also had to pay for our living accommodations after we moved to Uljin. I'm not the type that expects life to be handed to me on a silver platter, however, this expense is something that is taken care of by 99% of companies who employ foreigners (I've worked for 2 others). The other two American instructors who arrived with me had to make a visa run to Japan after they arrived in Korea, as KAU with all their time management skills couldn't get the visas for their prized foreign instructors until 3 (what's that Hambone? Did you says 3? Yes, I said 3 days) before our scheduled travel arrangements. 2 of those days included Saturday and Sunday (days in which the embassies do not work). The other two American instructors made a visa run to Japan. On the way to the airport, they were informed that they would be paying for the flight. How nice? You mean to tell me that it's your fault we don't have our visas AND we get to pay for our flight. Sign. Me. Up.
4) I hated the chief pilot. I should say that I'm the kind of person who wears my emotions on my sleeve, and people can misinterpret me sometimes, however, having said, this man was absolutely vile, and we did not get along. He was from Croatia, and had an issue with Americans, and most likely grouped us all in one category as being arrogant and ignorant. Well, he unfairly judged me, as I was willing to uproot my entire life to go live and work in a foreign country. His personality was that he was the best, and you were nothing. He was dismissive, condescending, insecure, and extremely arrogant. You could not have a conversation with him without him mentioning who he knew or how much he knew. We clashed a lot, and when we weren't working, we lived 300 feet from each other, and would end up drinking on our nights off. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. After a night of drinking one night, when I couldn't take his • anymore, we ended up in a screaming match and he threatened to break my neck (I backed down as he once told us a story about how he fought as an infantryman in the Bosnian War). This strained our work relationship a bit.
5) The town of Uljin is the pinnacle of boredom. If the above 3 things won't take you down. The town certainly will. I should correct myself actually. You don't live in the town of Uljin. Uljin, a town of about 15,000 people, is a metropolis compared to where you'll be living, which is called Gunsan-ri; a motherfrikkin 300 person fishing village. No one below the age of 55. No girls. In fact, forget about women if you plan on working at KAU. I could never find any Korean Vaseline either, which is surprising, as the East Asians love copying Western products. On the plus side, beer and soju is really cheap so you'll be drinking on your days off, and after you stumble off to your room, you can masturbate. Sound like fun?
6) You'll be hungry all the time as well. While some Korean food is quite tasty, especially that which is found in Seoul, the East coast of Korea, where you'll be living is renowned as having the least award winning food (to put it lightly). Let's say you like seafood eh? Well, the seafood that you've had is American seafood. American's love jiving up their food. Take baked clams for instance. Breadcrumbs, bacon bits, chives, and of course the clams themselves. Uljin clams? Clams, heated in water. Salt optional. Vomit inevitable.
7) After you go delirious from boredom, you'll make it a point to travel to Seoul. You'll make sure that you have the weekend off (sometimes you'll work on weekends, even though in your contract it says you don't have to), and you'll head over to the bus station to make the trip. You'll be taking the 5:30pm bus as you had work that day. How long is the trip you wonder? Don't worry. It's only 5 and 1/2 frikkin hours. That means you can forget about partying on Friday night (unless you can somehow score some cocaine), and also you have to travel most of the day on Sunday. Make sure you get to the bus station in time for the bus back to Gunsan-ri, otherwise you end up in the town 30 minutes north of it instead, and have to get an epically ripoff priced cab down to your home, that is if you can even communicate with the cab driver how to get home. I lived there for 7 months, and after that time, I still did not know my exact address, which caused some confusion as one might imagine. I basically had to use the ole pointing method to get home.
8) The air traffic control at Uljin airport is atrocious. The tower itself cannot handle all the general aviation aircraft in the pattern. The airport was designed to handle 1 ERJ-145 every hour. They got controllers who could handle that kind of workload, however, they got 8 C-172s practicing touch and go's, but still kept the 1 plane an hour caliber controllers. It's the only airport in the world where if it were made uncontrolled, it would be ten times safer. They clear you for a touch and go on downwind, but don't tell you how many aircraft are ahead of you, so you have to count who's still on downwind, who's on base, and who's on final. Multiple times, I had to key the frequency and make a radio call informing the unsuspecting base traffic that we were on a collision course. We made a fuss about the whole thing, and eventually got the controllers to start assigning us numbers when we made our downwind call. We wanted them to tell us how many aircraft were ahead of us (Example: "University 3271, cleared touch-and-go, runway 35, number 4"). They didn't quite get it, and instead just assigned each aircraft in the pattern a number, which meant that aircraft number 2 could be behind aircraft number 4, if that makes any sense. On a less comical note, the massive SNAFU led to a mid-air collision which killed 2 solo students. There's an approach controller outside of the tower airspace that we have to check in with when we do maneuvers. He speaks as much English as I speak Korean, and all I can say is "Hello, Thank you, and I cannot speak Korean well". The only words he knows are "Maintain VFR". We had aircraft file IFR flight plans, check in with Mr. Dodo bird, and have him tell them to maintain VFR even though they were flying in IMC conditions.
9) Speaking of IMC conditions, the weather reporting systems were nothing compared to that of American airspace. Now, this is an unfair observation because the U.S. spends a ton of money on their aviation infrastructure, and there's little reason for Korean's to spend a reasonable quantity to satisfy the needs of a few GA outfits that obviously don't have weather radar on their planes. They have TAFs and METARS. Sometimes they're accurate. Sometimes they're not. There are no PIREPs that I knew of. This led me to the scariest moment of my flying career when I flew into freezing rain in a C-172. I don't know how close to plane no longer generating lift I was, but needless to say, I needed a change of underwear after landing.
10) The promise that you get an interview with Korean Air is ambiguous at best. Now, while I did hear that the aforementioned chief pilot did get into their Citation jet training program, it is hard to say whether or not you, as a regular flight instructor would make it. When we were there, we had befriended a Western 777 captain who did some research into whether or not there was an expat training program for First Officers (after we got suspicious of the Koreans). He spoke to to 5 reliable sources (2 of which worked in KAL management) who all told him that such a program did not exist. I can't speak on this subject too much more as I don't know the whole story, and we did not complete 2 years which was the required time that they said we needed in order to get said interview.
Good things. You'll get a lot of flight time. They also raised the pay since we left. When we were working there, we got 30k gross, and had to pay 15% Korean taxes which worked out to $25,500 net, plus we had to pay to housing. Another good thing is that being a pilot in the eyes of Korean women is very sexy. Koreans conform, so jobs that are not entrepreneurial are revered. Doctors, lawyers, pilots. Also, your job is massive contributor to who you are as person. In the west, people are looked for more than what they do for a living. A janitor will never get a 10 in Korea, yet I know many men in the U.S. who are broke as a joke but still have a good love life. Oh, but you don't need to worry about that cause you won't be getting laid. See number 5 and number 7. Living in Gunsan-ri and going to Seoul 1 weekend a month,and seeing all the pretty ladies is like that Got Milk? commercial where the guy gets hit by a truck and goes to what he thinks is heaven because he see's the piles of chocolate chip cookies, only to find out that the refrigerators are all stocked to the brim with empty milk cartons.
I have more that I may think of in time. Is all this worth 40k/year (new salary apparently)? You can be the judge.
Cheers,
Hambone
