Ten Koreans Who Found Work Abroad

I had spent most of university studying and knew less than I would have liked about how people found their work. In my last semester, I started using the library to fill some of the gaps.

Books could take me into an airport job or let me hear what a flight attendant remembered from a difficult shift. I did not have much free time, but I enjoyed fitting those accounts in between classes and applications.

What if I looked outside South Korea?

Once I had read enough about applying in South Korea, I wondered where else I might work. It was an idea I could entertain well before I knew enough to act on it.

Then I came across a collection about ten people who had studied in South Korea and found jobs abroad.

Ten different jobs and places

The contributors tell what prompted them to look overseas, how they prepared and what their days became like once they started work. The countries and professions vary widely enough that the book offers ten distinct experiences.

I had thought about working abroad before. It felt more immediate when graduation was approaching and I needed to decide where to send an application.

The details I wanted and the stories I found

I opened the book hoping for more about the individual steps of getting hired. The contributors spend more of their time on how it felt to look for work and to settle into a new place.

Those are still things I could learn from. Each contributor had lived through a decision I was only beginning to consider.

Several of the pieces end with one or two pages of resources. Here are the places and roles as the book describes them.

• Kim Hyeon-a — Singapore, advising engineers who supported Apple products.
• Kim Hyeon-seok — Paris, architect and urban planner.
• Jeong So-seon — San Francisco, nurse.
• Park Geon-yeong — Guam, activities supervisor at Pacific Islands Club.
• Choi Eun-chim — Timor-Leste, justice and human rights work in UNDP’s democratic governance team.
• Choi Hye-rin — Bangkok, flight attendant at Thai Airways.
• Kim Yeon — Paris, designer.
• Lee Jae-seong — Vienna, International Trade Law Division of the UN Office of Legal Affairs.
• Park Hye-won — Tokyo, software developer.
• Yang Geun-yeong — Jixi, Heilongjiang Province, Korean-language instructor.

How one instructor found WorldJob

Yang Geun-yeong tried teaching Korean while studying in China. Back in South Korea, he kept thinking about how it had felt. He found a Korean-language teacher training program through WorldJob, the Human Resources Development Service of Korea’s overseas employment site, and applied.

I was struck by Yang’s willingness to change direction later than some of the other contributors. I also learned about a public employment resource I had never thought to look for.

Reading a 2009 guide in a different job market

The book came out in 2009. The conditions under which these people found jobs had already changed by the time I was looking, and the distance is greater now.

When I was sending out applications, I thought a good list of credentials and a story I could tell in an interview might be enough to get started. Over time, I began paying more attention to what the job would actually offer once I got it.

When I revisited the book, the pandemic and rising costs had made it harder to imagine moving with the same confidence. A decision to work elsewhere can depend on the security a person would be giving up.

Layoffs at major American technology companies were another reminder of how quickly a market can change. A story from one period makes more sense when you can see the conditions the person was working in.

I still liked reading accounts by people who had made the move. They made the possibility feel concrete enough to think about, even if I would have to learn the present terms for myself.

Book details

Ten Koreans Who Found Work Abroad

Authors

Kim Yeon and others, edited by Park Chang-su

Published

September 28, 2009

ISBN-13

9788960862029

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