Brief History of one Hakwon Company

My first job was at one of the oldest hakwon chains in Korea.  At that time it had over 42 branches all over the peninsula and Jeju island.   It is run by a Christian Protestant church.  The idea was to offer high quality English, Japanese and Chinese classes, as well as free Bible-based conversation classes.  For the first four decades, the chain prospered.  It was highly respected and enjoyed the reputation of having honest, dedicated teachers.  That began to erode starting around 2010 when competition exploded.  Language institutes popped up everywhere and some charged lower prices.  Then came the multi-hakwons, where one could study any variety of subjects, not just languages.  Children didn’t have to criss-cross the city going to their various afterschool classes.  They could do it all—music, calligraphy, martial arts, language, math—in one place.  That was the beginning of the end. 

Another major contributing factor to the chain’s decline is that headquarters always appointed pastors to be institute directors, never people with a business or education background.  Since they had no female pastors, this also meant that the directors were also always men.  Many branches have since closed down because of mismanagement. The Incheon branch, which is where I worked is no longer there.  All things considered, that they lasted as long as they did is the real surprise. 

At around the same time that competitors made their appearance, they began having trouble recruiting teachers because they were paying less than the general going rate.  Since many new teachers were recent university graduates, they were looking to earn decent money so they could start making a dent in the mountain of student debt they had amassed. People with E-2 teacher visas were receiving missionary wages.  If they wanted to pay their teachers as if they were missionaries, their visas and benefits should match. 

The institute directors were not the only ones to blame.  There was mismanagement from the top of the organization all the way down.  Important decisions were made, not based on what was best for the schools, but on organizational politics.  There was a lot of petty drama (which I don’t even know the half of) that impeded properly running the hakwon business.  Then again, that was the problem, the chain had not originally been meant to become a money-maker.  It was supposed to be a ministry that also provided a valuable service.  When they started seeing success in the 1990s, the leadership got dollar signs in their eyes and expanded, ignoring the schools’ initial purpose.  Years later, even as they saw things visibly declining, they were hellbent on doing everything the way it had always been done and fully expecting to see different results.  The few changes that were made were mere window dressing.

As mentioned in a previous post, the two main reasons why I did not renew my six-month contract with the company was that the split-schedule was affecting my health, and I did not want to have a roommate.   A third reason that I didn’t mention is that I prefer to keep my religious and work life separate.  Boundaries are important.  It’s easy for boundaries to be trampled when different parts of your life are intertwined.  There is such a thing as too much togetherness.  Familiarity breeds contempt.