Now technically Skype and calling cards (which we discussed in Part I both utilize VOIP, however true VOIP is a different beast all together. Skype uses a closed VOIP network, so to access it you can only use their software and special hardware that is designed for Skype. Open VOIP however is designed for interoperability and the use of any ATA you would like.

The advantages of VOIP are that you can get a little device called an ATA (analogue telephone adaptor) which you plug into a router that you can then plug a regular telephone into. This technology allows you to talk digitally over the internet, and the best part is it’s completely portable! Just think about that for a minute. Imagine being able to talk to friends and family with a fully functional incoming/outgoing telephone service! It makes it easy to keep in touch and best of all there are no phone cards to worry about.

There are many different VOIP providers, some designed to offer PAYG (pay as you go) service, where you configure your own ATA (this can be daunting if you are not a technically oriented person). These plans offer truely cheap rates (some as low as 1cents/min to many western countries) and are designed for the casual user. If you don’t think you will use more then 600 minutes a month then this pay be the type of plan you are looking for. Then there are are various VOIP services that offer you an “unlimited” calling package that for a fixed amount every month allow you to make/receive calls to a certain calling area.

Vonage

This was the grandfather of VOIP, and so I feel I owe them a shout out. Unfortunately they haven’t kept up-to-date with the times, and don’t offer as many of the “cool” features that a lot of the newer services offer. They did come out with a new “world” plan that lets you call many different countries for a flat rate of $24.99/month. However with taxes this figures comes out closer to about $35/month. You do have to have a US mailing address to sign up, however there is no restriction on taking your ATA with you. This is one of the advantages of VOIP, you can take your phone number with you to any country in the world. Since they also allow porting in, this may be a good way of saving a cellphone/landline number you thought you might have to lose when you began ESLing. You can check out Vonage on their site. Vonage has specific offerings for Canadians and those from the UK.

VOIPo

A relatively new provider, these guys are backed by Hostgator a strong web hosting company. They have various servers which they allow you to pick in their control panel. This helps you to avoid “latency” (you know that annoying delay you sometimes get on overseas call) by picking one closet to your physical location. So if you’re in Asia one day, pick the “west coast” server, and if you’re in Europe the next pick the “east coast” server.

When you login to your VOIPo account you get access to a control panel. This allows you to set how you’d like certain calls forwarded, or set “simulatenous” ring numbers. This a really cool feature that allows you to call two numbers at once. So if your mom is calling you (using a local number for her) you can set it to ring your landline number in Korea or your cell phone as well as your ATA in your apartment. So you can literally answer the phone wherever you are, and you don’t have to worry about missing a phone call again. VOIPo also sends your voicemails to your email address, and can send you a text letting you know that you have missed a call. Unfortunately my tests show that this texting features only work with US/Canadian numbers but hopefully they’ll expand that down the track.

They currently have a promotion going on giving you a year of service for $135 including taxes. This includes a local phone number in many US and Canadian area codes, as well as unlimited outgoing calls anywhere within North America, plus 35 different features (including caller ID and 3 way calling). VOIPo – Unlimited Residential VoIP

Free Month of Service with VOIPo

Finally if you’d like a free month of service (confession, this will give me a free month of service too) please enter 6477240800 when signing up under the VOIPo referral section:

How to get the free month

Personally I feel that the key to fighting off the blues is keeping in touch with friends and family back home as often as possible. Modern technology has really made this a fairly easy thing to with minimal cost (at least compared to a decade ago) but there are still some monumental obstacles. The biggest one of course is the time difference. If you’re teaching in Asia and your friends/family are in the US or Europe the difference in time zones can be daunting. If you’re teaching during the day chances are they’re sleeping at night, and vice-versa.  Of course it really depends on what sort of hours you and your friends/family work but for me the most convenient times to call home is during the early mornings or on weekends.

In the following entry I’ll discuss ways that I’ve found to keep in touch with my friends and family, as well as discuss some neat technologies I’ve found that allows you to bring a small piece of you no matter where you are.

Calling Cards

You have to be a bit careful of most calling cards. Many advertise very low rates (0.5 – 1.0 cents/min) to most western countries. However they have many hidden fees that you might not be aware of. The first one that you have to be wary of is a “call connection fee” so every time you call the calling card number you may pay a fee. So for example on a $10 card, you may end up losing a significant amount of money, especially if you make short calls. Therefore if you are going to keep in touch mainly with calling cards you are better off buying smaller denominations and testing a card out to see how much you lose in call connection fees.

The other major disadvantage of calling cards of course is the call quality. You occasionally get echoes or dropped sounds and there is often a lag that makes it difficult for you to speak over the other person.  If you’ve experienced this it can make calling home a very painful experience and the amount of money you waste on trying different calling cards makes the whole experience extremely frustrating.

Skype

After several frustrating months of using various calling cards I finally decided to give Skype a try. Now there are two ways to use Skype. The first way is to use it on a PC with a headset. The second is to buy a device such as the Ipevo S0-20.

Headset

Using Skype on a headset can be a very pleasant experience, particularly if you shell out the money to get a good USB headset. These aren’t really that expensive but they save messing around with your sound card. You simply plug them directly into any USB drive and Skype recognizes them automatically. Using Skype via your PC means you can also participate in video calls, or a cool new feature that Skype recently introduced, “screen sharing”. I find this particularly useful because my parents inevitably have PC problems they want me to fix, and this allows me to look at their screen exactly so I can fix them without having to interpret what’s on the screen in front of them. It’s a small thing but it makes us both feel better and it doesn’t quite seem as if we’re that far away. The disadvantage of course is that to receive calls on Skype both parties have to have their PC on.

Wifi Phones

I’ll start off by saying that these can be quite expensive.  However the call quality on these is impressive. You also forget that you are using a VOIP service as Skype calls on these devices sound excellent. They connect to Skype via your wifi network so you need to be near a wifi network or have a wifi router. Unfortunately most aren’t able to do web page authentication so if you have an open hot spot that needs you to log in via a browser you won’t be able to use these phones. However you can even potentially take them with you around your new city and connect to any free open hot spots around.  May internet forums seem to think that Ipevo S0-20 is the best wifi phone around.

I’ve recently also started using Skype on my iphone, and I have to admit that the call quality is pretty good. It works as soon as you download it from the Apple “app” store. It doesn’t work over wifi (unless you jailbreak your iphone and install a program called VOIPover3G) however this may not be an issue if you plenty of wifi hotspots to choose from in your new city.

Cool Things to do with Skype

Let’s face it even though our families want to keep in touch with us they live a very busy lifestyle. It’s much easier for them to move on with their lives then it is for us. We are the ones that have made life alerting move to a foreign country and therefore we are the ones that have the desire to stay connected.

One feature I like about Skype is their unlimited plans. You can chose from a country, region or the entire world. It will give you free calls to landlines in most of these places, and in some cases (like Canada and the US) to mobiles as well. This is an excellent way of staying in touch with friends and family. Best of all there are is no credit balance to worry about since your plan comes with about 10, 000 minutes in a month. I prefer the all you can talk approach as it means I’m not going to have to worry about grabbing a phone card in the middle of the night, or worrying about any fees down the track. It helps me set my budget and lets me talk whenever and for however long I want.

Many Skype plans come with “online numbers” which give you local numbers in your home country. The main advantage of this type of Skype plan is that the party you call doesn’t need a computer, you can call them directly. If you are not at home you can also forward your “home” skype number to your new mobile. This helps to make the time difference seem like less of a hassle.

Visit Skype to take a look at their great offerings.


See part II for more great tips on staying in touch with family back home.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) Tuesday, it hired too many foreign English teachers to fill the 560 positions planned at elementary and secondary schools. It said it hired more applicants than necessary as some tend to fail to come to Seoul.

“About 100 applicants more than necessary were picked. Of them, we had to withdraw employment notices for about 56 applicants, and the rest voluntarily quit,” an SOME official said.

The sudden cancellation has frustrated prospective teachers, leaving many with complaints that they are now stuck without a job and demanding that the employer compensate for costs such as airline tickets and work visa applications.

“I just got a call from my recruiter. SMOE has apparently rejected my contract. After signing my contract and sending all my documents, they have said that they do not want me anymore. So now what should I do?” said an applicant using the ID “t1m1ty” on Dave’s ESL Cafe.

“They are doing this a week before it starts! Bearing in mind, I’ve already received my notice of appointment. Is there a clause in the contract to allow this? At the moment, this leaves me stuck without a job and all the costs. They said they will keep me on file to apply in either March or August 2010. Do I have any other options now?” said user Monochroma on the online cafe.

An official from the education office said, “Many foreign teachers give up working with us at the last minute, perplexing schools that are supposed to have native English speakers, so we secure extra teaching hopefuls every year. For this semester, we selected enough applicants for a possible shortage as we recruit a large number of teachers.”

She added some of the foreign teachers whose contracts were withdrawn had failed to submit necessary documents and skip mandatory orientation programs.

Last spring, the office hired 300, hiking the total number of teachers to 861 in Seoul, and has recruited 560 for the coming semester, the largest number since it started to bring in native English teachers.

SMOE also made it clear that almost all of the failed applicants agreed to the plan.

“We obtained consent from all of the teaching hopefuls on the job cancellation and we put some of them on the waiting list,” said another official from the office, indicating that they didn’t violate any contract agreements.

The office, however, helped some 10 failed applicants who have already arrived in Seoul land jobs on the English Program in Korea (EPIK) organized by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

Those with questions on the issue should call the education office on (02) 3999-774.

By Kang Shin-who

Link to original article

In a case that is certain to leave a mark in South Korea’s judicial history, a local court last week accepted a petition filed by Hussain and indicted a Korean man he accused of racial discrimination.

The defendant, identified only by his last name Park, had called Hussain “smelly” and “dirty” and a string of other epithets while the two were on a local bus in July.

“My goal was not to punish an individual, but to bring the issue to the public forum,” the 28-year-old professor said in a phone interview Monday with Yonhap. “To me, it is obvious that racial discrimination is an everyday phenomenon in Korea, but nobody seems to talk about it in public.”

After the incident, Hussain decided to take action against the man by filing a racial discrimination suit. He soon found, however, that no explicit law against racial discrimination exists in South Korea and thus the charge could not be applied.

“When I found out there is no such category on racial discriminatory practices, I thought that racism is more serious and deeper rooted in the society,” Hussain said. “Without proper law, foreigners don’t have many options but to put up with such situations.”

As a result, he filed “personal insult” charges against Park in accordance with local criminal code.

Hussain came to South Korea in early 2007 as a graduate student. Although he majored in history, he soon began to take interest in the country’s labor issues. After about a year, he was given an “research professor” title at SungKongHoe University and was tasked with coordinating research on social issues. He chose racism in Asian society as the topic of his paper, which he hopes to complete in the near future.

Soon after the incident on the bus, he filed a petition with South Korea’s National Human Rights Commission, claiming that police officers handling his case displayed a discriminatory attitude during his questioning. The investigators, according to Hussain, wasted more than an hour verifying his identity despite his repeated claims that he was a research professor. They would not believe him and were very discourteous, Hussain said.

The petition also argues that his personal rights were infringed because South Korea does not have a law that punishes racial discrimination.

The commission said it is looking into the petition.

Hussain’s actions have not gone unnoticed. Rep. Jun Byun-hun of the main opposition Democratic Party said Sunday he will submit a bill banning discriminatory practices against foreigners based on either color or nationality. The bill proposes punishing those who are found violating the law with up to two years in prison or a maximum fine of 10 million won (US$8,000), the lawmaker said.

The court ruling comes after a recent census showing the number of foreign residents in the country surpassed 1 million as of May. A report by a research institute earlier this month said that by 2050, the number of foreigners residing in South Korea will reach 4.1 million, accounting for around 10 percent of the country’s population.

Hussain said the bus incident was not the first time that he experienced racial bias in Korea, mostly because of his darker skin and east Asian nationality.

“It was interesting to see that some people instantly judge me as a poor migrant worker due to my skin color,” Hussain said. After “often (facing) those discriminatory situations, I don’t feel confident anymore.”
Hussain said that based on the court ruling, he hopes to see Korean society make further efforts to end its deeply rooted racial practices.

“With the help of Koreans who support my action, I decided to come out of the closet to at least talk about the issue in public, and hopefully, to make changes,” Hussain said. “Although the court’s official decision is yet to be made, some people already have started to talk about some elements of racial discrimination. That’s a good sign to deal with the problem.”

By Kim Eun-jung

link to original article

Those that plan on collecting your pension money after a long hard year of ESL, please listen up. Recently, it has come to our attention that tax offices in South Korea are encouraging public schools to under report your salary to compensate for the large taxes you don’t pay as a foreign national.

It goes like this, the school under reports your salary so your employer can pay less pension money. The minimum contribution to your pension is 4.5% of your earnings. If your employer writes that you earn less, they can pay less toward your pension. Without even realizing it you can be losing wads of cash each month, only to realize it at the end of your contract when you take out your pension. Many ESL teachers are now waking up to this ugly truth:

“The school’s administration said this is because the government is no longer considering your full income when taking out pension. This is a new rule that just went into affect in July and it’s affecting all teachers, Korean and foreign alike.”

“Many schools are trying this now and the pension office is backing them up. It’s because we get a 30% reduction in our taxable income (for tax purposes) so they are trying to apply it to everything – and nobody (the tax office) will tell them they can’t. There’s nothing in any legislation that says it applies across the board, but the standard reply from everyone is: “It’s Korean law.” Just ask them to show you and watch the stammering begin.”

“My school just realized they could use this 30 percent exemption for foreigners to their advantage and reduced my pension contributions. I called the pension office and they totally backed up my school on it. Apparently the pension office even sent out a document to my school instructing them to do this. Otherwise they wouldn’t have known about it. So basically now I pay 4.5 per cent on 70 per cent of my salary. ”

It seems like more and more English teachers in Korea are awakening to this disappointment everyday, even those that are very careful.

“No one told me that my pension was reduced. I’m one of those people who looks at every number on their pay slip though and nothing gets past me. The administration office told my co-teacher they were only going to explain it to me if I noticed, which of course I did. ”

How does one check his pension contributions?

Coincidently it has been made difficult for a foreigner to access this as the English page on the South Korean government pension site. It does not support a log in for English speakers. You will have to closely follow these steps to log in on the Korean site:

1). Go to http://www.npc.or.kr/ and look for the two blue boxes on the upper left side of the page. click on the left one.

2). On the new page, in the center you’ll see two white input boxes separated by a “-” … this is where you put in your ARC number

3). A pop-up should appear asking for your bank security password (the same thing that pops up when you do online banking). Put that in.

4). On the new page, on the top, look for the word: 개인전자민원 and scroll over it. a bunch of new links should drop down. there should be 3 columns

5). On the second column, click on the first link at the top and that will show you how much you have in your pension.

If all else fails you can make a trip to your local pension office and demand your pension statement. It would be a wise idea now to not place all your faith in the public education system anymore. These days they are no better than the horrid hagwons we’ve all heard about.

Teach Away, a Toronto-based agency that helps North Americans find teaching jobs overseas, says applications to teach English in Asia and elsewhere have jumped about 400 percent since late 2008.

“Positions are filling quicker this year than ever before,” said director Rene Frey.

Vancouver-based Footprints Recruiting has experienced a similar trend, receiving 100 more applications a week than it did last year, said co-founder Ben Glickman.

“We definitely see economic causalities come through the door. You see a lot of fallout from the financial industry, where people that were involved in finances are now teaching overseas,” said Glickman.

“I interviewed a guy the other day — he has a masters degree in quantitative science. I mean last year he probably wouldn’t be applying to teach in Korea.”

In Canada, the unemployment rate climbed to 8.7 percent in September, its highest in 11 years.

Footprints, which places most of its applicants in South Korean schools, says more teachers working overseas are staying put rather than coming back because jobs at home are scarce.

Applicants to teach English overseas need a four-year university degree rather than formal teaching experience. But agencies say more people with post-graduate degrees and stronger qualifications are applying for the jobs.

“The schools and the different employers we work with overseas are definitely being more selective comparative to years past,” said Glickman.

Indeed South Korean schools are hiring more ESL teachers this year than ever, agencies say.

Footprints, which handles applicants from Canada, the United States, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. currently has more than 1,000 ESL teachers placed overseas.

(Reporting by Nina Lex; Editing by Frank McGurty)

source:

http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=1736363