Korea’s 'hourly lecturers' struggle to make ends meet

While South Korea's economic upturn is being touted as a "model case" for economic recovery from the recent global economic slump, not everyone in the country is seeing the benefits of the alleged robust performance of the Asia's fourth largest economy that would host this year's G-20 summit, including some who are highly educated yet struggling their make ends meet.

Literally called "hourly lecturers" for their lecture-for-pay based contracts, the nation has many Ph.D. holders who are not hired full-time by a university for a college, but provide lectures.

The local Chosun Ilbo newspaper on Saturday ran a story of a 38-year-old lecturer, who holds a doctoral degree in humanities. It's been eight years since he has been working as a lecturer at numerous universities across the nation.

On the days when he has to give a lecture in a provincial school, he has to get up early and dash to the Seoul Train Station. A roll of ``gimbab'' is his breakfast, while he goes over his lecture material. He then puts himself on a few hours of train that would take him to a school where he is scheduled to give a three-hour lecture.

He gets paid 36,000 won per hour for the task.

With this kind of payment, his annual income seldom goes over 6 million won.

"I've tried almost everything to make ends meet, including private tutoring and translation of books," said he, whose name was withheld in the piece.

The nation's excess Ph.D.s are partly products of South Korea's once famous and now notorious educational overdrive.

Most of these highly-educated overachievers want to become professors, but with now so many Ph.D.s around these days, these people find it hard to be employed as a full-time professor.

Instead of looking for other opportunities, many of them try their luck by firstly agreeing to become an hourly lecturer. That doesn't give them any insurance benefits that regular employees enjoy, but they believe that doing so will help them get upper edge in the future job openings in the university.

But often this turns out to be the self-imposed trap they don't find an easy way to get out. It often extends into several years, just like the case shown above, without job security.

Most of these hourly lecturers' imminent concern is to make ends meet. "It takes a lot of time to prepare a lecture. And usually you get to teach only three or four hours a week. You cannot live on that level of income," Chosun said citing the lecturers it interviewed.