Repatriate Me!

A few days ago I left a comment on the Exurbanite Pedestrian’s (XUP) blog where I mentioned the low tax rate in Korea and how much I hate tipping, which I consider an evil custom. My comment is third from the top. Further down XUP asked me why I am returning to Korea. This is in light of other comments I’ve left there and some of my own blog posts, which really do seem to suggest Korea is a better place to live than Canada.

To a point I agree with this and if I didn’t have children I would probably be satisfied with living in Korea until I am ready to retire. However I do have children and they are the primary reasons I feel the need to return to Canada. In two earlier posts I detailed 5 Things I will miss about Korea and 5 Things I am looking forward to in Canada. This post will expand on those, but first a quick refresher:

5 things I will miss about Korea

• Service
• Neighborhood Shops
• Public Transportation
• Cheap high speed internet
• Korean language

5 things I am looking forward to in Canada

• Grass
• Snow
• Supermarkets
• Driving
• Anonymity

Some of the reasons I am leaving Korea, not related to my children, in no particular order include:

• Vilification of native speaker English teachers by the Korean media and the continual slanted reported to all things foreign and teaching related. See for example all 68 posts in the category We Hate Native Speaker English Teachers on Brian’s blog. Also many of the posts on The Marmot’s Hole in the Ministry of Barbarian Affairs deal with many of the same issues.
• The extreme difficulties in getting basic services for non-Koreans. Cellphones, internet, and banking are extremely difficult to do for foreigners. I’m married to a Korean with a permanent residence visa (like a green card to the U.S.) but my income still does not allow me to get a loan at a bank – I’ve been stably employed making good money for 14 years but I’m a risk because I’m not a Korean
• Even more annoying and stupid is trying to use Korean web sites. To register 98% of sites require your national id#. No problem immigration gave me one when I registered, however none of the web sites recognize them because they start with a number different from what Korean ids do. Yes that means I cannot buy anything online – instead I have to ask my wife to do it. Gord Sellar has an interesting, and long, post on the problems with the internet in Korea – The Hub of… Outmoded Software Shackles?
• Driving in Korea makes me angry. You have no idea how angry I get when driving in this country. Red lights are suggestions, not rules. The inability of most drivers to make left turns correctly – how shallow can you make that corner? Blatant disregard for public safety – taxi drivers, bus drivers and delivery motorcycle drivers love o cut people off, run red lights, drive on the sidewalk (though that is happening less often now) and a million other things. What do the police do? absolutely nothing.
• nationalism – nationalism of any kind is one of my pet peeves. There is a fine line between patriotism and nationalism and too many people cross over. Actually this is a problem with many Canadians as well.

Specifically related to my children.

• education. There are a number of problems I have with education in Korea. Yes I do know that Canadian education has different problems, but they are ones I am more willing to accept. Interestingly many Koreans would agree with me as there are regularly reports in the news letting readers know about how many Korean families send their kids abroad to study, from ages as young as 5, due to their own perceived problems with Korean education and societies inability to fix it. This has been in the news for many many years and is not a new phenomenon.
  • specifically, the need for kids to go to school for 12-14 hours a day. Actually they don’t attend school for that entire time, but once school lets out they then go from hagwon (private afterschool program) to hagwon often until 10 or 11 at night.
  • At higher grade levels (middle school and high school) students are so focused on the university entrance exam that they have no social life outside of school. One the one day off of school they get, Sundays + every second Saturday, they are often at school or the library studying.
  • The result of the focus on the entrance exam is that there is too much emphasis on rote memorization and not enough on synthesis of knowledge. Yes this is mostly hearsay, but my personal experience with my university freshmen students is that this is true. Again there are many exceptions, but I think the exceptions prove the rule.
• Apartment living blows. There is no where for my kids to play on grass. The few parks that exist in Seoul all have the grass fenced off – it’s only to look at.
• There is no where for children to ride bicycles or play together. Currently all the children in our apartment complex ride their bicycles in short circles in the parking lot. they also play soccer there which results in many cars getting hit by soccer balls.
• Finally my kids English skills are very weak. The only person they need to speak English to is me. All of their friends, neighbors, and teachers speak Korean exclusively. I’m fighting an uphill battle with English and losing. My Korean skills are not as good as they should be so my relationship with the kids is also suffering.

Having said all these negative things about Korea, one might wonder why I have stayed so long. There are a lot of positive things about Korea many of which I’ve mentioned in previous posts and will continue to write about. Canada has a lot going for it, but there are also a lot of bad things in Canada including tipping culture, taxes and crap medical care.

I’m sure that once I’ve returned to Canada, I’ll find more about it that I love as well as things that I dislike and the same goes for Korea. I don’t believe there is any one country that is the best place to live they all have good and bad things.

Well there you go – the reasons I’m leaving Korea. Less than 18 months to go – I can’t believe it.

A couple of weeks ago I met with a friend, David, who coincidentally has decided to move to Ottawa the same summer we are. He had already planned on moving, but hadn’t date until recently. In fact he’s even a little bit ahead of us in the planning since last summer he bought a house about 10 minutes west of Stitsville that he is currently renting out. Dave sat down with me over coffee and gave several solid pieces of advice for me. He went over various neighborhoods that he visited and gave recommendations to me including Stitsville, Kanata, Nepean and Rideau.

The other day, in my post A classic case of procrastination Angeli gave me some recommendations and then also followed up in an email. Thank you so much for your time. She recommended The Glebe, Sandy Hill, Centretown and then some areas across the river. I’m not sure that is good for me as I’ve remember reading some regulations that Quebec has about requiring children to attend French school – though I don’t have links at the moment. I don’t mind French, but one of the main reasons I’m returning to Canada is to improve my children’s English skills – they speak Korean and only a little English at this point.

Angeli also gave me a couple of links to look at – the Centretown Community Health Center for doctors and the Western Quebec School Board – which I will definitely be checking out shortly.

For the record, I’m looking for something suburban. I want a house with a yard where my kids can play and I can bar-be-que – close to a park would be great. I don’t need to be really close to downtown, but don’t want to be more than 40 minutes away if possible.

I’ve also created a Google Map which is publicly editable. If you have recommendations on places to live or useful resources please share them in a comment and/or on the map. I’ll be making extensive use of this when I come to Ottawa this summer and then again when I move the following summer. Please feel free to add pins to the map – I’ve set it to be editable by anyone.

View Recommendations for Sean in a larger map

Update

Danny Tam via email and twitter DM has given me some advice as well regarding Havenlea and Barrhaven. Specifically about Havenlea he says:

Havenlea area is a very respectable neighborhood, that if I recall, has previously won accolades for being a good community. It’s a relatively new area, having been built just a few years ago. There’s an elementary school inside the neighborhood, a MASSIVE park, a tiny park, a jogging walkway, basketball court, soccer field, and I think another upcoming school.

That sounds pretty much like what I’m interested. Just hope the housing is in my price range – will look at some online realtors in the next few days.