The Korean Staff of ULI

The very first person I met upon my arrival in Seoul on that July day in 1995 was Miss Chung. I never did find out what her full name was, she was always just Miss Chung. She was cute and very friendly, and she spoke reasonably good English, which made her an important link between the foreign staff and the boss. We all liked her.

Miss Chung eventually left to pursue studies in the U.S., and she was replaced by the bizarre Miss Gu. I took to calling her simply Gu. Two memories of Gu stand out for me. One was the time she came into work one morning at 6:30 as per usual after having spent the previous night at a ski resort getting her alcoholism on. She was so sick that every few minutes she ran to the bathroom to "give back that which she had taken" the previous night. We felt sorry for her because she just sat at her desk with her head down, moaning like a sick cow. The funny thing was, she was the person who had to greet visitors, including potential new students. Yet, ULI allowed her to sit there in agony, making the school look like the Betty Ford Clinic in the process.

The other Miss Gu story concerned a planned trip to Hong Kong. Originally, she, Anna (a teacher), and I had planned to go to Hong Kong on the Lunar New Year vacation. The problem was, Anna soon realized she couldn't go. I looked for another person to take her spot, and the matter was resolved when Heather (my kinda girlfriend, off and on), agreed to go. At least, I thought it was resolved, until whispers of Gu backing out of the trip arose. You see, an interesting side story to this affair was that Gu and Heather had been classmates in high school, and there was some minor history there. I don't know exactly what it was about, but Gu wasn't comfortable. However, everytime I asked her if she was still planning on going, she insisted she was. On the day we left, Heather and I went to the airport, and Gu was supposed to meet us there. Of course, she never showed. After we returned, she told us she had fallen and "broken her head," so she couldn't make it. Ahh, good ol' Gu.

Our manager was Mr. Shin. He was a quiet guy. Literally reminded me of an over-sized mouse. Other than that, there was nothing remarkable about this man.

The owner of the school, as we found out months later, was one Mr. Jack Suh, a guy who lived in Australia much of the year. I had virtually no relationship with this man.

There was also Little Mr. Shin. He was a guy brought in late during my year at ULI to whip the place into shape, or something like that. He worked side-by-side with the original Mr. Shin. We took to calling him the weasel because he looked like one and he acted like one. Or so we thought.

I remember the work of the sales staff, as well. ULI employed dozens of people to roam the streets and convince people that our teaching methodology would bring about the best results for them. In short, they supposedly promised people who could barely read English that they would be fluent in six months. Of course, when these people were invariably disappointed with their ULI experience, we teachers took the blame.

I'd also like to briefly mention some of the other teachers at ULI. This school not only taught English classes, but also Japanese and Chinese. Megumi, the native Japanese teacher, was funny and personable, and spoke impeccable English, as well. We had some very cute Chinese teachers, but since they didn't speak English, we never really got to know them.

Finally, I could never finish talking about ULI teachers without mentioning Anna Banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside). Imagine Lucy Liu as your English teacher, that's what Anna was like. She was the daughter of a diplomat, so she spent most of her youth living overseas, attending international schools. She came back to Korea and became an English teacher. At the time we worked together, I would have believed that she could have become anything she wanted. As it turned out, she got married to a Korean guy and... well, I don't know how her story has turned out. I wish her all the best, though.