giving up hope

Well, folks, at this point, I seriously doubt that Sungkyunkwan University is going to swoop in and declare that I'm a candidate for interview. It's Tuesday-- almost Wednesday in Korea-- and I've still heard nothing at all. I'd have to leave the country on Thursday for a face-to-face interview, and there simply won't be time to arrange a ticket by the departure date.

I've received private reassurances that it isn't for lack of qualifications that I've been shoved aside: it's merely the fact that I'm not in-country. I don't see what difference that would make since, in my application paperwork, I clearly expressed a willingness to come to Korea for the interview. I suspect a certain amount of stubbornness and bureaucratic stupidity on the part of SKKU. I suspect they didn't actually bother to contact the references whose recommendations I had submitted with the rest of my application. I suspect that they'd rather deal with people who are already employed in Korea, because that's how they usually garner new employees. I'm reminded of the sort of single-minded, unthinking mentality that makes a Burger King worker in Seoul give me a Double Whopper with onions when I specifically request one without.

I suppose that's a bit of a cultural paradox, isn't it? On the one hand, Koreans are almost dangerously nonlinear; on the other hand, once you give them a set of instructions, they follow it to the letter, never deviating even a little, and screening out external cues that they should alter their approach. Bureaucracies are guiltier of this than Burger King.


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