off to see the wizard

Tomorrow morning or early afternoon, I'll be visiting the South Korean Consulate to apply for my E-1 visa. I've received a PDF copy of my employment contract from CUD; I also have a visa confirmation number. Along with those items, I'll need to take along my passport, a passport photo, the completed visa application form, and $45 for the processing fee. (Information here. The website doesn't say how long processing will take. I'd love it if processing were instantaneous, but Murphy's Law suggests that I'll have to come back to the consulate in a week, as I'm free only on Fridays.)

One thing I don't get about the employment contract: in the English version, it says I'll be teaching 12 hours, and then it says that "8 hours... is mandatory." Are they saying I have to teach 8 extra hours (i.e., 20 hours per week), or are they simply describing the absolute minimum number of weekly teaching hours? Here's the English text:

Teaching Responsibilities

1) The employee is responsible for teaching 12 hours (credit hour) per week during semester and teaching 8 hours (credit hour) in department is mandatory. If the professor fails to teach the said lecture hours, they can be replaced by providing conducting English education program, club guidance and English Cafe activities.

For speakers and readers of Korean, here's the Korean-language version of that same section of the contract:

과목담당시수 및 강의장소

① 피임용자의 책임시수는 학기별 주당 12시간(실제수업시수)이며, 학기별 최소 8시간은 학과 수업을 담당하여야 한다. 책임시수 미 충족 시 영어교육프로그램, 동아리 지도, English Cafe 활동 등으로 대체할 수 있다.

I'm sure my reading of the Korean version is off, but it seems to me that the chwae-so 8 shigan phrase ("최소 8시간") is saying I have to teach a minimum of 8 mandatory hours per week. Chwae-so means "smallest," after all. I'll probably email my CUD contact to confirm this interpretation, but I'm not too worried: my other contact at CUD, that taciturn guy named P., said that CUD teachers teach 12 hours per week. I just wish the English version of the contract had been worded more like the Korean version.


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