Mrs Holley the Pathalogical Lier

Someone wrote this on the discussion page of a webb site, and I found the reasons given for such a conclusion very interesting. It seems that Korea and Japan are classified as shame based cultures in the sense that the shame from being seen breaking a law far outweighs any guilt that someone from say a western individualised culture might feel from a similar law breaking infraction. Mrs Holley, as the administrator of the Gwangju Foreign School, at times seems to be quite beyond this as she is quite capable of verbalising the most obvious of barefaced lies, but then of course maybe she is so thick in the head as to actually believe that the rest of the teachers and staff cannot see through her asinine B.S.
A lot of administrators have to resort to cunning and lieing to get things done, but most of them have a conscience of sorts and something inside of them wears and tears because of it. It's said that hypochrisy is the "tribute that vice pays to virtue", and a bit of it certainly greases the wheels of social exchange. It also corrodes the well being of those people who are continually forced to make use of it. In the case of Mrs Holley and her husband I'd say there is nothing inside to corrode.
Many Korean institute owners use tactics like "I will turn you into immigration if you don't do this" or " I will put you on a blacklist, because of your decision" or "we can fire you whenever we want" as intimidation tactics to keep their new and very green staff in line. Mrs Holley is quite capable of these and more. At times she has been known to describe so many differing and conflicting scenarios of why she was able to bring to pass certain events that it's beyond a joke. Her husband of course is a Western trained Lawyer, but the union didn't take her out of the weirdness of her culture. It either sucked him in or he was by inclination a part of it anyway. If he was drawn into it, it could be because of the maxim: "you can take a person out of her cultural background, but you cant take the cultural background out of the person". If he wasn't drawn in then maybe destiny played apart in their meeting.
Now I don't for one minute think that all Korean buisness people conduct their affairs by stretching the law i.e. by using subterfuge, lying, and cunning. There are some good honest law abiding people here otherwise the country would have gone to the dogs long ago. Unfortunately I don't thing any of them work in the vicinity of the Gwangju Foreign school in Yangsan Dong.

It's interesting that when Greenspan was in Korea to hand to the Koreans their baleout package of millions of dollars for the IMF fiasco in 1997 (or therabouts) he literally threw it at them in disgust. He had been duly informed by the many U.S. companies whom had been shortchanged in their buisness arrangements with Korean companies. Korea did pay off the IMF loan they borrowed, but I am wondering where they dipped their hands to get the needed funds.

The tactic of "we can fire you whenever we want" can be thrown in the garbage dump completely. Korean law says that a person cannot be kicked out of his position until the end of his or her contract. Should a company try to do this then the Labor Board will step in and guarantee the rights of that person. The performance of the individual concerned is irrelevant. I worked for the public school system with a co-worker who was so bad that the school told him to stay home, and still recieve his pay.