midnight run

plural midnight runs

1. An unannounced departure from a teaching job at a school in Korea (or rarely elsewhere), in which a teacher leaves the job or country without warning, typically to escape abusive working conditions.

   […] the likelihood of them […] doing a midnight run to the airport in the dead of night after that first paycheck.

   2009, Scott Phillips, Confessions of an Expat, page 4

   2 more examples

   In frustration, teachers do the midnight run and managers go mad, yelling, screaming , and ripping the teachers off […]

   2010, Melissa Christine Karpinski, Teaching in the Land of Kimchi: Discovering South Korea, page 51

   [interviewee] Do I need to midnight run? Do I need to leave, tell no-one, and speak of it nowhere? […] [comment by tleafs3638] Very recently midnight ran myself, after typical hagwon treatment to foreigners, as well as seeing a 13 year old commit suicide via jumping from their hagwon on the tenth floor. […] [comment by MrWadewynn] midnight runs are pretty damn funny. I have been a coworker of several midnight runners, and the aftermath is pretty hilarious watching the owners scramble to figure out why it happened... again lol.

   2022, "The Horrors I Saw at Korean Private Schools | Informer", VICE