Beginner's Guide to Teaching in Korea

UPDATE 12/5/11:  Starting in 2012, the Chungnam Office of Education will stipulate that all foreign English teachers must have some sort of certification -- a teaching license, or some kind of TEFL or TESOL certificate -- in order to be hired.  As far as I know, this only applies to Chungnam Province (where I teach), but similar changes may be coming to other provinces in the near future.  It also only applies to public schools in the province, not hagwons.  This was just announced last weekend, and I wanted you all to know.

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I've had several friends tell me that they're considering coming here to teach, and they've asked me for information and advice. So I decided to take the time to type up a detailed 'Beginner's Guide' and adapt it into an entry for my blog.  So here it is -- everything you need to know about teaching English in South Korea. I want to be clear that this account is based on my own experiences and those related to me by other foreign teachers; they are not to be taken as universal.


Things You Need to Understand -- Challenges and Benefits

If you're planning on teaching abroad, Korea is easily one of the best places for saving money, since they cover a lot of your living expenses (unless you want to go to the United Arab Emirates or somewhere else in the Middle East...they pay outrageously well, but require a higher level of credentials). A standard contract will reimburse you for your flights, give you a settlement allowance, pay for your housing, and reward you with a bonus at the end of your contract, all on top of a salary of around 2 million won ($2000) per month, give or take (it’ll be higher if you are more qualified and/or experienced). My only bills are for my utilities and my phone.

Another bonus is that the jobs are less demanding compared to teaching jobs in the US. You'll have a 40-hour a week schedule, but you'll only teach a maximum of 22 hours. You also get 18 paid vacation days and lengthy school holidays. The attitude and ability of the students can vary widely though. Since I actually have a teaching background as well as a degree in English, I got placed in a prestigious foreign language high school where the students are gifted and highly motivated. If you get placed in some out-of-the-way agricultural community, however, you'll find that many of your students couldn’t care less about learning English.  This will obviously create some friction in the classroom and make your job more challenging.

Generally speaking, you can either teach in a public school or a hagwon (private academy). I personally recommend going with a public school -- in addition to getting more vacation time, the contracts are standard and almost always honored, whereas the hagwons are a crap shoot -- some of them are great and pay better than public schools, but I've also heard a lot of horror stories about others that take unfair advantage of their foreign teachers and even renege on pay and benefits (they are, after all, for-profit organizations). Most public schools will ask you to follow a textbook, which makes planning easy. Your job is to come up with fun activities to help the students learn the textbook material. The more creative you are, the more successful you'll be. It should be noted that the Korean approach to ESL instruction is extremely narrow and counter-intuitive, which causes frustration for a lot of foreign teachers, so be prepared for that. It's not unusual for schools to expect the students to memorize long textbook passages, which seems cruel and unnecessary, since it stresses the students out and doesn’t actually help with fluency at all. It flies in the face of Western educational philosophy, so it's a hard pill to swallow, especially for trained teachers or those with experience in education. Of course, the severity of this varies from school to school -- I've been lucky enough to land in a school that adheres to a more American-esque curriculum and approach. My classes are taught more like Language Arts classes in the US.  In other schools, this would never be possible due to the comparatively lower level of the students’ English language ability.  I am also lucky to have other native speakers teaching in my school.  In most cases, you will not have that luxury – you will likely be the only native English speaker in the building.

Another thing that you need to understand is that Korean students work much harder than you or I have ever had to. By the time they reach middle school, they are expected to forgo all social and recreational activities in order to become study robots. Most students will go to their public school for the regular school day, then go straight to a hagwon in the evening. A 12-14 hour no-fun schedule is pretty typical. My school is a boarding school, so it's a little different, but my students' day starts around 7:45 and ends around midnight. Studying is their entire life; it seems pretty masochistic.  (Here’s a great 12-second video that pokes fun at this system).  Long after I go home in the late afternoon to relax, make dinner, have a beer, fool around on the internet….my students are still at school studying their butts off.  They are under a tremendous amount of pressure to prepare for a college entrance exam, which is taken in the third year of high school and is only offered once a year.  How a student performs will determine which college he or she gets into, which in this country can make or break your entire future.  There are far too many stories of students attempting suicide after doing poorly on the test.  It’s pretty insane.

Schooling is also very competitive here.  There’s a lot of stock placed on a student’s class rank, so cheating and copying work is rarely an issue.  However, Korean students have this huge fear of giving wrong answers or appearing as if they don’t know what’s going on – this sometimes prevents them from asking questions when they don’t understand something, or volunteering answers when you ask questions (many teachers have become familiar with the dreaded ‘Korean stare’).  In most cases, they will do anything to avoid standing out (which isn’t a virtue in this culture – conformity is what’s valued).  This can be extremely vexing for inexperienced teachers, but those with some know-how can usually make due.

Another thing you should be aware of:  some people, depending on their school and co-teacher, feel as though they are being under-utilized and feel guilty that they aren’t working very hard.  I’ve heard some people make comments about how they feel as though they’re ripping off the Korean government.  The extent of these sentiments varies greatly on a case-by-case basis.  Some teachers are strongly encouraged to just play games with the kids and make their classes fun, so they don’t actually teach much real material (which is awesome if you’re lazy, not so much if you’re ambitious).  Some of the worse cases I’ve heard describe Native English teachers whose main job consists of correcting the grammar and pronunciation of their Korean co-teacher.  I personally have not experienced these problems, but they’re definitely out there.  In some schools, you might only see a certain class once a week, which causes progress and growth to occur at a much slower rate than you would probably like.  So it’s totally a toss up.  If you’re ambitious, you may find yourself feeling frustrated that you can’t fully use your skills or make more of an impact on student learning.

One final common complaint about Korean schools is that the chain of command is complex and inefficient, which can be rather annoying (It’s largely a result of a Confuscianist top-down approach to authority and seniority).  Usually, you will be the very last one to hear important information, and stuff gets sprung on you at the last minute.  You may show up to school on a given day to find out that your schedule has been changed, or that you need to cover another teacher’s classes and you have 10 minutes to come up with a plan.  It's just the Korean way, and you learn pretty quickly to just roll with it.  If you’re smart, you’ll keep a couple of emergency lesson plans tucked away somewhere in your desk – like a grammar review or a game of some sort that requires little preparation.

Above, I’ve tried to be honest about some of the challenges you may encounter if you come teach in Korea.  But I want to be honest about the positives as well, and there are many.  You can have a lot of fun in this job, and you will have the opportunity to build some really great student-teacher relationships.  Korean students are very sweet and funny, and they will be completely fascinated by you and your strange foreign ways.  For the first couple of weeks I was at my school, I felt like a celebrity.  They are very inquisitive, so they will challenge your knowledge and teach you a lot about Korea in return – most of what I’ve learned about this country and culture has come from them.  Korean society traditionally has a pretty narrow, conservative perspective on things, so you’ll be in a prime position to open up the students’ minds and expose them to new ideas, new ways of seeing and being.   I find the job to be pretty laid back and easy compared to teaching jobs back home – there is far less paperwork and pressure, and you aren’t expected to do much in the way of grading or evaluation.  Instead, you can fully dedicate your time to creating the best possible experience for your students.  You have ample time to plan, so you rarely have to take your work home with you.  Your Korean coteachers will probably be very welcoming and invite you out for dinner and drinks, and even sometimes other things like hiking or cultural events.  If you demonstrate an openness and willingness to learn about the language and the culture, you will be endlessly rewarded.

I feel like I should emphasize that it takes a certain kind of person to flourish here.  Many people love it here -- I know expats that have been here for years, are married to Koreans, and speak the language fluently.  But to be perfectly honest, I have to mention that there are also those who hate it here -- I know people who have bailed on their contracts early and skipped the country.  A lot of it has to do with what kind of school you end up in and what your co-teachers are like, and these are things that are largely out of your control.  It's a little bit of a gamble, but life is more exciting when you take chances.  I got really lucky.  Hopefully you do too.  As long as you keep an open mind, are willing to step outside your comfort zone, have a little patience and a sense of humor, and can put up with a little bullshit -- you'll be fine.


How to Land a Job

If you make the decision to teach in Korea, do your homework before you choose a recruiter.  The ones with established reputations should be easy to vet online.  Do NOT, under any circumstances, pay a fee to a recruiter for their services.  The way things work here, the recruiters make a commission from the schools for every candidate they recruit, so their services should be entirely free to you.  If they try to charge you, they’re scamming you.  Some recruiters are catch-alls, while others will specialize in a certain kind of school (hagwon, public, or university) or a certain city or province – so again, do your homework, especially if you have your heart set on a certain type of placement.  When I first contacted my chosen recruiter (I see no reason to keep it a secret – my recruiter was Alistair at Korean Horizons, and I give him my full endorsement) I told him upfront that I wanted to be in a public high school in a small to medium-sized city.  I initially found my recruiter after simply posting my resume on eslcafe.com – the emails from recruitment agencies started immediately pouring in, and it was just a matter of doing a little online research and selecting the one that I felt was the most reputable and the best fit for me.  Once you’ve made your choice, your recruiter should help you with the entire process – completing the formal applications, preparing for the phone interview, applying for a background check and a visa, and all that good stuff.

Another piece of advice -- start the paperwork process as early as possible, because it can be a bit of a nightmare. It takes 2-3 months to get an FBI background check, so applying for one should be your first step, and it would be ideal to do so like 4 months before you plan to depart. Trust me on this. I only gave myself like 2 and half months, and the stress almost killed me.  Also, the earlier you get your application in, the more placement options will be available.  A majority of contracts start in either March (start of 1st semester) or August (start of second semester), but there are plenty of exceptions, and recruiters are usually willing to accept your application whenever you’re willing to submit it.


Living in Korea

Living in Korea is both endlessly fascinating and endlessly frustrating. The language is extremely difficult to learn (in my humble opinion), but you honestly don't really need to learn it before you get here. People will be eager to help you out, and learning just a little can go a really long way.  I've been here 3 months and haven't learned more than a few basic phrases, and I’ve been getting along OK. There’s no doubt, however, that learning more Korean would make my life easier because it would decrease my dependence on my Korean friends and coworkers.  There’s a long winter break coming up, and I plan to use the extra time to get more serious about learning Korean.  It is also very useful to learn how to read Korean characters, and it's actually much easier to pick up than the rest of the language. Most people can teach themselves how to do it in a few days.  There are some great tutorials for this online.  Try TTMIK.com (Talk To Me In Korean).

Korea is a really beautiful country with lots of mountains, beaches, temples, and museums. It’s culture and history are rich and complex.  Korean cities, however, all look exactly the same, and they aren't very attractive, if you ask me. During the country’s big economic boom in the 1980s, it seems that they favored utility over aesthetics when it came to architecture, but I guess there's nothing wrong with that. The climate is very similar to the American Midwest  most of the year, except for the super high humidity and the monsoon rains during the second half of summer. The air quality can be pretty poor during certain times of year (yellow dust, anyone?), but this usually only affects people with respiratory problems like asthma.  Smoking is common, and is still permitted in all bars and some restaurants and coffeeshops.  Korean cuisine might take some getting used to (hope you can handle spicy food), but it's usually pretty healthy and there are plenty of dishes that I've come to absolutely love and crave. Korean beer totally sucks, I'm sorry to say.  American-style fast food is also pretty easy to find in any decent-sized city (if that’s you’re thing), and Koreans do fried chicken especially well. I’ve heard it said that this is a hard place to be a vegetarian, but I can’t really speak from experience on that topic.  There are coffee shops everywhere. Transportation is cheap and efficient, and with it being such a small country, you would be hard-pressed to find a destination in South Korea that you can't reach in 3 hours or less. Health care is very affordable.  The people are generally very friendly, though their often hypocritical and closed-minded social conservatism can be a bone of contention for many people (for example, homosexuals are generally considered to be mentally ill). But it has to be said -- Koreans of both sexes are really attracted to foreigners. Seriously.

I guess that's everything you need to know. For what it's worth, I'll say that I had originally planned on being here for a single year, but I'm already considering sticking around for a second. I really love my school, and the money's too good to pass up. Plus, it's still really hard to find a teaching job in the States, so I'm in no hurry to return to that job market. I wouldn’t say that I’m in love with Korea like I was New Zealand or Washington State, but I definitely don't dislike it either. Bottom line: if you want to teach abroad while saving enough money to do more traveling, pay off debts, etc....Korea can't really be beat.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments.

Cheers, and good luck!