Korean Job Discussion Forums

[shawner88]

Hey, new category!

My boss seemed so stingy yet he had 300 students! If he gets 100,000 Won for each, he must be rich!? He has only 8- 10 korean teachers and 1 foreigner.


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http://korealife.blogspot.com

[Captain Obvious 2.0]

Depends on the pricing. Generally though 100,000 - 120,000 Won means a foreigner is there for a majority of the classes taught.

For a Korean teacher teaching English, usually it's less. 50,000 to 60,000 Won. A cameo by a foreigner may be done.

Other extreme, a "native class" with foreign teachers only is 150,000 or higher.

I haven't checked out what schools charge these days and these were the prices from a school I was at a year ago.

So assuming 300 students, that would be 15 million won on the low end. 10 Korean teachers at 1.5M minimum would be 15 million won.

Odds are that he is charging more than 50,000 a month. But you still have to pay rent (a million a month easily), power, and taxes. An 11% sales tax is included in the price he charges. So of that 50,000 Won an hour, 5000 would go to the government right off the top.

[gajackson1]

A lot of Hak-won owners make serious bank. If you have ever been to your owners apartment, you'll have a good idea.

I don't usually think about it in hourly terms, but I can add my 24won-worth about monthly stuff.

CO is right about the overhead expenses - they usually are expensive. Foreign teaches usually make around 2.0 (+/-)/month, and Koreans generally make about 1 mill (+/-).

However, that is just the class end. Owners have all kinds of other ways to make money here & there. Materials is the easiest (a markup, or 'in-house' required mats), followed with special programs, transportation, special projects (like editing/proofreading/translations), etc.

Many schools actually MAKE money off of teachers housing! What they do is put down the key money so that there is NO rent payment involved. Then, they charge an apartment fee to their teachers. Sometimes this is used to pay bills, and the rest is pocketed. Some poor teachers pay this fee, AND their bills!!! (to be fair, even that is usually a better deal than paying rent & bills back home).

LOTS of school owners underreport teachers numbers/incomes for taxation-avoidance purposes. Some of the 'old-timers' can tell you about how a number of the big-chain franchise owners were investigated & lost everything for trying to finagle the tax office!

Anyway, if you want to know, check out your owner. Look where they live, what they drive, where they vacation (condo membership???), & you will get the picture pretty fast.

As a final note, they are NOT all like this. Just like recruiters, there ARE some good, honest. law-abiding ones out there. . .

Regards,

G.

[Homer]

They make what they make.
They are businessmen/women afterall and the hakwon is their business.
Some of them do quite well, others not so well.
As long as you are being paid a fair wage for your work and being treated well what does it matter if the owner is raking in the dough hand over fist?

[Holden]

Are you kidding? At my hagwon the k teachers make 1 mill if they are lucky. I've seen the student payment envelopes and they are all over 100,000. Our school has 6 K teachers and me and 250 students and 1 big bus and a small one. 250 x 100,000(min)=25,000,000 Won - 10,000,000 teachers, at most....minus 2 bus drivers, 4,000,000 at most, he is easily make 8-10 million per month, and yeah right sure he's paying taxes.

[Rand Al Thor]

Actually at a lot of hogwons the Korean teachers are paid a commision. The last hogwon I worked at the Korean teachers got 45% of each students fees. The top teachers were making big bucks.

[hellofaniceguy]

They are making more than you!

[dutchman]

[william beckerson]

I gotta agree with Dutch on this. As long as the money keeps showing up in your bank account, I wouldnt care.

[Holden]

Not angry...just pointing out the facts...and because this is what the discussion is about !

[dutchman]

[weatherman]

[hellofaniceguy]

Look at it this way; schools are paying you AT LEAST 2.0 (if not, well like the man said, a sucker born every minute) schools pay for housing, air fare, 50% medical, visas, the lawyer to draw up the papers to sponsor you, bus drivers, fuel, lights, gas, other teachers salaries, the answer the phone ajuma, sometimes the cooking ajuma, etc , well, you get the idea. It is expensive to run a hokwon. But, more students is obviously where the money is!
Immigration's rule of thumb is "no visa unless the school has 50 students." 50 students equals one foreign teacher allowed. One teacher, foreign, should generate at the very least 35,000,000 million Won one year. Salary of at least 24,000,000, housing, etc. This is based on 6 classes a day with 10 students in each class. Take a look at English Friends in Guil, Seoul. They have 600 students. 300 pre-schoolers at 300,000 per month. 90,000,000 million a month! 300 elementary at 200,000 a month, that's 60,000,000 million a month! You got a 150,000,000 million Won a month business paying slave wages cause the teachers agree to teach 8-10 classes a day for 1.9! Whose the fool? Damm sure ain't the school owner! The name of the game is to keep expenses down, way down and have the incoming go way up! Pay slave wages, stick teachers in shared housing, cheat 'em on the tax and medical, etc. screw 'em out of the severance, pay them peanuts for teaching extra classes and the owner really rakes it in! But hell, that's not the owners fault! That's the teacher's fault for signing a bad contract! Common sense tells one to check it out before hand! Investigate! You would NOT take a job back in the western world without first checking! So why do it in korea?

[william beckerson]

[shawner88]

I knew a foreigner named Justin in Busan who some help from his girlfriend's parents obtained a business visa and opened a school called Hello English...I worked for him, but he had to let me go because he didnt have enough students at the time. However, I've heard he has 2 or 3 schools now and 500 students and has published a book. Anyone here who can verify it?

Some of us should pool together and try to open aschool..