Korean Job Discussion Forums

[losing_touch]

[TwoFold]

Wow, we�re thrilled to see the quality of feedback on this thread.

Touching back on some good points people have made thus far:

�Some overall comments based on your prognosis of the situation. � Great in theory. Not so much in practice.�

�I think that your plan to come over first etc could just prove to make things more complex and expensive.�

�good hagwons do exist out there. i wouldn't overlook them.�

�Your idea of claiming the recruiters fee in your first post is not very realistic either.�

�People get paranoid from reading the insane ramblings posted here.�

�If you don't like your apartment, you can ask them to move you (yes, I asked them to move me from a shi--y place to a nice loft place).�

�Public schools have contracts they follow with set pay scales. They don't negotiate them. Do yourself a huge favor and just use a recruiter for public schools. You will save yourself a ton of money, hastle and headaches. And understand most people that post their madness here have significant mental/personality issues in RL, and come here to vent. It's not a good representation of life here.�

�One track to consider is to work at an independent (private) Middle School/High School pair.�

�Our one-bedroom apartment, intended for a single teacher, is large enough for our needs. This being the case, my school provides the (cheaper) apartment, and my partner receives a 400,000won housing allowance from her school. Splitting this allowance is a nice bonus to our salaries.�

�Mate while most people under think you have over thought this big time.�

�First thing use a recruiter, actually no don't use a recruiter use them all.�

The constructive criticism is great, really serves as a reality check against our honeymoon perceptions of ESL. As we read some of the posts we began to realize that some of our expectations were rather unreasonable. We feel a lot better now about leveraging recruiters to see what options are out there. It would seem that the critical aspect is flexibility and a good attitude as a foundation for what our experience in K-land will be like.

And to keep the conversation flowing�

Should our preference for schools be based upon province or by city? Is only giving 3-5 options for preferred cities too narrow?

Are loft-style apartments a rare thing to find or does this really depend on the city? If it helps, you can assume that we will be in the greater Seoul area.

Note: we really, really like the single loft-style setups we�ve seen. This isn�t a deal breaker, just something that would be a nice bonus if it was available. Here are some pictures of what we mean.

http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/South-Korea/Seoul/blog-144633.html

Thanks again!

[greedy_bones]

public schools seem ok, hagwons are hit and miss, but there are at least 3 other options you might consider. Foreign language schools, private schools, and colleges. Foreign language and private schools offer hours between public and hagwons, great pay and stability. Colleges offer lower pay but great hours and vacation minus some of the insane bureaucracy of public schools.

Personally, I've only worked at hagwons. Any time I have a class of more than ten students, I really dislike it, so I figure teaching 30 kids at a public school or 100 at a college would be terrible for me. I have however interviewed at one private school and unfortunately wasn't offered a position. The place sounded amazing. Maximum of 25 hours teaching per week. $35,000 a year(they pay in won based on the current exchange rate for usd) plus severence/insurance/pension, housing allowance of 10M/600,000, 10 weeks vacation, and a western director.

[greedy_bones]