Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Lady_Firefly]

Hoping for any advice you nice people might be willing to provide...

Our recruiter is offering us positions in Yangsan teaching at separate middle schools.

We are unmarried, and in such we've been looking for private school positions that will allow us to live together, shared or single housing. And of course, this is not an option with public schools.

I've heard of people just leaving the 2nd apartment abandoned, but I'm not sure if this is just silliness. So far, we've had one recruiter try to get us an interview in Suwon, but the position was filled before we could, and we also just had an interview with Alphabet Street in Seocho Seoul, but I'm not sure the director was happy with my non-denominational religious status.

Now I'm not sure if it's appropriate to rush this process, but we do need to try and be placed in October for financial reasons... with my current teaching position ending next week.

We wanted to be in a metro area, or a suburb would be alright too.

Does anyone know about Yangsan? What about unmarried couples in public schools? Would it be risky/ not allowed for us to try and live in one of the two apartments? She says our apartments would be 15 minutes apart by car, 20 by bus, but I know that means they could be further.

Thanks in advance for any input!

[northway]

[SeoulNate]

Uh... I think the logical thing to do would be take the money from one of the apartments are live in the other.

Public schools are pretty easy going when it comes to offering the money in place of a living arrangement. That way you could put an extra 200 bucks in each of your pockets each month.

[Lady_Firefly]

I was thinking about that, but I'd heard that it was difficult to get the housing allowance, but I think that'd be the best option. I'd certainly prefer that, and it's good to hear that it might not be that difficult

[RMNC]

I had a friend do that exact thing, he just told the office he didn't want to have an apartment and wanted to subsidy money, and he just pocketed it every month. Worked out easy as pie for them, hope yours does too!

Of course, the only downside is that you could get jammed into an apartment the size of a shoebox that's only meant for a midget to live in, let alone one person, or even two. Best of luck, let us know how it goes.

[blonde researcher]

Have you been offered the jobs, or is the recruiter just trying to get you an interview?
EPIK and POE are avoiding hiring unmarried couples this year especially if the teachers want to live together. Married couples only are allowed to be hired and get living together in provided housing. Is this an EPIK contract? Are you going to pretend you are single for the interview or will you ask about taking an apartment each?

[jammo]

another option is to both request housing allowance and find your own place. it will be bigger but there is the big deposit to deal with

[Weigookin74]

Live seperately for your first year. (But stay over at each other's places all you want.) Then, if you renew, one of you demand the subsidy in lieu of accomodation. I suggest this because it is difficult to set this up when you're not in Korea. If you are both public school employees in the same town, take the subsidy and use a friend's mailing address from a hogwan or uni. That way nothing ever gets discovered or found out.

[Troglodyte]

By "private school" I presume you mean privately owned langauge schools. What Koreans call "hogwans"? Am I right?

At a hogwan, the boss will rarely care what you do in your free time, as long as it isn't connected to the school (ie. it won't lose them any clients). You could keep a harem in your apartment for all they care. I've heard varying reports from teachers at public schools regarding cohabitation.


Let me ask a question. Are you only applying through a single job agency/recruiter? From your initial post, it sounds like you are. That's a mistake that many first timers make. Write to as many recruiters as you can find. Recruiters are a shady lot by nature. They may offer you jobs that have already been filled, offer and then retract an offer because they found someone better, keep you on the back burner because they don't have any offers or because they have better candidates to attend to first. Write to a lot of them. Keep in touch with all of them until you have, not only a job offer, but also the actual work visa. Up until you have the actual visa, schools (sometimes at the recommendation of the recruiters themselves) will retract offers. You have a special request (that you have 2 jobs in the same city and you want to live with your gf in one apartment). Although most hogwans won't care, recruiters will rank you lower on their list of priorities. You need to compensate for that. As well, if you contact more recruiters, you increase your chances of finding a school that wants to hire TWO teachers (although that has it upsides and downsides).

[Lady_Firefly]

Thanks for all the input.

The positions are with GOE, not EPIK from my understanding.

This is sorta stinky, I really dont want to compromise living together, as my bf and I have done so for the past 5 years. Silly traditional marriage ideals....

Anyway, yes by private school I did mean hagwon. And we are applying with many recruiters, I think we've applied with at least 10 recruiters so far and 2 schools, of which 6 have responded, 3 have offered to try and set up interviews with schools for specific positions(one of which was the gal who pushed for GOE public schools) and we've had one interview thus far (with Alphabet Street in Seocho)

We also have phone interviews with 2 of these recruiters on Monday.

I suppose this isn't bad, considering its only been about 5 days since we've began contacting and applying, and since we're an unmarried couple.


Blast our progressive beliefs i guess!

[definitely maybe]

What is "GOE"? If it's Gangnam Office of Education, you're not getting housing. They will give each of you 900,000 won a month for rent though.

[Lady_Firefly]

this is the info i was given from the recruiter

The files for the application say GOE, but then also reference EPIK in the actual application... so really I have no idea.

As we talked on the phone, I can recommend you the public school position we have in Gyeongsangnam do (province) here:



Public school position in Gyeongnam province! (starting Oct.)


Location: Gyeongnam province, Korea


Work Days: Mon-Fri

Class Level: Elementary , Middle , HS


Housing: Single

Starting Date: Oct 1, 2010


Benefits Provided:
Round Trip Airfare , Health Insurance(50%) , National Pension Plan , Serverance pay

Salary: ￦2.1-2.7

Working Hours:
9:00am - 5:00 pm


Post date: Apr 13

# of Foreign Teachers: 1


Vacation: 20 days + National holidays days/year

I�ve attached the sample contract and the application form here, so please send it back to me if you finish to fill that out! J

We can apply for the Yangsan city (close to Busan) for teaching middle school students, and the name of the school is Yangju middle school http://www.yangju.ms.kr/

, Woongsang girl�s middle school http://www.ws-g.ms.kr/.

[Hawkeye Pierce]

Be careful with this offer. Either GOE or a recruiter they use waits to inform applicants that they want original copies of documents like CRC's before they will issue a contract or notice of appointment. They don't need these documents, and for those who must pay good money and wait months to them, i.e., the CRC, it is foolish to send it to a recruiter who doesn't actually need it and will not return it if you want to apply somewhere else.

Be very, very careful with this situation.

[Lady_Firefly]

thanks for the heads up.

Do employers usually request your documents before sending you a contract? I'm new at this, so still trying to figure things out....

And do you only send copies of your CBC to Korea, and keep the others for the visa interview at the consulate?

[gogophoto]