Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Dog Soldier]

OK, so I know it's not ESL, but to cut a long story short I have an acquaintance who wants to come to Seoul to teach Italian. He has been offered 1.2 million per month plus accommodation for 25 hours a week. This is at a hagwon.

Now I know English teachers would be offered a much bigger salary, but in your expert opinions, is this offer fair for the current market?

I live in CheongJu so my knowledge of the non-English language teaching market of Seoul is minimal to say the best.

Many thanks in advance for your effort.

[SeoulNate]

My main question is how can he do it legally?

[morrisonhotel]

[Slowmotion]

1.2?? Good luck with that!

[carlo]

hello guys,

I am italian (graduated) and i would like to go to korea to teach italian, someone can give me some advice to find a job there or knows what italian hagwon are there?

i dont really care about salary, 1,2 won would be fine for me, since italian demand is much lower than the englsih one.

[wings]

From what I understand that is standard pay for non-English teaching. I met a few foreigners from non English speaking countries who were teaching ESL illegally rather than Spanish, French etc, because they could get better pay than teaching their own language.

[fosterman]

[tardisrider]

Carlo, maybe your Italian university has a career placement center that might help you find contacts and jobs in Korea. You talk about demand being less, and I'm sure that's true, but is it also possible that supply is less? Perhaps there are fewer Italians interested in coming to Korea to teach, so what need there is may be equally difficult to fill.

Some universities also have faculty teaching languages other than English. This would probably be a better gig than teaching in a hagwon. I've never met an Italian teaching in Korea, but I've met French and German native teachers. I don't know if their salaries are different than English teachers' salaries, but I always got the impression that they were reasonably the same. Housing, holidays, all of that stuff was equivalent.

Unless specific circumstances warrant something different, the visa will be an E2 or maybe an E1, so I'd expect the same requirements regarding education, criminal checks, and so on.

[ovid]

it is possible to teach a language outside of english and it's a little popular. i know this is true for french and spanish, mainly from upper class koreans who want to learn it "just for fun".

job boards are pretty difficult and like most things here, the best way to find these jobs is through word of mouth. that said, universities are a good place to start.

[Hotpants]

I reckon it'd be pretty difficult to guarantee a teacher of Italian 25 actual teaching hours per week, unless the school has some special contract to train Koreans to work as diplomats in Italy for example.

1.25 is quite low, but it's doable, especially with accommodation provided. The question is whether your friend is happy to accept that amount or not. Are they also positive that they can secure a visa for your friend, too?

The only people I've come across here so far who were keen on learning Italian were a group of nuns. They periodically traveled to the Vatican. They found a volunteer Italian national associated to the church who was here (on god knows what visa - excuse the pun!), and they used a university campus classroom out of hours to hold their once a week classes.

[tardisrider]

[wings]

Also very important is that requirements for people teaching a language other than English are much higher than for ESL teachers. Since there is less demand you pretty much need to have either a degree or a diploma in teaching that language.