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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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Flit
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Location: UK
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 Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:32 am Post subject: No degree - no visa? |
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Hi all,
I want to teach in South Korea. From all the ads it appears I need a degree to obtain a visa. Is this correct?
I can't see the logic in it. (I'm quite annoyed too). Does this mean they will take on some 21 yo uni graduate with no teaching experience whatsoever (no offence) - let alone a TEFL cert, over someone with over 5 years qualified experience?
Please tell me I'm wrong.
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Big Mac
Joined: 17 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 11:40 am Post subject: |
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You're not wrong. You cannot work legally in South Korea as an English teacher unless you have a university degree. Some people try, but they risk being caught and deported. I wouldn't risk it.
And really, I think most English teachers in Korea would rather you didn't come without a degree, as it hurts our overall reputation. |
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Flit
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Big Mac wrote: |
| You're not wrong. You cannot work legally in South Korea as an English teacher unless you have a university degree. Some people try, but they risk being caught and deported. I wouldn't risk it. |
Ok, well, thanks for verifying that for me.
| Big Mac wrote: |
| And really, I think most English teachers in Korea would rather you didn't come without a degree, as it hurts our overall reputation. |
I presume you mean the reputations of foreign teachers as law abiding folk might be hurt (?) |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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I agree. Don't come to work illegally. Koreans tend to measure all visible minorities with the same stick. If one does something wrong, Korean rage boils over asap and we're all put into the same pot. Getting a visa used to be a much simpler process until a bunch of jokers used fake degrees, scammed schools, were caught, and every Korean news org jumped on the story. Us law abiding teachers ended up having to pay with extra paperwork, a trip out to Korean immigration in the dead of winter, parents coming around schools demanding to see our degrees... Thanks cheaters!
So, the last thing we law abiding teachers with legal visas and legit degrees need is another freebooter coming to work illegally and ending up in an immigration hell hole and the subject of another SBS news report. Trust me, immigration is very fired up these days to root out the illegals and odds are you will be caught. And you don't want to spend a week in a Korean jail.
If you want to teach English in Korea, no matter how qualified you think you are, first do the legal minimum: get a BA. It's really that simple. No amount of outrage at the system, crying in your beer about a BA meaning nothing in the great scheme of things, yaddie yaddie, is going to change a thing. We've heard it all here before. Rules are rules. Korean society isn't about making exceptions. "Oh you're a rebel who plays by his own rules? Okay, we'll bend regs for you." In Korea, you know your place in the system or you'll get beaten down. You may as well argue red lights don't actually apply to you as you're a much safer driver... |
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Flit
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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Sure sure, I understand it is illegal. Even without a degree it is possible to understand and abide by the law.   I wanted to know what the law was. I never suggested coming and working illegally. I guess you have had your share of illegal workers flaunting their success in this forum.
'Crying in my beer... yaddie yaddie' Thanks for the explanation, but have some sympathy, I've only just found out.
Last edited by Flit on Wed Mar 01, 2006 8:28 am; edited 1 time in total |
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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If you've stuck with teaching and already have 5 years experience, there must be something you like about it...getting a B-Ed would formalize the whole thing and allow you to take it to the next level....like coming to Korea to teach and moo about having to pay off your school loans like the rest of us!!!!
Seriously though, that could be a good option for you. |
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J.B. Clamence
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 6:33 pm Post subject: Re: No degree - no visa? |
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| Flit wrote: |
| I can't see the logic in it. (I'm quite annoyed too). Does this mean they will take on some 21 yo uni graduate with no teaching experience whatsoever (no offence) - let alone a TEFL cert, over someone with over 5 years qualified experience? |
I disagree, I think it makes perfect sense. They want people who took at least four years after high school to improve their education. It's possible to educate yourself without a formal degree program, but the problem with that is how do you prove your a post-high school eduaction? The easiest and simplest way is to get a university degree, so that is what they require. The basic premise of the law is you have to have proof of an education to be a teacher, and I don't disagree with them. |
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Flit
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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Canuckistan: I did consider that option a year or two ago. Hmm.
Clamence: I see your point. But I consider the requirement over the top and contradictory. What good can this law do for the quality of EFL teaching in Korea? I mean come on, who would you have teach you English? ...the 21 yo Sports Science grad ...or the seasoned EFL teacher? Why does the TEFL cert bear no importance? Surely it should be a degree OR a TEFL cert (and what about my diploma... nothing!) At least... why not a degree AND a TEFL qualification? Just a degree accounts for absolutely diddly squat in my books when language teaching is concerned. They don't even care what subject it is . Crazy. I could prove my worth with references... a test... solid experience. Looking good on paper is NOT good enough. |
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Big Mac
Joined: 17 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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Flit, I disagree with you. A university degree is a very good measuring stick for determining the kind of teacher you're going to get. In other words, if you hire someone who has completed university you're more likely to get someone who has drive, initiative, reasonable judgement, etc. I'm not saying you can't have those things without a university degree, it's just more likely.
Put yourself in a Korean employer's shoes. If they see that you haven't completed university, to them it's an indication that maybe you don't value education much (which Koreans do very highly), that maybe you're a little lazy and perhaps not very smart. Also, it shows that you probably aren't from a very affluent family, which is something that I think Koreans over-emphasize the importance of. I'm not saying all these things are necessarily true about you...it might just be their impression.
Besides, it's the law...so you just have to deal with it. If you want to come here, get a degree. Simple as that. |
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keithinkorea
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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Get a degree.
Some idiot gyopo has been sending me personal messages asking for advice about how to work as a teacher in Korea without a degree! It is annoying but funny how he-she-it boasts about making so much money in the US but wanting to come to Korea to 'experience the culture'!
I think SBS should do a documentary about gyopo types without degrees expoiting their f series visas to deprive better educated Koreans of work and also shirk their military duty!
Doing a degree in any discipline involves a variety of skills needed by a teacher. Essay writing, critical analysis, hardwork, patience, self discipline and of course the desire to learn, all very valuable qualitites of a teacher.
Get a degree all you gyopo losers! |
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jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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| keithinkorea wrote: |
Get a degree.
Some idiot gyopo has been sending me personal messages asking for advice about how to work as a teacher in Korea without a degree! It is annoying but funny how he-she-it boasts about making so much money in the US but wanting to come to Korea to 'experience the culture'!
I think SBS should do a documentary about gyopo types without degrees expoiting their f series visas to deprive better educated Koreans of work and also shirk their military duty!
Doing a degree in any discipline involves a variety of skills needed by a teacher. Essay writing, critical analysis, hardwork, patience, self discipline and of course the desire to learn, all very valuable qualitites of a teacher.
Get a degree all you gyopo losers! |
The degree requirement only applies to E2 and E1 visas. So for an F visa th kyopo isnt breaking any rules. F visa holders are allowed to teach without a degree. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Big Mac wrote: |
| Flit, I disagree with you. A university degree is a very good measuring stick for determining the kind of teacher you're going to get. |
I disagree. If there's one thing that teachers in the global ESL community have been able to prove, is that ESL certification and related experience trumps non-ESL education and zero experience. Take Spain and the rest of the ESL hotbeds in Europe, plus Vietnam, Thailand, etc...where they are less stringent on degrees and place more value on TESOL, TEFL, or CELTA certification and your related experience. It's really only in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, where the degree/transcript is so fixated on. The need to prove a BA is needed for immigrant control, NOT something that schools care too much about factoring into their hiring decisions. This is Korea, where your picture gets a longer look than your resume, and the cover letter is so redundant to them, that they likely use them as lunch placemats to absorb the splatter from the tangsuyuk.
I mean, seriously. If you look at it strictly from an educational perspective for finding targeted teaching candidates, a guy with 5 years of ESL experience and ESL certification from a credible and solid institute, should offer less employment liability than somebody who just finished university with a BA, has zero experience in teaching in english, zero or limited job experience, particularly in a foreign country with a foreign employer, and outside of possibly living in a frat, has no significant experience of living away from home for an extensive period of time, much less on the other side of the world. And I'm a little confused as to why teachers here seem to go along and agree with the obtuse line of thinking that having a random BA and no experience guarantees educational value to students, versus someone who doesn't have a BA, but is TESOL certified and has related ESL experience. I don't get that logic, at all. That's not ESL education-centric thinking. That's just preserving the ESL business and its lousy loopholes, style thinking.
If I owned a school here, I'd be 100 times more inclined to hire a guy with verifiable references for this 5 yrs ESL experience and related certification, over a guy who has nothing to offer except a BA for meeting basic immigration requirements. But unfortunately, immigration has set this standard and they have no one to blame but themselves for doing so.
Last edited by chronicpride on Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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denverdeath
Joined: 21 May 2005
Location: Boo-sahn
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| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Flit wrote: |
| Clamence: I see your point. But I consider the requirement over the top and contradictory. What good can this law do for the quality of EFL teaching in Korea? I mean come on, who would you have teach you English? ...the 21 yo Sports Science grad ...or the seasoned EFL teacher? Why does the TEFL cert bear no importance? Surely it should be a degree OR a TEFL cert (and what about my diploma... nothing!) At least... why not a degree AND a TEFL qualification? Just a degree accounts for absolutely diddly squat in my books when language teaching is concerned. They don't even care what subject it is . Crazy. I could prove my worth with references... a test... solid experience. Looking good on paper is NOT good enough. |
As others have stated, the degree is a requirement of immigration, which is a branch of the Korean gov't. Your points are valid, but you may want to look at the TESOL/TEFL/TESL/WHATEVER cert as bearing importance AFTER the basic qualification of a degree. You may want to try and petition the Korean gov't into changing their requirements, but that may not be such an easy task. Also, there's really no way any of us are able to predict the future with any sort of certainty. Perhaps in the future the Korean gov't will be requiring an MA in TESOL/TEFL/TESL or Linguistics/English along with a cert in Korean language ability. Who knows? One other thing to consider is the fact that TEFL/TESOL/TESL certs do not necessarily give you a lot of extra useful info/techniques than you may've already had. At least in my situation that was the case. Most of the theories and techniques I learned for my cert I already knew either from areas I learned in psyc classes at university or from common sense. The cert wasn't completely useless as it makes my resume look a little better and I did learn a couple of useful teaching/classroom strategies. As Jinju mentioned, some people without an E2/E1 visa will be able to teach here without penalty. However, most places such as private institutes, public schools, and universities will not hire them if they do not have at least a bachelor's degree. That's just the way it is. |
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jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 1:20 am Post subject: |
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| denverdeath wrote: |
As Jinju mentioned, some people without an E2/E1 visa will be able to teach here without penalty. However, most places such as private institutes, public schools, and universities will not hire them if they do not have at least a bachelor's degree. That's just the way it is. |
Therein lies the dilemma;) Would an F visa holder want to work for a place that would hire someone without a degree? |
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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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| Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 2:13 am Post subject: |
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The work product produced by the current ESL industry is terrible. The Koreans spend plenty of time and money and have little to show for their efforts. The Koreans aren't stupid, they're just misled. I can talk to Poles,Romanians and Filipinos just like another native speaker and they get all of that work done without the handwringing and hogwans.
To answer your question - you need a 4 year degree to work here. |
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