Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mack4289]

I worked at Kelly Lee's Little Campus in Busan for a year. You will get everything you're promised with no hassle but you will also have a heavy teaching load (at least in comparison to some other schools). It's 7-8 forty minute classes from Monday-Friday, from 10am-7pm (til 515 on Tuesday and Thursday). I found I was exhausted by the end of every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Outside of work- most of the apartments are right in the school (there is an apartment they give to couples which is 5 subway stops away), which I thought was perfect because there was no commute to work. It's close to a 1 line and a 3 line subway stop (the 124 and 306 stops). So that's close to the two major spots for nightlife (the 128 stop and the 213- Pusan National University and Kyungsung National University. Say Busan-dae or Kyungsung-dae to a cab driver and they'll know what you're talking about).

The apartment is fine- everything they promise is there and they have huge beds. They also have a dryer, which is a big bonus. If anything's wrong, they're good about fixing it. They also don't care who you have over or bring home. My girlfriend lived with me for months without working at the school and they never said a word to me.

You are close to some good spots for going out but in the immediate area there's not much to do. There's a baseball stadium nearby and those games are great. There's loads of Korean restaurants and bars, nice places to go with friends but you're probably not going to meet anyone there. There's also the biggest nightclub in Busan, at the Diamond Hotel, but it's almost exclusively Koreans in there and they sometimes forbid single foreigners from entering.

I think the workload is normal for big hagwons but you'll find that the people who go to the smaller hagwons get the same pay and work a lot less. Of course those hagwons are less reliable, you know with Little Campus that it's not going out of business and that it'll always have enough students.

Other drawbacks- they basically leave you alone, which I thought was great but some teachers were annoyed by the lack of guidance. They're not going to tell you if you're doing a good or bad job. As long as the parents don't complain, there's a good chance you won't get any feedback about your work. Again, that was fine with me but other teachers didn't like it.

Also, make sure you get them to agree the cover the whole airfare. They only covered 1200 for me but with other teachers they did the whole thing because the teachers pushed for it.

Ok good luck if you're going there. You can email me with any questions.

[spliff]

Suppose it might be okay if the salary was 2.5 and I wouldn't want to live right at the school, myself.