Basic requirements

In order to get a job teaching English in South Korea you must meet some basic criteria. You must have a full and valid passport from an English speaking country i.e. The UK, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland or South Africa. You must also have a bachelor’s degree in any subject – though a degree in education may help you negotiate a higher wage. You should also have a clean police record. Aside from these things the only requirements are an interest in teaching, a willingness to accept and even embrace the idiosyncrasies of a culture vastly different to your own, and a lot of patience.

Public or private?

Teaching jobs in Korea are located in either public elementary, middle and high schools, or private after-school academies called hagwon. Both have their advantages (hagwons pay more and often have shorter working hours whereas public schools have long holidays and better job security) and disadvantages (hagwons can be run by money-hungry directors who care very little for your welfare, and public school class sizes are often in excess of 40, making class control an issue). Both usually provide you with return air fare, either in advance or refunded upon arrival, and single or shared furnished accommodation.

Positions in hagwons are relatively easy to get with the help of any of the major online recruitment companies. Just googling “teach in Korea” will highlight hundreds of options, though you should be careful to, in turn, research the recruitment company to ensure their legitimacy. Once you have selected a position you seem suited for, it is essential that you question the set-up. What are the hours? What time of the night will you be expected to work until (most hagwons operate between midday and 9 or 10pm)? What holiday entitlements will you have? How much will they pay you? (The average for a first-year hagwon teacher is 2.1 million won a month outside of Seoul, a little more in the city and out in the sticks.) Have they had English teachers before? Did they finish their contracts? If not, why not? All of these questions are essential to ensure you are not walking into a bad situation.

Unfortunately recruitment companies will often do anything to secure a viable candidate and receive their commission so make use of the ESL blacklists online such as esllist.com. If your hagwon appears on one, then stay away. If this all sounds worrying then please remember that thousands of teachers, including myself, work very happily in good hagwons run by caring directors. The horror stories are out there because they are just that: horror stories. If you are prepared you should be fine.

Public school recruitment is entirely different from the private school routine. There are several government-affiliated organisations which place thousands of teachers in schools throughout the country every year. The most well-known of these is EPIK but GEPIK and SMOE are also worth a look. Once again, you can apply through many of the major recruitment websites or directly through the organisation’s website.

Public schools tend to recruit twice a year in order to meet demand for the new school terms in February and August and dedicated organisations support their teachers throughout the process with training programs, social events and general advice. The selection process is a little tougher and a TEFL certificate is generally required, though it is by no means an absolute necessity. As opposed to hagwons the working hours are commonly 9-5 and, though the wages are typically lower, the completion and resigning bonuses are higher and the vacation allowances are far more generous than those in private education.

Location

Korea is a stunningly beautiful country. Mountain ranges criss-cross the peninsula and the rough, craggy coastline is littered with scores of beaches and stunning islands. Wherever you are, transport is cheap, easy and extremely convenient allowing you to wear out your your guide book and make the most of your time here. Despite this ease of movement your city will be where you spend the vast majority of your time in Korea and it is important that you consider your personal needs before committing to a position.

Seoul is loud, boisterous and has a huge foreigner community which can be both a blessing and a curse. The opportunities for social interaction, taking part in creative projects and networking are huge but this comes hand in hand with the sense that you may lose some of the “Korean” experience. Smaller cities such as Gwangju and Daejeon have a less thriving social scene and a smaller expat crowd which can equate to a wonderful community spirit. However, while having everyone know your name after two weeks can be comforting for a newcomer, some people may find it suffocating and prefer a larger more vibrant environment. Busan is a beach city with a party vibe and an established gay scene which is rare outside Seoul. Its popularity can make it tough to find a position there as a first-time teacher but those with experience, or just a bit of luck, may make it through.

As with any travelling experience, the more you put in the more you get out. If your city doesn’t have a drama society then start one. If you deplore the live music scene then form a band or arrange a live music night with one of the bars. If there is little or no information for foreigners then begin a blog and ask your friends and colleagues to submit their experience and advice about living in your area. Be proactive and you will make life better for those who will come after you as well as for yourself.

Visas

So you’ve found a job and picked the right city for you. Now for that pesky visa. Almost all foreign teachers working in Korea do so with an E2 visa which is valid for a year as long as you remain in the employment of those who sponsored you. Getting the visa can be a complicated and drawn-out process, especially as you are required to provide police checks, apostilled proof of your education history and a myriad other bits and pieces. Though this might sound daunting, don’t let it put you off a fantastic experience. Thousands of people every year survive the mountains of paperwork and go on to successful teaching roles in Korea. Any recruitment company worth their salt should provide detailed step-by-step advice on how to obtain your E2 visa, and if they don’t, they probably don’t deserve you.

A final word

Moving to another country to work is an entirely different experience from just travelling through, seeing the sites, and heading home. Korea is at times challenging, difficult, stressful and can stretch your patience further than you thought it could reach. But if you come with an open mind and a willingness to adapt then you will find it to be a warm, open country filled with beautiful landscapes and charming people. Thousands come every year and find so much more than a good pay cheque; why not be one of them?

by George Marshall

Plan A. Work hard at school, secure a good job, set your sights on promotion, climb the corporate ladder, live happily ever after.

Reality check for Plan A. Work longer and longer hours just to make ends meet, condemned to a life of wage slavery, drowning in a sea of debt, poverty of mind and spirit, existing only to work.

Plan B. A simple yet revolutionary idea…

GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN

The premise of this book is that Plan B is the better option and the book guides you through the process, step by step, of making Plan B a reality for you.

I identified very strongly with this book as indeed I am a Plan B person already. I had also made a little progress towards writing such a book myself. However, I was still at the stage of outlining the chapters of my proposed book and George has pipped me at the post by publishing his. I guess that’s me off the hook for writing the book now as Get Out While You Can is very much the book I would have written, had I been quicker off the mark to do it.

This is not a get-rich-quick plan, nor does George recommend that you recklessly give up your day job today, especially if your household depends on the income. Instead, he plots a course where you can start small and grow your financial independence. You don’t need vast sums to invest – it’s possible to get started with as little as £50.

The idea is to create multiple revenue streams of automated income which lead to your making money while you sleep. Literally! Perhaps some of you are sceptical about this. Does it sound too good to be true?  No, actually, I can vouch that it’s possible. I get up every day and check to see how much I earned while I slept, so does George, so can you.

How is it possible? The trick is that you make the same piece of work earn over and over again. Say you spend an hour today working for someone else. You will be paid for that one hour of your time. And that’s it. The time is gone now and you can never get it back. You can’t get paid for that hour again either. Now, think what if you had spent that hour working for yourself creating something that can generate revenue day after day, month after month, year after year even. Wouldn’t that be nice?  It’s not so hard to do.

Think about the magic of numbers and compounding. If you did enough work every day to generate £1, then after one year (or 365 days) the accumulated earnings would amount to £66,795. Where did that figure come from? Well, it’s £1 on Day One, £2 on Day Two, £3 on Day Three etc. Because on any given day, you still have the work you did on all the previous days behind you. Obviously life isn’t that predictable, but the figures are believable and achievable. So, how do you go about this?  The book spells it out for you.

Need a website? The book explains domains, hosting and website build for total beginners. Want to make money with the website? The book explains various methods of monetisation. It even tells you how to get more visitors to your website – the more visitors you get, the more chances you have of making money from your website traffic.

The good thing about this book is that it holds your hand all the way. It really is a blueprint which shows you how to get out while you can. If you follow the advice and work through the process of making Plan B a reality, then this book could well be the best investment you’ll ever make.

Get out while you can

George Marshall
Paperback, 440 pages
Geronimo! Books
Publication date: 16 May 2011
(advance copies now available from Amazon.co.uk)
ISBN-13 978-0-9535932-1-7
RRP: £14.99

We live in a society based on wage slavery. Every day millions of people go to work as wage slaves. Why they do this isn’t as obvious as you might think. They do so not to earn money. They do so because that is what is expected of them.

From the day we are born we are sold the lie that is Plan A. Work hard at school, secure a good job, set your sights on promotion, climb the corporate ladder, live happily ever after. The problem being that very few of us do live happily ever after.

For far too many people the reality of Plan A is this. Working longer and longer hours just to make ends meet, condemned to a life of wage slavery, drowning in a sea of debt, poverty of mind and spirit, existing merely to work.

Plan A didn’t even work for most people during the so-called good times. With the current economic problems we face, and the far bigger ones ahead (an ageing population, peak oil, climate change, the looming pension crisis to name but a few), it’s more vital than ever that we at least consider alternatives to “earning a living”.

George Marshall, who divides his time between his native Scotland and Spain’s Costa Blanca, thinks work is a four-letter word. He thinks we are all mad to spend 40 or more hours every week for 40 or more years of our lives “earning a living”. Especially when we don’t have to.

In our frantic bid to earn enough money we don’t realise that in return for a wage packet we trade our most valuable possession. Our time. The big mistake we make is to sell our time by the hour. Instead we should be doing what movie stars do. Do an hour’s work and then allow that hour’s work to make us money for days, weeks, months, years even, to come.

We can’t all be movie stars, unfortunately, but thanks to the information age, anyone who can turn on a computer can put their time to work for them just like those movie stars do.

George Marshall has spent the last six years excavating an escape tunnel that leads directly away from the rat race. He calls it Plan B and he thinks it’s an escape route you might want to explore for yourself. It won’t bring the wage slave society crashing down, but for tens of thousands of people just like you, it may just provide the blueprint for the life of endless possibility that you were born to lead.

Plan B is a simple yet revolutionary idea. And it’s this. Get out while you can.

Get out while you can

George Marshall
Paperback, 440 pages
Geronimo! Books
Publication date: 16 May 2011
(advance copies now available from Amazon.co.uk)
ISBN-13 978-0-9535932-1-7
RRP: £14.99

What are the schools/pay/conditions like?

Schools vary a great deal. In all likelihood you’ll be teaching at a private school which works outside the public school system, often supplementing its shortcomings.

Their set up varies from country to country and city to city. In richer and more developed countries you are likely to find school chains which are often large affairs – sometimes up to 1,000 students or more – with tens of English teachers and several different campuses. In less developed countries and smaller towns, schools tend to be much smaller, sometimes just a single teacher in a single classroom with perhaps 20 students in all.

It’s hard to say, but the average school is perhaps 200 students, two or three classrooms, basic facilities and three or four teachers in all (mostly locals; often schools will have just one English native speaker teacher).

The majority of students will be from 10–17 years old, though many schools also run English classes for younger children and Business English. And in case you are wondering, the students tend to be quite well behaved and there also tends to be much more respect for a teacher both inside and outside the school.

A typical working week would involve something like 20 classroom hours. You may well work slightly odd hours though: 9 to 12 in the morning and then again in the afternoon from 4 till 8. Split shifts like this are not uncommon in private schools.

Generally you’ll sign a contract for the school year. The pay is generally quite good by local standards. An entry-level job will give you enough to live on, pay for bedsit-type accommodation (which is often organised by the school), give you a couple of nights out per week and enough for a holiday at the end of your contract.

The school will often organise basic health cover if the country you are in does not have a reciprocal agreement with your home country. Often your return flight will be reimbursed at the end of your contract.

Finding Work

There are three generally accepted ways of finding work.

• Through an online advertisement. Many schools advertise their job online and a simple search will bring up suitable jobs. Spend time to look through them all and get the feel of what is out there and general pay and conditions. Be aware that there are scams about, so if a job looks too good to be true then it probably is!
• Using an agent. Sometimes you can see advertisements online for agents. These will help place you in a school and help with sorting out paperwork. There is one golden rule here: never pay an agent. They are given a commission by the school to find a teacher and so if they ask you for money to find you work, walk away immediately! Another point to bear in mind is that the agent works for the school and not for you, so they may not be too scrupulous when it comes to placing teachers in not-so-perfect schools. This being said, it’s often a good way to find a first job in a country until you find your feet and it also means there’s someone there you can turn to for help should the need arise.
• Pounding the Streets. This isn’t to be dismissed immediately and a lot of teachers do this. If you know where you want to go but can’t find work there beforehand then you can take a flight over, rent a cheap room and see if you can find work on your own using the Yellow Pages or local newspapers as your starting point. It’s best to go at the beginning of term (usually around September/October) and be sure to have enough money to get you home if things go completely wrong.

And then?

And then it’s time to buy a phrase book, pack your bag and go!

English teaching has taken people to all corners of the earth to live and work. It doesn’t matter if you are straight out of college or looking for a mid-life career change. English teaching can give you the opportunity to get out there, make a difference… and enjoy yourself!

Choosing a country

While you’re getting qualified, you can be deciding where you want to teach. You can go almost anywhere so if a particular country takes your fancy, the chances are that you’ll be able to find work there.

Oh, and one common question we are often asked is, “Do I have to speak the local language?” The simple answer is, “No!” You don’t need to speak Russian if you’re looking for work in Russia or Portuguese if you’re looking for work in Portugal!

The general principle of teaching English is that you and your class speak only English when you’re together so don’t worry if you don’t speak anything but English yourself!

Meanwhile, here are some common destinations for teachers (but this list is by no means exhaustive and you will likely find small, privately run English language schools in every city and almost every single town in every country in the world – so wherever you want to go, you’ll find work there if you look hard enough):

Europe

Because of EU regulations, schools tend to favour EU passport holders as this spares them the bureaucratic hassle they would get trying to hire non-EU applicants. So in practical terms this means that most English teachers in Europe are from Britain or Ireland. There are still plenty of jobs in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey) and Eastern Europe. Work is harder to find but still available in Central and Western Europe, although for places like Germany and France you generally have to have experience and higher qualifications.

China

There are a lot of jobs in China. It’s the new emerging market for teachers and a simple search online will bring up hundreds of jobs available there ranging from work in the big cities to small towns in the far end of the country. If you work here you’ll find teachers from many different countries alongside you.

Elsewhere in Asia

Outside of China, common destinations are Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. In the same way that Europe is a common destination for British and Irish teachers, these countries are popular with Australian, New Zealand, American and Canadian teachers although you’ll still find plenty of British and Irish working there too.

South America and Central America

Mainly popular with American teachers, the more popular countries include Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil and Argentina, though Chile and Peru are also on the up.

Middle East

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE (especially Dubai) are known for paying well. But there are lifestyle restrictions which may not suit everyone.

Africa

Work can be found by applying individually or through volunteer associations and international missions. Morocco, Egypt and South Africa are popular amongst Americans and British teachers alike.

Part Three: Living/working conditions and finding a job