02/03/2021
hi and welcome to another live session by itt my name is
linda and i'm here today um to talk about teaching english in south
korea so welcome welcome um i'm just gonna wait for um people to join please do let me
know if you can hear me if you can see me or if you're not if you can't hear me if there's a problem if anything's wrong
uh because that would be um bad obviously so
yeah drop a comment um just leave a high and uh where you're tuning in from that
would be really helpful let me know where you guys are watching
from and um yeah i can see a few people have joined already
hi thanks so much for joining awesome okay i got a yes i can hear you
from mika awesome or micah sorry if i pronounce that wrong but yeah
uh yeah thanks so much for joining okay and mika mika is from argentina
or joining from argentina very cool awesome we have mandy hi mandy i remember you
tuned in before right thanks for tuning in again mindy from iowa awesome great
nessa is watching and listening from the philippines great awesome i spent my honeymoon in
the philippines it was amazing i want to go back so bad
but yeah so uh let me just show you today's topic so
that everybody who's joining knows what's happening and what's going on today today we're talking about teaching
english in south korea and i'm so excited about this topic and it's actually been a um super requested topic um every time
i go live because we do these we these lives weekly so every time i get
like requests please do a live about you know korea just korea um i've been living in korea
for five yeah almost six years like in may it's gonna be
well in may it's gonna be six years but yeah time flies so um i've been here a while i've been
teaching i've been you know teaching a couple of different uh classes and like did
summer camps and winter camps and teaching kids and teaching adults teaching business english teaching conversation teaching full-time
at a kindergarten and elementary school with afternoon
programs and stuff like that so um yeah i hope that i'll be able to you know
provide some good information and some insight into what it's like teaching english in south korea and you
know everything else that goes along with it if you have any questions about um you know what it's like
living in korea or you know learning korean or um you know all those things that
just kind of come with that with teaching here and living here um just let me know and
uh you can ask me any questions that you have at any time i did prepare
a presentation um but yeah you can throw your questions at
me at any time feel free to do that so that you know i'm not just talking by myself
here um but yeah it's a very active crowd already i see some questions coming in
so mandy was asking about if i teach in a public or private school or is it all private
so currently um i am mostly teaching online different projects because of covet
um but yeah i do work full-time for itt and so teaching is sort of on the side
for me at the moment but i did um teach full-time in korea
my first year here um it was a private kindergarten
private kindergarten with elementary school afternoon classes but i do have some friends who you know
work at public schools so i also know a little bit about that and can give you some information
so i hope it works out uh yeah so anybody who's here
are you interested in teaching english in korea is that why you're
watching this live or just teaching abroad in general and you're looking at options or what's the deal let me know also
maybe where you are currently in your tefl journey are you taking a tefl course are you
thinking about taking a course if you're taking a course which course are you taking
let me know i'm super curious you know who i'm talking to so that also i can adjust sort of my
information based on you know what you guys are doing what you guys are wanting to hear
uh you know what kind of information i can provide and stuff like that but i can see a lot of questions already
coming in that's awesome okay great question from
amy here thanks so much for asking because i know a lot of people are curious about that and that's why i
actually did a live session about sort of teaching the best teaching destinations
for 2021 during or post well we're kind of still in the
pandemic but you know during the pandemic so what's the situation so amy's asking should anyone even
bother looking into teaching abroad while there are coveted lockdowns so it always depends on you know where
you want to go so because the lockdowns are different right i know there are
some very strict lockdowns happening like in europe right now here in korea it's not
as strict as it is in europe so we do we we're not really on lockdown but
there are restrictions in place so i can tell you what it is like right now for example um
basically everything closes at 9pm um and you cannot
meet uh hang out with more than five people um but other than that it's pretty much
that's pretty much it so like everything closes at nine um and a few weeks ago it was like a
little bit stricter where cafes were only take out so you couldn't actually
because cafe culture is huge in korea we can talk about that a little bit later but like people love going to
cafes and people go to cafes to like work or study and they hang out there for hours and hours
and hours so um that was restricted so you could only get take out at cafes
but since like two weeks or so ago um they also lifted that and you can hang out at cafes again um
but yeah back to the question so yes uh countries are still hiring and i have a
couple of friends who are actually new in korea um who got here
in summer last year for that intake uh that um fall
intake and they got here in july or august and um they they get hired so you you do
go through you know the the quarantine the two-week quarantine
but um every teacher coming to korea already has typically in a pint an apartment
assigned so you can quarantine at that apartment so basically at home you quarantine at home
it's at no cost to you it's free um you get like this uh
covet quarantine package from the government and um you quarantine there and after two
weeks you know if you're good uh if everything is you know negative and
then you start teaching so actually teaching abroad is one of the only ways that you can travel right now
or go abroad um so it's definitely still happening and schools are hiring you know
the need is there the demand is there so yeah don't worry about that it's definitely
still happening then lose i saw your comment about um
learning korean and i'm actually going to talk about that a little bit later um so stay tuned i am going to mention
that i have a special slide just for that um
[Music] yeah all right so there's a lot of people interested in
korea in teaching in korea only virtual right now okay so you you are teaching online
that's really cool can that be possible and then maybe go abroad okay yes so yeah a lot of people are
starting you know teaching um english online at the moment to get experience and you know because
of covet you can't really do anything else so that's a great way you know get started
teaching online getting experience and then going abroad later that's definitely a good idea a lot of people are doing that
so yeah that's a great idea okay very very cool
so mandy says i'm interested in teaching abroad but south korea is my ultimate place to teach
i just got done with the course and i have to finish my practicum to get my certificate
awesome great congratulations so korea is the ultimate place to teach
awesome great awesome love it
all right before we jump in to the presentation uh all the you know info
that i have for you please please don't forget to like and subscribe so that you don't
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listening also there will be a special offer at the end of the session
a discount if you've watched before you know the drill so at the end of the session there will be a 30
off discount link for any itt teflon tesol course so um you don't want
to miss that so stay tuned great all right then let me
turn on my presentation and i'll be a little smaller down here
hope it works and um also let me turn this off so we can all
see the whole thing but yeah um so teaching english in south korea
let's take a look and here we go i always introduce myself
um for those who are new here like i said we are going live every week actually twice i go live once a week and
my colleague lisa she goes live um also once a week so on tuesday and um yeah she's a
non-native english speaking teacher so that's a really great
other perspective we have a lot of non-native english course takers and graduates so um
if you're one of them i highly recommend checking out lisa's lives because she has a lot of
great info for a non-native english teachers um she's a very successful teacher she does
a lot of online teaching also in class she worked in china um
so she's very knowledgeable about that and then yeah about myself so my name is
linda dunsmore um on the one hand i'm a travel writer and content creator
under the name linda goes east so you can find me at lindigoseast.com and that's basically a
blog website about um living in asia and a lot of information about korea
so if you're interested in living working korea or just traveling in korea or asia i highly recommend checking that
out as well i have a huge um guide about teaching english in korea
with um filled with information about you know my personal experience and also um other people's experience
and i'm going to share the link to that in a little bit so that you can check it out you can
find me on social media at linda goes east um i always say that you know just feel free to reach out to me at any time
ask your questions about tefl teasel korea anything really you can just reach out
to me i am from germany slash usa so i was born in germany
my mom is german my dad is american and um yeah i spent time in both countries and since uh 2015
i'm based in south korea and before that i also taught english
and spent some time in china i actually studied chinese moved to china but then i met
my now husband who turned out to be korean so that's why i moved to korea basically that's the story but yeah on
the other side i also am a teflon tesol marketing professional at itt
international tefl and tesol training and you can find us at teflcourse.net and on instagram at
international tefl training i highly recommend checking that out giving it a like a follow um because we are really trying
to build that page on instagram um we have a lot of followers our facebook page is huge but
our instagram you know it's uh growing slowly so we'd appreciate some follows there
um and yeah itttt is a leading teflon tesol course provider worldwide we have online courses in
class courses combined courses of all different for all different needs basically
yep so that's who we are and i am and uh yeah
let's see so i just want to start off with like a
few interesting facts about korea i thought that would kind of um be maybe funny and interesting so
just to get like an idea of um you know what korea is like and um
yeah so interesting facts about south korea south korea um
for the americans out here is about the si same size as indiana and actually south korea or the us sorry
the us is 99 times bigger than south korea so south korea is quite small
quite a small country um and uh yeah i love you know just taking the car
and then just going on different road trips it's really fun because everything is quite uh
compact so you can drive down you know uh to the beach uh in like an hour
so there's always like a beach nearby it's it's really great but um i actually have a map of korea in the
next slide and i can talk a little bit more about you know what the country is like itself
but yeah also there are more than 3 000 islands around south korea so i think
not a lot of people know that that actually there's a lot of islands and um jeju
is the biggest island in south korea
oh lose said uh i would love i would love to stay for more but i need to go to work now
thanks so much for tuning in though lose you can watch the playback you can watch the replay later it'll
stay on our patreon on youtube thanks so much and have fun at work
great okay so yeah digi island is the biggest
um island in korea it's a popular tourist destination especially nowadays
because we can't really travel abroad so a lot of people are going down to jeju um you can actually take a plane from
seoul to jeju it takes like an hour it's very fast actually under an hour um and it's
really really nice amy says it's the size of indiana that is mind-blowing
yeah right so it's quite small and that's only south korea not the whole peninsula so only south korea but
yeah it is very small yeah then approximately 9.7 million
people live in seoul and actually so sol is the capital city and that's where
most people live and seoul and its surrounding um areas that's where 40 of the whole
population lives around 40 it's what they always say um so it's
very it can get very crowded in seoul and um yeah apartment prices are really high
there and the cost of living is a little bit higher than you know the rest of the country
um traffic is crazy in seoul because you know just 40 of the whole
population live in the area so it can get quite crowded especially in different depending on you know where you are
visiting which part of seoul um so yeah i do not live in seoul i live about an
hour and a half south of seoul i'm gonna show you that in the next slide um and i love seoul i go up there a lot
but uh it can get crowded and um i do uh i'm always i always feel like relief
when i go back home but yeah yeah anyway so it's also an interesting fact
the next one south koreans are one year old when they are born so that's something that a lot of
foreigners can't really wrap their head around it's kind of a strange system but yeah you're when you're born in south korea
you're already one year old and then also
everybody turns one year older on january 1st so that's also very interesting so
imagine that for example my husband he was born in september
so when he was born in september he was already one and then three months later january
first he turns two isn't that wild even though he's actually what three or
four months old but he's two in korea so um yeah that's one of their interesting systems that's why
when you come to korea as a foreigner and they ask you how old you are they're always like korean age or american age
because they're different and you'll be older in korea just to let you know you'll be older
either one or two years older depending on when you're born but um yeah that's always something that kind of i think is really crazy and very
unique to korea i don't know any other place that does that um let me know if uh
there's a another place that does it like that i don't know uh amy asks and then he still celebrates
his birthdays in september so um yes it's kind of like
nowadays so the younger generation they celebrate their birthday on their actual birthday but like the
older generations they usually follow the lunar calendar so they would
celebrate their lunar birthday which um is different every year
so like in our calendar like the western calendar i guess um so
my parents-in-law they kind of celebrate their birthday according to the lunar calendar so
every year i have no idea when their birthday is because i don't follow the lunar calendar so it's
kind of yeah it's difficult but like the younger generation they follow like the western calendar and
also everything that's like official like for getting like an idea or license
or whatever they um follow the um the western calendar so for official things but um that's
just one of those little cultural things that they do but um i heard that this system kind of
causes problems for some kids especially those who are born you know at the end of the year
because they like i said they are one and then they turn two a few months later so they're actually a few months old but
they're considered as being two in korea and then they're in the same class with
older kids and so some of them have disadvantages because of that so i heard that they might kind of change
that but um i have no idea but that's just yeah it's something crazy
so um okay amy's asking so basically everyone
gets a bonus two years birth and the first yeah sorta yeah but there's no two
birthdays a year so yeah everybody's turning one year older on january 1st but then like
that's like officially and then you also celebrate your own birthday on your
actual birthday but like it's just some like it's symbolic
you don't like age two years in one year you know what i mean i don't know
it's complicated like yeah i don't even know who came up with
that or like why it's like that i have no idea but that's just how it is
okay all right then um also very interesting to know that all men before 30 have
to complete between 21 and 24 months of military service in
korea that's basically because technically and i don't want to get into the whole
history of things but technically you know korea is still at war with north korea um
they you know technically officially they are still a war they never signed an end of war agreement um
so that's why you know the military power is still very strong and they
are you know for protection and security so all the men they must um commit to 21 to 24 months of military
service before turning 30 and a lot of men do that actually during university
they would do like one year for university then like take a break do their military service then come back
and finish the university so things like oh excuse me
things like that so that's just something to know if
you're um dating a korean make sure he has completed his military service or you're gonna end up waiting
for him for two years so yeah and then the last fun fact that
i added in because we're very close to valentine's day is another interesting fact um
that on valentine's day is on february 14th it's the women that give chocolates and
gifts to their to the men so to their husbands or boyfriends um to show their love so it's the opposite
sort of and then um so on february 14th it's the women giving the men chocolate chocolates and
gifts and then a month later on march 14th um the men
give the women chocolates and gifts so they're sort of two valentine's days
actually um every month every 14th of the month has like a
special kind of couple holiday korea is a lot about couple culture it's
a huge thing like people wear couple clothes you go out you see people wearing like
matching outfits matching shoes matching anything matching so they love
showing off their couple and so um it just turned out that every 14th of
the month is a special couple holiday so this can be like valentine's day
then i think march 14th is called i think it's called white day um then there's like
is there like a like a chocolate day then the other one is like
a flower holiday you get flowers the other one is like for jewelry the other one is for taking
i think couple pictures or i don't know but um yeah so technically every 14th of the month is a
couple holiday you can look that up um i'm not we're not doing that my husband and me
uh we're just doing valentine's day but um yeah that's what's happening so those are interesting facts about
korea i hope um to get an idea of what it's like um over there and now i just want to
show you guys a little bit about what the country looks like and maybe this is too small it's a little small for me too um but
yeah just a little bit of um geography i guess
so uh we already talked about the size so south korea is quite small um the us is 99 times bigger
so and it's about the size of indiana so it's quite small but there are nine provinces
even though i know down here it says eight provinces but so eight mainland provinces and one
special province which is jeju right here so that's the biggest island
that i talked about earlier and yeah so nine provinces seoul is over
here up there that's where seoul is next to it here that's incheon that's where um the
airport is so when you're arriving in korea you're actually not arriving in seoul you're actually arriving in incheon over
here and the airport is kind of like on this island i don't know if you can see
there's like this little island here um that's where the airport is so you're when you're flying into korea
you see all the islands and then you're landing like on this island where the airport is and then you
can take you know the train the bus or taxi or wherever to go wherever you need to go
it's not far from seoul it's quite i think the airport train is maybe like 45 minutes or so
um yeah but they also have buses you know to go all over the country so
that's that then obviously here is north korea so actually seoul is
quite close to north korea um not that far away you can take tours
to visit the border which is really interesting uh if you're into history or just in
general i mean it's something really interesting to see um the dmz the demilitarized zone
you can go in there and um you can take the full so they have a smaller tour in the
full tour so the full tour is like where you actually see the north korean guards where they face each other the north
koreans and the south koreans so that's really cool um to see
uh yeah then actually i took a uh trip with two my friends in
like late summer last year and we went up to it was maybe about here um a city called paju
and um i took my car and i was driving and we were driving sort of like really
at the border so there was like barbed wire fence and then on the other side it was north korea and you could see like
just north korean like scenery like the mountains and stuff no villages you can see that but like
this is kind of cool like you're driving and oh yeah there's north korea so it's kind of fun but yeah
i live sort of here kind of really in the middle of korea which is convenient for me i like it
uh because i have a car so i can drive anywhere it's almost pretty much the same distance anywhere so i really like that
um yeah daegu because somebody was asking about daegu uh diego is right here so those are like
because you see it's a different color so a few cities are like special cities
they they're not private they're not like in the pro like they're not part of a province they're like sort of their
own thing so those are a few cities like you can see here degu ulsan busan guangzhou
de jong sejong seoul i think that's it so those are like the special cities
and then um those are like the provinces and jeju and those are just some um you
know attractions around korea some of the most well-known
i thought it was just interesting to include so that you can see that it's very um there's a lot of variety so like there's
you know beaches ocean islands there's bamboo forests there's tea fields there's like
also like this is busan it's a really fancy part of busan it's really nice you could take like a
yacht tour there um there's history a lot of historic buildings there's also you know snow
especially this winter we had a lot of snow so there's like winter sports going on there's like
a lot of really nice ski resorts um all that stuff so all of this is korea
because i think a lot of people have some um sort of different opinions about korea or like they're not they don't
really know a lot about it so um yeah also again if you're interested in learning more about especially
traveling in korea you can check out my website lindagoseast.com
and uh yeah you can see more about that i hope this is interesting i didn't get a lot of comments so far
anybody still out there let me take a sip of tea but yeah korean tea by the way this
is actually really nice sort of like probably from this area this is a big tea area in korea and also jeju island so
here wait this is here that's the tea area down here very very pretty i'm actually planning
on going down there again this spring i love tea and i'm just you know seeing
like the tea fields and all this stuff and and with the cherry blossoms in spring it's just
so beautiful so i really enjoy that
okay tea break
thanks amy okay cool all right thanks for letting me know you're still there i don't want to bore you guys i feel like
i'm just talking you know i can get carried away i love living in korea you know it's so
fun so um if at any point you know i get too much of topic just let me know and i'll
shut up or i'll get fast i go through it faster anyway so that was it about um our
geography class i guess uh
cool johannes is very interesting would love to road trip all around korea oh my god that's my goal especially
you know now with kobe we can't really travel abroad um so i just wanna yeah take my car and
go everywhere that would be my goal
moses says hello linda hi moses thanks so much for tuning in we're talking about teaching english in korea
all right very cool all right i guess um oh albert has a
question cool albert asked what kind of tea is that green tea the tea that i'm drinking
yes actually no i well it's actually this one and normally i
don't do tea bags but i don't have time to do the loose leaf right now so it says um post fermented tea with
sweet elegant flavor of korean pear it's actually my first time having this tea but yeah this brand is really nice
you can check it out osula they have some really really good tea um and they are i actually went to the
osolog museum on jeju island oops here on jeju island they have a big team
museum and tea fields there um but yeah so south korea mostly produces green tea
they do not actually make pure or anything like that mostly green tea and it's actually
really nice green tea also a little bit of matcha even the matcha matcha culture isn't that big
like compared to japan for example but yeah anyway that's my tea um
all right moving on
now we're getting into um more about actually teaching in korea um and i just want to start off with the
qualifications because people are always like you know what do i need do i need to have a bachelor's in education or do i
need to you know what do i need to have so um basically two things are important
mostly when it comes to teaching english in korea it's your nationality unfortunately and your qualifications
um so generally for qualifying for the um english teaching visa which is the e2
visa that most english teachers are on here you must be a passport holder from the following
countries so us canada united kingdom ireland south africa australia and new zealand
oh ignore that university so um yeah you need to be from one of those
countries you need to be a passport holder from one of these countries however there are some loopholes and i'm
going to talk about that in just a bit so um don't worry about that then you
also need to have at least a bachelor's degree and um a copy must be notarized in
epistles so um but yeah that's really you can get that done very easily but yeah you need
to have a bachelor's degree but it doesn't matter which major so it doesn't have to be in tesol it
doesn't have to be teaching it doesn't have to be in english it can be any major as long as you've
completed four years of education um yeah so that's sort of what you need
in order to get the visa um so your bachelor's degree the copies
they must be notarized in epistles and there's a lot of companies that do that so an apostille is like a it's similar to a notarization
but like it's for international use i think that's the difference but um there are a lot of services if
you search like if you search it online you can find services to do it you know they have
express services obviously you need to pay more money for that but um
yeah it's pretty easy to do some other requirements that you will need to get the visa
are three sealed university transcripts you also need to get a clear criminal background check and that usually
kind of takes the longest to get i feel like especially now with all you know the public offices not
really operating at full speed um yeah so you need to get like your
fingerprints taken um and then sent that in for us people from the us it's like you
have to send it into the fbi you get an fbi criminal background check um
it has to be clean in order to get the visa yeah you also need a passport photocopy
you need to present a resume you also need to have a signed copy of the school
contract uh four passport-sized photos and two letters of recommendation
even though now that i'm thinking about it i think i didn't have any letters of recommendation so i'm not sure if that is still the
case um i don't know but um yeah that's the general um
requirements or things documents that you need in order to get your visa but like before that obviously
so you need to make sure like you have all of these things you have your bachelor's degree you know prepare get ready and then um
once you have all these things you tick you tick all the boxes you check all the boxes um
you can then move on to uh applying for a job once you have that they will give you
the contract and then you can usually you can basically do like the final steps of going back to
the embassy and you know presenting all the documents and then you get your visa so that's that basically
um oh yeah now we didn't really talk about the teflon tesol yet
as you can see it was not a requirement so a tefl certification is not required
to teach in korea or basically it's not required to get a teaching visa in korea so those
are kind of two things um there's a lot of schools in korea that will still require their teachers
to have a teflor tesol just for their own personal um preference so
it's definitely beneficial to have a teflon teasel even though it's not an official requirement
you will definitely get a higher salary compared to people who don't have a tefl certificate
and you also have access to better job opportunities if you're teflor t-cell certified
because like i said nowadays a lot of schools are making it a requirement so they only hire certified people
so if you don't have a tefl certificate then you might earn less and you don't have
access to all of the jobs available so that's why we are offering 30
off today our teflon tesol courses um if you watch until the end i'm going
to drop that 30 off link into the comment box or actually let me drop it right now let
me drop it right now why not all right so i'm just dropping this link i'll share
it again later on but let me just drop it in right now so people can check it out
so this is the link that you can use to sign up for a teflon tesol of course 30
off okay so check that out i'm going to mention it again at the end of the session but just
right away if anybody's interested you know use that link get your 30 off and um yeah
so like i said it's beneficial to have a teflor t-cell certificate in korea and also um so for example i was
teaching english in china before i came to korea at the time when i lived and taught in china a tefl
certificate was not a requirement but then now it is a requirement
so things laws and regulations change in case it changes you want to be ready
you want to be set that and you want to have a certificate so more and more countries are you know
uh following suit and are making a teflor tesol a requirement to get a visa so i
can see korea doing that too in the future so it's always good to have it
okay then let's talk about the money aspect so how much can i earn teaching english in
korea um so those are the typical salary
ranges basically we have to look at you know what kind of school it is so it always depends on the type of
school and then also on your own background and qualifications so
we start off with public schools public schools you typically um earn the least
um it's in the bottom part but it's still not bad especially depending on what region you
teach in and we can look at that a little bit more later because public schools is also the epic program so the epic
program is a teaching program in korea that a lot of teachers um are
going into and then they get placement in korea through um the government so um yeah
oh and it's only in korean one i'm sorry um so 1.8 million won um
to 2.7 million won sounds like a lot right you'd be a millionaire in korea but um yeah 1.8 is probably about 1
800 u.s dollars um let me just double check on my currency app um
so 1.8 million oh 1.8 million is currently oh it's
actually 1 600 us dollars so starting at 1 600 up to
2.7 million which is 2425
us dollars currently so that's what you'll be making in a public school then a little bit more you can earn a
little bit more in hagwons or private language schools up to three
million one so that is currently two
700 us dollars um yeah then universities you'll be making
more if you um manage to get a university job those requirements are usually a little bit
higher so they usually want people with a master's degree and preferably a master's degree in teaching
or tesol or english um but it's definitely doable especially in smaller cities they're
the universities aren't that strict and usually um if you you know you're in korea for a
while and then you get to know people you do a bit of networking you can definitely get a university job
because you're always looking for teachers and working for university in korea is really really nice you have
like very very little teaching hours you make a lot of money you have a lot of free time and you get
like two or three months paid vacation every season every term every semester
um so it's really really nice i recommend that and the highest paying um school would
be an international school that's usually how it is everywhere in every country
they pay the highest but they also have the strictest requirements so international schools they typically
only hire uh people with a teaching license from their country
so not only a teflor tesol but an actual um teaching license so they like you
have to go through teachers college and all those things and um so that can be a little bit challenging
but um we know not impossible then also when you teach english in
south korea you're not only getting your salary but there's also some extra benefits such as paid housing so most teachers
they get paid housing either paid housing or a housing stipend so you might get like a couple
hundred dollars stipend or you can receive paid housing and then you live
in a teacher's apartment you also get health insurance and typically
paid airfare and like year of contract bonuses and there's also a pension scheme that
you um basically pay into so the national pension scheme and then
when you leave korea you get all of this money back so depending on how long you're staying how
long you're paying into this this pension scheme you get like a couple thousand back a couple thousand dollars back when
you leave so this is a really really good chunk of money that you can then use you know for when
you're going to a different location or you're going back home as sort of like a starting starting uh
capital yeah all right all right i have a question
here chibi says universities i've heard is extremely hard to break into
so like i said it depends on you know where i imagine that seoul you know is probably really hard
but if you're in a smaller city you know networking and you get to know people
maybe you took some i was actually offered a university job at my um university job at my
here in my city and it's a really good university it's a national university a lot of international students it's
very prestigious and because i just knew people you know and they were like hey um yeah
you know we know you're a good teacher we know you're certified you've been here for a while would you like to
work at our university and so yeah just depends on you know networking and
yeah it's definitely not impossible i think they make it make it look harder than it is but
i feel like you definitely need to be like in korea for a while at least like maybe two or three years
to be able to um work at a university
all right let's move on to um yeah comparing hagwons which are
the private schools and public schools so because i get this asked a lot you know what's better working for private
school for a public school in korea so my experience i worked at a private school at
hagwon before um so i can speak about that i know a lot of people who
work for public schools and i um you know know their opinions and experience so basically a
hagwon you'll usually find oh more and more more more foreign teachers yeah more
foreign teachers work at hagwons so compare it to a
public school where you might be the only foreign teacher working in the entire school so that can be kind of hard if you're
new to korea you don't really know anybody um and then you're the only fortnight there usually you're
um in your own like foreign office so it might get a little bit lonely you
know there might not be that many other foreigners around so um that's just one of the things
then um the other one is that hagwons do pay a slightly higher salary so you you will
be making a little bit more money working for hagwon but you also have more working hours
typically and for a lot of hagwons depending on you know what kind it is um a lot of the
working hours start after lunch so at like 1 p.m
a lot of hagwon teachers are working 1 p.m to 9 00 p.m so a lot of people enjoy that they have
like their mornings off and then you know they uh work until nine uh can work but some people prefer you
know they're usually like uh nine to five um at public school i think it's also nine to five or like
eight eight to four depends on what school it is um so yeah that's the thing and then um
at public schools you have typically more vacation days which is really nice
um but yeah so compared to the hagwon at my hagwon i had um i had
10 paid vacation days per year 5 in the winter and 5 in the summer and
you can't um you couldn't choose like when you want them like that's the school vacation and all the teachers get that
time off that's it you can't like it's not a flexible date typically
um with public schools it's more it's a bit more flexible obviously you also have vacation when the kids have
vacations so it's also not you know you can choose your own dates but like i have a friend and she is able
to take a few um off days when she needs them for public school but in hagwon that's
typically not the case [Music] yeah and also for public schools one
thing especially if you work for epic the epic program and i'm gonna talk about that um
um you might end up working at more than one school so i have a friend and she's in
the epic program here in my city in chengju and because it's sort of a smaller
city um she actually works at i think now it's two schools but she
worked last semester she worked at um three different schools so she had one
main school and then she went to other schools i think thursday and friday or something
like that so um that can be the case obviously it doesn't have to be a negative thing
but um yeah you're gonna have a lot more you know students um you know different school
systems to deal with you know different co-workers might be a little bit overwhelming um and also she so her main school was
pretty close to her paid house to her paid apartment but um the other two schools were kind of like
rural schools so she had to take a bus out into the countryside and it was like took like 45 minutes or
so um yeah which is also not too bad but she really loved the experience it's you know part of the korea experience i think is
gives you a very good authentic insight into um korean life so yeah so those are
pretty much the differences between hagwon and public schools all right let me take a look at the
comment section real quick we have a question here from luz i am an accounting major but
definitely good in english is it possible for me to teach english in korea no teaching experience ouch
okay um yeah so like i said it doesn't matter which
major you have your degree in for teaching english in korea um but it sounds like if you say it's
i'm really good in english um what what country are you from so that always depends
um you know like i said for um the teaching visa you need to be from an english-speaking country
there are some loopholes and i'm going to talk about that in a minute but um typically that's one of the
hurdles depends on your it depends on your nationality
but yeah the qualifications are definitely there okay
all right let's go to the next one yeah so this is epic the epic program
and if you were watching one of my previous lives i did a live about the best um government uh funded
english teaching programs and um south korea no sorry the epic program
was on the list so that would be similar information if you watched that before but just a refresher then
so epic stands for stands for english program in korea it is run by the south korean government
and it is a program that places foreign teachers into schools across the country to work as english language
instructors what's great about the epic program is it's super it's great for first time teachers
to korea or abroad in general it um offers competitive salaries and extra benefits like i mentioned
and it basically offers the chance to live and work in a unique cultural environment in east asia that's
what they advertise their program with and um yeah for details you can check out
epic.go.kr they are hiring they're always hiring um
so there's like two hiring seasons one is for february march for then that's when the
school year starts in south korea in march so they hire february march and then another one the second semester
is august september so that's when they hire second time
but um you need to fill out your application like i think six months in advance so um yeah you need to be early with
that
also the requirements are you need to be a citizen of a country where english is the primary language
so the countries that i mentioned before um you also must have studied from at least
the junior high level seventh grade and graduated from a university in one of the seven designed
countries so australia canada ireland new zealand united kingdom united states or south africa however
and this is a little loophole here indian citizens are eligible for positions if they meet all other
requirements and hold a teacher's license in english because i get this asked a lot a lot of
indian people from india approach me they really want to come to korea and so this is a great opportunity for
those wanting to come to korea if you meet all the requirements plus you have a teacher's license in
english you qualify you're eligible for the epic program so i think that's a really good um good
way also to get to korea then there's also a uh for all the other citizens
um there is a working holiday visa for korea it's uh only for 12 months
but it can be extended and you can actually check that out if you look for working holiday
visa korea a lot of people from many many different countries are eligible they do
have some countries have quotas that you know only i think for some
countries it's like 100 people 200 people from that specific country can receive that visa
but many many countries have unlimited quotas so um check that out and maybe you'll be
eligible and this is basically allowing you to work and live in south korea and then while you're here you can
explore some other visa options because there's a ton of options um korea is really pushing for
their you know getting international talents to korea so they have a lot of different
visa options and um so don't be discouraged so maybe you need to go for a different
way into korea not the straight teaching english in korea way
but maybe some you know turns here and there uh depending on where you're from but
don't be discouraged there are a lot of options the visas there are a lot of different visas visas available so um
there's a lot of options for everybody but yeah back to epic you also need to
hold a minimum of a bachelor's degree so it's the same uh thing from before you need to have a
bachelor's degree a four-year degree and it doesn't have doesn't matter which
major but what's interesting if you have a associate's degree so two years a
two-year degree you can apply for the talk program which is pretty much the same thing as epic but
for people with um associates degree and usually younger people
so the talk program is also a teaching program that places you into schools in south korea
and for the epic program you also need to have a tefl or a tesol of at least 100 hours
so that's the difference if you want to go through the epic program you need to have a tefl certificate
unless you have majored um in tesol or you have a teaching license and stuff
like that so but other than that you need to have a teflon tesol and again just a reminder let me show
you the banner uh here special offer at the end of the session
thirty percent off for all teflor tefl or tesol courses from itt
um you know just wait a minute and then i'll share that link um so that you can get teflor tesol
certified as well okay i think there's one more slide about epic
um about yeah the salary and additional info it's pretty similar to what i said
before but this is only epic so they have like this level system
so depending on your experience and qualifications you will earn more or less and also it
depends on as you can see here what region you work in so actually
uh other provinces so basically the um i guess not so
popular places outside of seoul and busan uh pay the most
so yeah if you might end up working for like a rural school in like a small town
but you and you earn the most money but even like my city is cons is actually in this uh
category but it's still a pretty big city it's almost a million people here big city you know uh there's a downtown
there's a shopping mall like there's everything here so like don't think it's like in the boonies it's not
um but that's usually what people think like people in seoul or from seoul they think everything outside of seoul
is countryside but it's not just want to put that out there it's not
but yeah um then the benefits are pretty much the same as i said before so you get a um a fully furnished
accommodation an apartment you get paid airfare in and out of the country you also and this is
different that's unique for the epic program you get a 300 000 korean one settlement allowance
so sort of like to get you started with your life in korea if you have to buy some stuff for your
kitchen or like you know some anything for your house food
that will get you through like the first month until you first pay check so three hundred thousand one is about
like three hundred dollars a little bit less than three hundred dollars but yeah you also get 18 days paid leave plus all
national holidays so like i said before typically for um private schools you get 10 vacation days
and in the epic program you get 18. so that's a big difference um yeah and then
you also get one month salary bonus and completion of contract that's the same with um private schools
as well yeah okay and here's some information
about applying but yeah go to the official website epic.what was it geo.kr
let's go back what was the website um yeah epic.go.kr
so head there and there's all the info how to apply when apply all the forms
everything you need in one place and you can also reach out to them directly um i'm not from epic so all of this is
all the information here i have for my own research um of course things might change might
be different on the actual website so just to know okay
then oh now it's the question about do i need to
know korean before i go to korea i know at the beginning of the session um i don't know if you're still here
some people asked about that um so do i need to know korean
if i want to teach english in korea and so i'm splitting this up into two categories so do i need to
know korean for teaching english in korea the answer is no you do not need to know any korean
for teaching english in korea for example at my school the private hagwon it was um they had
something like the english only policy so you were only allowed to speak english to all the students and all the
students were only allowed to speak english to you so no korean if they spoke korean it's
like hey no korean no korean so um you don't you don't need to know any korean to teach english
in korea also for the epic program if you work at a public school you don't need to know any korean to get
hired now do i need to know korean for living in korea
that's a different story so most of the time people living in
seoul in seoul english is pretty widely spoken everywhere in
you know the restaurants all the like the all the places pretty much everybody
speaks english in stores and pretty much um
outside of seoul it's a little bit of a different story so like in my city pretty much yeah i find people um
who speak english here and there but they're not that common not that many people so if you know
korean it's definitely going to help you living in korea um also if you live in seoul um
so i definitely recommend you know learning some korean before you go um just to help you you know settle in
to your new life in korea make friends just get around you know
it starts at like going to the convenience store and buying something if the person asks you do you want a bag
you know just little things like that and or just you know knowing how to say hello thank you and please goes a long
way um koreans you know they're very helpful if they see like you can't speak any
korean they will help you and be helpful and try their best um
but if they see like you're making an effort you know a little bit a little bit of korean it really goes a
long way and um so i definitely highly highly recommend it and um i actually
want to share a link for anyone who's interested in learning korean um
i highly recommend 90 day korean and i'm just dropping the link into the comment
box you can check it out 90 day korean um they offer a lot of great resources and
programs uh you can work with a teacher or by yourself um you know it's a really great resource
for learning korean and you know it can't hurt learning a little bit of korean before you go
there's also a lot of options learning korean while you're here but um dude kobe a lot of those things
are not happening right now like the in-class korean courses there also is a government
sponsored course or program it's called kip the korean
uh korean integration and immigration program or something like that so that's
specifically for foreigners living in korea um you basically can take free korean
classes you go to a school um and you can learn korean there and it's
through through the government and they have like six levels if you go through all the levels you are
actually able to change your visa to a permanent like resident visa so
it's a really good program that helps a lot of people who are serious about korea and they really want to stay here and
they want to be a part of everything they um take it and i actually took this course it's really helpful
um challenging but helpful and um yeah i highly recommend it
moses asks do you speak korean linda i do speak korean oh sorry i do speak
korean um i did also learn started learning korean before i got to korea
i was living in china at the time and i had i met this girl who was korean who was
from korea but she lived in china with her family and she taught me some
korean before i went and then when i moved here i started taking korean classes at the
local ymca here in my city and then i also started with that kip program that i just talked about
and i did all the levels there so um i can speak korean but um i wish it
would be better after almost six years um so i definitely need to need to learn some more
but yeah so yeah check this out um 90 day korean i highly recommend it
if you want to learn korean check it out and then let me answer a
question from juliana she asks do they have any christian schools yes actually there's a lot of christian
schools in korea um also maybe a fun or interesting fact
about korea about 50 of the population or the people in korea are like so it's like split 50 50 half and
half half of them are christian and half are buddhist so typically older
people tend to be buddhist and younger people tend to be christian
sort of um so yeah but definitely there's a lot of christian schools
also a lot of christian private schools christian um international schools
definitely yeah okay
yeah so that is the end of um this teaching english in korea session i'm
just going to open up the general q a you can ask me anything and also you get 30
off so this is our 30 off link um let me share it in the comment
section one more time and you can also scan the qr code and
then you'll also see on the application page so the link
goes straight to the application page um but you can just check out the normal
website first and then you know figure out which course you want to take and then go back to the application page
and fill out your application you can also just fill out your application um no strings attached you
don't have to pay right away you can apply it and think about it for a few days um we will send you reminder emails
and yeah you'll get the 30 percent off
okay thank you amy that's so sweet all right if anybody has any other
questions about korea about tefl about anything
now is your opportunity to ask them i'll still be here for a few more minutes and then i'm going to sign off because i
feel like my throat is a little bit scratchy
but yeah let me know if you have any questions
if you found it helpful if you found it useful um or not i'm happy about
any any kind of feedback positive or constructive as they say
anything let me know all right mika says thank you linda
really helpful information thank you so much i hope so i hope so
like i said um reach out to me um at linda goes east if you want to learn
more about korea um more about learning korean or anything at all you can just message me and um
you know have a chat with me i'd be happy to do that all right maxine hi maxine she's asking
is tefl recommended if you want to teach english privately with families business leaders instead
of schools institutions all right
yes so um actually fun fact i just started teaching um english online
for platform i might do a live about that later on when i have figured it out more but um you can also
upload your qualifications there so this this platform is sort of teaching privately
um i definitely think a tefl is great also if you want to teach
english privately because it still shows you know um that you
can teach you know what you're doing and um you know i think it's a great thing so i
definitely recommend it it really shows you know whether it's your family member your friends or any
other people it shows them that you're serious you're you know what you're doing you're
also up to date you know you have all that knowledge and um yeah
i definitely recommend it all right jessica's asking sorry i
missed most of the live did you go over the teaching english online aspect so this life was mostly
about teaching english in south korea so i didn't really talk about teaching english online um but
is there anything you would like to know you can let me know you can ask right now
all right oh lo look oh my gosh i'm so sorry i can't
pronounce your name la camin chris i'm just gonna say chris chris
is it a plus to teach english abroad if i have the tessel tesol tefl course yes
definitely a plus um more and more um countries and schools are requiring a
tefl and like i said earlier for example i was teaching english in china before
a couple years back at that time a tefl was not a requirement but now it is so regulations and rules
are changing all the time so you want to be ready you want to be ahead of the game and definitely get certified
um in case you know it changes and then you're in a country where they're like hey now you need a tefl so
definitely i recommend it
all right jessica is asking all right do most teaching english online companies deal
with china versus korea okay so yeah um there are a lot of english teaching english online
platforms that cater um to like specific countries writers specific
um student groups so it's true that there's a lot that actually
focus on china because um china is so big um
compared to especially compared to korea china is huge there's so many people in china so that's why there are so many
companies that focus at china because china is actually the largest market for teaching english as a foreign
language online or abroad uh it's just huge and there's so many english learners
so that's why you will see a lot of companies that specifically target china and chinese students but there's
also platforms that have korean students there's a lot of local like korean
um korean websites for teaching english online that hire foreigners there's also
you know different apps that they use here where you can apply to be a tutor and things like that so um yeah
there is something for everybody for every region for every kind of student so definitely but that's the reason why there's a lot
of china focus because china is so big and it's the biggest um efl market
yeah juliana says that's right any tutoring platform needs their esl tutor to have a tesla tesol
certificate exactly yeah so it's definitely good to have nowadays it's just one of the standard
things a tefl all right jessica asks can i re-watch
this live after it's over yes you can so it'll be available for replay
at any time after it's finished so you can just stop by i see you're watching from
facebook so yeah it will be on our facebook page you can just re-watch it and it also will be on our youtube
channel you can also re-watch it there okay
okay let me just show you guys this last slide
how to find itttt online just a little reminder how you can find us
um at teflcourse.net and then on facebook on twitter and instagram check us out um give us a follow and a
like and a subscribe and all those good things we also have a youtube channel a very big youtube channel we share a
lot of different um really cool videos that you should check out um
so yeah let me go back to the qr code in case
somebody wants to scan it but yeah joanna one last question here could you
tell us a bit about the job hunting process sure
so uh you can either look for a job by yourself
or you can go through a recruiter or for korea you can go through the epic program that
i mentioned earlier so if you want to go through the program which is one of the most popular ways
you apply directly through their website
epic.go.kr i think i know it now um yeah you can go there and then you can apply
um you can also find a lot of open vacant jobs online if you just search teaching
positions korea a lot of stuff will pop up um you can also check out different
facebook groups so there's groups like um english teachers in korea um esl
jobs in korea or like things like that that's actually a really great way there's a lot of recruiters on there
there's a lot of school um head teachers on there looking for people to hire i recommend that and um yeah you can
also go with recruiters um we actually work with a bunch of different recruiters
um let me share that here
sorry [Music] here if you click on this link
here teflcourse.net efl minus esl minus
jobs you'll see a list of our teflon tesol partners and a lot of them
are actually recruiters and there's a lot of them that are focused on south korea and you can reach out to them we've
worked with them for many years and they will help you they would gladly help you find a job in south korea
and also good to know is that recruiters are at no cost for the teacher
so the school pays the recruiter and not the teacher so you can use these
services for completely free and um yeah i i recommend you know doing
a combination of all of those things because you don't have to stick to just one or even just one recruiter you can
you can reach out to 10 of them at the same time it doesn't matter so just use every opportunity you have
so you can pick and choose you know which job position is the best for you that's what
i recommend
okay all right then um yeah i'm going to sign off now again
you can re-watch this live at any time after um it ends
um i see you get a couple of questions now but i already answered that in the live so i recommend just watching
it from the beginning so you get all that info all that good stuff don't forget the 30
off link don't forget to reach out to me linda goes east if you have any
questions about teaching in korea living in korea in asia anything like that and also
check out that link that i shared earlier about learning korean study in korean i highly
recommend it um and yeah i hope to see you guys again next week
i'd love to have a chat with you again and um yeah i'm signing off now have a
wonderful day evening night morning wherever you are it is morning here where i am thursday
it's 11 19 right now so i'm gonna get ready to um you know have probably my second
morning coffee and um yeah i'm also gonna get this episode up on our podcast so
you can listen to it as a podcast episode don't forget to like and subscribe so you don't miss any other
live sessions that we're doing we go live twice a week one time me one time my colleague lisa
and um yeah this was a fun session let me uh let me know if you have any
questions oh now i'm just rambling uh yeah i'm gonna sign up now
and yeah have a wonderful rest of your day and i hope to see you again
