Why Teaching English in South Korea was the Most fun and Cost Effective Time In My Life

 Why Teaching English in South Korea was the Most fun and Cost Effective Time In My Life

A lot of people don’t have a job these days. They don’t know where they’re going, and what they’re doing. They don’t know what they’re gonna do about making money. While teaching online is a really good way to make money, the real bread and butter of making money as far as I’m concerned with English teaching is teaching in person. In this article, I’m gonna talk to you guys about my experience about teaching English in Korea

Cost of living 

One of the things that I was really surprised about was the cost of living. Your cell phone will cost you less than 30 bucks in Korea a month. You have your utilities, your heating, and of course your rent. I was in South Korea a long time ago, so I didn’t even have a cell phone, but what I can tell you though is that my expenses were pretty cheap. Food was pretty cheap, I probably spent 50% of what I would back home on food. And as far as utilities go, it’s super cheap, but I can’t quote you an exact number. Probably under 150 bucks if you have a small apartment with no family

Salary

I’m not sure if the salary for teaching English in Korea has changed a lot, but when I was there you could probably make 2000 USD a month in a regular job where you are probably just teaching for five hours a day. I mean, for the amount of work that you’re doing you’re making a lot of money. To be honest with you with regards to the job, I didn’t know what I was doing back then. I didn't do much English teaching at the time. But if you have a little bit more of a clue of how to teach English when you’re in South Korea, then obviously you can handle the job well.

You can move up 

South Korea is probably the only place that I know that I’ve heard people move up in English teaching. I’ve heard other foreigners become the boss at a small organization. Not to say that they’re the boss of the entire organization, more like they are the middle manager. They’re in charge of the other teachers. Probably this is a real convenience for South Korean people because they want somebody who will speak the language of the other teachers and communicate with them directly. At least in this way, the person who is managing the teachers doesn’t have any miscommunication. The point is that you’ll probably be able to double your salary if you become a teaching manager

Rent

While rent with regards to most English teaching jobs that I know is covered by the company, usually, people wanna move away from the company and establish their their own apartment and rent. The reason why is because sometimes they will have stipulations on who can stay at your apartment, what you can do in that apartment. I just think that you probably don’t want to have your school in your business when you go home. That’s just the way that I think about it though. Regardless of that, if you take the easy way and have the apartment covered by your school, then you pay nothing. I’ve heard rent being about $400 or $500 in Seoul a month. You could probably pay way less in the countryside of South Korea. I’ve heard of some teachers teaching in the countryside, some friends of mine, and their rent was cheap

Do what you want, just don’t bother them

I would say that for the most part, South Korean people mind their own business. The generations have changed a lot though because I would say that because they know more English, they’re more vocal about certain things. Regardless of that though, I would say that if you want to just mind your own business and do your own thing, then they’ll leave you alone. Recently there’s been a lot of kerfuffle regarding foreigners not being able to go to certain nightclubs, and I understand that. They just really want to make the lines in the sand get drawn well. What I mean is that if these certain people don’t go to these clubs, then to the Koreans that is no problem. For other people that might be a little bit of discrimination, I guess to each their own.

You can learn Hangul in five minutes 

I think the one of the biggest draws about going to South Korea, is that their writing system is really simple. I mean learning the Korean language is a huge undertaking, but at least you’ll be able to read everything that you see. For example, there is a word in Korean that means stomach, it also means boat and pear. The word is BAE. Many words like this have multiple meanings in Korean, and a lot of it is contextual. That’s actually where Mandarin Chinese is a little bit more specific, because even though some of the words will sound the same, the Chinese character is different, therefore you know that it is something else. Regardless of that, I would say that learning the Korean language is very interesting, and if you spend 1 to 2 years doing it, you can probably progress to a high level of fluency

I had the time of my life in Korea, and I think that everybody should probably go there once in their life. While you might not be able to live your K-Pop dreams, and your K-Drama fantasies, South Korea will be something that you will be intrigued by. You just gotta go there. That’s all I gotta say.