The demand for English teachers in Korea greatly exceeds the supply, and just about anyone from an English-speaking country with a four-year university degree can find a job here. These TEFL jobs provide salary, airfare to and from Korea, housing, and severance pay.
English teaching jobs in Korea should also pay for half of the money put into the mandatory national pension fund, though at present only American and Canadian citizens are eligible for pension fund reimbursement. Most employers offer these benefits so if you don't see them in your contract, you should seriously consider looking for another job.
The high demand for native English teachers in Korea ensures competitive salaries and a lot of money can be made teaching English there. Subsequently, there are a fair number of Koreans in the English school business specifically for that reason, some of whom have little sympathy or care for people coming from other countries to work for them. There have been countless stories of Westerners coming to teach English in Korea under promises of large salaries, bountiful bonuses, and competitive benefits only to find that their work conditions were very different from those they were promised. Of course, if you have done any research online about teaching English in Korea then you already know this.
That being said, most people who come to Korea to teach English enjoy their experience and find the vast majority of Koreans to be kind and friendly people. English teaching salaries start at around 1.8-2.2 million won per month and go up as high as 3 million won or more, making them very competitive when compared with the relatively low cost of living in Korea.
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What do you do if you arrive in a bad program?
If you do get hired by a less-than-reputable program, what can you do once there to fix the situation?
This is kind of a difficult
This is kind of a difficult situation. I've heard of programs that hire you and then don't pay you, in which case you can't really do anything. I mean, you could try, but you probably won't get that money. This is one of the worst thing i've heard of. Your visa is with your work and so you can't be in the country while not working, so if you do get stuck in a bad situation and want to end your contract then you'd have to leave the country or have new work lined up--this is not too hard to do with how many hawkgwons there are. However, to my understanding, you would still have to leave to another country to get a new visa with your new work.. so that would mean you would maybe go Japan and get your visa for Korea there or something, I don't really understand how this works, but I had a friend who had to do it becuase he didn't like his first job. It's important to really looking to your job first though, most of the big, official jobs these days will have nice websites that look professional. Also, they will probably have a good hiring process. The bigger hawkgwons are chains so they can afford this, and i'd stick to one of those, if possible. Most of the posts you will see are through recruiters, so you will want to see what Hawkgwon they are recruiting for and then if that Hawkgwon is legit.