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What happen to all the English teachers over there during COVID? Did hagwons close down? Also, has SA just aged out of people going over there or is South Korea seeing less English teachers? Since I am in education now back in the USA I know a lot of people who also taught English overseas but anyone who did it and is younger than 30 seem to go to teach in China. 10 summers ago I just was beginning my journey as teacher in South Korea and even though I have been back to Korea a couple times the past couple years I don't know anyone who is still teaching English there. When I look at salaries they are the same at best or even lower than a decade ago so that has to be a problem.
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Jun 6, 2020 23:37
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There are still goons teaching in Korea but I can't remember the last time there was a new one. Jobs in China pay so much better than Korea, the cost of living is much lower unless you're in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen, jobs have promotion possibilities, and also come with weird perks like months of paid vacation so that's why people are going there. Living in China sucks but the working environment makes up for that for a lot of people, myself included (for a while, anyway).
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Jun 7, 2020 01:04
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ToxicToast posted:What happen to all the English teachers over there during COVID? Did hagwons close down? Also, has SA just aged out of people going over there or is South Korea seeing less English teachers? Since I am in education now back in the USA I know a lot of people who also taught English overseas but anyone who did it and is younger than 30 seem to go to teach in China. The hagwon I used to work at and I'm still on fairly good terms with closed for several weeks with online only classes; they've since reopened. I know a few hagwon teachers got janked around about pay as well, but don't know the deets. Public school pay was no problem. Public school got delayed three times, then moved to online only, and has been reopening in some capacity across the country. Next Monday will be the last batch of kids coming in. How schools are handling the kids attending kind of depends on the area and if there are new active cases happening in that district.
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Jun 7, 2020 05:29
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I taught at an (adult) Hagwon in Seoul for a year and it was extremely interesting, extremely frustrating and generally a great experience made possible by bringing money with me from my real career at home and using it to subsidize my working vacation abroad. I worked with an even mix of Americans/Aussies/UKlains and their emotional states *usually* seemed to range between moderately content with life in korea to “very sad.” The Gyopo were perhaps slightly worse off, with all the downsides of being a foreigner in korea but none of the “white monkey” jobs available. They mostly generally seemed to be guys and girls who had gone to korea for university exchange, or grad programs or whatever, got addicted to the ocean of hot girls/guys and 24/7 party lifestyle, and are slowly sliding towards the realization that they probably won’t enjoy the process required to become an actual PR with real employment rights. That being said, Seoul is an absolutely fantastic city to live and work in, and if you have like, generic american middle class money you can do surprisingly well for yourself. People are actually genuinely quite friendly and well meaning, and the warnings about mean and racist old Koreans everywhere didn’t match my experience. You can definitely integrate into your neighborhood and form a group of korean friends to a degree that would probably be difficult in China. My understanding is that the country has transformed a *lot* over the last 10-15 years, with huge numbers of Koreans living, working or studying abroad and bringing a very cool, fashionable sort of cosmopolitanism back with them. If some kind of food or beer is trendy in the US or Western Europe, you can probably find some ex-grad student who opened a hole in the wall to serve it. It’s an amazing country, with fantastic hiking and biking, great food, a cost of living perhaps moderately below that of a major American city (the one big, screaming exception here is in multi room apartment housing), lovely people and an English teaching industry that absolutely will not pay you enough on its own to enjoy any of that.
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Jun 7, 2020 05:31
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Grand Fromage posted:There are still goons teaching in Korea but I can't remember the last time there was a new one. Jobs in China pay so much better than Korea, the cost of living is much lower unless you're in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen, jobs have promotion possibilities, and also come with weird perks like months of paid vacation so that's why people are going there. Living in China sucks but the working environment makes up for that for a lot of people, myself included (for a while, anyway). People from this old site might not be coming, but that’s largely due to the age of its users. Korea still sees a ton of new early-20s teachers come in every year. Everything you said is definitely true. SA just isn’t a very relevant sample for judging the activity in what is primarily a young person’s field.
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Jun 7, 2020 23:39
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ToxicToast posted:What happen to all the English teachers over there during COVID? Did hagwons close down? Also, has SA just aged out of people going over there or is South Korea seeing less English teachers? Since I am in education now back in the USA I know a lot of people who also taught English overseas but anyone who did it and is younger than 30 seem to go to teach in China. FWIW I think 6-7 years back there was a huge cut to the foreign teacher budget for public schools, so AFAIK there are Fewer Foreigners around as well. In my old city the westerner bar scene collapsed because the honkey population imploded.
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Jun 7, 2020 23:53
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Grand Fromage posted:There are still goons teaching in Korea but I can't remember the last time there was a new one. Jobs in China pay so much better than Korea, the cost of living is much lower unless you're in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen, jobs have promotion possibilities, and also come with weird perks like months of paid vacation so that's why people are going there. Living in China sucks but the working environment makes up for that for a lot of people, myself included (for a while, anyway). I am the newest long term stayer of the Goon Kakao Chat group. There was a guy a year or two ago that stayed for 1 year. Another goon came and left after 18 months recently too.
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Jun 8, 2020 08:12
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Also SAffers are in higher density from what I've noticed (20s and 30s) thanks to them taking the lowball jobs so they can get the gently caress out of RSA.
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Jun 8, 2020 08:14
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Grand Fromage posted:There are still goons teaching in Korea but I can't remember the last time there was a new one. Jobs in China pay so much better than Korea, the cost of living is much lower unless you're in Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen, jobs have promotion possibilities, and also come with weird perks like months of paid vacation so that's why people are going there. Living in China sucks but the working environment makes up for that for a lot of people, myself included (for a while, anyway). What are the hours typically like for jobs in China these days? I'm teaching in Vietnam now, and the money is decent considering the cost of living but I could definitely be making more in China. That said, I teach 20 hours a week and have 3 days off, which I like I would also say that living here is good and does not suck at all, but I'm sort of tempted to plan for a year of just making good money
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Jun 8, 2020 09:58
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Paperhouse posted:What are the hours typically like for jobs in China these days? Jobs vary too much to say anything general. I've never heard of one with a poo poo ton of hours though. Mine was a standard 40 hours a week deal. Theoretically I could teach up to 22, in reality I don't think I ever went over 20. Also the seniors graduated in April, so May and June I would have like eight classes a week. Two months paid vacation guaranteed, another month possible depending on the July schedule, plus all the Chinese holidays like the week off in October. On the occasion I was asked to teach above/extra I got overtime pay and extra hours off for doing that. They also didn't gently caress with me about things like sick days. I only had the one job, but if other China goons weren't lying mine was actually more work than is typical.
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Jun 8, 2020 16:26
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Wow, that’s very different from Korea. I don’t know what public school teacher life is like, but I’ve been told it’s generally superior to teaching at a Hagwon. The Hagwon that I taught at paid, IIRC... 18k KRW per class, and I would have, on average, 5-6 one hour classes a day. Classes for a “split schedule” teacher could be booked by students between 7-11am and 530-930pm. You were guaranteed a minimum salary of 2.1 million KRW and the housing stipend was 250k/month. I think, if you needed it, they offered between 5-10 million for your apartment deposit. I only took a sick day once during my whole year there, and it resulted in a shouting match with the manager in her office. If you were an average teacher (not one of the popular ones who was booked for 8 or more classes every day) you could actually have a nice break in the middle of the day to hike, look around and generally explore the city.
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Jun 8, 2020 22:01
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My job for 1.5 years in Seoul was Wed-Thur-Fri-Sat, 6-10PM, 2.1 million per month. Permanent 3 day weekend and just 16 hours a week and adult teaching of mostly young college students. If you can find a good, small business hagwon with a sane owner (rare) then they're the best jobs by far, but it's true that the majority of them, including my first, are horrible nightmares. Sadly the hagwon closed because most of the other teachers couldn't keep students coming back. It was a sweet deal for me but it was only because I dug really deep on job boards that no one really knows about usually to find it.
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Jun 22, 2020 09:17
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I got married because of this thread. An Irish fey poster bartered with me for access to the military base. In exchange I demanded a woman. Last year we got married. I love all of you happy last post before Lowtax nukes the server. Grand Fromage, I'm getting you that Uramagi Vesslekov game.
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Jun 24, 2020 11:25
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yeah, god drat. it's hard to overstate how much this specific thread changed my life (for the better!). Thank you goons. I love you all, even if this isn't the end.
Pentecoastal Elites fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jun 24, 2020 |
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Jun 24, 2020 18:49
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As someone who is considering moving to Korea, I will miss this thread and its valuable advice.
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Jun 24, 2020 19:05
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Haven't posted in years, but it was fun while it lasted!
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Jun 24, 2020 20:14
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KirbyKhan posted:I got married because of this thread. An Irish fey poster bartered with me for access to the military base. In exchange I demanded a woman. Last year we got married. I love all of you happy last post before Lowtax nukes the server. Grand Fromage, I'm getting you that Uramagi Vesslekov game. thanks u for the gift goon sire I'm glad we have the Kakao, I made a lot of good friends from this thread and Korea would have sucked without it. I'm still hopeful things will work out with the forums.
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Jun 24, 2020 22:35
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Hey while we're still here and saying our goodbyes, let me just say a big "gently caress you" to former Korea thread post James AKA "aeglus", for trying to blackball me out of our shared friends and my social life back in like 2011-2014 when I was in Korea because I had coffee with a girl who you liked but was never into you at all. I'm glad you got caught and arrested selling drugs on the side during your time as a club promoter (which actually meant begging our friends to buy tables and bottle service at clubs) while you were a Kindergarten teacher (during which time you had an illegal fraudulent visa that you bought from the Brazilian embassy) and got your rear end banned from the country. Last I heard you were teaching at an elementary China were they don't look at your work history or whether or not you commit tax fraud abroad (you did). After you left everyone rightly called you a snake and laughed at your loser rear end. Anyways, love to everyone else whether or not the forums exist in a month, week or day. I would also like to state that I was the one who first quoted this thread's subtitle. Cheers.
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Jun 24, 2020 22:50
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Whoah. That’s an interesting story! I miss a lot not being in the chat I guess. I remember some guy drunk-posting about how awesome all the scooters zooming around were when they first got here ten years ago, and that got me excited about coming. 23 year old me was very easy to please I guess. That’s my Korea thread memory.
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Jun 25, 2020 00:32
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Hedgehog Pie posted:As someone who is considering moving to Korea, I will miss this thread and its valuable advice. Download Kakao and join our group chat. It's not nearly as active as it used to be, but we can answer any questions you might have. And to anyone that's been in the chat before and left, everyone's grown up a lot and there's nothing cliqueish anymore. Come on in.
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Jun 25, 2020 05:00
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AHH F/UGH posted:Hey while we're still here and saying our goodbyes, let me just say a big "gently caress you" to former Korea thread post James AKA "aeglus", for trying to blackball me out of our shared friends and my social life back in like 2011-2014 when I was in Korea because I had coffee with a girl who you liked but was never into you at all. I'm glad you got caught and arrested selling drugs on the side during your time as a club promoter (which actually meant begging our friends to buy tables and bottle service at clubs) while you were a Kindergarten teacher (during which time you had an illegal fraudulent visa that you bought from the Brazilian embassy) and got your rear end banned from the country. Last I heard you were teaching at an elementary China were they don't look at your work history or whether or not you commit tax fraud abroad (you did). After you left everyone rightly called you a snake and laughed at your loser rear end. Stunning Honky posted:i don't want SA to go away but these "grab the microphone at prom" posts in the end times are totally worth it I love this dead gay comedy forum. I cannot remember if Aeglus got me or if you got me when I was some military dude crossing liveposting myself going to the Tom'n'Toms across the street from the goon meet Tom'n'Toms. I miss gilgamesh november. 
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Jun 25, 2020 19:25
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My friend keeps wanting me to move to Korea with him. He even says he might be able to hook me up with a job that will set me up with a room and board before I move. It's making me intrigued, but like I was wondering what life is like in the country? I visited there before but very briefly.
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Oct 10, 2020 00:59
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punk rebel ecks posted:My friend keeps wanting me to move to Korea with him. He even says he might be able to hook me up with a job that will set me up with a room and board before I move. It's a place to live but not a place to make a life. edit: ...In my opinion. I'm sure others would disagree. I think if you're a young single guy, go for it. I had a blast but I wouldn't want to live there indefinitely, especially in the teaching English path. I was deeper into the language, culture, country than 99% of the people who go to live there ever get and I still mostly saw it as an extension/expansion of college partyzone antics. Of course, your mileage may vary and it will be what you make it. Most part of Seoul are crushingly depressing to exist in/look at in the daytime. It kind of sucked the lifeforce from me towards the end of 3 years. Again, YMMV. AHH F/UGH fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Oct 10, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 02:08
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Depends on where you are coming from and what you would be doing. If say you are coming from the US. It has a functional government with affordable healthcare.
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Oct 10, 2020 03:32
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AHH F/UGH posted:It's a place to live but not a place to make a life. Yeah I have pretty much the opposite experience of this post.
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Oct 10, 2020 03:46
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My wife is Korean and whenever we visit we have a good time. I haven’t lived there other than visiting but if given the opportunity (meaning a comparable job to what I have here in the US) I would.
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Oct 10, 2020 05:45
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I'd love to hear stories. Personally I'm leaning not wanting to move there. As crazy as America is, I like it here, plus I'm not white in the US so I'm not sure how well I'll fit in there. And I don't know I'm worried that I may be treated stranger over there.
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Oct 10, 2020 06:06
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Gildiss posted:If say you are coming from the US. It has a functional government with affordable healthcare.
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Oct 10, 2020 06:22
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Move there for a year. And if you can avoid teaching children, then definitely go for it. At the very least it's worth it for having the experience of having lived in more than just the USA. You might like it and want to stay longer. If you're not white and not Asian you'll probably get somewhat of a different treatment than most but nothing bonkers or legitimately racist. People will stare but you but it's not malicious. At worst you might get passed on by some taxis or something. Most Koreans will probably assume you're a G.I. from an American airbase or something like that.
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Oct 10, 2020 06:54
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AHH F/UGH posted:Move there for a year. And if you can avoid teaching children, then definitely go for it. At the very least it's worth it for having the experience of having lived in more than just the USA. You might like it and want to stay longer. Yeah the job is for the army, even though I've never been in the military.
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Oct 10, 2020 06:56
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Will you be in or close to Seoul? If so, definitely do it.
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Oct 10, 2020 06:57
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AHH F/UGH posted:Will you be in or close to Seoul? If so, definitely do it. It's in Pyong Taek. 50 minutes south of Seoul.
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Oct 10, 2020 07:00
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If you don't want the job I'll take it.
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Oct 10, 2020 07:04
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punk rebel ecks posted:It's in Pyong Taek. 50 minutes south of Seoul. Keep in mind that if you live there you'll probably rarely want to take that 1 hour trip to Seoul, maybe on the weekends occasionally in the beginning but for the most part you're going to be chilling in Pyeongtaek. Pyeongtaek is dirt cheap and you'll be able to save a ton of coin. Food in Korea truly is loving awesome, even with all the hype, and you should eat out and get KBBQ and Dak Galbi as much as you possibly can. You can probably live very comfortably even on like $2000 a month. You'll get a truly authentic Korean experience because it's going to be way less international, with far fewer foreigners and English. I'd say do it for a year and see if you like it. Not teaching little bastard kids English is already like 80% of the way to having an enjoyable experience and if you're getting set up with a job and housing, all the better. AHH F/UGH fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Oct 10, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 07:19
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90% of what sucks about Korea is the Korean working environment. If you can be in Korea and not in a Korean job you've won the lottery. So anyway give it to me please.
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Oct 10, 2020 07:51
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Jesus Christ I was originally thinking there is no way I would want to do this, but now you guys are starting to somewhat convince me. 
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Oct 10, 2020 07:58
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punk rebel ecks posted:Jesus Christ I was originally thinking there is no way I would want to do this, but now you guys are starting to somewhat convince me. Can I ask - what's salary around? Either Korean Won or USD is fine, ballpark it if you have any clue.
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Oct 10, 2020 07:59
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AHH F/UGH posted:Can I ask - what's salary around? Either Korean Won or USD is fine, ballpark it if you have any clue. At least $66,000 USD. EDIT - Nevermind re-reading the application I don't think I qualify. Says you need at least a masters degree.
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Oct 10, 2020 08:04
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Holy loving poo poo call your friend tomorrow morning and tell him to set you up with that job immediately. edit: Those things can be flexible if you have an in-road. If you're good at what the job is asking you to do, ask your friend to do a solid favor and recommend you to the person who gives out that job despite the lack of the master's degree. AHH F/UGH fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Oct 10, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 08:05
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Im military here, and working onbase as civilian is a major Korea cheat code. A lot of the good international food is moving from Itaewon to Pyeongtaek due to the base closing. I've lived in korea 11 years now and its definitely what you make of it. But I also ride motorcycles all over the country so i don't just jump from norebang to bar my whole time.
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Oct 10, 2020 08:40
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