QUICK INFO MAJIGGER

Thought I'd make a quick informational post about teaching in Korea for the two and a half of you that have asked me.

GETTING THERE
The process is super easy and I'm not gonna waste too much time talking through it all when that's a representative's job to do so for.  There are tons of companies, Teach ESL Korea, Aclipse, Epik,etc, and everybody has good things and bad things to say about each one.  From my experience, Aclipse and Epik seem to be pretty good to their candidates, but the school you get will determine your experience moreso than the recruiting company.

Some companies will have you front the cash for the plane ticket ahead of time, where others will pay for it all right away.  This can be different even in the same company, depending on your contract.  Plan for the possibility of not getting reimbursed for your costs for maybe a month after your arrival.

The whole process of getting to the country is pretty painless.  Be relaxed and friendly during your interview process, be professional in your video.  They're looking for confident individuals to stand in front of a group of kids and hold their attention for hours on end, try to be personable.
After you get accepted, the rest of the process is pretty simple.  Read through your contract.  No, seriously. READ YOUR CONTRACT.  There are some things you don't want to get blindsided by.  Costs of your apartment if there are any, health insurance, what they can and cannot request of you.  If you're going to a small private school they may try to get you to do things outside of the contract and honestly, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it.  If you are going to be working for a larger chain hagwon, then awesome, you'll have a headquarters (most likely in Seoul) that you can voice complaints to if need be.  Contracts are worthless here for the most part, and you can and will be asked to do things outside of them.  Be reasonable.  If it's something like attending a conference or team building exercise, go along with it.  If it's something like heavy custodial work, feel free to turn that down and hide behind your contract when doing so.

Getting your background check is the longest part of the process, and is primarily a waiting game.  Getting the apostilles can be done at banks, city hall, some universities, and various small shops and some libraries.  Your bank will quite likely do it for free for you, although they may give you a hard time about them not being able to do the right kind of apostille.  They can, don't worry about it.  Most recruiting agencies will do the whole process for you for a small fee as well.  Get everything done in a timely manner (you normally have a week or two for each part of the process) and just be patient.  My process went pretty quickly (I got everything through in three months) but some people can take as long as 6 months to get their whole background check and other information sorted out.  This process will be mentally exhausting and you will spend every day wondering if they're scamming you or they changed their mind and don't want you anymore.  If you've signed a contract already, you'll be going there, try not to worry too much.

Also customs coming into Korea is the easiest thing ever.  They pretty much just wave you through.  I'm serious, one of my friends was literally carrying a pocket knife when we came through and they told him it was okay.  I wouldn't try that a second time, though.


ARRIVING IN KOREA - THE SCHOOL
Your work should do a quick training situation with you. Most of them won't.  Some companies will send you on a training course for a week or so, some will just put you in your classroom the day you get there.  Be prepared for this.  If there is a training session available, take it.  TAKE IT.  Over the course of a week you may not see a lot of progress, but certain issues with your teaching style will be pointed out for you to at least address over the next few weeks, and being surrounded by newcomers is a great way to not feel completely alone.  You're in a new strange country, it's nice knowing there are other people in the same boat as you.  Some of these people will become your best friends in this strange country.  Treat them well.

When you get to your school you may not have your own classroom.  You may not have projection equipment or a computer.  You may not have any secretary staff that really speak any English.  You may, in fact, be the only foreigner at your location, and your boss may barely speak any English whatsoever.

I don't have any of these problems, but I've heard horror stories concerning various mixes of these scenarios from other teachers.  Be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.

Your school will most likely leave you alone for the most part.  There will probably be a CCTV camera in the classroom where your branch may or may not monitor your class activities.  Get used to it, everything has a security camera in Korea.  Even some bathrooms.  I'm kidding (I'm probably not kidding).  The school may use it to either give you constructive criticism or just the mean kind of criticism, or they may ignore it.  It may not have sound and just exist to absolve you of any claims of assaulting the children, in which case you should try to peak at the camera so you know which areas of the classroom are out of sight so as to be able to administer punishment.

The staff will be nice to you and probably compliment you on your appearance or call you fat.  It will be one of those things.  If they say you have a small face, this is a good thing.

You will not be invited to your staff meetings.  If you do go to the staff meetings, they will speak in Korean.  You'll probably get a separate, quick English meeting for the foreign teachers, but be prepared to be blindsided by random events they forgot to tell you about your entire time there, it will keep you on your toes.

A lot of your time will be spent 'deskwarming'.  This is when you're stuck sitting around in between or before classes, but your branch either discourages you from leaving in between classes or you don't have enough time to do so.  Either way, they expect you to be working on class prep materials. You won't have any.  It never takes that long to do these things, and even worse, some schools will make you come in for days purely dedicated to only doing classroom prep work.  You're probably going to get caught up on tumblr, watching movies and tv shows, and sleeping at your desk.  Sure, for the first month or two you'll try really hard to find work to do, but there's never enough work, and you stop feeling guilty after a while.

Right, the uh, actual teaching


Teaching will frustrate you.  Korean schools don't teach knowledge, they teach memorization.  This is your job to change that.  It may not be in your job description, but if you can get the kids into the habit of justifying their answer (after they answer just get them to explain 'why') it will be wonderful.  Otherwise the kids tend to do this thing where they listen for keywords and then sift through the reading looking for that word, and read out every sentence containing it until they have the right answer.  It's a great cheat code that the schools have invented, and they'll frequently get the right answer that way, but they won't understand it.

Most of the material you will disagree with like that.  Don't let it bother you.  Unless you get an opportunity to create your own curriculum, just teach the material they give you and try not to worry about it to much.  But keep an eye out for when they try to pass off konglish as grammatically correct.  When teaching synonyms, for example, I've had some examples run as: "main vocab: Keep it loose.  synonym: stay baggy".  "Stay baggy" is not a thing anybody has ever said.  Kids, cross that out.  You can teach them wrong on purpose as a joke if you think it's funny, but really, come on, don't do that.

Your classes will either be short, 30 minute long classes where you'll see tons of students every day, or they can be up to 3 hours long.  IF you teach the 3 hour classes you will be exhausted every day.  The students will be exhausted and bored and crazy.  These are the classes I myself teach and the kids definitely do not want to be there by the end of the period.  Do your best to stay energetic and interactive. Do jumping jacks and play games.  Be loud. Drink coffee and hotsix.  Drink Mountain Dew with 6 espresso shots in it.  Whatever it takes.

Take your students' cell phones.  In Korea it's totally fine to be on your cell phone at all times.  Store employees will be on their cell phones. Your coteachers will be on your cell phones.  If you go to a Korean wedding, everyone there will be on their cell phones during the reception.  Your students should not be on their cell phones, because then they can't hear the wisdom you're imparting on them.  If your school doesn't have this rule, make it one for your classroom.  You will not regret it.

Your students will probably call you fat or ugly, even if you aren't. What am I saying of course you aren't, you're a beautiful angel.  Moving past that, they totally will.  Just say it back to them and they'll laugh and move on.  The kids will ask you how old you are, if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse, how much you weigh, how much money you make, and where you live.  Lie to them.  Lie to them like you're getting paid for it.

Above all, if you act like you're enjoying being there, teaching with energy, and get all of your material done in class every day, it should be an enjoyable experience for a year or two or forever if you decide to get trapped.  The country is quirky and fun, they pay you a lot and more with each contract, the people are nice, the landscape is gorgeous, and nothing costs any money.   Once you settle in you find it hard to want to leave again.  Good luck!



OTHER QUICK TIPS
-LEARN HANGUL:  Korean writing. Seriously it takes like an hour YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE
-EAT THE KIMCHI: Not all kimchi is the same kimchi! Keep eating it until you like it.  You can get it in soup, mandu, mixed into rice, in kimbap.  It tastes different everywhere you go.  The prepackaged stuff is generally quite terrible, though.
-ANJUU: Lots of bars 'require' you to buy food with your drinks.  Being a foreigner, you'll realize pretty quickly that this is one of those things you get to ignore by pretending you don't speak any Korean (Waygook smash, yes?) but if you do buy it the owners will like you more.  On top of that, the food is never terrible and at worst bland, and there's generally more than you asked for for the price (The equivalent of 10 dollars at a bar where I live gets you a donkkasu platter [breaded pork cutlet] that also comes with chicken wings and french fries)
-You will never stop being a novelty: It's not necessarily a bad thing, though.  Students will walk up to you randomly on the street that you don't even know and ask you how you are in English and then walk away.  People will buy you drinks just because you're a foreigner.  Other foreigners will talk to you because you both speak English and now you're suddenly best friends.  It's a novelty less in a freakshow sense, and more of a houseguest sense.  A commodity? Something like that. 
-Mart Drinking: It's so much cheaper to drink at 7-11 or CU Mart. And they have chairs.  And soju is like a dollar for a whole bottle.