Recent Developments

I found my Korean Bible. It was given to me a long time ago by a Korean friend, and I must have packed it away several years ago. It was in a box up at my parents' house. The Bible should come in handy after I've learned Korean (not to mention, how to read hangul).

I still have not had any feedback regarding the previously mentioned position in Ulsan. But a couple of developments have taken place in the meantime. The agency had me fill out an application for the EPIK (English Program In Korea), which is a program sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Education designed to bring English teachers to Korea. I suspect that it is something like the famous JET program in Japan. Placements through the EPIK are in public schools as opposed to private language academies or hagwans. Through my research I've gathered several things about teaching in Korean public schools:

1. There is no concern about whether or not the schools are reputable or well-established. As with any public school, the fact that they are government-sponsored institutions lends a degree of stability to them.


2. As the result, teachers do not have to worry about things like being paid on time or the school abiding by the terms of the contract.


3. Work hours are typically during the day, and total about 40 hours per week, as opposed to the shorter weeks generally worked by teachers at private academies.


4. Class sizes are substantially larger than at private institutions.


5. Pay is generally not quite as high.

So essentially, the major benefit to teaching in a public school would be the stability of working for the Korean government. Though I wasn't as excited about the other aspects, I thought it wouldn't hurt to apply just the same, particularly since there was said to be open positions in Busan. Education majors and people with formal teaching experience are given primary consideration, however.

At about the same time, the agency also sent my file to a major English academy that has branches all over Korea. A representative from the academy has already contacted me, and I have a phone interview scheduled with him for Monday evening. I'm actually pretty excited about this possibility; I researched this particular school some time ago and at one time thought about applying independently. They are well-established and I've read positive things about them on Dave's ESL Cafe.

I'll just have to wait to see where all this goes. It's easy to grow impatient, since I'm dying to know exactly where we'll be living, when we'll be leaving, etc. But the truth is that I've only been graduated a little over a month, and there's no real rush at this stage.