Everything Korea - Learn More About Life in Korea
Why South Korea?
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Life is about opportunities! Don’t let this one pass you by!
Teaching English in a different country provides great opportunities to explore a new culture, travel, save money, learn a new language, and meet new people. You can go almost anywhere in Asia and find some form of job opportunity to teach English. The demand for English teachers in Asia is growing and there is no better moment to seize the chance of a lifetime.
The major ESL markets in Asia include China, South East Asia, Japan, and South Korea. Each of these places has distinct cultures, languages, and opportunities.
South Korea offers the best compensation packages for English teachers compared to the other Asia countries. It is true that Japan offers some of the highest salaries for English teachers but Japan also has one of the highest costs of living in the world (housing, food, transportation, mobile phones, internet, and medical costs). Housing is often not provided for English teachers in Japan so you would have to find residency yourself and pay out of your own salary which would make it nearly impossible for you to save a decent amount of money.
China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia also offer English teaching positions but their meager compensation packages pale in comparison to countries such as South Korea or Japan. They do not offer competitive benefit packages for teachers. These countries recognize the need for native English speaking teachers but governments have very little means of providing the opportunities for things such as, competitive salary, compensation, housing, insurance, and airfare. The average salary for English teachers is roughly $600 US dollars per month. It is true that this is sufficient money to live a comfortable life in that particular country but would only be pennies on the dollar back home, thus you would not be able to save much if anything at all. If one of the reasons you want to teach English abroad is the opportunity to save money, this would clearly not be the road to take.
