How to Get to Korea

As my first post, let me give you an idea of why Gianni and I decided to go to Korea, and the many steps in the process to get where we are right now. It seems appropriate for me (Abbi) to write this first post because Gianni has been in school, and I've been compiling the paperwork and figuring out the logistics. I feel pretty knowledgable on the subject. If you are thinking about going to Korea, and this post doesn't answer a specific question you have. Please leave me a comment, and I'll do my best to answer it for you.

For us, this process began in September 2012. Before that, Gianni offhandedly mentioned that we should do this. He knew some people who had done it and had heard of the program to teach English in Korea before. Initially, I dismissed it, thinking it was something I could never do. But I slowly began to discover more about Korean culture, and it made me really want to go there. I then suggested it to Gianni again, and we were both really excited. We started watching Eat Your Kimchi videos with Simon and Martina and learning all we could about Korean culture-- K Pop, the food, Starcraft (Gianni has loved the game for a while, and it just happens to be really popular in Korea). Also, traveling is very important to me, and I think this is a fantastic way to live abroad. FYI: They pay you a monthly salary, pay for your apartment (not including utilities), and reimburse you for your round trip flight. The Korean English teaching program is awesome!

I then began the long process of gathering documents and figuring out how to get this crazy journey started. The first step is to decide whether you want to apply to work a public school position or a Hogwon (private school, sort of like an after-school program). Check out this video for information about which to choose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8XAch40z8E. Please note that this video is a little bit old. Hogwons are much more stable positions than they used to be, but I am under the impression that the hours are longer and vacation time is still not as good. That being said, it does seem more likely that people could go in pairs or small groups because I've seen Hogwon job postings asking for two or three people at a time. Gianni and I decided to apply to public schools after all the research. We felt that going to a foreign country was challenge enough; we didn't want to also have to worry about job stability.

From there, you have a few more options. Again, we went with public schools, so I'm not sure where the Hogwon option goes from there. But as for public schools, you have to decide how you want to apply, and there are several options: through English Program in Korea (EPIK- the Korean government's teaching program, or GEPIK- Gyeonggi English Program in Korea, specifically teaching in the province that Seoul is in), through a consulte, through a recruiter, and through the province itself. I may be forgetting some options here, but those are the general ones. We chose to get some extra help and apply through a recruiter. Disclaimer: the service of a recruiter is completely FREE! Recruiters are nice because they help make sure you have what you need. But we had to do even more research here about what recruiter we were going to choose. You want to make sure you get a reputable agency, and there are so many out there. If you wanted the previous video, you should have seen that Simon and Martina mentioned a recruiter called Korvia. After bouncing back and forth between a few options, we settled on Korvia. We figured they must be reputable because Simon and Martina had endorsed them. Also, Korvia only recruits for public schools, which is what we were looking for anyway. Our recruiter's name is Ann Park, and she has been very friendly and helpful throughout the whole process thus far. So I can safely say that we definitely made a good decision when it came to which recruiter to choose. But Korvia isn't the only one. There are plenty of other agencies you could go through that would be great too.

Then I looked into what documents we would need and how to obtain them. Here's the compiled list of all the documents (US ONLY):
1. Apostille on FBI background check
2. Apostille on bachelor's degree and any other higher degrees you might have
3. Final Official transcript
4. 2 letters of recommendation
5. Passport photos (2)
6. Copy of your passport
7. TEFL certificate and/or teaching certificate
8. EPIK Application

Make sure you scan all your documents and make copies. That way you have the originals, scanned digital copies, and hard copies. Now let's go into detail about how to get each of these things.

An apostille is basically a really official notarization. Here is the link for how to obtain the FBI background check with an apostille: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/criminal-history-summary-checks/submitting-a-criminal-history-summary-request-to-the-fbi. It's fairly simple. You fill out a form, get some finger prints (we both went to the police station in our towns to get printed), pay, and send it all in to the FBI.

The rules for getting an apostille on your diploma are dependent on your university or college. We contacted our separate registrar offices to ask how to do this. In both cases it involved making a photocopy of your diploma, sending it to them to be notarized, then they would send it to the Department of State in whatever state the diploma was issued to get the apostille. So this one really depends on how the school does it and also which Department of State your diploma has to go through. Again though it is fairly straightforward. There is a payment to the Department of State as well as a form that you have to send them. A lot of schools let you just send everything to them, and they will make sure it gets to the Department of State. In the case of your final official transcript, again you can request that very easily from your registrar. They will come in a sealed envelope, and if you break the seal on the envelope, the transcript is no longer official. So don't break the seal.

IMPORTANT NOTE: For those of you who are applying to go to Korea right after graduation--I.E. You don't yet have a diploma or a final transcript--here's the deal: You can really only apply your last semester of college. You will need to get an official transcript for all the semesters you have been in school so far. In addition, you will not have a diploma to get an apostille for, so instead, you have to get a letter from your registrar's office that says your expected date of graduation. Make sure it is on your college's letterhead and looks very official (have them include the office's contact info on there as well).

For the recommendations, there are a few guidelines you and the people you chose to write one for you have to follow. First, you must chose past or current employers (not coworkers) or academic professionals (like an advisor or professor). The rest is just things that need to be included in each recommendation. Please refer to this webpage for that info: http://www.korvia.com/index.php/recommendation-letters-for-public-school-teaching-jobs-in-south-korea.html.

The photocopy of your passport and the extra passport photos are really simple. Go to CVS or something for the photos.

The TEFL certificate was the most challenging part for me. If you did not graduate with a degree in education or have not been a teacher for a certain number of years, Korea does not exactly require a Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate, but it is definitely moving in that direction. This was a very difficult answer for me to find when I was looking into eligibility requirements for teaching there. Eventually, I found my answer buried on the EPIK website. Although it is not yet required, you really do need to get a TEFL certificate that is at least 100 hours with 20 hours of in-class work included. If you don't get this, you basically won't get hired. Before I found this answer, I was looking into many different options for TEFL courses. It's all very confusing. Do you invest $2,000 to take an all in-class course? Do you get a $200 online only course? They really do range this much in price. It made it a lot easier when I found out what the real "requirements" were though. I-to-I TEFL was the only course I found that was an acceptable price (about $550), included both online and in-class work, and was over 100 hours. I did the 140 hour combined course (http://www.i-to-i.com/tefl-courses/combined-tefl-courses-140.html). Don't be intimidated by the 140 hours thing. I went through 120 hour online sections in a week, and the 20 hours of in-class work is done one weekend. I did my in-class section in New York City, and they have a few other locations as well. It seems like it will be a long weekend, but my teacher, Claudette, was fabulous. The online portion may be short, but it is actually really good in helping you figure out how to plan lessons and review grammar. Work hard on the checkpoints--people grade those pass/fail, and they are a really helpful in getting you to think about teaching actual students. The one negative I will say is that if you sign up for a weekend course time, they may call you a week beforehand and cancel the course if there are not enough students enrolled at that time. You won't get charged because they cancelled it, but you will have to reschedule. Bear that in mind if you are on a time crunch for getting the certificate done. I know there is an option that if you can't do any of the weekend courses, you can opt to do another online module, but our recruiter was really happy that we were in a TEFL course that had an in-class component, so I wasn't interested in doing another online module. If you are not finished with your TEFL course before you apply, you need to request that the TEFL company you go through writes you a letter of enrollment. They know how to write it; they get these requests a lot. In addition, if you apply through EPIK, you will have to sign a paper that says you are going to complete this before you go out there, etc. Gianni had to sign it to say he'd be finished with it before July, since that is when we should be signing a contract for a specific offer, and we'd have to get our visas.

Whether or not you have an EPIK application depends on what route you chose to go down to get to Korea. Since we did EPIK, we had applications we had a to fill out with all the normal stuff (name, age, address, etc.) and also some personal information regarding health and tattoos. Please take note that Korea is apparently not comfortable with people who might take certain kinds of medication. Birth control is accepted, but I have heard of some people being prejudiced against for taking depression or anxiety medications or things for ADD, etc. I can't speak to this directly; it's just something I've heard of. Likewise, if you have a tattoo or a piercing, they will need to be covered at all times while you are teaching. Although this is waning slightly, Koreans don't like tattoos. If you have a tattoo, EPIK has a sworn declaration you need to sign pertaining to it. I didn't need it because I don't have a tattoo, but I'm guessing you have to agree to keep it covered or something like that. Also, the major parts of the EPIK application are the lesson plan and the personal essay. The lesson plan can be difficult if you have not done your TEFL course yet. I just used one of my practice lessons from my TEFL course, but Gianni found this part difficult. The personal essay basically just asks you to say why you want to go to Korea, why you want to teach, how you will adapt to a new culture, and what kind of a teacher you will be. It does get you thinking, and it prepares you for some of the things they will ask you during your EPIK interviews (you will probably be asked similar things if you interview directly with a school or province or whatever, but I don't know because, as I said, I went through EPIK).

I realize I've mentioned a few times about not having something before you apply, so I wanted to give you the general guidelines about when to apply to go to Korea. So, Gianni and I applied at the beginning of March, and we are hoping to go to Korea at the end of August for what is their second semester in school over there. Given that it is their second semester, there are typically less job positions open at that time of year. I believe the first semester starts in March, so either you can get a position for August/September or February/March. Not quite sure when you would apply if you want to go in March, but we applied 5 months before we anticipate going, so 5 months before March would be November. That would probably work, but check with your recruiter or EPIK or whoever you are going through to work this out.

So you have all your documents together--great! The next step is only for those applying for EPIK or GEPIK. Ann, our recruiter, submitted our applications to EPIK for us. She then heard back from EPIK about our interview time. Gianni and I were interviewed by the same person, but I was interviewed right before him. The interview lasts for about a half hour. As I said before, they ask you similar questions to what is in your personal essay. They also ask about classroom management techniques, and how you would work together with your co-teacher. In case you haven't heard of a co-teacher, in Korea, a co-teacher is the students' normal teacher who is present in your class as well. Apparently, some can be very controlling and take over the class and other times they won't help you very much at all. It really depends on who you get. From what I hear, co-teachers can also be very helpful to you when you first come to Korea. They sometimes help you set up bank accounts, find your apartment, etc. So it really varies by school and based on personalities. Wear business clothes for the interview. It will be on Skype, but you need to look professional. And always smile and be friendly. The interview is serious--nothing to be too nervous about, but not a joke either.

A few days after the interview, Ann notified Gianni and I that we had both passed our EPIK interviews. What that means is that we are eligible to be placed into schools. Going through EPIK, you do not get to choose what school you are in. On the application, it asks if you have a specific province in mind, but you can't pick a school. Still, we felt that because EPIK is a government program, it was the most stable and secure way to go about this, but I know plenty of people who chose a different route. Gianni and I both wrote that we would prefer Daegu province on our applications. Because we are not married, we cannot apply jointly to the teaching program, and we can't live together. So all along I've been stressing to Ann the importance of us being placed at schools in the same or nearby cities. She thought that Daegu, because it is smaller, would give us the best likelihood of being placed close to one another. We still don't know where we are placed, so we're stressed out about this at the moment, but we're excited and hoping for the best. As I mentioned before, the job postings for Hogwons online seemed to sometimes be looking for multiple people, so maybe there's a better chance of getting placed in the same location. We're leaving this open as a back up plan still.

The next step is to send your documents (mentioned above) off to Korea. I said it once, but I need to repeat: REMEMBER TO MAKE COPIES!!! I just sent the documents to Korvia the other day, and it cost me $88 from UPS! That was harsh. I think Fedex would actually be cheaper--might be something to look into. Try to have the documents ready before the interview though because the faster you send the documents in, the faster they can start to find you placement for a job. As far as I understand, EPIK will not look for placement for you until you send in your documents confirming your eligibility for the program. We got ours in about 3 weeks after the interview, and I wish we could have gotten them in sooner, but I was waiting for him to mail me some things.

The rest of the process seems to be a waiting game. Right now we are waiting for placement. Then, in July, we will sign contracts if we accept the position we are placed in. Then it's time to book our flights to Korea. I believe the flight is around 14 hours--ugh :( From then, we go through EPIK training around mid to late August, and we start teaching in September...hopefully! Hope this helps those of you thinking about going, and please ask questions in the comments section. Also if you have had other experiences--like maybe you didn't go through EPIK or you are working/going to work for a Hogwon--please let us know about that as well. I want to help people out here because I know how difficult it was for me to figure out at first. I'll keep you posted on where things go from here. Thanks!