Things seem to be humming along pretty much as usual, protests continue ourside the American embassy in Seoul although things seem to have lost the hard edge that they had a few months ago. Salaries are slightly higher on the upper end, but still 1.7 on average although with the won having lost a lot of ground (now down to US$1:W1260) real wages have lost about 10% or so. How much lower is it going to go? We're have to wait and see. Just don't keep your money in Won.
Similar to the last update I did an online survey over December (a winter slow time as you will see) to access the job scene. One ad posted was for an American male and the other was for a male from down under (Australia). I choose down under to represent the two extremes of how easy/hard it is to get a good position in Korea these days. I also wanted to explore how easy it is to get email references from the existing teachers and how much room there is for contract negotiation.
Of course the American job seeker again had many more initial responses than the other guy with the funny accent. Total responses were again over fifty counting recruiters responses. I then went through the process of sending out resumes and photos (a handsome model) for the concrete offers (vague offers with no specific jobs mentioned from recruiters were eliminated). Further responses for the Aussie guy after they got the resume were initially reasonably numerous but many of them I never heard from again. I was then left with a handful of offers from Cheju do and other fairly isolated places (none in Seoul or Pusan). Continuing the corespondence I endeavored to obtain the email addresses of the other teachers before moving to the negotiation stage. For the Aussie guy, with one exception I then hit a blank wall. Even for the American guy, with only two exceptions, I could only get a few schools to cough up ONE email address despite asking for a least a couple. The problem with this is that they usually have one brown noser whos paid off with perks for just this purpose so their testimony is lacking in any credibility. Amazing! Also for the person down under there was just the same one place that provided two emails. Actually it was a college position and was advertised by a recruiter. So much for getting on to contract negotiations!
Now this is all in marked contrast to if you're actually in Korea which is how in practice I've personally handled getting work. It is so much easier and faster. For a start they don't have to pay for your airfare so you're given first preference. Second you can save a lot of time emailing backwards and forwards, you can just do it all on the spot and so beat the crowd. Third its easy to actually talk to all the teachers since they're right there and which in practice proved practically impossible via email. Fourth you can get a feel for the director and the school. Fifth its easy to do a bit of negotiation.
Still I don't think its worth paying for your own airfare (see here for a more through look at the pros and cons). Of course once you've got your foot in the door it will be a lot easier. The majority of the teachers I've seen in Korea from down under have actually been young and female which is probably not a coincidence given the limited oportunites the males seemed to have in this survey (although as noted it was the winter slow period). Pretty foreign girls will no doubt always be in demand here. If you're from England you should have better luck since its better known although it isn't the accent that they're looking for of course.
Good luck!
