1) About 95% of your pay goes into your own pocket after you handle utilities. So you have near $2000 to play with every month. Abd all i know is that I’d never have that must spending money back Cantaxada

2) You don’t pay rent since the hagwon provides housing. The downside to this is that they, more often than not, provide you with a shit-hole to keep costs down.

3) Despite the occasion frustration, the job is pretty easy.

4) If you don’t like what’s being offered to you while job hunting by one hagwon, you can just go down the street and see what the next one has to offer.

Overall it’s a pretty good life.

Some of us F5 holders earn more than that. You just need to diversify your income. For example, I teach at a university and own a business (we had two, but we sold one at a profit). Then there’s the stock market. Korean stocks are pretty predictable (goes up 3000won then goes down 3000 won. Just like clockwork).

God I’m in the wrong business.

The 9 to 5 business world can’t compete with loafing by day, starcraft by night and not to mention the bevy of Korean hookers. One cannot forget the hookers.

Seriously, no matter how boring teaching English is, it has to be better than sitting in a cubicle (actually antire corner office for me, Yay!) all day and looking at bills of lading or letters of credit all day until your eyes bleed.

When the Peace Corps left in (1982?) they had to do something to put native speakers in front of students. Some of the PCV’s I met in out-of-the-way places were doing some pretty solid work, and their students were coming along nicely.

As far as the trillions spent on English, I guess this proves the old adage “throw enough mud against the wall and some of it’s bound to stick”…

Can’t stretch my imagination enough to believe it….

I didn’t look at the exchange rate today, but it seems it has been getting more profitable again to teach in Korea.

I started when the Won was at 790 to the US $. But within a year, it was up to where it is now, and at a year and a half point, as the Asian Tiger Economies fell, I saw it hit around the 2,100 range and only came down to about 1,200-1,300 by the time I left teaching.

But the place is still going to have problems recruiting teachers even if the Won gets back to around 800-900, because the internet has made it too easy to find out how shitty the industry is and how the headaches are not worth the cash unless you are really desperate. And the US economy is not bad enough for most college grads to decide to throw caution and advice to the wind and go to a South Korean hakwon….