South Korea has become quite the hotspot for those wishing to teach ESL abroad. When deciding to teach in Korea, many prospective ESL teachers have trouble deciding whether they should work at a hagwon or public school.
This is an important question that you must answer early on in your journey to becoming an ESL teacher in South Korea because sometimes both types of school require different documents. There are also certain deadlines for public school programmes.
Fortunately, here’s a comparison of each type of teaching establishment, which may help you decide whether you want to work at a hagwon or a public school.
Table of Contents
Pay
Hagwon
The average starting salary at a hagwon is about 2.1 – 2.3 million won outside Seoul, depending on your qualifications and the hours you need to work.
Public School
The average public school starting salary tends to be lower at 1.8 -2.1 million won depending on the city.
Work Hours
Hagwon
Hagwon work hours vary. I think the average is 8 hours per day, but I’ve seen some with fewer hours and some with more. Most hagwons start in the afternoon, which night owls will love. However, there are some positions which start earlier in the day because you teach kindergarten, and early risers may prefer these jobs.
My workday started at 2 pm and finished at 8. 45 pm, so I worked for 6 hours and 45 minutes a day. Three-quarters of an hour of this time was used for preparing for classes or having meetings.
Most hagwons have lunch/dinner breaks, but the ones at hagwons with shorter hours may be very brief though. I got 45 minutes for my breaks, but some hagwons give workers 15 minutes. Sometimes there are even no real breaks at a hagwon with short hours.
Public School
Public school positions are a regular 9 to 5 job. You normally have a lunch break where you can eat with your students, but I’m unsure of whether it’s compulsory to eat with them.
You also have plenty of time in the day to do lesson planning and other stuff because public school teachers have something called desk warming. This is when you have no assignments or tasks to do, but you still have to sit at your desk as you can’t leave before work finishes.
Teaching Hours
Hagwon
Although some hagwons have the same amount of or less working hours than public school positions, most hagwon jobs have more teaching hours. You’ll teach an average of 30 classes a week, and each class is about 45 minutes, but some are longer and some are shorter.
Public School
Public school teachers have 22 classes a week at most. Any class over that is classified as overtime, which isn’t mandatory. Classes tend to be approximately 50 minutes.
Class Size
Hagwon
Hagwon classes can be really small. The average class size is about 10, but I’ve seen some hagwons with 12 students in a class.
I had 10 students at most in my classes. I even had some with just four students, which made it easy to get to know and talk to all of them.
Public School
Class sizes are bigger at public schools. I’d say the average is about 30, but you can even have 40 students in a class, which makes it difficult to form a close bond with a lot of your students.
Application Process and Documents
Hagwon
The application process for a hagwon can be quite quick and easy. You just find a job on your own or through a recruiter, have the interview, see the contract, accept the contract when you’re happy with it, and send your documents over.
Some hagwon positions require references or letters of recommendation but not many do, especially if it’s your first time applying to be a teacher in Korea.
Public School
The EPIK and TALK processes can be quite long-winded and complicated. The application for positions normally opens up 6 months before the proposed starting date.
Furthermore, you’ll often need two letters of recommendation (LORs) for public school positions. For programmes like EPIK and TALK, these LORs have specific requirements. For instance, they must be addressed specifically to EPIK or TaLK.
British and Australian citizens also have to get their birth certificate apostilled to apply for a position, which isn’t the case when applying to hagwons and even Korean universities.
Benefits
Hagwon
Flights: Most hagwons either pay for your flight to Korea or from Korea. Others ask you to pay and then reimburse you and some really good hagwons may pay both your flight to and from Korea.
Paid Vacation: At a standard hagwon, you get 10 days of paid vacation time, sometimes less. The better hagwons tend to let you have more time off if you find a substitute teacher or have been working at the school for a long time.
Health Insurance and Pension: Hagwons should include standard benefits such as paying half your national health insurance and pension contributions. However, some try to avoid this, especially if you’re from a country like the UK where teachers don’t get their pension contributions back after leaving Korea.
Accommodation: Most hagwons provide private accommodation, which will most likely be a one-room studio. In more rural places, you may get a two-room studio. I did when I worked in Suncheon.
Severance pay: At the end of your contract, you will get a severance payment which will be equal to one month’s salary.
Orientation: At some hagwons, you’ll have a couple of days to see how things work and may even shadow the teacher you’ll be replacing. However, this isn’t always the case you and may end up teaching without any training.
Public School
Flights: Public schools, especially those affiliated with EPIK or TaLK, usually reimburse you for your ticket to and from Korea. For both programmes, you get an entry and exit allowance or 1.3 million won (that’s 2.6 million won in total) as well as a settlement allowance or 300,000 won when starting your first contract.
Paid Vacation: Most public school programmes allow up to 18 days of paid vacation but some offer more. For instance, teachers who work at a public school in the Jeollanamdo Language Program (JLP) will get up to 26 days of paid vacation a year.
Health Insurance and Pension: Public schools also include benefits like contributing half of pension and national health insurance payments and most if not all of them do follow this as it’s the law. So you won’t realise that you haven’t been signed onto these services halfway through your contract, which sometimes happens to those working at a hagwon.
Accommodation: You also get your own studio.
Severance pay: You also get severance pay at the end of your contract when working at a public school.
Orientation: You have an orientation that lasts a couple of weeks if you apply to EPIK or TaLK. Orientations can be quite intense, but they’re a great way to make friends as you’ll meet a lot of people and even have a roommate. This will probably change because of the pandemic, however.
Security
Hagwon
Hagwons are businesses and are driven by money, so a hagwon not making money may close, which means you’ll lose your job. Alternatively, you still be made redundant if a hagwon can’t afford to keep you as an employee.
Unfortunately, a lot of hagwon teachers had issues with getting paid during the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. The government’s orders to close schools also weren’t obligatory for hagwons, which made arguments about whether employees should be paid or not unclear.
Public School
Once you definitely have a public school position, it’s unlikely that you’ll lose your job during your contract unless you do something very bad or the school burns down. Public school teachers were also paid when schools were shut back a couple of months ago due to COVID-19.
However, each year there are cuts to public school positions which makes competition more intense. Furthermore, you can only stay at the same public school for a couple of years, whereas you can stay at a hagwon as long as you’d like if you and your employer agree.
Here’s an interesting blog post I found about the security of EPIK placements.
Location
Hagwon
You can apply for a hagwon position directly and through a recruiter. Either way, you’ll be told which city the position is in. If you have a specific location in mind, then you can focus all your energy on applying to or asking your recruiter for jobs in that place.
Public School
For EPIK and TaLK, you find out where you’ll be teaching at your orientation after you arrive in Korea. Sometimes you may even be placed at multiple schools.
However, you can apply directly to public school positions through a recruiter, which gives you more control over your location.
Co-workers
Hagwon
At your job, you’ll most likely have other Native English teachers as colleagues as well as some Korean teachers.
In addition, 99% of hagwons don’t require Native English teachers to have a co-teacher, which means you get the class all to yourself. It also means you’ll need to learn how to discipline the students, but you can still ask your Korean colleagues for help with difficult students.
Public School
You often the only native English teacher at your school, which may be lonely for some. Furthermore, you normally have several co-teachers you work with at your school(s), which may be a good or bad thing, but they’ll often help you with the discipline side of teaching.
Extra Responsibilities
Hagwon
At a hagwon, you may have extra responsibilities such as planning course content, grading homework, writing reports and even filming student presentations. You may have to accompany students on school trips too.
Public School
You don’t really have extra responsibilities except for preparing for summer and winter camps, which are additional special courses students must sign up to during their winter and summer vacation.
Most teachers usually teach two weeks’ worth of camps in the summer and winter. The content for the camps depends on the schools’ wishes. For example, camps may focus on a certain theme such as science or American culture.
Career Growth
Hagwon
You could get promoted to the head of English or you may get more responsibility planning educational content, but other than that there’s no real career growth.
Public School
There’s no real career growth in a public school either but working at one counts as experience for university positions in Korea, whereas hagwon work doesn’t.
In a nutshell
Here’s a table of the pros and cons of teaching at a hagwon vs teaching at a public school:
Hagwon
| Pros | Cons |
| Higher pay for entry-level teachers. | You get less flight allowance. |
| In charge of your own classroom (This could also be a con). | May have a lot of other responsibilities such as marking exam papers and writing student reports. |
| No desk warming (this could also be a con). | Some jobs have long hours. |
| No winter or summer camps. | Most hagwon jobs have longer teaching hours than public school positions. |
| You can choose your location. | Job insecurity, especially during a pandemic. |
| Most jobs don’t require references, especially for first-time teachers. | Short vacation time. |
| You’ll work with other Native English teachers (some may view this as a con) | No real career growth. |
| Your classes will be small. | Your employer may not sign you up for benefits and may even do other illegal things. |
| The application can be much easier than the public school application process, especially compared to programs like EPIK or TaLK. | You may get a short lunch/dinner break or none at all. |
| Your orientation can be quite short. (Some may view this as a pro if the orientation is sufficient). |
Public School
| Pros | Cons |
| Secure option (although this can be argued). | Could get stuck with a crappy co-teacher |
| Low teaching hours. | If applying with EPIK or TaLK then you won’t know where you’re placed until late in the application process. |
| Not a lot of extra responsibilities. | May be placed in a small rural town |
| Not in charge of a whole class i.e., you have a co-teacher who can discipline students. (Some may view this as a con though). | May have to work at more than one school, which may be exhausting or isolating (i.e. don’t spend enough time at one school to build rapport with your co-workers and maybe even your students) |
| Longer vacation. | Summer and winter camps. (Some may view them as a pro because they’re a change from teaching the standard curriculum and it could be fun.) |
| Desk warming. (Some may view this as a con because they may feel idle) | You’re the only native English teacher (Some may view this as positive though). |
| You get more flight allowance and bonuses. | The application can be long and complicated and some applications need to supply more documents. |
| You can use your experience to apply for Korean university positions. | May be stuck with a lot of lesson planning |
| You have a long orientation for EPIK and TaLK, which can be useful. (Some may view this as a con because they may not find the orientations useful and may not like sharing a room during this period.) |
My advice
I think the better option, especially for those coming to teach in Korea for the first time, would be to work at a public school because you’ll have less to worry about and you’ll be in a more secure position.
I worked at a hagwon during my first year in Korea and I did enjoy having smaller classes and more freedom in the classroom, but my employer wasn’t always doing things by the books, and that was stressful. The workload also really drained me, even though I liked having the class to myself.
If you can’t get a public-school position, then choose a chain hagwon that is established rather than a mom and pop hagwon. The latter can be wonderful in terms of work hours, freedom and class sizes, but they’re more vulnerable to having money issues and may be more likely to not follow certain rules.
