Here you will find my top reasons to choose EPIK teaching in South Korea. After doing a quick google search, it becomes very obvious that teaching in South Korea is one of the best teaching jobs in the world.  

The benefits are much greater than any other teaching job in Asia and the world. More specifically, EPIK (English Program in Korea) is the crème of the crop.

Now, I might be slightly biased, but with benefits including flight reimbursement, free housing, 18 paid vacation days plus national holidays, and generous pay it’s hard to believe that you could find anything better.

Benefits

Trust me, I am the first person to say money isn’t everything and you should NEVER take a job solely for the salary, but honestly the salary is an added bonus to the EPIK life. And of course add to that being nestled between mountains and surrounded by nature and life can’t get any better.

For those of you that are new to the life of teaching ESL abroad, let me give you some quick background information. Before moving to South Korea, I was teaching English in Ecuador and I loved it! Besides living in an incredibly beautiful country, there weren’t many benefits to my job but at the time, I was okay with that.

I moved to Ecuador without a job, because most schools hire once you have landed, and no place to live. The school that I worked for paid decent compared to the other schools but I wasn’t racking up money by any means and just broke even and they certainly didn’t pay for my flight or give me paid vacation.

My hours constantly changed every week and I never knew how much my paycheck would end up being. I can confidently say that this is NOT the case with EPIK!

Salary

South Korea’s currency is the won and an EPIK salary starts at 2,100,000w. Yes, that is correct: 2.1 million won and that’s only the starting salary!! How many times have you started a new job and instantly became a millionaire?

Don’t know about you, but that had never happened to me and I don’t even have to pay rent with this money because my school pays that for me. Like most people, I do have student loans to pay but this type of salary allows me to pay my bills from home as well as save money and travel.

Most of my friends have become addicted to shopping and can easily afford to buy new clothes, a bike, or a camera. I can’t think of many other jobs that allow you to do this.

Freedom to Travel

Working for the public schools is perfect for traveling because there are so many national holidays. For example, we just had Children’s Day which fell on a Thursday and the government decided to make Friday a “Red day” meaning we had the day off and a nice long weekend.

Unfortunately, my friends working in hagwons didn’t get this benefit and had to work on Friday. Some may not realize this, but South Korea has more than 3,000 islands off of its coastline. This means plenty of travel opportunities within the country.

South Korea has a great location and is within a 4 hour flight from many other places in Asia like Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong. Many teachers spend their long weekends traveling to other countries or exploring hidden gems located in South Korea.

And let’s be honest, you don’t come to South Korea just to teach, you want to travel and explore and the perks of teaching with EPIK allows you to do this!

Kim started her teaching career in Quito, Ecuador teaching Business English.  After a year of living in South America, she decided to try something new and teach in South Korea through the EPIK program.  Before teaching, Kim was an Athletic Trainer working with high school aged students participating in all different types of sports.  When not teaching, Kim enjoys being active whether playing sports, hiking, or taking a walk to explore the city.  One of Kim’s biggest goals is to see as much of this world as possible.