Coming to Korea: Part Two
Or ‘How I survived an ESL job in South Korea, barely.’
BY JL COPELAND
Here is my long-awaited second part of a three-parter about how I ended up, here in Korea in 2026.
If you missed the first part, you can find it here.
Selecting music for this post was tough. Should I really torture you with K-pop? Haven’t you had enough of those demon hunters? Tell you what, I’ll give you two choices:
First is this K-pop monster hit from around the time I first came to Korea.
I once had to perform the whole thing (yep, the dance) on stage in front of 1500 screaming high school students. See if you can picture that.
Nope? Well, here’s the video evidence.
Or, to be kinder to your ears, try this top 60’s tune:
In part one of this series, we learned how JL, turning his back on a law career to start a White Stripes tribute band, The Shite Stripes, had run out of money and was unsurprisingly questioning his life choices. Then he received an email from Ali.
Ali has been a best friend since high school. She’s one of those authentic, unflappable and simply brilliant people. I haven’t the faintest idea what she sees in a crusty, self-centered, herbert like myself.
She had gone to teach English in South Korea for a year and suggested I join her. It was an opportunity to travel (I was skint, but the employer would pay for the plane ticket and accommodation), you could save loads of money there (again, skint) and it was an exciting place (I was stuck in Cumbria).
What was not to like?
Can I work in Korea if I only speak English? (and have little else going for you)
Yes, you can. But I hesitated at the English-teaching part.
Ali had studied English at university and was considering becoming a teacher in the UK.
I, on the other hand, had scraped a ‘C’ in my school exam, and my declarative knowledge of grammar extended to ‘a verb is a doing word.’
Not even kidding. Although you’ve not doubt assumed that already from what you read here every fortnight.
You see, I’m the kind of person who likes to over-prepare and double-check. Some people mistake this for diligence.
In fact, it is the fear that others will find out what I have struggled to conceal throughout my life: I am a complete fu*king tool.
But Ali reassured me that it was easy-peasy; so I merrily jumped feet-first into that enticing pool, the car wrecks lurking just below the surface.
I read up on Korea and arrived ready to embrace the culture. I was different from the usual expat plebs. My first meal in Korea? KFC, naturally.
I met my boss and Ali (I’d made sure I was in the same city as her, Daegu) and he showed me my flat.
Do English teachers in Korea get free housing?
Yes, they do. But, like anything that’s free, it’s free for a reason.
I could smell the mould as I walked in the doorway. Fortunately, it wasn’t too bad, a few light blooms here and there. Later on, I saw the downstairs apartment of an American colleague. Half the ceiling was black.
My boss gave me a present of some fruit and milk. What I wasn’t expecting was the present waiting for me in the toilet bowl of my bathroom.
Welcome to Korea.
Although, to be fair, it wasn’t exactly like I improved the place. This was its natural state for the 12 months I was there:
The school was a private English academy (or ‘hagwon’ in the local lingo) for children under 10.
I was nervous. Hagwon owners didn’t exactly have a good reputation for treating staff well.
Does Korea have a five-day work week?
Yes, but five days is more of a guideline.
Ali’s evil queen of a boss would ring her at all hours of the night, (weekends, too) sometimes in tears, as if Ali’s 1500-dollar salary extended to providing round the clock therapy.
My academy was called Wonderland.
If the name sounds dystopian, the impression wasn’t helped by a blog post I’d found shortly before departing England, called Prisoner of Wonderland, describing a litany of abuse.
But, to be fair, I got lucky, my boss was alright. A suspicious type, but alright.
I couldn’t blame him for his suspicion, aside from the—not uncommon—‘midnight runs’ (fleeing the country without notice) a few of his ‘lazy’ western employees had pulled, one Canadian had sheets of LSD delivered to the hagwon under an alias, until he’d got caught.
Considering we used to give out sheets of smiley stickers as bribes for good behaviour/calming down more volatile cherubs, I can’t imagine that went down well with the parents at the hagwon.
I enjoyed picturing at length the possible consequences if there’d been a mix-up with those sheets. I’m wicked like that.
The main problem I suffered at work in those first few months was one I often face: I didn’t have a fu*king clue what I was doing.
I’d have a textbook with set pages for each forty-minute class of seven to ten-year-olds.
I wouldn’t even bother looking at the book until I got to class.
I’d just make it up: order them to repeat and act out the dialogue on the pages, throw in a bit of hangman, play I-spy, ask them random questions. Real shooting from the hip.
My Korean co-workers suggested I use the teaching manuals accompanying each textbook.
Again, you know me, I knew best. I didn’t need the teaching manuals; I’m was from England, I said, I know all the English. I can just freestyle.
Then, I was assigned a class of five-year-olds. Beginners, could barely speak a word, I was told. Tiny Talk book one, page one, I was told.
I rocked up to the class, six little gormless faces beaming expectantly at me. I opened the book to see what the material I had to work with for the next forty minutes was, and found:
Those forty minutes were painful. I used the teaching manuals after that.
There were plenty of weird and messed-up things at Wonderland, too many to include here. One that stands out though is Halloween. That’s the photo at the top of this post.
The boss wanted a ‘highlight experience’ for the kids.
There was this room at the academy with no windows.
The Korean teachers decorated with toilet paper hanging down from the ceiling like vines, and screwed up bits of rubbish all over the floor. I had dressed as Dracula the another (American) teacher, a witch.
The boss’s brilliant idea was to turn off all the lights, so it was pitch black, and we would wait at the back of the room, away from the door.
Then, each kid would get a turn at being pushed into the room, the door slammed and held shut behind them.
We were supposed to come shuffling forward in the darkness, making ghost/groaning sounds, holding a small flashlight. I can still remember the kids’ wide-eyed faces in the beam of that flashlight.
Bear in mind, some of these kids were as young as five.
There were tears.
There were kids scratching at the door and screaming to be let out as we closed in.
There was certainly life-long trauma.
Away from work, life was pretty fun. I felt rich: beer was cheap, we took taxis everywhere, I could make extravagant guitar fx pedal purchases every other week. I even paid for stuff for other people. I know.
I could also save about 1000 dollars/five hundred pounds a month. For someone who’d been scraping by on the same amount from shifts at the pub for the last year or more, this was a fortune. Life was good.
Some had it even better. I met these Texans at a football practice one day. They were pretty similar to me, but said they worked at a local university, had months and months of vacation on full pay.
Da fuck? I was lucky to get Christmas off at Wonderland. Christmas morning off.
Unbeknownst to me, those Texans had planted a seed. More on that next time.
Back to the fun times. There was karaoke at the noraebang. Trips to the beach. Dancing in clubs all night that finished with grilled meat at 6 AM, watching the sun rise.
And girlfriends.
Yes, that last one is indeed plural, a Canadian chick and then a Korean. JL, man of the world. I was feeling groovy. The confidence was flowing. What a player. What a prat.
I played music, too.
Downtown was a foreigner bar called Communes that had open mic nights on Wednesdays. I would rock up with my guitar, keyboard and pedals and do a one-man show.
I still couldn’t play guitar for shit (or sing), but ah… the confidence of youth.
One hazy memory from one of those soju-sloshed nights is of me ending my set with an cappella The Bare Necessities: marching into the crowd with the mic, the crowd singing along.
The owner nicknamed me ‘Crazy Jamie.’ Can’t think why.
The end of the year came, and my boss wanted me to sign on for another year. He was impressed: I hadn’t tried to leg it, or import crack through the hogwan as a side-hustle.
Yeah, the bar was pretty low.
I almost stayed. But I resisted the munificent $ 50 – a-month pay rise. And anyway, Ali had gone home.
I’d had a good time, but now it was time to continue with that law career.
Or so I thought.
Tune in next time to find out how I boomeranged back from Blighty to bibimbap.
Speak soon,
JL
PS: If you like freebies, dark humour, unsettling true stories, and watching someone overshare with confidence…
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It’s cheaper than therapy. And somehow less effective.