Teaching in Korea

Going to where the jobs are

Looking for a good job–try teaching overseas

By Frank Bradley

Sentinel writer

While much is being made about the need to create local jobs so kids who grow up in western North Carolina can continue to live and work here, there are some who don’t mind braving it in the larger world. Such is the case of Bryan Mims, a Hayesville High School graduate and graduate of Appalachian State University, Class of 2005 with a degree in Communications.

Mims has been teaching in South Korea going on three years, first in a high school and more recently at Pukyon University, where you guessed it, he is an English Instructor.

He said he completed an application, had a telephone interview and was given an annual contract. His duties consist of teaching a Freshman college class for two hours, one-day a week, and eight conversation classes with about six students each.

The Koreans take lots of English classes in high school. They have to pass rigorous tests, so by the time they start college they have a pretty good grasp of English. What they have difficulty with is communicating with more complex sentences,” he said. “That gives them lots of trouble and that is what we work on mostly in the conversation classes.”

“It’s safe. They take care of you. South Korea is a very good starting place for teaching,” Mims told me last week when he was back in the county between semester breaks. “They provide me with an apartment at no cost, pay my living expenses and plane fare and a basic starting salary of about two thousand a month. I also have full health insurance under the country’s national health care plan. Going to a doctor costs less than $20 a visit. I had trouble with lower back pain. I went to a huge clinic with specialists for my back and with the medication and all, it cost less than $100.”

Mims said Koreans really like Americans. “The men are eager to get to know foreigners. They are very friendly. The women aren’t usually as outgoing, but the kids will walk up to you on the street, say hello. Who are you? Where are you from?”

He said obesity does not seem to be a problem there. Koreans love to hike, climb mountains, and bike. The mostly drink water, coffee and tea. They are not big drinkers of soft drinks. He said the food is surprisingly good. That its better than southern barbecue.

Mims lives and teaches in Buson (formerly Puson). It is Korea’s second largest city after Seoul. Buson has a population of 3.6 million. It is Korea’s largest port city and the fifth largest port city in the world. Old timers will recall that Puson was the port where the American military were evacuated out of after the Chinese entered the Korean war.

Mims said students go to public schools five or six hours a day for six days a week. Then many of them also go to additional private classes after school hours or in the evening. There are many after school programs, which are privately funded.

He said baseball is the national sport. Koreans love American movies and Korean soap operas.

Mims said most Americans who go to Korea to teach stay there on average two to three years, but a two instructors who teach at his university have been there for ten years. He plans on staying another year and a half or two years.

“I wish I had gone earlier,” he said.

Anybody who finishes an American university who wants to travel, have fun, make some money in a safe environment will find Korea very much to their liking, Mims said.