The Korea Herald profiled a celebrity English teacher a little while ago.
Yoo Su-youn, who teaches TOEIC classes at YBM e4u Language Institute in Jongno, downtown Seoul, is a star lecturer. Her classes are fully booked each month, her personal essay collection is a bestseller at local bookstores, and her annual income reaches about 2 billion won ($15 million).
The continued popularity of TOEIC, or the Test of English for International Communication, is driving her success, but Yoo said many people do not understand what the test means.
Of course a big obstacle to any foreigner striking it rich this way is that we don't own our E-2 visas, and I'd suspect setting up online tutoring would be illegal. And, as demonstrated by Yoo, the big money here is teaching toward tests.
Meanwhile, in other tutoring news:
Since the Education Ministry launched a nationwide crackdown last week on private education institutes and tutors, 1,884 tutors have voluntarily registered with local education authorities to avoid sanctions, the ministry said yesterday.
Further, reports made to authorities by third persons on tutors and illegal operations of hagwon, or private education institutes, tallied 292 over a one-week period ending Monday.
. . .
With the exception of university and graduate school students, tutors must register with education offices in their residential district so that the National Tax Office can impose income taxes.
A person without a full-time job who teaches several students at home is illegal if he or she isn t registered.
Schoolteachers are banned from tutoring and two or more people working as tutors at the same residence are also illegal regardless of their registration status.
The article also shows that if you can't get rich teaching you can always try narcing.
People reporting illegal tutors to authorities can receive 20 percent of the tutor’s monthly income as a cash reward. For reports of hagwon overcharges or operations beyond curfew, 300,000 won ($235) can be rewarded. Those reporting unregistered hagwon can receive 500,000 won. The ceiling for rewards per tipster is 2.5 million won a year.
10 comments:
Makes you wonder how much internet porn webcam people make. if there was only a way to combine these two things...
I think I will go back to the USA and set up an online tutoring operation geared towards Koreans. I can be millionaire! Oh, wait....the ones who never met a tax they didn't like are in office in Washington now. Forget it. After they get through with me I will be making what I am making now at at public school.
@ Keith/#2
All of these superstar teachers are Korean for a reason.
First, you have to speak in Korean, even if you're teaching English or another foreign language.
Second, you have to lecture. None of this ridiculous nonsense of having students speak/practice/do exercises. You are the reservoir of knowledge. The students are blank slates. You lecture, they listen. You pour your knowledge into their empty heads by droning into a microphone.
2 billion won is not 15 million dollars.
Yeah, I assume they mean 20 billion won, but that's a big typo.
extrakorea's right, and he's referring to something I said in the post itself: you're not going to get rich teaching people how to speak English over the internet. You can see there are programs in place where people from, say, Wyoming teach kids in South Korea via webcam, but it's basically old people and housewives earning a little extra money. In Korea the big money is teaching toward tests, and you really can't prep students for a TOEIC or TOEFL exam without doing it mostly in Korean. When I'm in a fouler mood I might even say that the actual English is secondary.
These are ordinary classes that are filmed and made available to internet subscribers, so you'd have to not only be employed by one of the big boy hagwon, you'd have to be popular enough to able to go out on your own (and have an employer willing to let you do so). Even if this weren't illegal for E-2 visa holders, I can't imagine too many employers would be thrilled about letting their teachers film their lectures and broadcast them on the internet. Actually, now that I bring it up I wonder about the legality of it, because don't some contracts stipulate that all materials produced in the school and for the school are thus property of the school?
Anyway, compare what these "superstars" are doing with what Isaac Durst and the other famous funny foreigners do on TV. The former are serious teachers, preparing their students for real goals, while the latter are clowns, buffoons who can't do anything without bouncing around the room. This is the climate they've created for native English speakers in English education, and I'll keep myself off TV for the time being, thank you very much.
But, I know a guy who's setting up an online Korean class, and that could prove quite lucrative.
Brian, I have to disagree on a couple of points.
I was a TOEIC, TOEFL and IELTS teacher in New Zeland for a couple of years, and also have done tutoring for various exams in NZ and (unpaid) in Korea. I have also included lessons based on the content of these exams into my regular classes.
From my experience, I believe it is possible to teach for exams using only English - even in Korea. It may first be necessary to teach the students basic English until they're ready to prepare specifically for an exam, but even genuine beginners can learn a language mostly in that new language.
But, just like the diet industry, many people are looking for the quick easy solution. They think there is some secret that they can use to reach their goals with minimal time and effort - there isn't. With the mass English education industry in Korea, as with the diet industry, I can imagine that those who are selling quick fixes are fully aware of their inadequacies and are quite happy to continue misleading their customers in order to continue making heaps of cash.
So, esseintially what I'm saying is: it's possible to teach for these exams using only English but you won't get rich doing it, because most students will go for the 'famous' lecturer who holds the 'secret to success' with these exams.
Sorry, I forgot my other point - actually, more of a question.
How do you expect someone to make a lot of money with a Korean language website?
Is it geared towards the TOPIK? How many people want to take that?
Is there really that much of a demand? Why would someone choose to pay money to a website when there are a lot of really good free Korean language websites out there and lots of Koreans (both in Korea and overseas) who would be happy to teach Korean for very little, or even for free?
Erm... actually that's a lot of questions. I think you get my point. So, do I understand right, that you expect someone could make a lot of money from a 'learn Korean' website?
Schplook:
I don't think somebody'd become a millionaire teaching Korean, but I think doing online classes would fill a need and would allow the teacher to earn some money. A guy I know down here will be doing just that, and I think he could do pretty well for himself.
I live in Suncheon and there are really no opportunities for Korean classes. There are free classes offered through the Office of Education but---and this might be a rant for later---they're awful, just awful. Most people who start them simply stop showing up because they're just not good. I know a few people who take private lessons from a guy, and while I've heard it's going a little better, it's still not a great fit. So, a Canadian teaching Korean I think could appeal to people here who have no other options.
I think many English teachers here just want to learn some practical Korean. I don't know many who have any desire to become fluent, or who even think they can, but they just want to be able to handle themselves in a restaurant, at the bank, making friends, and talking with a little more depth than just A/S/L. Yet, the books I've seen have all been very rigid, and haven't seemed to have real communication in mind. Indeed the classes I took in Suncheon were all about substitution drills.
There are resources online, true, and I'll admit I'm pretty ignorant of them. There are a few good ones I can use for practice at the upper-beginner level where I am, but I haven't experimented with others. I recall the KBS site had/has good stuff for beginners. Point is you have to do a lot of digging around. A foreigner teaching practical Korean can cut through all the crap and give more personalized lessons that appeal not only to what other foreigners need, but can relate to the difficulties English speakers have trying to learn Korean.
The guy I know---I'll be posting on this class in a week or two, I think---is pretty well known down here, and could easily get a few dozen to sign up. That's not a bad chunk of change.
Not rich, mind you, but enough I think to make the effort worth it.
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