How to Survive and Thrive Living in Korea as an EFL Couple

Article and photo by Jonathon Engels

Teaching two personalities for one task!

South Korea is a great place to begin an EFL career. As seemingly every Korean child undertakes the task of learning English, language hagwons (private academies) are everywhere and jobs plentiful. In addition, accepting one of the thousands of posts in Korea typically comes with paid airfare, school-supplied housing, and a bonus for contract completion. Many of the teachers I worked with had come to pay down school debts quickly. Nearly all of us were new to the field.

This isn’t to say life in Korea was not without its challenges. The cultural differences were far more vast than, for example, a U.S. citizen teaching in Mexico or a Brit living a year in Italy. Everything was largely unfamiliar: the alphabet, the food, living in a 15-story building, not owning a car, and gender roles. However, within my first three months in Korea, I met my eventual wife, Emma, who unlike my mother had predicted was British not Korean. 

Over the next 2-plus years, we worked in a little suburb of Seoul, Ansan (barely over half-a-million people), and deciphered some of the great mysteries regarding how to survive Korea as an EFL couple. We may not have arrived as an item, but by the time we left, we had mentored many an incoming duo on the fine points of the EFL life in Korea, from sharing the 1-room apartment to working-living-socializing together to where to buy the best kimbap.

Housing is a Friend of the EFL Couple

In our first year, Emma and I technically had separate domiciles. The "apartments" were tiny 1-room closets with a one-burner electric stove atop a mini-fridge, single basin metal sinks, and a window at about head-level. In reality, her apartment functioned mainly as a closet, and we squeezed into my tiny abode, smaller than the average guest bedroom in the U.S. We grew to know each other well very quickly.

When we signed up for a second year in Ansan, we did so as a couple. This meant we managed a major upgrade in our housing situation. Living in one apartment instead of two also saved money, so in year two in South Korea, our apartment effectively doubled in size. We also managed to find a place with massive windows along the front wall. In addition, we only had to pay one set of bills.

Helping Each Other Comes Naturally

One of the most common problems expats run into is loneliness. This is especially likely in Korea. The cities are often dense with people who are in a hurry and can’t speak English, so polite communication is sometimes hard to come by. Many single friends struggled, their appreciation of the local customs waning in the mire of culture shock. Missing home, some latched on to old flames or fixated on former lives and wound up even lonelier.

Emma and I were fortunate in that we always had each other to turn to when things got confusing: navigating the grocery store or going to the bank. Even though we may not have been able to translate or explain everything to each other, it means a lot to live with someone who has empathy for your experience. Your partner may even take the reins when you can no longer handle the cultural maze by yourself. Compatible couples have such support built into their relationship. We also had someone to field irrational vents when a cultural “norm”—spitting, slurping, burping—finally rubbed us the wrong way.

Scheduling Should Work for You

A great thing about Korean academies is that teachers generally work once a day rather than for hourly wages as in much of the world. Teachers put in their time, go home, and pursue a life outside of the school. Hourly jobs more often equate to split shifts (working the morning then the evening) and a more school-centered existence. For Emma and me, as a couple, our schedules in Korea had many more advantages.

Korea seemed to put us on a good ebb and flow. Emma, a kindergarten teacher, started work in the morning and finished in the late afternoon. I was an elementary-middle school person, arriving in early afternoon and teaching until nine at night. This provided us each with a little personal time at home, allowed us to have midday coffee or ice cream together, and prompted us into distinct household responsibilities. The timing just worked right.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Just about every year, when it’s time to start looking for our next job (Emma and I are now married and have remained traveling EFL teachers), we eventually linger on Korea for a few days. Good memories inspire us to start shuffling through Korean job boards and researching how to obtain our work visa from abroad. Therein, we run into the problem. The current visa process requires returning to our respective home countries, England and the U.S., for in-person interviews with the Korean consulate nearest to our place of birth.

Flying to the US and England just to get a job is too expensive, so we give up on the quest and choose somewhere new. We inevitably find positions in some other part of the world without daily fresh tofu and such a dizzying array of mushrooms. We learn about a new culture yet still remember Korea fondly. It seems we have figured out how to live there without much ado but have never learned how to get back.

Jonathon Engels has been an EFL expat since 2005, just after he earned an MFA in creative writing and promptly rejected life as an instructor of freshman comp. He has lived, worked, and/or volunteered in seven different countries, traveling his way between them. Currently, he is in Antigua, Guatemala, where most mornings he can be found tucked behind a computer in the corner of a coffee shop. For more from Jonathon, check out his website and blog.