What Korean English-teaching job ads don’t tell you

Data updated 2026-10-25 · computed live from 586 adverts · counts of adverts, not of employers

Of the 537 live adverts on LucyESL for a salaried post, 89.6% state the monthly salary and only 67.8% state the total hours you would be at the school. Across all 586, 13.7% state the teaching hours.

Which means: for most of these jobs you cannot work out what the pay is worth per teaching hour. Two adverts offering the same salary can be a long way apart in what they ask of you, and most of them do not give you what you would need to tell the difference.

Silence is not a “no”. An advert that does not mention pension is not an advert refusing pension — it is one you will have to ask. Everything on this page counts what adverts say. It says nothing about any school, and it is not a benchmark for what a job should pay.

How many adverts state each fact?

Monthly salary, total on-site hours, severance (퇴직금), national pension, health insurance, flight / settlement support and paid vacation days are counted against the 537 adverts for a salaried post, an employment contract (근로계약) paid by the month, rather than all 586, because an hourly rate or a contract engagement has no monthly salary, severance or pension to declare. Counting those the other way would score an honest advert as a silent one.

Why the hours line is the one to look for

Salary is the number every advert leads with, and it is the number that tells you least on its own. A post offering the same won can mean 22 teaching hours or 30, finishing at 6pm or at 10pm, with or without the desk time either side of class. The effective pay per teaching hour on the salary page can only be computed for the minority of adverts that state their hours — 13.7% of them. This page is about the rest.

What to ask before you sign

The table above says how many adverts leave out each of these. None of them is an awkward question, and a school that will not answer them in writing has told you something.

• Teaching hours, and total hours on site. Ask for both. The gap between them is unpaid in practice on many contracts, and it is the difference between a good salary and an ordinary one.
• Split shift. Only 1% of adverts mention it either way. A morning block and an evening block with a gap in between is a long day that pays like a short one.
• Severance (퇴직금). Statutory after a year of service. Ask whether it is paid on top of the monthly figure or folded into it — folding it in is not lawful, and it is the most common way the advertised number is not the number.
• National pension and health insurance. Both are employer-shared. Ask what the deduction is, so the figure you compare is take-home, not headline.
• Housing. Provided, an allowance, or neither — and if an allowance, how much, since a studio in Seoul and the same allowance elsewhere are different jobs.
• Paid vacation, and when you may take it. Days alone do not settle it; hagwon calendars often fix them.

See the live listings Read the salary figures

These figures recompute on every request. The monthly report records them once a month at a stable address and says what changed since the month before, and the market page breaks the same board down by region.

Is disclosure improving?

Each month’s figures are recorded the first time this page is read in that month. Earliest month first.

* Counted the old way. How this line changed.

Methodology & sources

• Population: every live advert on this board at the moment the page is served — published, moderation-approved, and not expired. Sample rows are excluded. 586 adverts today, covering listings posted between 2026-08-21 and 2026-10-25.
• Where the adverts come from: most are copied from public Korean-market job boards and are marked as copied wherever they appear on this site. The adverts are their authors’; these aggregate counts are computed here. No advert text, contact detail or personal information is republished on this page — only counts.
• “Stated” means the advert gives the fact at all, in either direction. An advert saying “no airfare” is counted as having stated it. Only an advert that is silent counts as silent.
• Two denominators. Teaching hours per week and split shift are counted against every live advert. Monthly salary, total on-site hours, severance (퇴직금), national pension, health insurance, flight / settlement support and paid vacation days are counted against the 537 adverts for a salaried post (an employment contract paid by the month), because the others have none to declare.
• Not benchmarks. These are counts of what adverts say. They are not claims about any employer, not a measure of how common a benefit is in Korean workplaces, and not advice about what a job should pay.
• Segments smaller than 8 are withheld rather than published thin.
• Recomputed on every request. The figures move as the board does; the date above is the most recent listing update.
• Changed 2026-10-11: From October 11, 2026, LucyESL reads four lines of an advert more fully. An advert that gives its working days and its daily hours (“Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm”) counts as stating total on-site hours, where only a weekly figure (“40 hours a week”) did before; a count of classes (“35 classes a week”) no longer counts as teaching hours; more ways of offering a flight (“flight support”, “a one-way flight”) count as stating one; and severance named in Korean (퇴직금) counts as stating it. These are changes in how LucyESL reads adverts, not in what they say, so months recorded before them are not compared with later ones on these lines.
• Changed 2026-10-13: From October 13, 2026, an advert whose employer answered paid vacation with “the statutory minimum” counts as stating its paid vacation days, as the advert’s own page always showed. Only an advert posted on LucyESL can give that answer, so months recorded before it are not compared with later ones on this line.
• Changed 2026-10-20: From October 20, 2026, LucyESL reads every line it counts more closely. A copied advert that pays by the hour or by the class is read that way, so it leaves the count of adverts on a monthly salary that the salaried lines share; a monthly salary given as a range, or beside other figures, is read where it was missed or misread before; naming Korea’s four statutory insurances (4대보험) counts as stating both national pension and health insurance; and a full-time week read as under twelve teaching hours, almost always a day mistaken for a week, no longer counts as stating teaching hours. More ways of stating on-site hours, a flight, severance, paid vacation (summer and winter days added together) and a split shift are read too. These are changes in how LucyESL reads adverts, not in what they say, so months recorded before them are not compared with later ones on these lines.
• Changed 2026-10-25: From October 25, 2026, LucyESL reads four lines of an advert more fully. A week given as two labelled lines (working days, and working hours), as days in groups each with its own hours (“Mon. Wed. Fri. 9:15–6:20 / Tue. Thu. 9:15–7:15”), or as a clock written without its colon (“0900~1630”) or in Korean words (오후 1시 30분) counts as stating total on-site hours; teaching hours named per week in the label (“Teaching Hours per Week: 25”) count as stating them; a flight offered as a ticket (“air ticket”, “one way ticket”) counts as stating flight support; and paid vacation written other ways (“11 days of paid annual vacation”, “12 workdays”) counts as stating it. These are changes in how LucyESL reads adverts, not in what they say, so months recorded before them are not compared with later ones on these lines.
• Changed 2026-10-26: From October 26, 2026, LucyESL reads six lines of an advert more fully. A yearly salary (“30 million won”) or a sum for a whole project or term no longer counts as a monthly salary, and a monthly figure written “Starting salary is 2.7” counts as one; teaching hours given as “25hrs teaching/week”, or in brackets after the day’s hours, count as stating them; “40 working hours per week” and “8 hours a day, 5 days a week” count as stating total on-site hours; health insurance named “NHI”, “health & pension” or “pension, medical” counts as stating it, and the four insurances named another way (“4 Major Public Insurances”) as stating both national pension and health insurance; and paid vacation written “Vacation Days: 11”, “11 paid leave days” or “10+ days of paid vacation” counts as stating it. These are changes in how LucyESL reads adverts, not in what they say, so months recorded before them are not compared with later ones on these lines.

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Suggested citation: LucyESL, “What Korean English-teaching job ads don’t tell you”, disclosure rates across 586 live adverts, 2026-10-25. https://lucyesl.com/disclosure