Where Korea’s English-teaching jobs are
Every guide says the work is around Seoul. LucyESL counts by how much, from the adverts live now, with the denominator under every figure.
Data updated · computed live from 593 adverts · counts of adverts, not of employers
The board right now
LucyESL holds 593 live English-teaching adverts in South Korea. 78.5% of them are in Gyeonggi / Incheon, Seoul and Busan — 475 adverts between three of the thirteen regions. 297 are posted by the employing school, university or public programme; 296 come through a recruiter. 4 of them were posted on LucyESL by the employer; the other 589 were copied from other public job boards and are labelled that way.
Of the 549 adverts offering a monthly salary, 381 state the total hours you would be at the school (69.4%).
Every region, counted
| Region | Live adverts | Median pay | Direct hire | Recruiter | State on-site hours | Adverts in the median | Opened per advert |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gyeonggi / Incheon | 218 | ₩2,500,000 | 112 | 106 | 141 of 202 (69.8%) | 172 | 9.0 |
| Seoul | 216 | ₩2,500,000 | 108 | 108 | 131 of 200 (65.5%) | 160 | 11.4 |
| Busan | 41 | ₩2,400,000 | 19 | 22 | 27 of 37 (73%) | 31 | 14.3 |
| Gyeongsang | 32 | ₩2,500,000 | 16 | 16 | 21 of 30 (70%) | 26 | 7.9 |
| Daegu | 16 | ₩2,450,000 | 7 | 9 | 10 of 16 (62.5%) | 14 | 12.8 |
| Daejeon | 15 | ₩2,500,000 | 7 | 8 | 12 of 14 (85.7%) | 13 | 13.4 |
| Chungcheong | 14 | ₩2,450,000 | 8 | 6 | 8 of 12 (66.7%) | 10 | 8.6 |
| Jeolla | 12 | ₩2,500,000 | 8 | 4 | 4 of 10 (40%) | 8 | 9.0 |
| Gangwon | 11 | ₩2,600,000 | 2 | 9 | 8 of 11 (72.7%) | 11 | 9.6 |
| Gwangju | 11 | ₩2,500,000 | 7 | 4 | 9 of 11 (81.8%) | 10 | 9.1 |
| Sejong | 8 | withheld | 6 | 2 | 5 of 6 (83.3%) | 5 | 11.4 |
| Ulsan | 6 | withheld | 3 | 3 | 4 of 6 (66.7%) | 6 | 8.7 |
| Jeju | 5 | withheld | 2 | 3 | 2 of 5 (40%) | 4 | 15.2 |
An advert naming two regions is a row in each, so the rows add up to more than 593.
The same counts as a map What the adverts pay What the adverts state
How this is counted
- What is in it. Every advert live on LucyESL when the page loads, samples excluded. Most are copied from public job boards, labelled as copied, and not verified by LucyESL.
- Direct hire against recruiter: the type of the account the advert sits under, an employer (school, university, public programme) or an agency placing teachers.
- On-site hours: adverts offering a monthly salary under an employment contract, the /disclosure denominator.
- Median pay follows /salaries: full-time, salaried, pay stated, one region only. Below 8 adverts the median is withheld.
- Opened per advert: human views of the region’s adverts per advert, last 30 days. Reader attention on this board, not the market.
- What it is not. A count of every vacancy in Korea, a statement about any school, or a benchmark for pay.
The record
The LucyESL Advert Record — recorded every month since September 2026, by region, with the denominator. A month that was not counted while it happened cannot be counted later.
The figures above recompute on every read; quote them with their date. The monthly record fixes each month, by field and by region. 3 months recorded so far, beginning with September 2026; the latest is November 2026.
We looked for a published regional breakdown of Korean English-teaching vacancies on 2026-09-18 and again on 2026-09-20 and could not find one, in English or Korean, with a method, a sample size or a date. If one exists, tell us and this page will link it.
Quoting this
Suggested citation: LucyESL, “Where Korea’s English-teaching jobs are, by region”, 2026-10-31, from 593 live adverts. https://lucyesl.com/market (CC BY 4.0)
Open data under CC BY 4.0: name LucyESL and link the page. As data: JSON, and other ways to read the board.