COST OF LIVING in SOUTH KOREA on an EPIK SALARY 

SHAYTIANA oh wow! Really?! Where!! Omg yeah the money is the struggle lol

Paulyne Duong I live in Wonju 😊 you? A struggle indeed~ I’m with the TaLK program so we get paid WAY less than EPIK sadly 😢

SHAYTIANA omg lol I live by Hoengseong! All my teachers at my school are in wonju 😂 oh wow the talk program! That’s cool! No idea they had talk in wonju!

Paulyne Duong That’s crazy! We’re not so far from each other! 😊 Yeah there’s a handful of us living here but because we’re supposed to be in rural areas, our schools are a bit outside of Wonju so my school is like 40 mins away. Btw, stay safe love! The virus is in Wonju.

SHAYTIANA omg the travel must be a lot on y’all! But at least you’re in wonju!!! We should meet one day 😍 and pls stay safe as well I heard about the case in wonju!

kamogelo dk thanks so much for the support!

Goodluck on your journey!!!

Thanks for watching!

Hey Georgia, have you moved yet? How are you finding the program?

^ yes an update would be great!!

eliz f honestly body language does so much lol I don’t know much tbh and although I’m rural I don’t feel super isolated. It’s definitely a challenge but if you take it with a grain of salt you’ll be okay! Thanks so much for the support and goodluck on your journey!

You can certainly choose to track the won to dollar rate and try to time it to get the best price. At EPIK orientation we were instructed to open an Remittance Bank account that lessend the cost of transfer fees but you'll still have to deal with the overall exchange rate at the time. Some fellow EPIK teachers I know use 'Sentbe' and say it's super cheap to transfer money back home which could even be less than a remittance bank account, maybe that's worth looking into!

Daejeon and daegu aren’t rural! Thanks so much for watching, Goodluck on your journey!

Yes all utilities is your responsibility! Only housing is covered!

Check on Google

Public transportation all the way. It’s expensive to have a car!

I'm also an EPIK teacher in a more rural area (Jeollanamdo) and I'd have to say flexibility has been everything. Traveling around the country was heavily discouraged and there was often lots of judgment from Korean teachers at the school if they thought you weren't being COVID safe while traveling. There is still some of that stigma, but with the relaxed omicron policies it's been much better. They also recently removed the quarantine for vaccinated travelers so we can finally go travel to other countries during our time off if we want! Other than that, sometimes we teach online if enough students test positive for covid, but at this points it's a class per class basis. If many students in one class test positive then just that one class will be online for 1 week. They provide all students and teachers an at home covid test we take each sunday to be cleared for teaching in person that week. Still masks everywhere too (but I hear rumors that may change for outdoors soon :o)

Usually programs like EPIK prefer to give the employee housing. You may have better luck at a hagwon if you want to get stipend and find your own housing

EPIK provides your apartment for you! They'll hook you up with a place for free that would usually run for about 400,000korean won per month and still pay you the full salary too.

That's obviously per month

Well in the US here a paycheck for a 9-5 job that’s around 10-11 dollars an hour you get roughly 900-1100 or so a paycheck so 2200 would be for the whole month id say.

900-1100 Every two weeks in the US*

@@Stardew_hoe That math is so off lol nobody making $10 an hour is getting a paycheck like that on a 40hr work week.

She literally said she ends up with $2200 every month… listen maybe?

You obviously didn’t watch the video but that’s okay friend! At 3:33 I talked about cost of food. Housing is covered by epik which was stated within the first 30 seconds of my video. But thanks for coming by 🤗

Did you watch the same video as me? She definitely talked about all those things!! Talk less and listen more!!