Moving to Korea; working as a couple

[gogo]

Hi -

So I was in Seoul doing research summer 2007, and had planned on moving there to teach English and climb after graduating college.

I graduated and had some circumstances change (long-standing shoulder injury and recent surgery on it), so I've kept working in Tacoma, WA as a rock climbing coach. I'm still planning on going to Korea to teach, but have some questions.

First, my girlfriend graduates in may, she also climbs and is interested in coming with me to Korea. Does anyone have experience getting hired as a couple? Is it more difficult?

The other question would be with starting dates and climbing season - I was there during the summer and it was pretty hot. Ideally we could start late summer/early fall, but I'm not sure how the school system works with hiring. Again, any experiences/advice is much appreciated.

[shanja]

Many places actually like to hire couples as they figure they kill two birds with one stone, you're less likely to do a midnight runner and you'll be less likely to get mixed up in dangerous laisions that could tarnish the schools rep.
Hiring usually happens between Dec-Feb as semesters start in March and again hire round June-Aug for the Sept start of semester 2. Hakwons though hire pretty much year round, and it never hurts to try submitting your resumes anytime with Unis and public schools. The latter require that you have a TESOL/ TEFOL certificate, and a bit of experience...a masters is preferred by most Uni's but not always necessary. Get online at Dave's ESL Cafe, Inside Korea (via yahoo.co.kr) etc and see what is out there and contact a bunch of places.

[Chickenlegs]

If you go for a hakwon, make sure they know up front that you want to take your vacation together. Our first job (a hakwon in Seoul) was quite surprised that my husband and I wanted to have the same week of vacation. It ended up that we only had two weeks to choose from out of the WHOLE year... and one of those weeks would have been 3 weeks before our contract ended!