Living in South Korea is different from Europe or North America. These tips were written by someone who came to Korea from North America and found out that the information he was reading online from the forums was not from reliable sources. Here you have a reliable source of information.
If I had known how useless most of the things I brought to Korea were, I would have packed only one suitcase instead of two. What did I bring with me? Everything I read online. Unfortunately, the articles I read were written by native teachers who were planning to go to Korea or teachers who had been living in Korea for so long that they couldn’t be bothered to advise others.
Here are some of the things you should not bring to Korea and why.
Pants: Do not bring more than one pair of jeans. I brought a rain trench coat, a winter coat, a trench coat and 2 pairs of jeans among other items, which was too much, for reasons you will discover.
Every year native English teachers go to Korea to teach and bring a lot of things. It doesn’t matter if you go to Busan, Seoul, Suwon or Chuncheon. The fact is that the food in South Korea is very healthy, full of vitamin-rich vegetables. If you are American, Canadian or European, this food is likely healthier than what you have been eating, which means that eating it all the time will cause you to lose weight.
In my first 3 months in Korea I lost almost 20 pounds. Most of that fat was in my gut or around my thighs, meaning that a comfortable pair of size 38 jeans I bought in Canada now rippled around my waste under the tension of an oversized belt. My belt was too big too. After 5 months I had to stop wearing all my coats because they no longer fit. I felt like I was wearing grandpa’s clothes.
Be prepared to lose weight unless you eat at McDonald’s every day. Who does it anyway?
Your cellphone: I admit that a lot of people would disagree with this one. Why bring a cell phone when you may need to call home? Note that if you bring your phone, you must bring the charger, a converter for the charger to connect to the wall, and you must have a phone service that supports roaming charges. Roaming costs vary from one provider to another. One thing we know for sure about them: They are expensive.
When you arrive in Korea, you want to spend your free time getting your Alien Registration Card (ARC) so that you can get a cell phone in Korea (preferably an iPhone). There is no point in using your home phone, incurring heavy charges at home, and then having to transfer money and move it into your local bank accounts from Korea.
Anyone living in Seoul, Suwon, Gyongju, or anywhere else will need to get an ARC card anyway, so you can also wait and plug in a Korean cell phone to pay your bills in won, not dollars.
To follow: Unless you are planning to become the president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce within a few months of your arrival, you should be sure to leave your suits, ties, dress shoes, and shoeshine at home. You’ll feel much more comfortable walking up and down the halls of your school in a pair of comfortable pants sold in Korea than in an oversized baggy suite. You will also look younger. Remember that throughout the peninsula, Korean men in particular always dress to look their best. All of this is fine, but if you do it too much, you will look like a future middle-aged man. If that’s what you want, do it. Your students, principal, and school will appreciate that you look younger and add some sparkle to the school’s native English speaking classes.
I cannot stress this enough. Most English teachers think they have to wear a suit to teach. This is not really the case. While Koreans appreciate someone who is trying to ‘look’ good and make a good outward impression, they also frown upon a foreigner wearing a Hugo Boss crossover goes the same way as teaching children. Focus on making fewer “waves” in your workplace and worrying less about your appearance and you will be fine.
That doesn’t mean you should come to school unshaven and with messy hair. It simply means that you should be known as the teacher who connects with children and who likes children.