Jeju Island is a wonderful place to work and live, however I must warn potential teachers that Park's English School could very well ruin your experience.

First of all, your co-workers will be disgruntled. They are all wonderful people, but they know that this school has a reputation for being one of the worst, if not the very worst on the island. Also, Mr. Park has a reputation among all the foreigners for being incredibly difficult to work for... I wasn't there long enough to know ALL of the reasons (apparently, there were many), but sufficed to say, the school has seen A LOT of teachers leave before finishing their contracts, either because they were fired or because they couldn't stand being there and quit.

The kids at this school are used to doing nothing but playing games (I mean games involving little to no English, like BINGO and 7-UP, which they repeatedly requested I play), and their English is probably the lowest I've had to deal with... I've taught in Korea and Japan and Taiwan, and out of all of the schools I've taught at, the English spoken here is the worst.

The owner, Mr. Park, will tell you that he wants to help them improve their English, but the truth is he's losing students and losing money and can't afford to keep you if you do not do what the children want you to do. I inherited classes from another disgruntled teacher who, in order not to get fired, let the kids go wild and play games and did very little studying, simply because she wanted to keep her job. This has made the children demanding and rude (my Korean co-worker, also new, was actually quite shocked at how rude the kids were). And you will have no choice but to put up with it, because he will not support any attempt to stop it, in the fear that standing up to these kids will cause them to leave and go to another hagwon.

Most importantly, I went in with the intention of doing a visa run... which he delayed week by week, citing various excuses such as timing, which were all lies.

After two months of waiting, I heard FROM A STUDENT that I was losing my job. Mr. Park had told a student that I was going to be fired before he actually told me. At this point, I asked him AGAIN about my visa run, and that's when he finally told me that this student was telling the truth. Then, because my replacement hadn't arrived yet and he might lose even more money, he expected me to keep working there, even though every kid at the school knew that I was being fired before I did.

So I was stuck in Korea with no visa sixty days into my stay, simply because I wouldn't let the kids play non-educational games all the time, and the kids thought that that was boring. This after having taught at a school where the kids spoke very good English, or AT LEAST showed a little respect, and would actually argue over who would get to carry my things into the classroom for me!!

He didn't send me on the visa run simply because he didn't want to be legally obligated to pay my return airfare. On top of that, he DIDN'T PAY MY AIRFARE OVER, while every other teacher in Korea, including the other teachers at that school, got reimbursed. The man is obviously getting desperate to save money, and isn't above screwing over teachers to do it.

I know that this site suggests you come up with good things to say, but at the moment I can't think of any. Here is a man who actually thinks it's fair to literally let the students tell you that you're fired, and expects you to have sympathy for his situation after almost getting you DEPORTED.