There is a good chance I’ll be going back to Korea this fall.  I’ll probably post about it off and on  at my blog – which is like my daily journal and thus has been focused on things in the US for the past year or so – but I wanted to make a note about it here too.

This will be the closest I’ve come to fitting the typical stereotype of ESL instructors in Korea:  that I’m going because I couldn’t find a “good job” in my home country.

The reality is that, even in this economy in the US, there are always teaching jobs in parts of Atlanta and more rural parts of south Georgia.  There are also always jobs over in Alabama and up in Tennessee that are often closer to my hometown than some of those jobs in south Georgia.

However, we’re interested in living in certain target areas – the north Georgia region – especially as close to the mountains as I can get if not in them.  And if I have to relocate for a year or two before I find a teaching job in my target area, I’d just as soon do it abroad, and I’m not interested in working for a year or two outside of education.

I’ve been back in the US since 2000 and in Georgia since 2003 and haven’t spent any significant length of time outside the US (or in South Korea) since the end of 2002.   I started to have the itch to do some traveling about a year or two ago.

Now is a good time…

It will be interesting to see how things are different in Korea now from the last time I was living there.  It will be interesting to see how the ESL industry has changed.

Some changes I already realize will make it easier (safer) working in that cesspool of an industry:

The main ones are that I have easy escape plans.   We have some money in the bank – unlike when I went from 1996-2000 straight out of graduate school.   I always recommended to ESLers new to the country that they should save enough money from their first or first two pay checks to buy a return ticket home at a moment’s notice.   I’ll have that covered before I leave.

Next, I have my in-laws in a fair sized city in Kangwon Province – the place I taught in for the first two years in Korea.   If I end up at a bad institute, I can jump ship and head to their house and either teach privates – or – get a new school to finagle  a release letter out of my old school.    This might be the best anyway, because you can make more money doing privates and my wife’s father is very ill which is one reason I decided to look into a position in Korea again.

Initially, however, I’m looking for jobs in Seoul only.   I toyed briefly with the idea of teaching in Pusan or Kyongju.  There are a lot of historical sites just in Kyongju alone I’ve never been too and would like to see, but it’s too far from where my in-laws live, and I’ll be visiting them fairly frequently.  (And in fact, if I have to go illegal doing privates, one benefit will be that I can set my own schedule and take an extended vacation if I feel like it).

I also want to work in Seoul to be closer to opportunities to do somethings related to North Korea I’ve had an interest in but couldn’t really manage where I live in the US.   I want to do some volunteer work with some of the groups located in Seoul and maybe do some research type work that some of these groups working on North Korea Human Rights could use — like oral histories from North Korean refugees.

I also want to work in Seoul because it is the best transportation hub and I hope to do some traveling to historical sites.

Which means, I’ll be looking for an adults-only position or a university gig – with no Saturday work.

There is still a chance I’ll find the right job in my target area here in Georgia.   School districts are just now getting to where they can figure out their budgets for next year, but what I’m hearing in the newspapers and from teachers I know is that counties are talking about whether or not they will have to layoff teachers.

And the closer I’ve gotten to making the decision to go to Korea, the more I’ve started looking forward to it…

We’ll see…time will tell….