Teaching English in Korea: Best tips for applying to EPIK

Unsure about getting a job in South Korea? Does the application process look too daunting? Follow this simple guide for applying to EPIK.

Applying to EPIK (English Program In Korea) was both the simplest and most complicated process I’ve ever experienced. The whole business was over quickly, taking only five months to arrange this life-changing move. But filling out all my details correctly, preparing my personal essays, and collecting all the dreaded documents was challenging. Keep on top of your application. You don’t want to make it to the month, the week, or the day of your departure and realise you’re missing an important document needed for immigration. Already feeling a little overwhelmed? This guide will help lead you through the application process, giving advice and insight into the most tricky parts of the journey. So where do people usually get confused when applying to EPIK?

1. Braving it alone
2. Filling in your details
3. Writing good essays and a lesson plan
4. The interview
5. Collecting your required documents  

First, let’s go over some of the basics of EPIK.

The Basics

First and foremost, are you eligible to apply to EPIK? Not only do you have to be a citizen from one of eight countries (Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States), but you also need some qualifications before you can think about a teaching position. A bachelor’s degree is a requirement and having one in Education can put you in front of other candidates. If your degree is not in education (yep, my archaeology degree was of no help, surprise surprise), you’ll need a 100-hour TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate. Other than being a bit pricey, these are easy to get and pass, and you can complete them fully online if you haven’t got the time for classroom teaching. This certificate stops you from walking into your new job in Korea with zero prior knowledge. Also, it’s just a cool thing on the old CV, even if you don’t end up with an EPIK contract. 

When should I apply?

So you’ve read the terms, and you fit the EPIK criteria, but when can you fly out? Slow down a little. There are two intakes for EPIK in a calendar year: a spring intake where you’ll enter Korea in February, and a fall intake where you’ll come in August (that was me). On top of this, you’ll also hear about some “late intake” peeps who might arrive in Korea a month or two later due to clashing contracts or slow documents. Don’t use the safety net of late intake to dawdle with that application though. It’s not worth it! It’s good to start thinking about your application around six months before the departure date. It took about a month or two to round up all my details and essays, and I officially posted my application online on the 1st of April. EPIK then offered me an interview four days later. Within two weeks they’d accepted me. This goes to show how fast everything happens once you start applying to EPIK. So are you ready to begin? Okay, now have a look at how to ace every stage of the application. 

How should I apply?

1. Solo application or a recruiter

You have three options: journey it alone as a direct applicant; use a MOU/MOA organisation to apply – a recent change to the system; or use one of the two recruitment agencies that EPIK endorses. I went for the third option. I liked the idea of being supported by knowledgeable pros throughout my application, making sure I was 100% prepared and very employable. After a short interview with Korvia Consulting, they were happy to take me on board and offer me support, from reading and correcting my essays to interview-prep to checking through the documents that I sent their way. I wanted to be babied through the process, but I have many friends who braved it alone instead, showing that this is also a good choice for those who don’t want to involve a third party. My friends are evidence that EPIK won’t dismiss you just because you don’t have the backing of an agency. 

Applying to EPIK with a MOU/MOA organisation is a 2023 update to the process. Some companies with an agreement with EPIK, like Premier TEFL and TEFL Graduate will be your official recruiter, offering you advise throughout the admissions journey, while also offering TEFL courses. This means a MOU/MOA organisation can be your one-stop shop for all your EPIK needs. Whichever route you decide to take in applying to EPIK, it’s up to you to do the work. Your organisational skills will have to be top-class to wade through all the admin that will be thrown your way.

2. Filling in your personal information

So many details! EPIK wanted details about my life that I barely knew. All my holidays abroad, every single place I’ve ever studied, and a perfectly posed ID photo. Okay, let’s break this down. I’m going to run through the bits that I had to think twice about so that you don’t get tripped up at the first hurdle of your EPIK application. 

1. Time spent abroad

This part of the application involved me looking back at my calendar and asking my mum for a couple of dates. List the four most recent countries you’ve visited, even if it was just for a holiday. For school trips, I put the purpose as ‘Education’ and for vacations, I wrote ‘Travel’. This section will give EPIK an indication of how well travelled you are, but don’t worry if you’ve never been anywhere as you can write about your desire to journey abroad in your personal essay.

2. Teaching experience

Try and fill this box! Put down anything relevant. I wrote that I volunteered as a Classroom Assistant at my dance school when I was 14 years old. If you’re applying to EPIK you probably have some sort of experience with looking after kids. No matter how irrelevant you think it is, put one thing here. 

3. Placement preference:

Now I thought that because I was very inexperienced as a teacher, I would have my best chance at getting an offer if I wasn’t fussed about where I ended up. This led me to write down a flexible location. My friend with the same level of experience put Daejeon and ended up in Daegu. I wouldn’t worry too much about what you put here. Try not to be too disappointed if you end up in a different city than what you applied for.

4. Checklist:

Read this checklist thoroughly and scan through it three or four times before submitting. Not every answer will be ‘No’! Try and answer honestly – if you’ve got a tattoo, it’s best to just be upfront and declare it on the form (I got a tattoo in Korea so it’s certainly not a deal-breaker). Make sure you actually agree with what you’re signing and that you understand your responsibilities as an EPIK teacher. 

Okay so hopefully this form is now nothing more than box-filling and we can move on to the juicy stuff. 

3. Essays and lesson plan

When I applied to EPIK I was an essay-churning machine, at the height of her university degree. This didn’t make writing the EPIK essays any easier. It was difficult to figure out what EPIK wanted to hear from me. I didn’t know if there were keywords I should be including, or whether I should be writing something groundbreaking to stand out from other applicants. On top of that, no matter how many times I ran it through a grammar checker, I worried that they’d find a typo and deem me unworthy of teaching English to seven-year-olds. So, how do you ace the essay section of the EPIK application?

EPIK will ask you to write three 300 to 400-word essays. This actually isn’t a lot of space when it boils down to it, so be savvy about what you write about. The three briefs given to me were about:

1. why I wanted to teach English and specifically why in Korea.
2. what my teaching philosophy was, my past experience and my personal development.
3. how I would adapt to Korea. 

How to approach these questions

First of all, what really worried me when I was writing these essays was whether I should refer to Korea as ‘South Korea’ or ‘Korea’. What helped me decide was copying EPIK’s tone of voice and wording. Therefore, my overall advise is to check out EPIK’s website. Steal keywords from it if you ever get stuck for inspiration. Overall, no matter what section I was answering, I would always try to relate it back to EPIK’s morals and goals. I wrote quite formally throughout, but write however you feel is best to express your personality and passion as a teacher.

How to approach the lesson plan

Compared to the essays, I didn’t stress as much over the lesson plan. It’s likely that you’ll already have a lesson plan to hand in because you’ve completed a TEFL qualification. I only modified this and tailored to schools in Korea. My topic was a ‘City Tour’ focusing on vocabulary to do with places. This lesson plan will take a bit of imagination, but if you are comfortable with a PPP lesson structure (Presentation, Practice, Production) it should be a walk in the park. Include lots of activities and even look at websites like Korshare for inspiration regarding real-life Korean lessons. Note that you should write a lesson plan for the school level you would like to teach in Korea. I aimed my lesson plan at elementary school students because I wanted to teach little kiddies. However, my bestie focused on a high school lesson plan and EPIK offered her this placement instead. This will probably be the most in-depth lesson plan you ever make, but remember it’s all make-believe.

4. Interview

Yay! You sent in your initial screening! But now you’ve been offered a scary interview. No worries. Bish bash bosh! My interview started at 8:00 am and finished just 30 minutes later. This will be an online interview, so make sure you’ve got good internet connection, good lighting and a quiet space. I’d also recommend having some paper and pens near you, as well as your application. And for mercy’s sake, please wear trousers, even if you think your interviewer will only see you from the shoulders up. Now you’re fully suited up for this little chat, let’s run through the types of things you’ll talk about:

1. Application review

Your interviewer will probably start by running through what you wrote in your application. They’ll make sure all your details are correct and nothing untoward is written on your forms. Have your application close by and make sure you’ve read it before heading into the call. 

2. Interview questions

If you’re like me, you’ll probably make a list of all the possible questions they could ask you and all your splendid answers. Despite all my research, I still wasn’t prepared for some of the questions asked. Therefore, make sure you’re genuinely passionate about teaching in Korea. The two questions that I fluked were “Can you describe Korea’s school system?” and “Can you describe some recent trends in Korea and how you would use them in the classroom?”. For the first question, I could roughly speak about the division into elementary, middle and high school, but couldn’t give specific ages (so make sure to research this), and for the second question, I very carefully danced around the word “BTS”. Answer your questions confidently. And if in doubt, just say something.

3. Lesson demonstration

For this section, you will be told the age range you’re pretending to teach and the lesson title. Your interviewer will give you 5 minutes to prepare for a mock lesson demonstration. I was told to teach colours to an elementary school class, so I quickly dashed to make some flashcards with colour vocab on. I then started the mock lesson by singing for my interviewer. Yes…singing. To this day I wonder what my parents thought of me singing in an interview, but it got me the job! Be energetic, enthusiastic, and don’t be shy. The most challenging thing about the lesson demonstration is the lack of response from the interviewer. They won’t repeat after you or answer questions so they’ll be some pretending on your part. This part of the interview will last all of 5 minutes so don’t overthink it and have fun with it. 

There wasn’t time for me to ask any questions at the end of the interview, which was a shame. Nonetheless, my interviewer indicated that I could go to my recruiter if I was confused. So with that over and done with, I could only sit and wait for the result. 

5. Required documents

This was the most difficult part of the application. And the most expensive. For my application, I needed no less than 8 different documents that had to be bundled up and sent to Korea. And no, the international postage was not the most difficult or expensive part. It was getting my damn documents apostilled. Before EPIK, I didn’t have much experience in apostilling documents, but now I’m a pro. Depending on what country you live in, this process will be slightly different. Some countries have a central agency that will do it for you, while others will need to go it alone and find solicitors to certify their documents. Whichever method you have to use, make sure it’s a legit process and you use the proper channels, otherwise, you’ll just end up wasting time and money. Also, don’t go losing or damaging those lovely documents after you get them back. Keep everything safe and organised, and I’d recommend tracking all the paper you’ve got flying around.

Here’s something EPIK probably won’t tell you: they might let you bring late documents to orientation. I was late getting my degree certificate. By the time I had my degree in hand, certified and apostilled, it was too late to send it internationally. Luckily, my recruiter informed me, days before my flight to Korea, that I could bring it along with me and show it to the coordinators once I was in the country. This news put all my stress to rest and meant I could enjoy my final days in the UK with no worries. So although it’s good to have all your documents submitted nice and early, EPIK does have some secret flexibility.  

Scared of applying to EPIK?

I know it seems like a lot of work when I put it like this, but 5 months of essay writing and document collecting led to two fantastic years in Korea for me. Plus some parts of the process really did help to prepare me for life in Korea, like having to be so organised. It’s no lie that applying to EPIK can be a little expensive with all the admin work you have to do, but I can assure you that it’s very easy to make this money back once you arrive (learn how here). Look at all this preparation as an investment. If you have any questions about applying to EPIK or life as an expat comment them down below!