Korea vs. China

I have been meaning to write this post for ages but haven't been able to organize it. A question I am often is asked is whether I like Korea or China more. Both have advantages and disadvantages and I have decided to try to write a post exploring them.

While I was born in Germany and have traveled in Europe my first real experience living abroad was Korea. Moving abroad can be overwhelming. The culture shock and homesickness and knowing you have made a commitment that may trap you for the foreseeable future creates a great deal of pressure. I felt positively sick during the weeks before I left for Korea. I was certain that teaching in Korea was the wrong decision and that I would spend the year just trying to make it through.

Korea turned out to be quite easy. My recruiter helped arrange my visa and plan ticket. The school sent someone to pick me up from the airport and take me to a hotel. The head teacher from the school came by in the morning to take me around and tell me about the school. An apartment was provided for me. There was very little risk or hardship involved. Korea is very industrialized and many of the young people in the cities speak English. Most restaurants have an English menu. While Korea is distinct and different from the US I didn't find the culture shock to be so tremendous. Korea is a very safe and an easy place to teach abroad for the first time.

That being said- Korea is boring. It is nice, pretty, safe and convenient. All of those things have merit, but it is boring. Korean society can be very closed to non-Korean so most foreigners spend all of their time together. Visas are closely controlled in Korea so most of the foreigners there are teachers or students, which creates an insular social group that can feel claustrophobic and incestuous. There is also very little mobility there. You can be a teacher but that is about it. You'll likely never progress much beyond the job you first received when arriving in Korea. The people who have been there for five or six years don't seem to have done much with their lives. But the money is good! With little effort you can save quite a bit of money in a year. I have friends who paid off student loans or paid for Master's degrees after teaching in Korea for two years.

China, on the other hand, is more of a frontier. In Shanghai the opportunities are limitless. You have the freedom to do anything you like and the social scene is very diverse. Only a few of the people I have meet here are teachers or students and many of them aren't from English speaking countries. However, the risks are much greater and the experience wouldn't be as easy if this were my first time abroad. China is much more overwhelming to the inexperienced. English isn't as common, the schools are more likely to be scams and screw you over, friends are harder to make with such a large selection, and there are more mistakes to be made for a first timer. If done right, there is good money to be made here. If you are rash and sign a contract with a school because it seems easy you might be trapped in a low-paying, over-worked job that has control over your visa. I've seen this happen to many people!

My overall impression is that I find Shanghai to be a wonderful place- but probably only because I was eased into it by spending a year in Korea. When picking a place to teach abroad consider what you want out of it. Do you want to make money fast and get out? Do you want to invest in being in one place for a long time? Do you want the freedom to travel? Different counties, particularly in Asia, can offer different things.