Comparing Two Hagwon Job Offers That Don't Use the Same Pay Structure
You compare two hagwon offers by putting the same categories side by side for each one: base salary, housing arrangement, overtime rate, pension contribution, and severance, because schools quote pay differently and a bigger monthly number does not always mean more take-home money.
Park English2026-09-103 min read
We get this call a lot in March and September, when contract offers land in someone's inbox two days apart. Teacher has Offer A at 2.4 million won a month with an apartment provided, and Offer B at 2.6 million won with a housing allowance instead. They ask which one is "better," and the honest answer is: it depends on categories neither offer bothered to spell out clearly.
The problem is that Korean hagwons are not required to use a standard contract template beyond the government's model E-2 contract, and even that gets adapted. So one director writes "2.4M won, housing provided," another writes "2.6M won including housing," and a third writes "2.3M won plus 400,000 won housing stipend." Three different structures, same rough ballpark, and none of them tell you what actually lands in your account.
Line up the same five things
Before comparing, write both offers into one table using identical categories. If a school's offer letter doesn't answer one of these, ask before you sign, not after.
| Category | Offer A | Offer B |
|---|---|---|
| Base monthly salary (gross, before deductions) | ||
| Housing: provided apartment, or allowance, and its won value | ||
| Overtime rate (per hour, in writing) | ||
| Pension: mandatory 4.5% employee contribution, or opted out | ||
| Severance: one month's pay after 12 months completed | ||
| Contract hours per week and split (teaching vs desk warming) |
Severance and pension often get left off casual comparisons entirely, but they change the real annual number by a full month's salary or more. A contract that pays 100,000 won less per month but keeps severance intact for a full year is usually the better deal over twelve months, not the worse one.
Overtime is where offers quietly diverge
Ask for the overtime rate in actual won per hour, not "we'll take care of you." We've seen contracts with nothing written at all, which almost always means overtime gets absorbed into your base pay with no extra pay for the classes you pick up during camp weeks in January and August. A stated rate, even a modest one, is worth more than a vague promise, because it's the number you can point to later.
Deposits, tax, and the parts that vary
Health insurance and income tax get withheld automatically through payroll, split roughly between you and the school, and the exact percentage moves depending on your salary bracket and pension status. We won't put a fixed percentage here because it genuinely varies year to year and school to school. Ask to see a sample payslip from a current teacher if you can, rather than trusting a director's verbal estimate.
If housing is provided, ask what happens to the key money deposit when you leave. Most leases return it within a couple of weeks of move-out, but that's the landlord's decision, not the school's, and delays happen more often than anyone admits.
None of this tells you which offer to take. It just means you're comparing the same five things twice, instead of comparing a headline number that was never designed to be compared at all.