What a normal week costs a foreign teacher in Korea
Real Seoul transit fares, real coffee-shop pricing, and a look at where a single teacher's food money actually goes each week, with sources you can check yourself instead of a made-up total.
Park English2026-09-163 min read
Everyone writes about the first month: the deposit, the flight, the furniture. Almost nobody writes about the Tuesday six months in, when you're just trying to remember whether the T-money card has enough on it.
We can't hand you one clean weekly number, honestly. Costs move by city, by how often you cook, and by whether your gym is a converted officetel basement or a proper chain. What we can do is show you the two or three things that actually have a real, published number behind them, and be upfront about the rest.
Transport: this one you can check yourself
Seoul's subway base fare (card) went from 1,250 won to 1,400 won in October 2023, and then the fare rose from 1,400 won to 1,550 won starting June 28, 2025. Bus fares moved separately: the fare for trunk and branch buses is 1,500 won by card, and village buses are 1,200 won, a change dated to August 2023.
Do the math on a normal commute (subway there and back, five days a week), and you're at roughly 15,500 won just in fares, before you add a bus transfer or a weekend trip. Call it 15,000–25,000 won a week for transport if you're commuting daily and moving around on weekends. Fares can change again, so check news.seoul.go.kr/traffic if this article is more than a year old to you.
Coffee: the one category with real survey data
The Korea Consumer Agency surveyed 25 franchise coffee shops and found the average price of an Americano was 3,001 won, with Coffee Bean the most expensive at 5,000 won, Paul Bassett at 4,700 won, and Starbucks and most other major chains at 4,500 won. By 2025, Starbucks had raised its Tall Americano to 4,700 won. If you buy coffee four or five times a week (and plenty of teachers do, because a cafe table doubles as a planning desk), you're looking at somewhere between 15,000 and 24,000 won weekly, depending on which chain you default to.
Groceries, gym, and everything without a clean public number
This is where we can't give you a government figure, because none of these categories are set by a regulator the way a subway fare or a minimum wage is. What we do have: KB Kookmin's 2024 survey of single-person households found food makes up the largest single share of living costs, at 32.8 percent, bigger than housing, bigger than leisure. That tells you groceries and eating out together are the category to actually watch on your card statement, more than coffee or transport.
For the rest, here's the honest shape:
| Category | What we know | Where to check |
|---|---|---|
| Groceries | Prices vary block to block; Homeplus/E-mart discount days beat delivery apps on price | Compare app prices yourself before committing to Coupang Fresh or Market Kurly |
| Gym | Usually a monthly contract, discounted for 3–6 months | Ask for the cancellation terms in writing before signing |
| Eating out/delivery | Delivery fees shift with fuel costs and app competition | Check the app's current minimum order and fee, not last year's number |
What we genuinely don't know
We don't have a trustworthy, sourced number for average grocery or gym spending in Korea broken down by week; the surveys that exist measure whole households, whole months, or self-reported budgets, not a single teacher's Tuesday shop. If you find a Statistics Korea (KOSIS) breakdown that isolates single-person grocery spending by week, we'd rather point you to that than guess.