EPIK Fall Term 2025 — Teach English in Korea

Where will you teach?

When teaching through the EPIK program, you’ll be able to receive teaching opportunities in all metropolitan cities and provinces in Korea.

• Metropolitan Cities – Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Incheon, Gwangju, Daejeon, Ulsan, Sejong
• Provinces – Gangwon, Gyeonggi, Chungbuk, Chungnam, Jeonbuk, Jeonnam, Gyeongbuk, Gyeongnam, Jeju

Note*: Your workplace place may be in a school, the Office of Education, a training center, an English Experience Center or any other educational institute located in the jurisdiction of your Office of Education.

You may also be designated to work in multiple locations and the grade level of your students will not be made available until after your arrival in Korea.

What does teaching through EPIK look like?

Let’s now go through some of the most common questions that teachers have about teaching through EPIK.

What are the duties?

Teaching at a public school can be quite different from teaching at a private academy.

Note*: These listed duties serve as a general guideline. At the time of your placement, you’ll receive a more comprehensive list of duties from your Korean co-teacher.

All duties are carried out under the guidance of your MOE (Metropolitan Office of Education) or POE (Provincial Office of Education).

How long is the contract?

• The length of the contract is one year (52 weeks).
• You are able to renew your contract if there’s a mutual written agreement between the EPIK teacher, school, and MOE/POE.
• Before applying, it’s important to make sure that you are able to fulfill the contract and avoid early termination.

Will you teach alone?

When teaching at a public school through the EPIK program, you will have a Korean co-teacher who acts as a supervisor. This co-teacher will be a licensed Korean English teacher/teacher who speaks English fluently.

The co-teacher will be in charge of consulting, directing, and cooperating with you when it comes to class work, as well as life in and outside of the workplace. Their main role is to plan and teach English classes together with you, but they will also be planning and carrying out events at school, and administrative tasks.

What is the salary like?

The EPIK program uses a pay scale that scales based on your qualifications and teaching experience. The salary range is approximately 2,000,000 – 2,800,000 KRW per month (paid overtime is possible as well). Areas with a higher cost-of-living, such as metropolitan Seoul, may offer higher pay.

For a more detailed breakdown of the pay scale, please visit the EPIK program’s official website.

What are the work hours?

As an EPIK teacher, you’ll work eight hours per day, five days per week, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and Korean national holidays (roughly 14 days annually).

Your weekly teaching hours will not exceed 22 hours unless requested by the MOE/POE or the school. Additional time outside of these hours is considered overtime and will be compensated accordingly. Some schools also have special classes after regular classwork, in which EPIK teachers are required to teach specific subjects or fields.

Class length varies, but generally, it’s 40 minutes for elementary school, 45 minutes for middle school, and 50 minutes for high school.

Note*: These numbers are subject to change, so make sure to verify them on the official website.

How many students are there in a class?

There is no national unified regulation for the number of students in a class. Most commonly, the number of students is bewtween 30-40. However, the class size is also affected by the location of the school, meaning that some schools may have smaller classes.

How old are the students?

When teaching through the EPIK program you will be teaching in Korean public schools, which follow the Korean education system.

This means that the students that you will be teaching range from 6-18 years old. However, the ages of the students can vary slightly depending on the individual student.

How about paid vacation?

In Korea, the school year begins on March 1st, and the vacation periods are within the summer and winter seasons.

The summer vacation starts at the end of July and finishes at the end of August (roughly 1 month in total). Winter vacation starts at the end of December and finishes at the end of January or early February.

EPIK teachers may be required to teach special programs during these periods, as it’s not uncommon for students to participate in special school activities during these vacation periods. In total

Note*: Start dates and end dates can vary between schools, as each school sets its own vacation period dates. For more detailed information about paid vacation, please refer to your individual contract.

Will you have access to support?

Each school’s administrative office is responsible for providing EPIK teachers with the necessary administrative services after placement. The Administrative offices are in charge of handling the contract, salary, insurance, tax, etc. These offices also help arrange housing before the EPIK teacher is appointed. for the EPIK teacher.

For any questions relating to the areas mentioned above, the teacher should contact their Korean co-teacher and have them relay your questions to the Administrative office.

When can you apply to EPIK?

The EPIK intake is available twice a year as it is based on the Korean public school calendar which has two semesters per school year – Spring semester and the Fall semester. The EPIK program offers a main intake for each semester, as well as a late intake if there are still positions to be filled.

How do you apply to EPIK?

There are currently 3 ways to apply to the EPIK program:

1. Submitting a direct application through the EPIK Office

The most common way to submit your application is to submit it directly to EPIK via the official direct online application form.

For more detailed information about the direct application processes, as well as how to directly apply to the program via EPIK, please visit the official website.

2. Submitting an application through an official MOU/MOA organization

3. Submitting an application through an official recruitment agency

New application option: EPIK Plus

For the Fall 2025 intake, EPIK continues to offer an additional application option which is EPIK Plus.

EPIK Plus is a recent addition to the EPIK program that provides priority processing, guaranteed placement, and an all-expenses-paid workshop.

When applying through the EPIK Plus option, your application will be expedited for faster processing, and upon completion of a successful interview and document review, the approved applicants will receive guaranteed placement in rural schools throughout the Jeju and Jeollanam (Jeonnam) provinces. Successful applicants will also receive an all-expenses-paid workshop on Jeju Island.

The teaching contract details for Jeju and Jeollanam provinces via EPIK Plus can be viewed here.

How to apply to the EPIK Plus program:

Under the section “Classification” at the start of the EPIK online application, please select “EPIK Plus (Jeju, Jeonnam)” and follow the instructions listed on the page. Once your application has been submitted, it will be expedited for faster processing.

For more information about EPIK Plus, please refer to the Official Website.

EPIK’s official online application preparation guide

The first step of the application process is to send in your online application.

You will be required to upload certain files when you submit your online application.

To get a better understanding of what is required for the direct application option via the EPIK website, applicants should first go through EPIK’s Official Online Application Preparation Guide for the Fall 2025 term intake.

This is a very helpful tool that goes into detail about what the applicants need to prepare for the initial online application.

Note*: Failure to prepare and submit the required documents can lead to processing delays.

For more specific information about each item, please download EPIK’s Official Online Application Preparation Guide.

If you wish to apply via an affiliated MOU/MOA organisation or a recruitment agency, please contact them directly for more information regarding their requirements and procedures.

Sending the remaining required documents

After you’ve submitted your initial online application and passed your interview, the next step will be to prepare and send the remaining required documents to the EPIK office. It’s recommended to prepare these as soon as possible as it can sometimes take some time to procure the required documents.

The required documents may vary from country to country, so please make sure that you prepare the documents that are required for your country of origin/residence.

To help you get started with the preparation, please refer to their official General Required Documents Guide. This guide is a simplified version of the full guide that will be sent directly to each successful applicant after passing their interview.

Once you have sent the required documents, the EPIK team will help guide you through the next steps of the application process.

Additional EPIK resources

To stay up-to-date throughout the application period, they also recommend that applicants join the official Facebook group for the EPIK Fall 2025 intake (link not yet available).

You can also refer to the official website for more useful information about things such as the Mandatory Orientation Program and Life in Korea.

Familiarizing yourself with this information can help you build a solid understanding of what you will be facing when teaching in Korea, which in turn can help make your stay in South Korea all the more pleasant.

If you still have any unanswered questions, please read through their FAQ on the official website or directly reach out to EPIK at epik@korea.kr.

Good luck and happy teaching!