I don’t think my advice was one-sided. But yeah, I got burned there. Every foreign teacher I met in Korea, and every foreigner who has taught in Korea I’ve met since, except one, has had problems.
At one school I didn’t get paid until I punched my boss in the face (male boss, I’m a woman), and even then it was only half what he owed me - but the other teachers got nothing. I knew another teacher, a young, blond, handsome American man (i.e., gold in the eyes of the hagwon bosses) who also had to ‘beat the shit out of his boss’ (his words) to get paid. There’s a school in Pusan reun by a former pimp who has found fleecing foreign teachers and Korean students is easier, and one of his teachers had to beat him to get paid too.
Not getting paid also happened to the Korean teachers at the hagwons - a typical scam was to open a school, hire foreign and Korean teachers, never pay, promise to pay and keep the school open as long as the teachers were willing to wait for their money. I was the only foreign teacher at one such school, so the boss paid me to keep me around, but the Korean teachers didn’t get paid for three or four months, when they’d quit, and he’d hire new ones, who never got paid and stuck around for three or four months and quit, and so on.
You can make a lot of money teaching private lessons in Korea, but the police really do try to catch you. I knew several people who were caught, fined, and deported for teaching illegally. I’ve never heard of anyone getting busted for teaching in someone’s house or apartment in Taiwan.
There’s also the attitude of the average Korean. They don’t like foreigners, and they show it. True, if you don’t understand Korean, you may not realize it. I got sick of kids and grannies pointing at me in the streets and shouting, “Look! There’s a barbarian!”
The other problem with their xenophobia is you cannot expect help from the authorities with labor issues. If you go to the CLA in Taiwan with a legitimate complaint, you may well get assistance. In Korea there is a very strong tendency to think that the Koreans must stick together, and so no matter how bad the boss’s behavior is, or how obvious it is he is cheating you, you won’t get help.
People in my hometown sometimes ask for amy advice about going to teach in Korea, because it often looks like a good deal. I tell them Japan or Taiwan is better, but if they do decide to go to Korea, get out at the first sign of trouble. Don’t think, ‘things might get better, so I’ll stick it out.’ If the boss is a few days late with your pay, but has what seems like a reasonable explanation, and you let him pay you late, he’s just testing you. Next time he won’t pay you at all, maybe. Just leave. Preferably, don’t go in the first place.
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Sure, in Taiwan they would make a bit less money, but they would be much happier. Sounds like an easy choice to me.