People who come to Korea under an E-2 visa to teach English do so with the understanding that they will move into a paid-for and fully-furnished single apartment when they arrive. What they get is sometimes radically different than what they imagine.

Living arrangements are understandably a major issue between employers and their foreign staff — especially at private academies (hagwons), where the employer will try to save money, and it’s the employees job to demand more if they expect to get it.

But new teachers have little control over their living arrangements. Where they live is up to the school. Schools can promise the moon before you arrive, but once they get you into the country you’re forced to accept whatever they give you — unless you’re willing to cut your losses on the plane ticket home and perform a midnight run to avoid paying both for the flight over and the flight back to your native country. Few people want to leave that badly.

Unfortunately, you just won’t have any clue what it will be like until you get here, but you can still try to have as good an idea of what it will be like before you go and avoid any situation that seems suspicious or inadequate.

Ask question before you arrive

These days, employers realize that housing conditions must be adequate enough for teachers to stick around (and maybe even to re-sign for another year). It generally isn’t in a school’s interest to have a high turnover rate, so at the very least they likely wont throw you into a box in the wall.

It really does depend on the school though. Smaller schools with less foreign teachers are probably more likely to be stingy with living arrangements on account of a tighter budget. At the same time, foreigners working at smaller schools are more vulnerable of not quite getting what they had imagined prior to arrival (lots of problems like this are associated with smaller schools due to a lack of a solid support group of foreign peers).

The main thing is to ask a lot of question before you arrive. Stress the importance of living alone (people have been introduced to flatmates they didn’t know they would have before they came). Ask for pictures, but don’t totally assume they will be representative — we were all psyched by the pictures of my brother’s new digs before he left home until he showed us the place three times smaller they actually put him into. If you’re coming with a friend and are to live together stress that a two room apartment doesn’t mean a kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms with no living room.

If you’re a new teacher and you aren’t enamoured with your place when you arrive don’t completely lose heart. If you work at a school with other teachers there might be a chance to move into one of their places when they leave. New teachers generally get the worst apartment available. People eagerly jump up the chain — apartment climbing is a ruthless sport in which the meek do not inherit. Be sure to keep abreast of who will be re-signing and who wont be. Ask for a move whenever possible before a fellow teacher beats you to it.

“Furnished” — a letter starting with “f”

The place itself aside, if you move to Korea there is one thing that you should be absolutely prepared for — the word “furnished” under housing arrangements might not mean what you think it does.

Oh, you can expect the big things when you arrive, like a television with cable TV, a fridge, a propane stove, a bed (of debateable quality). But, the moment you attempt that exhausted mid-afternoon nap upon arrival you might find nothing but the bed and mattress. Actually, no bedding is a very common complaint from newcomers.

Food made with the only greasy-from-years-of-use pan in the kitchen may seem less appealing than that nap you were going to have on the bare and used mattress. You see, it’s all too common to find kitchenware comprised only of a spoon, three knives, a baby fork, a bowl and a plate. Somehow it just doesn’t seem enough to get somebody through the year.

The absence of these small things is not the end of the world, unless you’re arriving jet-lagged, culture shocked, untrained for a job and life on the other side of the world with a limited budget until your first pay check (a breif discription of pretty near everybody who comes) — in which case a few extra pots and pans and a full bed spread make a big difference.

There’s a good chance you’ll get some of what you deserve if you take it up with your management. They likely wont get everything for you, but bedsheets should at least be provided. Don’t sign a contract that doesn’t specify what to expect for furnishings, or expect nothing when you get here.

Unfortunately, all this means you may have to do some shopping for apartment essentials when you first arrive. The good news is that Korea has some very affordable places to get what you need and not feel bitter about it. With that in mind, we’ll tell you all about where to shop in the coming days.

It hit me like blanket as I exited Incheon International airport upon my recent reentry of Korea: it was real humidity, not the sort of thing the weather girl goes on and on about on the local news at home.

Summers in Korea are really damp. The air is thick, hot and sticky. It’s the beginning of September and today is more humid than any day I experienced in mid-July or August on my vacation home, where temperatures probably average about 26 degrees in the summer.

Just trying to load my luggage onto the bus to Gwangju from the airport had me in an embarassing lather.

If you’re not used to this you can pretty much expect to be coated in stickiness and sweat in a matter of minutes just by walking to work in the morning.

It’s no surprise that airconditioners are at a premium in this society, featuring the likes of Kim Yuna as an advertising spokesperson.

The humidity is not quite as bad as, say, Vietnam or Malaysia, but it’s bad. If you’re not used to it, and especially if you have a sweating problem, you might want to consider bringing a change of clothes to work if you don’t have access to air conditioning at your workplace.

The message from the Ministry of Justice in Korea is don’t come to the country if you are holding a fake identity or your reasons for visiting are deemed “suspicious” – the outcome is you’ll have your photograph taken and the fingerprints too.

Stricter immigration regulations are being brought out in advance of the G20 summit happening in Seoul later this year. It is hoped that by the end of 2011, all foreign nationals entering Korea, either through the sea or water route, will be subjected to photo and finger print taking. The plans were shelved in 2003 amid concerns over human rights violations, but it now seems Korea wil follow the examples of Japan and UK by matching the biometric information of visitors with that of “blacklisted” people.

Authorities will also examine people who have a passport declared “missing” by Interpol. Personally, I would have thought alarm bells would be ringing at airports in this case, but the only result, for now, will be photography. And, another piece of advice, don’t come to Korea with a one ticket purchased in cash. According to the Korean Times, this is too “deemed suspicious.”

The paper quotes Ahn Gyu-seok, a spokesman for the Korea Immigration Service, as saying that “cash is hardly ever used to buy flight tickets. We suspect that those who do so are attempting to prevent the authorities from tracking cash flows.” Indeed.

In reality, this should affect nobody, as many international gateways use this system. Let’s hope they don’t erect a huge anti terrorism banner behind immigration, as has been done at Osaka Kansai Airport.

Meanwhile, stayed with speakingkorea.com for more, up-coming coverage of the G20 Summit in Seoul.

I can’t believe I have been here for 53 weeks now. I still recall the fifteen minute drive from my family’s home to Dublin airport. My brother, an English teacher in Japan, was in the car during undoubtedly the saddest journey of my life. He was home for two weeks visiting the family. He told us how he was introduced to life in his adoptive land; a woman collected him from the train station, and as she pulled into his apartment complex, said “welcome to your home.”

I remember thinking, in the back of the car, how Korea would never be my home. I was comforted when my mother told me to just take a holiday for a few weeks there if I didn’t enjoy the experience. There would always be a home for me in Ireland, and my chances of returning to my old job were quite high, I felt. It’s not like I had nothing to come back to.

You just never know who your friends will be. Will you have any? What about the job? The internet is full of hard luck stories of people taking the plunge and being ripped off upon arrival. The food, the weather, the people. I had no idea what to expect. I already knew a lot about Korea, but what good would that be when I got there? For the first time, I had second thoughts about moving here.

Korea is now my home. I could live here for another three years. Leaving in little over a week is going to be tough. Not as tough, admittedly, as leaving Ireland, but bitter nonetheless. I am confident that I will come back, but where and when I have no idea. Today I finished the final clean up of my apartment. I found pictures drawn by my students (normally the wording is Korean) with hearts and kisses. Letters from partner teachers thanking me for this and that, t-shirts signed by the children.

Photographs of Halloween dressed as a leprechaun and Christmas being the school’s Santa. Skiing and mud festivals. Buddhist temples and ticket stubs from nights out in Seoul. Japanese coins and souvenirs from the Great Wall of China. The Roman Colon signed baseball and Korean language books. Korean weddings and the DMZ.

I have been to China and Japan numerous times, not to mention Seoul and other places in Korea. I confess to not having enough of this country. My only trip to Daegu was for the day to see Korea play Japan in rugby.

Not everything has been positive. I hated my first month teaching. The 5 year old kids ran riot in my class and I felt too much pressure from the management. I also dropped a 7 year old boy on his head causing him to bleed for a long time. But these problems were few and far between.

My final day in Korea will be attending the wedding of a close friend. Eating dinner in the houses of locals, celebrating their new born babies, being there for their new adventures and singing karaoke with them has been the biggest positive.

I originally intended to take the Trans-Siberian from Beijing to St Petersburg, but the Russians wouldn’t give me a visa under my current circumstances. Their reasoning makes no sense, but we move on. I will, instead, see Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Malaysia for the first time. All is not lost.

So, if you’re thinking of moving to this land, accept the apprehension but don’t drop out. Sure, some places are sketchy, but you can’t let that stop you from enjoying this wonderful and culturally rich land.

Teaching kindergarten students in Korea: easily the best job on the planet.

In Korea many women think they can lose their virginity to a tampon. All images of having sex with a tampon aside, this essentially means they believe they will break their hymen if they use them, therefore marking themselves “deflowered”.

This isn’t a completely accurate definition of virginity itself. That said, the tampon  misconception is another unfortunate urban myth many Koreans believe despite all evidence to the contrary. Except that this one is exclusive to limiting the actions of one gender only.

Tampons are avaiable in Korea but aren't used by most Korean women.

The origin of such a misunderstanding is all too predictable. It starts with a lack of adequate sexual education, but is preserved with archaic patriarchal expectations of female purity.

These are the chief reasons why tampon use is quite unpopular in Korea.

Virginity as purity

In the darkest days of patriarchy in the West, purity and preservation were once coveted traits for a young woman to have. If a husband discovered his new wife was not a virgin he might send her back like some damaged good and if she was lucky she wouldn’t be beaten to a pulp in the meantime.

This history is not exclusive to the West. Quite predictably, Korean men also deemed virginity a prerequisite of a proper wife. The reasons are varied and colorfully erroneous, but from an economic perspective one can assume a lot of this had to do with ensuring the legitimacy of lineage and guaranteeing women remain servile and reliable parts of the male dominated household.

Similarly, accusations of “impurity” (as in, sexual agency) were likely used, just as in the West, to limit the economic freedom of young, unmarried women. It has been well documented that any display of independence by women was often associated with sexual deviance.

Virginity values linger, but aren’t as important

Economic, social and – as a result – sexual developments in Korean society have now made virginity prior to marriage a somewhat untenable requirement for women.

As men and women get married later in life and generally have sex at a younger age, virginity isn’t regularly, or reasonably, coveted by aspiring husbands who may have had a good run of promiscuity prior to (but hopefully not after) tying the knot.

Yet some women still “hold on” until marriage and, no doubt, many men in Korea still like the idea of “having” a woman who hasn’t expressed her sexuality prior to doing it with them.

My girlfriend has two friends that she knows of who remain virgins at 28 and 29 years old, and they aren’t at all religious. This is, perhaps, telling of a requirement that – though it may be dying – still exists in the culture.

Of course tampons really don’t have anything to do with this unless you’re completely misinformed about female anatomy, which a lot of people must be in Korea.

The tampon myth

Tampons are sold in Korea, but they are not commonly used. My girlfriend doesn’t know a single person among her coworkers who uses them and estimates (rather unscientifically, of course) that 20 per cent of females in Korea use them.

Anything to do with sexuality or female anatomy is traditionally dealt with between mother and daughter. So if a mother doesn’t use a tampon and doesn’t really know about them, she isn’t likely to recommend her daughter use them.

Still, says my girlfriend, many mothers also don’t recommend them because they think tampons could somehow end their daughter’s virginity.

If mothers don’t exactly expect them to be virgins at marriage – they probably maintain an “ignorance is bliss” position, despite certain ineffectual measures such as curfews for women still living at home (which most women do before marriage) – you can still imagine that they aren’t readily going to recommend something to their daughters if they think it will directly contribute to their loss of virginity.

You can’t have sex with a tampon

If women generally aren’t waiting to have sex, why do they avoid the tampon? Simply, they just don’t want to lose their virginity to a tampon.

I suppose this makes sense…except that you obviously can’t have sex with a tampon. Yet, if you don’t have adequate sexual education, formally or outside the school system, any old myth becomes quite believable.

Virginity aside, many Korean women also think there is something “gross” about using tampons. There could be lots of reasons for this, but I bet discomfort with sexual organs has been a very clear symptom of a lack of female sexual agency throughout history (I admit this is pure speculation on my part).

Currently many women only use tampons if they regularly go swimming – for work, exercise or leisure. Otherwise they just don’t consider using them at all. Still, tampons are readily available at pharmacies throughout Korea, though I’m told selection is a bit limited from store to store.

Even so, more young women have become aware that tampons have no link to virginity, while virginity itself is much less coveted than it used to be. As with all social development in a dynamically progressing society, sexual education promises to improve. Hopefully this means the link between tampons, virginity and “grossness” will be relegated to social history.