Hanseo Institute campus in Gangnam

In 2009, Hanseo Institute of English Language Studies was founded in Seoul with a registered office at the Gangnam Finance Centre and a founding intake of twenty-eight trainees and a faculty of five. The brief was simple and, at the time, unusual: to train teachers of English the way classical musicians or architects are trained — slowly, with observation, and under the tutelage of practitioners.

We remain, by design, a small school. Each year we admit fewer than four hundred trainees across all five levels. Our Diploma cohort is capped at thirty. Our tutorial groups never exceed twelve. We turn away applicants who would not, in our considered view, benefit from what we teach.

152 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu 강남구 테헤란로
"The aim is not to certify anyone who pays. The aim is to produce teachers whose first lesson abroad is already their hundredth — because they have rehearsed it, here, with us."

What the Institute is

Hanseo is an independent post-secondary training centre specialising exclusively in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. We do not run language courses for learners; we train those who will. We do not franchise our name. We do not sell curricula to other schools. Everything we offer is delivered, in person or online, by our own faculty.

What we are not

We are not a weekend accelerator. We are not a pipeline for recruitment agencies. We are not a university, nor do we pretend to the apparatus of one. Our graduates leave with a qualification recognised on its own merits by the international TEFL accrediting bodies (TICA, STEC & HKTSB) and by the employers who know the profession well.

Our location

The Institute is registered at the Gangnam Finance Centre at 152 Teheran-ro — the financial spine of Seoul. The choice of address is deliberate. Many of our trainees pivot from corporate careers into teaching; Gangnam is where they are already going to work. For those arriving from abroad, the tower is a ten-minute walk from Seolleung station on the Seoul subway green line.

Further reading

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Prospective trainees are welcome for a one-hour online interview. Please write to our admissions office.

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Our admissions office replies to every message within two working days. Applicants are scheduled for a short admissions interview before final enrolment.