So, How Will You Survive?' Answering Everyone's Question
The Real Cost of Jeju International School Tuition
"Isn't that place only for celebrities and real conglomerate families?"
"You're moving to Jeju and putting your kids in international school? What are you actually going to live on?"
That was the question I heard, almost word for word, from eight out of every ten people I told about our plan. The other two skipped straight past the finances: “It’s great for the kids, but honestly, I could never do it.”
Underneath all of it was the same quiet fear: Can an ordinary family actually afford this?
The Book That Broke My Old Paradigm
A few weeks before we moved, I read You Were Born Rich by Bob Proctor, and one line stopped me cold: the amount of money I earn is a number I get to decide, not a number the world hands me. It sounds almost too simple. But it named something I'd been circling for months — that most of the fear I was carrying wasn't about our actual finances. It was about a paradigm, inherited from everyone around me, that said people like us don't get to choose numbers like that.
So I started doing something that felt a little ridiculous at first: writing down the income goal I actually wanted — not the "realistic" one — every night, by hand, over and over. Not because the number magically appears, but because I noticed my fear was quietly setting a ceiling I'd never actually agreed to. Raising two kids through international school isn't going to be easy. But I've come to believe that the growth it forces on us — as parents who have to keep learning, keep building — is the thing that actually solves the money problem, not the other way around.
The Double Bill Nobody Warns You About
Here’s the part that genuinely shocked me, and no one had mentioned it before we committed: international school tuition in Jeju isn’t billed in one currency. It comes as two separate invoices — one in Korean won (KRW), one in US dollars (USD).
If I’d known the exact number ahead of time, I might have lost my nerve before we even started. Instead of panicking, I sat down and ran the real math using AI as a calculator, plugging in our actual monthly living costs alongside the tuition breakdown.
What We're Actually Trading
Around the same time, I read an article about families in Daechi-dong — Seoul’s most notorious study district — spending roughly ₩5 million a month on hagwon (private academy) fees alone. I grew up inside that system myself: cramped classrooms, exam prep stretching past midnight. Even years after starting university, I still had nightmares about sitting for the Korean college entrance exam.
I didn’t want to hand my kids the same script. I wanted them looking at a wider horizon than a whiteboard — building the ability to think for themselves, not just the ability to guess the right answer on a test. That, more than any brochure, is what made the tuition number feel less like a burden and more like a trade I was willing to make.
Changing the Paradigm, Not Just the Spreadsheet
*Image Source: iStock
Someone might call this reckless. But I trust what I’m building — both my income and my own capacity to grow into it. As Wayne Dyer put it, when you change how you look at things, the things you look at change. I’m not saying that lightly; I’m trying to actually live inside it.
I don’t know exactly how the next few years unfold financially. But I know the goal I’ve set, and I know I’m not waiting for permission to reach it — as a parent building the best environment I can for my kids, and as someone done accepting limits I never chose in the first place. Whatever this next chapter in Jeju turns into, I’m genuinely excited to find out how much all four of us grow along the way.
Tips If You're Considering International School in Jeju
1. Ask for the exact currency split before you commit.
Get the precise KRW and USD breakdown per semester in writing — don't estimate from tuition averages you find online, since dual-currency billing isn't always disclosed upfront.
Build in an exchange-rate buffer.
A shift of even ₩50–100 per dollar changes your USD-portion cost by hundreds of thousands of won per semester. Budget with some room, not the exact rate on the day you calculate.
Compare true monthly cost, not just the sticker price.
Divide total tuition by 12 and stack it against what you'd actually spend on hagwons, tutoring, and after-school programs elsewhere — the gap is often smaller than it first appears.
Start building income streams before the bill arrives, not after.
Whether that's remote work, freelance income, or a project like this blog, having a plan in motion before enrollment removes a lot of the panic later.
Separate the money mindset work from the money planning work.
Believing you can hit a bigger number matters — but pair it with an actual spreadsheet.
Both together, not one instead of the other.
[Image Credits] All photos are personally taken unless otherwise noted
