On November 1, 2006, we held our first Korvia Party to mark the start of our work connecting English teachers with schools in Korea. We've counted that day as our anniversary ever since, and today is our twentieth.
Korvia Consulting started in Seoul in 2006, so November 1, 2026 marks 20 years.
The record of those twenty years is scattered across korvia.com: the year slider on the home page, our company history, the list of past parties, and the stories teachers wrote for us. Here they are, in order.
2006–2010: the beginning
Korvia started just as Korean public schools began bringing in native English teachers in earnest. Schools needed teachers, and teachers landing in Korea for the first time often struggled to find their feet. Korvia began by building a consistent process for matching teachers with schools.
We started with local offices of education. Daegu and Gyeonggi Province (GEPIK) chose Korvia as a recruiting partner in 2007, and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) followed in 2008. The year slider on our home page calls 2009 “a landmark year”: Korvia became an EPIKrecruiting partner for NIIED (the National Institute for International Education, part of Korea's Ministry of Education) and opened a US office in Portland. A year later that office moved to the college town of Eugene, Oregon. The full list of offices of education is on our company history page (in Korean).
2013–2018: putting down roots in Seoul
In 2013 the Mayor of Seoul commended Korvia. Around the same time, a couple from Pennsylvania came to Seoul through Korvia. From 2014, Monica and Benji ran an “English House” as part of a Seongdong-gu program, where students stayed for short English-immersion stints. The program grew from one center to three. Their story on our alumni page is titled “From Pennsylvania to Honorary Citizens of Seoul”.
In 2018, Korea's Ministry of Employment and Labor certified Korvia as an excellent employment service provider.
2020–2022: the COVID-19 years
The COVID-19 years were hard on us. Teachers still came, and some of them wrote about it. Qadirah applied for the August 2019 intake, deferred to March 2020, and started EPIK in Daegu. That same year, Robert joined Korvia's EPIK pre-orientation, where he opened a bank account and got his SIM card in one afternoon before taking a bus to the official orientation. “If I were facing this same decision again — coming to Korea during the coronavirus period — I would not hesitate to sign up for the Korvia pre-orientation event,” he wrote.
During those years we tightened up how we work and kept refining how we match teachers with workplaces that suit them. In 2021 the Ministry of Employment and Labor certified Korvia for a second time, and in 2021 and 2022 we received GoAbroad's global awards.
2024–2026: every spring and fall
The list of past parties on our events page starts in fall 2024. Every spring and fall since then, Korvia Party has drawn more than 100 people, with support from sponsors SentBe, Korean Safari, Waikiki Beach Pocha and D-Live TV. In spring 2026 the party was in Itaewon.
The promise on our home page is to be with you from your application to the day you land at the airport, and right up to the last phone call if you decide to head home. One of the stories on our alumni page is Chelsea's. She taught through EPIK for four years and finished a master's degree in Korea, then came to Korvia to find her next school. She had heard about us from other EPIK teachers.
On October 3, 2026, we held our 20th-anniversary fall party at the 15th Gangnam Festival, together with KFTRA (Korea Foreign Teacher Recruiting Association). 278 people signed up in advance and 158 checked in on the day, mostly teachers from the US, South Africa, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. Our 20th-anniversary medals, engraved with Namsan Tower, Sungnyemun Gate and a mountain ridgeline, were laid out on the booth table. The full story is in our Fall 2026 party recap.
Looking back on twenty years, Korvia CEO Henry Oh says the moments that have made it worthwhile come at the parties: the teachers who do more than say thanks, and whose faces show they know they made a good decision.
Ann Park, Korvia's co-founder, looks after our relationships with schools across Korea, and helps teachers stay part of the Korvia community after they finish teaching in Korea.
What's next: new fields, and applicants' well-being
Until now, our work has been recruiting native English teachers and helping them settle in. Next, we're expanding into recruiting foreign professionalsacross a wider range of fields in Korea, beyond education. Besides the E-2 visa for English teachers, we're getting ready for E-7, E-1 and other kinds of foreign hiring.
Starting next year, we're also launching a project to support applicants' mental health through art therapy and other programs. Living and working in a new country takes a lot out of people, and we want to help with that part too. We'll share details as they're ready.
Thank you
As an official recruiting partner for the Ministry of Education's EPIK program, we've played a part in the growth of English education in Korea, and we've helped a great many people who wanted to teach here.
All of this was possible thanks to the teachers who worked hard in classrooms far from home, the schools, offices of education and academies that hired them, and everyone who has put their work into English education in Korea.
Thank you for twenty years.
Henry Oh, Ann Park and the Korvia team
November 1, 2026