there were over 25,000 hagwons registered with the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, with nearly 6,000 being in the Gangnam area. It was also revealed that local government councils other than Seoul had decided not to implement the 22:00 curfew. The curfew was seen as not having an impact on education fees and not addressing the real concern with private education. Despite the curfew, there have been attempts to get around this curfew among hagwons in Seoul. Impact on real estate A higher than average concentration of hagwons in the Gangnam-gu (강남구) area, specifically Daechi-dong (대치동), has been cited as the primary reason for an increase in real estate costs in the area. In the 1970s the Seoul government made some top schools relocate to the area; however, the schools there have become associated with entry into elite high schools and then elite universities. Many residents feel their children need to be associated with these schools in order to reach the upper levels of business and success. As more parents try to move to the area to allow their children to attend these schools, the prices of real estate in the area have risen to 300 percent of similar areas in Seoul. In 2003 the government had planned to develop a hagwon center in Pangyo to relieve some of the pressure on Gangnam, yet after heavy criticism for only shifting the problem around and not solving it, the government canceled the plan only a couple of weeks later. English-language instructors Native English speakers were hired as early as 1883 in Korea, originally out of need. The first teacher hired at the government-run Tongmunhak was Thomas Hallifax. Due to the preference for having native English speakers teach English, many native English-speakers are still hired to teach at hagwons in Korea. These hagwons may be only English schools or they could also be schools which have a variety of subjects including English. The minimum requirements for foreigners for such teaching positions are: citizenship of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, or the United States, a clean criminal background check at the national level, and a bachelor's degree obtained in one of the aforementioned countries. In return for signing a one-year contract, the institute provides an instructor with a monthly salary, round-trip airfare from his or her country of origin, usually a rent-free apartment or housing stipend for the