Plenty of people in Daejeon are interested in a drone certificate but keep postponing it because they cannot free up weekday daytime hours. If you are an expat professional here on a work visa, or a researcher with fixed lab hours, that constraint is usually tighter still — taking weekday leave may not be realistic at all. In practice a large share of training enquiries come from working adults, and completing the course using weekends and evenings is entirely normal. The deciding factor is not determination but schedule design, and schedule design starts with knowing how many logged flight hours your target class demands.
Start from the logged flight hours you need
The 조종자 증명 (jojongja jeungmyeong, remote pilot certificate) is divided by aircraft weight, and the law fixes the logged flight time required to sit each class of exam. That number effectively decides how many weekends you must clear.
- Class 1: over 25 kg maximum take-off weight (MTOW) up to 150 kg empty weight / 20 hours logged flight / minimum age 14
- Class 2: over 7 kg up to 25 kg MTOW / 10 hours / minimum age 14
- Class 3: over 2 kg up to 7 kg MTOW / 6 hours / minimum age 14
- Class 4: over 250 g up to 2 kg MTOW / online course only, no practical exam / minimum age 10
The arithmetic is simple. If a single visit yields two to three hours of actual flying, Class 3 is achievable across three or four weekends, while Class 1 needs three or four times as many sessions. Factor in cancellations for rain and it is realistic to allow two to three months for Class 1. Conversely, if you only plan to fly small hobby aircraft, Class 4 is completed entirely through an online course, so you need not clear any weekends at all. For a working adult, choosing the class that genuinely matches your purpose — rather than reflexively aiming at Class 1 — is the single largest time saving available.
The practical training is where working adults get stuck
Ground-school theory is comparatively easy to fit around a job, since it can be studied online or independently. The practical component is the problem. It requires an aircraft, a training field and an instructor simultaneously, and it is exposed to weather, so you cannot simply fill the hours whenever it suits you.
- Weekend slots attract concentrated demand, so there may be competition for bookings.
- Evening practical sessions can be limited in scope by lighting conditions and airspace restrictions.
- A cancellation for rain or strong wind pushes you to the following weekend and stretches the whole schedule.
- Flying skill decays across long gaps, so the same total hours produce less proficiency when they are spread thin.
For that reason, confirm the make-up policy and the booking method before you enrol, not after.
What to ask a Daejeon drone academy
- Do you run weekend and weekday-evening practical sessions, and in which actual time slots?
- Across how many sessions will I accumulate the flight hours my target class requires?
- How are practical sessions booked, and how many can I reserve at once?
- When weather cancels a session, how is the make-up slot allocated?
- How long does enrolment remain valid, and on what terms can it be extended?
- Where is the training field, and how long does it take from the city centre by public transport?
- Do you help manage written exam registration and practical exam scheduling?
Validity is especially important for working adults. Busy periods at work will leave you with several empty weeks, so a provider with a generous window puts you under less pressure. The exams themselves are administered by the Korea Transportation Safety Authority (TS) and registration takes place at the national qualification site lic.kotsa.or.kr, so you should plan training dates and exam dates together to avoid dead time between them. If your Korean is limited, ask early whether the academy can assist with exam registration, since the portal is Korean-only.
How to actually finish
The single most effective tactic is to book the whole block of practical sessions at the point of enrolment. Plans to book "whenever I get time" are rarely honoured. Clustering the sessions also has a technical benefit: continuity preserves your feel for the controls, which tends to reduce the total flying time you need. Study the theory in commuting gaps and reserve the weekends you have secured entirely for flying. Setting aside one or two spare dates in advance stops a weather cancellation from collapsing the whole plan.
Plan for what comes after certification
Once certified, actually operating an aircraft brings registration and approval obligations. 기체 신고 (gichae singo, device registration) is required for any aircraft used commercially regardless of weight, and for non-commercial aircraft above 2 kg MTOW. 비행승인 (bihaeng seungin, flight approval) is required before flying above 150 m above ground level or inside controlled or prohibited airspace, and both registration and approval are processed through the Drone One-Stop Civil Service (drone.onestop.go.kr). Night flying and beyond-visual-line-of-sight operation additionally require 특별비행승인 (special flight approval) from the Regional Aviation Administration, which typically takes 30 days and up to 90 in special cases — worth knowing if evenings are the only time you can fly. Going through these procedures once during training saves a great deal of confusion when you later prepare a flight on your own.
Light Beyond Drones is a drone academy in Seo-gu, Daejeon, running licence courses alongside industrial drone solutions and aerial filming. For anyone balancing training against a job, we start by confirming your target class and the flight hours it requires, then build a realistic completion plan around the times you can actually attend. If you are working in Daejeon and want to know whether your schedule allows you to finish, begin the consultation with the calendar.
References
This article draws on the following government and public-agency sources. Laws and examination standards can be revised, so please check the original pages before you apply.
