Schools Around the World: South Korea
Lee Jin-man/AP
After a visit to South Korea in early 2009, President Barack Obama applauded its education system, noting that students in South Korea attend school for an entire month more than American students. Obama suggested that the U.S. should consider changes to a school calendar, “designed for when America was a nation of farmers,” in order to remain globally competitive, according to The Korea Times.
In 2007, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranked South Korea first in reading scores, and fourth in math among all participating countries. According to the BBC, “South Korea has made rapid progress since 2000, says the report—with its pupils improving by the equivalent of a whole school year.”
Yet there are glaring flaws in the South Korean system. In May 2005, teens staged a protest in Seoul after five students were driven to suicide by academic pressures, The New York Times reported.
“Schools are driving us to endless competition, teaching us to step on our friends to succeed,” Shin Ji Hae, a 16-year-old girl, said in a speech before an approving crowd of students. “We are not studying machines. We are just teenagers.”
In South Korea, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents among students 15 to 19, according to The Times.
Much of the academic pressure on students is triggered by university entrance exams. Proponents of the exams say they offer equal opportunities to all students; others say the pressure-cooker environment is too intense. Success on exam day can determine students’ “position and salary in their 50s,” The New York Times reported in 2008.
Due to the fact that the outcome of these exams is so important, students attend “cram schools” where there are rules limiting nearly every possible freedom. Fashion magazines, Internet, TV and any interaction between boys and girls beyond conversation about the exam are all forbidden. Classes are held seven days a week, beginning at 7:30 a.m., and they continue until midnight with only a one-hour free period. On weekends, the morning wake-up call is delayed one hour and students are granted a second hour of free period.
“We have an old rule of four versus five,” 16-year-old Oh Hyun Chul told The Times. “You can enter the college you want if you sleep only four hours a day, but you won’t if you sleep five or more. You get used to it.”
There are still many critics of the South Korean education system, such as Clay Burrell, a blogger and teacher who lived in South Korea. Burrell says President Obama must reconsider his support for the educational system there. He cites the research of Samuel S. Kim of Columbia University who found that 44 percent of Korean students who attend “top” American universities don’t graduate. “Koreans are so good on international test scores because they work overtime being taught to pass these tests. When they hit the real academic world in college, they don’t have the skills necessary to succeed,” Burrell concludes.
But the significance—some might call it an obsession—of being admitted to the right university is deep-rooted. History teaches us that a proper education in South Korea was denied to the masses for a long period. “Japanese educational policy after 1910 was designed to turn Koreans into obedient colonial subjects and to teach them limited technical skills,” according to the U.S. Library of Congress. In 1923, after a university was established in Seoul to mirror Tokyo Imperial University in Japan, the governing bodies limited the enrollment of South Koreans to 40 percent. The other 60 percent of students were Japanese expatriates, noted the Library of Congress.
This denial of what seemed a basic right may still influence South Korean students and their parents today. Consider Taesung Elementary School, the only school in the demilitarized zone—an area established after the 1953 peace accords between North and South Korea. First, the government and the U.S. lured farmers to the area with tax-free land. Then it drew students to its school by promising that American soldiers would teach English there twice a week. Despite any apprehensions over safety that students and their parents might have, 30 students now attend school there.
“I don’t have a worry in the world,” Han-seul, an 11-year-old student who attends the school, told The New York Times in 2009.
But that could soon change. South Korea made headlines last week after an investigation determined North Korea torpedoed one of its warships. South Korea now promises “’firm’ measures” in response, while North Korea has threatened war if South Korea imposes sanctions, according to The Independent.
In the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see how students at all levels respond to a conflict situation that appears to be escalating—and whether the threat of war can deflect their attention from their single focus.
