Blog#8 South Korea's Education

        Hello everyone, this is Shoko :) How was your summer vacation??I went to the lake Kawaguchi and enjoyed swimming in a river, eating Houtou which is kind of noodle, and watching fire works!!Yet i have been so busy for working and studying these days:(

        As you know, The relationship between south korea and japan is getting worse these days. I think the statement to japan’s emperor by Lee Myung-bak is still fresh in your memory. So, today’s my topic is south korea and I would like to focus on its education because i am taking teacher training course.

        South Korea, the official name is Republic of Korea, is a country located in the southern part of Korea peninsula. It is also one of neighbors of Japan which you can visit there within 3 hours by airplane from Tokyo. It is a high democratic country. The population is about 50 million. After the war with North Korea which ended in 1950, it has culturally and economically developed rapidly. Despite its tininess; 109^th largest country in the world, now it is one of the largest developed countries in Asia. According to Wikipedia, in 2008, its GDP was 1,163 trillion dollars which was ranked 15^th in the world and now its economy is fourth strongest in Asia and fifteenth in the world. Recently, South Korea is famous as exporting its culture such as K-pop, drama, food, and electronic devices. Samsung, a Korean consumer electronics company, is now one of the biggest companies as other world’s companies.

Map of South Korea

           South Korea has a compulsory education system like japan. All 6 to 14 year-old students can be taken education for free for 9 years. 

So infrastructure of education system is good compared with other developing countries. After compulsory education ends, 99.6% of students enter high school. There is no entrance examination for high school in South Korea unlike Japan. Therefore entrance examination for university is the only examination which students take. This is one reason why exam for university is extremely hard. You might know that examination  is totally bruising. Korean people attach huge importance to career. It means university you graduated decides your job and future. It is quite common that parents take a day off on the day of exam to encourage and pray for their children. Despite extremely low temperature, they wait outside until exam is over. Sometimes even police are there to take care of those parents and drive students who get a wrong exam venue to the right place.

Praying parents 

           Cram school is also one of features of South Korea’s education. Parents let their children go to cram school at an early age. Many students usually get up early in the morning and go to bed late in the night for studying. Because of that, many students damaged their health. South Korea has conscription and needs healthy young people to make strong army. 

So the government once prohibited cram school to prevent losing healthy young men. However, it did not work at all. Soon high schools were replaced as cram schools and students continued to study until midnight every day

South Korea's cram school

        There are many problems cause by its education style. In that highly tensed situation, students obviously feel unbelievable stress and pressure from parents all day. Of course they have no holiday. You might have heard that suicide rate in Korean is highest in the world.  12,858 people killed themselves in 2008, which is equal to 35 people killing themselves every day and many students are included in the number. You can see more detail HERE. Also, bullying is another huge problem.

        Thanks to such a severe education style, Korea marked high score in PISA investigation. However, its education style makes children physically and also mentally tired and unhealthy. They might need to think what is the best way to educate children once again.