Success and Education in South Korea

Success and Education in South Korea
Author(s): Clark W. Sorensen

Source: Comparative Education Review, Vol. 38, No. 1, Special Issue on Schooling and Learning in
Children's Lives (Feb., 1994), pp. 10-35
Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Comparative and International
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Success and Education in South Korea
CLARK W. SORENSEN
Over the past few years, we have come to expect high educational achieve-
ment from the countries of East Asia. The level of educational achieve-
ment in Japan has become widely known,1 and South Korean students
have recently achieved the highest mean scores in science and math in the
International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP) administered
by the Educational Testing Service to 13-year-olds in 19 countries, with
Taiwanese students having achieved second highest.2 This international
success is well known in South Korea, having been widely reported in the
media, and has become a source of national pride.
It is not immediately apparent why children in South Korea and
Taiwan should be so successful in science and math. Neither subject is a
traditional strength of East Asian intelligentsias, and educated Koreans
often respond to questions about South Korean students' mastery of math
by noting that none of the world's famous mathematicians have been East
Asian. Lip service has been given to scientific and technical education
since the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948, but the actual
emphasis in educational planning up until the 1970s was citizenship edu-
cation- inculcating loyalty, patriotism, self-reliance, and anticommun-
ism. Even the ideology of modernization introduced in the early 1960s
focused on spirit rather than technology. In-su Son has characterized the
educational policy of Huii-s6k Mun, minister of education and culture
during the Democratic Party Government of 1960-61, thusly: "If mod-
ernization is realizing humanity by making daily life more rational, then
the spiritual aspect of modernization is even more important than the
material, and the spiritual must precede [the material], if only in stages
... human propensities and the structure of consciousness must be recon-
structed as the driving force of social reform."3 Serious and sustained
special attention to scientific and technical education came only in 1973
I would like to thank Dr. Kim S6ng-ch'61 and Mrs. Yoon Whan Choi who, in interviews, provided
some of the insights on which this paper is based.
1 Harold W. Stevenson and
Shin-Ying Lee, in collaboration with Chuansheng Chen et al.,
Contextsof Achievement:A Studyof American, Chinese,and Japanese Children,Monographs of the Society
for Research in Child Development, Serial no. 221 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
2Japan did not take part in the IAEP tests. Chinese (PRC) students scored higher than Koreans
on both tests, but, because the tested population was a limited sample of students, the Chinese were
not placed in the overall rankings.
In-su Son, Han'guk kyoyuksa (A history of Korean education), 2 vols. (Seoul: Munfim Sa, 1987),
p. 728.
ComparativeEducation Review, vol. 38, no. 1.

? 1994 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.
0010-4086/94/3801-0002$01.00
10 February1994
SUCCESSIN SOUTH KOREA
with the establishment of vocational schools associated with the "move-

ment to scientificize the whole people" (chonkungminui kwahakhwaundong)
that was developed in conjunction with the government's heavy and chem-
ical industrialization plan begun in the same year.
The state in South Korea does not devote an extraordinary amount
of money to education-some 4.5 percent of the gross national product,
compared with 7.5 percent for the United States. Rapid expansion of the
educational system and the lack of secondary education in the past have
yielded a teacher force with limited higher education (it was only in 1985
that all teachers' colleges became 4-year institutions) compared with that
of teacher forces in developed countries. Moreover, middle-school class
size in South Korea, as in Taiwan, averages 40 to 50-almost twice the
average class size in most developed countries. These conditions are typical
of several East Asian countries that score well on international tests in
science and math.4
Pundits trying to account for East Asian educational success, therefore,
sometimes advance the notion that the economic and educational success
of East Asian countries is due not so much to institutions and resources
as to the efficacy of East Asian Confucian culture.5 According to this
notion East Asian countries have succeeded economically and education-
ally because Confucianism has provided these countries with high levels
of social capital in the form of strong family structure and norms of
frugality, hard work, and a high valuation of education.
While it is certainly true that strong family structures and a high
valuation of education are important ingredients of recent educational
successes in East Asia, a note of caution is in order before we rush to
judgment. Confucian economic and family values have been a constant
in East Asia for the past thousand years, yet East Asia has not always been
particularly economically-or educationally-successful in comparison
with other parts of the world. It was only a generation ago that Confucian-
ism-which, in any case, has always been a very different thing in Japan
than it was in China or Korea-was commonly cited as the reason not
for East Asian economic success but for China's failure to modernize.6
Confucianism, it was said, fosters a status orientation that discourages the
4
Most of the information in this paragraph comes from the summary table opposite p. 16
in both Learning Mathematics: The International Assessmentof Educational Progress (Princeton, N.J.:
Educational Testing Service, 1992) and Learning Science: The International Assessmentof Educational
Progress (Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 1992).
" Herman Kahn, WorldEconomic
Development,1979 and Beyond(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1979);
Roderick MacFarquhar, "The Post-Confucian Challenge," Economist274, no. 7119 (February 9, 1980):
67-72; Hung-chao Tai, "The Oriental Alternative: An Hypothesis on Culture and Economy," in
Confucianismand EconomicDevelopment:An OrientalAlternative?ed. Hung-chao Tai (Washington, D.C.:
Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, 1989), pp. 6-37.
6 Talcott Parsons, The Structureof Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 549 ff.
Comparative Education Review 11
SORENSEN
practical activity necessary for entrepreneurship and investment. Even

educational Confucian values used to be seen as a hindrance to moderniza-
tion, since Confucian humanism focuses on belles lettres and history as
sources of moral instruction and promotes contempt for practical learning
in mathematics and science.7
During Korea's Chosdn period (1392-1910), when Neo-Confucian
thought was established orthodoxy, systematic education, though highly
valued, was mostly limited to a self-conscious, hereditary ruling class,
known as the yangban, that numbered at most some 15 percent of the
population.8 Learning was seen as unnecessary for the masses, and even
such education as existed for the elite was almost entirely history, philoso-
phy, and poetry written in Chinese.9 Education in practical matters-as-
tronomy, medicine, foreign languages-was left to a much smaller group
of distinctly lower-status specialized lineages located in the capital, which
collectively were known as chungin.'0 Commoners were almost totally ex-
cluded from official government service, and the level of advancement
available to even the brightest chungin was strictly limited. Modern science
and mathematics, of course, were unknown except to an extent among a
small group of literati in contact with the Jesuits in Beijing who were
introducing modern astronomy and mathematics as part of their mission
to the Chinese.
Twenty-five years ago when Confucianism was a more living presence
than it is today in South Korea, a long-time admissions officer for a U.S.
university international program confided to me that Koreans at that time
were generally considered "dumb" among international students on that
campus." Some of the reasons for this past negative assessment of the
educational level of Koreans are obvious. A country as poor as South
Korea was 25 years ago-with annual per capita income around $200-
has few resources to train and support teachers and schools. Families
often had to withdraw children from school so they could work to help
make ends meet. Having only begun to build a modern, independent
educational system since liberation from Japan in 1945, Koreans were
7 Ibid., p. 548.
8 Susan Shin, "The Social Structure of Kfimhwa County in the Seventeenth Century," in Occa-
sional Papers on Korea, 1 (Seattle: University of Washington, 1972), pp. 9-35; James Palais, Politics
and Policyin TraditionalKorea(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 6-9, 319, n. 23.
9 Poetry and fiction in vernacular Korean is extant from the fifteenth century (and records of
vernacular works that have been lost go back another thousand years), but these works, being written
in the "vulgar tongue" (6nmun), were considered divertissements not comparable to the serious
business of Chinese-language history, philosophy, and poetry that was tested in the state exams.
They did not become part of a formal curriculum until after World War II.
'o Ki-baik Lee, A New Historyof Korea, trans. Edward Wagner with Edward Schultz (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 181-82, 250 ff.
" At the time the remark startled me, since missionary literature going back to the late nineteenth
century uniformly characterizes Koreans as highly intelligent.
12 February 1994
short on knowledge and experience in running modern school systems.

The 3 years of death, destruction, and large-scale refugee movements that
accompanied the Korean War raging up and down the Korean Peninsula
in the early 1950s interrupted educational careers and reversed much of
the educational progress that had been made since 1945. As a consequence
educational facilities were seriously inadequate in South Korea even into
the 1970s.
Moreover, because Korea, like the other countries in East Asia, had,
by the nineteenth century, fallen behind the rest of the world in level of
development, providing modern education has not been simply a question
of disseminating knowledge that already exists within the country. It has
involved importing advanced knowledge from more developed coun-
tries-in South Korea's case, primarily from the United States and Ja-
pan-and adapting it to local conditions. It is hard to remember, given
South Korea's present level of development, that, in 1948, when the
Republic of Korea was formed in southern Korea and a modern education
system began to be built there, the very vocabulary to talk about modern
science and mathematics hardly existed in the Korean language and had
to be invented before textbooks could even be written.
The educational success of present-day South Korea-and by exten-
sion Japan and Taiwan, too-has been brought about by an exceedingly
complex interplay of values, institutions, economic resources, and accu-
mulation of knowledge, and this interaction has taken place in a specific
historical context of international economic and military relations and of
nation building. Humanistic Confucian values derived from the status-
centered agrarian society of Korea's past play their part, but in the context
of a modern, competitive trading nation with large engineering firms and
heavy industrial enterprises.
In this article young South Koreans' educational success will be seen
less as a matter of curriculum, class size, and educational technique than
as a consequence of how education is embedded in the fabric of Korean
society. We begin from the point of view of the students, by understanding
the organizational structures they confront, the pressures to which they
are subject, and the values and goals that seem most important in motiva-
ting them to succeed. To an extent these structures, pressures, and values
can be considered "social capital" in Coleman's sense of a norm or institu-
tion "facilitating the achievement of goals that could not be achieved in
its absence or could be achieved only at a higher cost."12Yet, as Bourdieu
has noted for Europe,13 social structures, pressures, values, and goals are
12James S. Coleman, Foundationsof Social Theory(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1990), p. 304.
13Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1984).
ComparativeEducationReview 13
SORENSEN
meaningless without taking into account historically conditioned notions

of the relationship of knowledge to status, as well as definitions of the
self in relationship to others.
The educational system of present-day South Korea does not simply
reflect a practical need to train an efficient work force, since it also must
respond to students' and parents' demands to provide upward mobility
through education. But it cannot be seen simply as the means by which
autonomous individuals seek upward mobility through the acquisition of
cultural capital either, since Koreans, like most East Asians, tend to define
the "self" in relationship to the groups-family, lineage, and nation-to
which they belong.14 South Korea's educational institutions have, in fact,
been created as an integral part of a national project to strengthen and
develop the country for national survival. Although this project has been
under way at the state level only since liberation from Japan in 1945, the
basic assumptions about the nature of the world, Korea's place in it, and
the role of education in creating modern citizens capable of taking charge
of Korea's destiny had already been put in place by the cultural nationalists
of the 1920s.'5 These assumptions, though rarely articulated by students
themselves, provide the context within which their behavior becomes
meaningful, and they legitimate educational ambitions in the context of
the nation as a whole.
The Development of Modern Education in Korea
By the late nineteenth century, Korea, which had been closed to

outside contacts for 400 years until 1873, had begun the long and painful
process of confronting the challenge of Western industrial civilization. A
number of schools with modern curricula had been set up by missionaries,
and the foundations for a modern school system had been established by
the government.16 These early attempts to create a modern educational
system, however, were truncated when Japan took over Korea first as a
protectorate in 1905 and then as a colony in 1910. As Japan is both
adjacent to and culturally similar to Korea, Japanese penetration was
particularly intense.17 The Japanese colonial administration was auto-
cratic, systematic, thorough, and used large numbers of ethnic Japanese
brought from the metropole to occupy key niches in the civil service,
"14Clark W. Sorensen, Over the Mountains Are Mountains: Korean Peasant Households and Their
Adaptationsto Rapid Industralization(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), pp. 130-31.
15Michael E. Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-25 (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1988).
16 E. Patricia Tsurumi, "Colonial Education in Korea and Taiwan," in The Japanese Colonial
Empire, 1895-1945, ed. Ramon Myers and Mark Peattie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1984), p. 295.
17Bruce Cumings, "The Legacy of Japanese Colonialism in Korea," in Myers and Peattie, eds.,
TheJapanese Colonial Empire, pp. 485-86.
14 February 1994
educational system, business, and industry. By 1942, the colonial bureauc-

racy in Korea, which was entirely supported by tax revenue generated in
the colony, employed more than 100,000 ethnic Japanese but fewer than
50,000 ethnic Koreans (almost entirely in low-level clerical positions) to
rule a country of some 24 million.18
The Japanese record of providing modern education at the elementary
level in their colonies is good when compared with that of other colonial
powers, but Japanese colonial education was designed to assimilate Kore-
ans and to keep them in their place--subordinate in all ways to ethnic
Japanese. Separate systems were maintained for ethnic Koreans and eth-
nic Japanese in Korea, with secondary education highly restricted for
Koreans. The medium of instruction in all schools-even those for Kore-
ans-was Japanese, and a large proportion of teachers in schools for
Koreans, particularly secondary schools, were ethnic Japanese.
After the failure of the independence movement of March 1, 1919, the
cultural nationalists, who were influenced by social Darwinism, became
convinced that only through widespread acquisition of modern education
could Koreans become qualified to regain their independence.19 Japanese
control and manipulation of the school system, thus, did not prevent
Koreans from seeking such education as was available. By 1942 almost
40 percent of ethnic Korean children were attending elementary school.
Fewer than 5 percent of ethnic Korean elementary school graduates,
however, went on to middle school.20 Even Keij6 Imperial University-set
up in Seoul in 1924 in response to Korean demands for a university to
provide tertiary education on the Korean Peninsula--enrolled a majority
of ethnic Japanese. After elementary school, those few ethnic Koreans
who continued their education did so in 5-year higher ordinary schools
(with 1 year added for teacher training) or in shorter courses in vocational
or technical schools rather than in the middle schools set up forJapanese.
After their elementary grades Korean boys and girls went to separate
schools, with girls' schools (regardless of whether they were vocational)
providing 1 year less education than boys' schools at the same level.
When Korea became independent again in 1945, then, the Japanese
departure left a huge, deliberately created gap in trained manpower.
18Won-mo Dong, "Assimilation and Social Moblization in Korea," in KoreaunderJapaneseColonial

Rule, ed. Andrew Nahm (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Center for Korean Studies,
1973), p. 164.
19Korea's cultural nationalists felt Koreans had to prove themselves "qualified" for indepen-
dence, because the Great Powers (particularly Great Britain and the United States) had supported
the original Japanese takeover of Korea in 1905 on the basis of Korea's "inability" to institute
modernizing reforms. During the colonial period the Japanese also promoted historical discourse
that justified Japanese control of Korea because of Korea's "stagnation." Some Japanese historians
even went so far as to deny that Korea ever had the qualities of true independence (despite the fact
that Koreans had a united, independent state from 668 to 1905!).
20
Dong, p. 157.
SORENSEN
Illiteracy was still widespread in Korea-the overall illiteracy rate in 1945

was 78 percent-but even more critical was the shortage of teachers and
others with a modicum of secondary education. Although a fair number
of people had become acquainted with modern science and mathematics
through the colonial education system, few could talk about these subjects
in any language but Japanese. And the fragmented secondary education
system created by the Japanese for transparently discriminatory purposes
left a distrust among the Korean population of multitiered school systems
with separate vocational and academic schools that track children from
an early age into different social levels.
The Basic Education Law that (with modifications) is still in effect
today was passed in 1949.21 It provided for the creation of a unified system
configured as 6 years of compulsory free education beginning at age 7,
3 years of tuitioned noncompulsory middle school, 3 years of tuitioned
noncompulsory high school, and 4 years of tuitioned college. Citizens'
Schools (kongminhakkyo)for adults who had been unable to receive educa-
tion and mass-literacy campaigns were initiated. Widespread illiteracy was
eliminated by the 1960s.22 The transition from the multitiered secondary
education system of the colonial period to a unified 3-year middle school
and 3-year high school system was completed by 1951.23 Students in sec-
ondary education doubled between 1945 and 1947. Elementary enroll-
ment ratios passed 90 percent in 1964, middle school enrollment ratios
passed 90 percent in 1979, and high school enrollment ratios recently
passed 90 percent.24
Naturally an educational system that expanded as rapidly as that of
South Korea has not been without problems. Particularly in the 1950s
and 1960s, before rapid economic growth allowed for greater levels of
government financial support, providing facilities and teachers for the
rapidly expanding population was not easy. Semicompulsory parent-
teacher associations (sach'inhoe),under the control of the school principals,
charged miscellaneous fees to supplement meager state support, compro-
mising the principle of free state-supported education. Quality suffered,
as classes frequently exceeded 100 pupils in size, and schools sometimes
operated two and three shifts a day in crowded urban areas. From 1953
on the government implemented comprehensive entrance exams for mid-
dle and high school to make sure that those who received the limited
"21Remarks about Korea before 1945 apply to the whole peninsula, but, after 1945, they refer
only to the southern half.
22 By 1960 the illiteracy rate for males had been reduced to 15.8 percent. Female illiteracy rates
had been reduced to below 15 percent by 1966. Noel McGinn, Education and Developmentin Korea
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 48.
23 Son (n. 3 above), p. 710.
24 Han'guk t'onggyey6n'gam (Korea statistical yearbook) (Seoul: Economic Planning Bureau, vari-
ous years).
16 February 1994
secondary education available were the most qualified. In an effort to

encourage practical education for work rather than the traditional belles
lettristic education for government service encouraged by Confucian atti-
tudes, the government in 1963 compromised its earlier commitment to
a unitary education system and reintroduced vocational high schools.
Although the middle school entrance examination was abolished after
1969 as part of a government plan to make education at that level univer-
sal, entrance exams remain for high school and college to this day.
The Korean educational system has become a "testocracy," with the
influence of the high school and college entrance exams rippling through-
out the system.25 Because they limit the type and quantity of education
children can receive-affecting their future employment and marriage
prospects-and because neither parents nor children like the "examina-
tion hell" (sihom chiok), entrance exams are controversial in Korea. In
response to political pressure, the Ministry of Culture and Education
tinkers with some aspect of the secondary and college school entrance
system almost every year, but such alternatives to limiting enrollments
through exams as charging tuition high enough to exclude segments of
the population or letting those with connections get into the best schools
are unacceptable to the Korean public. Entrance exams of one sort or
another, thus, are regarded by most Koreans as a necessary evil, the most
impartial method of regulating access to education above middle school.
During periods of authoritarian central government-particularly the
1963-79 period-centralized state exams have been the method of
choice, not only because they establish orderly standards throughout the
country but also because they provide a means by which the state can
control the content of education and the number of passes at each level.
Exams test only school-based learning, however, and national exams make
success more difficult for rural children and for others coming from envi-
ronments with less access to good teachers and academic stimulation.
Thus, during periods of democratization (1960-61, and after 1987) more
decentralized examinations managed by individual schools have some-
times been used, particularly at the university level. In each school atten-
dance area (hakkun),26students are assigned to middle schools on the basis
of a lottery system that is supposed to provide for a relatively even ability
mix in each school. High schools are of two types-academic (inmun
kogyo) and vocational (sir6p kogyo). Admissions decisions are first made
for vocational high schools (industrial high schools and agricultural high
Son (n. 3 above), p. 740.

"25
26 School districts are coterminous with the regular units of local administration-cities and
counties. Hakkun are areas within school districts in which middle and high schools are matched for
entrance purposes. Normally a number of middle schools are grouped with a number of high schools
that are in the same geographic area.
SORENSEN
schools) on the basis of school marks (s6ngj6k)and an admission exam.

Only then do the academic high schools that provide superior preparation
for college entrance make their entrance decisions based on students'
degree of success on the high school entrance exam, place of residence,
and the lottery.
Since the government provides free education to everyone at the
elementary level, only about 1 percent of elementary school students
attend private schools. As the competition gets tougher, however, private
schools become more important, so that almost 30 percent of middle
school students, 47 percent of vocational high school students, 53 percent
of academic high school students, and 80 percent of college students attend
private institutions.27 Private colleges are much more expensive than state
schools, and several are among the top institutions in the nation. However,
the tuition for private middle and high schools, which is set by the state,
is only slightly more than for public institutions. All elementary and sec-
ondary schools, whether public or private, follow the same national curric-
ulum and use the same textbooks. Teachers for private as well as public
schools can be hired only with the permission of the superintendent of
education. The school district-administered admission system, moreover,
applies to both public and private schools. Because private schools are
limited in their tuition-charging ability, and because they get less state
support than public schools, they generally have larger classes and are
less well equipped. They thus function as second-best overflow institutions
for those students unable to be accommodated in the public schools rather
than as elite institutions for the well heeled.
Vocational high schools, whether public or private, are generally con-
sidered less desirable than academic high schools by the public. During
the 1960s and 1970s, the government, intent on education for industrial-
ization, had hopes of educating 70 percent of students in these schools to
provide technically trained factory workers and to discourage the diploma
disease.28 Korean parents and students have been wary of a two-tiered
school system since the Japanese period, however, and generally see voca-
tional schools as third best (after private academic high schools), even
though the employability of vocational high school graduates in Seoul
and Pusan has been better than it has been for academic high school
graduates.29 Vocational high schools today enroll only about 35 percent
27 Han'guk kyoyuky6n'gam (Korea education yearbook) (Seoul: Han'guk Kyoyuk Sinmun Sa,
1991), p. 87.
28McGinn notes that, as early as 1953, South Korea was producing more college graduates than
the economy could absorb. The Chung Hee Park administration of the 1960s and 1970s was con-
cerned about the revolutionary potential of idle college graduates. As the Korean economy has
grown more sophisticated since the 1980s, this has become less of a concern, though overproduction
of college graduates is still a problem. See McGinn, pp. 35 and 95.
"2Ibid., p. 181.
18 February 1994
of the high school population,30 and parental pressure has led them to
add more and more academic material to their courses so as to allow at least
some of their students to succeed in the college entrance examinations.
High school graduates who wish to continue on to college must first
pass a preparatory examination (yebi kosa) to qualify for college applica-
tion. At times a second state exam was given to sort university admissions,
but, at present, individual universities manage their own admissions pro-
cess by using preparatory examination scores and school marks. Because
of the system of university admission by competitive exam, Koreans gen-
erally consider universities to be rankable on a monotonic scale, with Seoul
National University (a state institution) at the head of the list. College
graduates, too, are ranked in social prestige for the rest of their life
by the ranking of the university they attended.31 The reason for the
examination hell in middle and high schools, then, is that admission to
a good high school is necessary for success in the final decisive competition
for college entrance, and taking one's middle school education seriously
is necessary for admission to a good academic high school. High schools
are rated by the proportion of their students admitted to prestigious
universities, and middle schools are rated by the proportion of students
able to get into good academic high schools. Information on the reputa-
tion (which in urban areas is subject to change) of schools is exchanged
informally in gossip networks of students, teachers, and parents, with the
occasional newspaper article providing more solid facts.32
Education and Equality

The system at the high school level and above is designed to sort
students by achievement. The best jobs go to graduates of the most presti-
gious Seoul-based universities who have come through the best public
academic high schools, with lesser job prospects for, in order, regional
university graduates, vocational high school graduates, academic high
school graduates who have not gone on to college, and school-leavers
who, these days, are confined to unskilled occupations. This system, how-
ever, has not yet perpetuated old class differences-as is sometimes said
to be the case for the highly tracked European systems.33 Creating a
30
Korea education yearbook, 1991 (n. 27 above), p. 117.
31
For this reason, one normally does not ask Koreans directly which university they attended.
Those who did not attend the prestigious Seoul universities will often not answer.
32 The most recent gossip is that, since school grades have become a more important criterion
for admission to college, it may now be better to put children in less competitive schools to improve
their grades.
33 As the new Korean society stabilizes, however, parents with modern education may try to
replicate their new class status among their children. Signs of this change can already be found in
the affluent, educated middle-class areas south of the Han River in Seoul, where educational competi-
tion is generally conceded to be most intense and where larger proportions of the population attend
cram schools than in other parts of Korea. See Sing-mun An, Chong-ho Pak, and Hye-w6n Kang
SORENSEN
modern society on the ashes of colonialism has required Koreans to jetti-

son the old cultural elite in favor of new groups with the knowledge
appropriate for a modern, democratic society. This new knowledge im-
ported from abroad has been disseminated largely through the formal
educational system to students whose parents rarely had much modern
education. The old Korean elite, whose educational legitimacy was based
on knowledge of Chinese culture, has thus been less able to perpetuate
status through control of cultural capital acquired outside school34 than
have European societies that have preserved more cultural continuity
with the past. The more prosperous classes, to be sure, have been better
able to shoulder the financial burdens of modern education, and their
children are well represented in the new educated elite, but the culture
of this new elite is still in the process of being created so that all mem-
bers-whatever their social background-are, in a sense, newcomers
whose status is based on mastery of math, science, and other "modern"
knowledge.
Access to public elementary, middle, and high schools is regulated by
residence as well as examination success. To the extent that social classes
are concentrated in different places of residence, then, systematic inequal-
ity of access to education-such as is found in the United States-is a
possibility. The government avoids publishing data that can be used to
measure such inequality,35 but it is generally conceded that the affluent
areas of Seoul south of the Han River (Kangnam Ku), built in the late
1970s and early 1980s and housing a large proportion of Seoul profession-
als and their families, have superior schools, with students put under
intense pressure by their parents to succeed. As one proceeds to provincial
cities, small towns, and rural areas, the quality of schools is thought to
decline.36 Suburbanization of the more affluent families has only just
begun, however, so that, compared to the United States, where each social
and ethnic group tends to be concentrated in the same geographic area,
school attendance areas in Korea are still quite socially mixed.
The Korean government since 1969, moreover, has tried hard to
equalize (p'y6ngjunhwa)middle and high schools to ameliorate exam pres-
(1992) "Ch'6ngsony6n iisik tae chosa (A large-scale investigation of adolescents' consciousness), Uri
Kyoyuk11 (1992): 40-72.
34 Bourdieu (n. 13 above), pp. 13-14.
35 Statistics published by the Ministry of Education, for example, are broken down by province
but not by criteria that nongovernmental surveys reveal are likely to reveal inequality-such as
either urban versus rural or affluence ranking of districts. School districts are coterminous with
administrative districts, and rural and urban areas are systematically distinguished in the administra-
tive hierarchy, so the reason the government does not publish educational data broken down ac-
cording to this hierarchy (special city, direct rule city, provincial city, town, and rural district) is
unlikely to be simply due to the mode of gathering the statistics or to inconvenience of compilation.
36 In-su
Kang, Kyoyukp6p y6n'gu: Han'guk, ilbon, miguk fii kyoyukp6p mit p'allye rfil chungsimifro
(A study of educational law: Centering on case law of Korea, Japan, and the United States) (Seoul:
Munum Sa, 1989), pp. 63-64.
20 February 1994
sures and to make the school-area/lottery system more acceptable to the

public. They have had only moderate success. When the middle school
entrance-without-exam policy was implemented, the government closed
a number of the most prestigious public middle schools in Seoul and
other major cities, shuffled teachers around, tried to provide for a similar
ability mix in all schools, and promulgated nationwide standards for build-
ings and equipment. Similar measures were tried for high schools in the
1980s. Inevitably, however, some schools have been better run or have
had a more able student body.
Particularly obvious quality differences remain between urban and
rural schools and between public and private schools.37 Until illegalized
in 1979, it was common for ambitious rural parents from all over Korea
to send their children to live with relatives in Seoul to attend the better
middle and high schools in the capital. Though the present school admis-
sion system is designed to give parents and students little control over
their school assignments, some parents have inevitably gone to great
lengths to get their children into particular well-known schools. This
problem became especially prominent in the 1980s as education became
simultaneously more available and more necessary for economic success:
"fraudulent school admission" (haksaengwijang ch6nip) became a serious
problem.38 Since class and social status are very closely related to educa-
tional success, the struggle for upward mobility, to a large extent, is played
out in the "examination hell" for secondary and tertiary school admission.
The Korean Zeal for Education
Koreans see "education fever" (kyoyungny6l)as a traditional character-

istic. A common theme of traditional folktales is success through hard
study. In "The Story of Spring Fragrance," Korea's best-loved folktale,
the protagonist, Yi Tory6n, is able to save his sweetheart, Spring Fra-
grance, from a venal new governor by placing first on the government
exam, being consequently appointed a secret inspector who anonymously
wanders the countryside checking up on administrators, and, in the nick
of time, coming across the new governor oppressing the love he left
behind in the countryside. Contemporary evidence of education's high
valuation also abounds. Since 1945 demand for education has exceeded
supply despite the fact that Korean enrollment ratios have been much
higher than those of Euro-American countries with comparable standards
of living.39 Korean enrollment ratios now approach those of the most
"7Ibid.
s8 Ibid., p. 61.
39Alice Amsden, Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989), pp. 217-18.
SORENSEN
developed countries of the world.40The fact that middle school education

is not compulsory and requires the payment of a substantialtuition and
yet has become universal, with a 98.5 percent enrollment ratio in 1990,
speaks for itself. In fact, demand for education has been so strong that
parents have, over the years, directly coughed up more than two-thirds
of the total cost of education through tuition, "parent-teacherassociation"
fees, and costs of school supplies. This is several times the proportion
directly paid by parents in neighboringJapan.41Government support of
education in Korea is not high by international standards-4.5 percent
of the gross national product in 1990, compared with 3.6 percent for
Taiwan, 5.7 percent for Hungary, 6.1 percent for France,and 7.5 percent
for the United States42-but Korean parents' enthusiasm for education
has led them to directly pay enough in student costs to bring the total
proportion of the gross national product devoted to education in South
Korea up to some 15 percent. And this figure does not include the huge
costs of private tutoring as students prepare for the high school and
college entrance examinations.
If the present-day zeal for education in Korea can be partiallyattrib-
uted to traditionalattitudes,it can also be attributedto desires for upward
mobilityin a fast-changing society. In a recent survey of middle and high
school students, 78.7 percent of the respondentsanswered that going to
college is "apracticalnecessity,"and, of those, the overwhelmingmajority
cited the need to get a good job or the importance of social recognition
(12.7 percent mentioned "seekingtruth,"and only 5 percent mentioned
"parentalpressure").43There is evidence, moreover, that these attitudes
reflect reality. A person with a greater amount of education will be paid
more for the same work, and this is perceived as just.44 Only those with
a college education are recruited for management positions.45Such posi-
tions are paid much more than what even the best-paid workers make.
National studies have shown that the college-educated make double the
40 Enrollment figures for 1990 were as follows: 100 percent in

elementary school and 98.5
percent in middle school. Of middle school graduates, 92.2 percent continue on to high school, and,
of these, 31.1 percent continue on to college. Son (n. 3 above), p. 152.
"41The proportion of total educational costs borne directly by parents varied from 70.9 percent
in 1966 to 66.1 percent in 1975. McGinn (n. 22 above), p. 28, table 10. A 1982 study found the
private share of educational cost in Korea to be 39 percent in primary school, 85 percent in middle
and high school, and 75 percent in college and university. The comparable figures for Japan in 1981
were 1 percent, 20 percent, and 29 percent. Korean Education 2000 (Seoul: Korean Educational
Development Institute, 1985), p. 126.
42Learning Mathematics,summary table opposite p. 16.
43An et al. (n. 33 above), pp. 40-72.
44 Choong Soon Kim, The Culture of Korean Industry: An Ethnographyof Poongsan Corporation
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992), pp. 106-8.
4 Ibid., p. 113.
22 February 1994
incomeof high schoolgraduatesand threetimesthe incomeof primary

or middleschoolgraduates.46
Successfuleducationaloutcomesare also relevantfor those who do
not continueto college,however.Eventhoughpersonswithouta college
educationare rarelypromotedfrom the shop floor into management
positions,academicskillsand educationalbackgroundare used by man-
agementto regulateaccessto trainingin the mostadvanced(andbest-
paid)technologieswherethe abilityto read Englishor use mathematics
is important."Laboraristocrats" with such skillshave greatersecurity
thanordinaryfactoryworkersandsometimes,withovertimeandbonuses,
bringhome morethan some lower-levelmanagement(though,whenthe
amountof work is taken into account,white-collaremployeesare still
betterpaid).47In Korea,then, as in Japanand Taiwan-two other East
Asian countrieswhose studentsdo well on internationalachievement
tests-educational successand socioeconomicstatusin Koreacorrelate
much more highlythan in the UnitedStates.48
Education and Parental Pressure
Given the fact that educational qualifications virtually determine one's

economic level, the Korean zeal for education becomes understandable.
Any rational and ambitious person would want to do well. Since Koreans
also deem education to have intrinsic worth as a marker of social status,
parents rarely leave educational success to chance: they subject their chil-
dren to intense pressure to study.
Within the memory of people still living today, most of rural Korea
was divided into hereditary, endogamous, and ranked status groups. One's
position in the status hierarchy was marked by mode of dress, by whether
one studied or engaged in manual labor, and by the culture of one's
speech. With liberation in 1945 and the creation of a new democratic
society in South Korea, this decaying hereditary-status hierarchy was re-
jected. Status consciousness itself, rather than disappear, however, has
been transformed to become a main feature of the new, dynamic, modern-
izing society. Status today is mostly achieved rather than inherited, and
46 Son (n. 3 above), p. 755; Amsden, p. 230.

47Choong Soon Kim, p. 103.
48 In the United States technicians make 1.6 times what production workers do, and managers
make 1.79 times what production workers do. By contrast, in South Korea technicians make 2.46
what production workers do, and managers make 3.95 times what production workers do. Amsden,
p. 231. The correlation between the occupational status of the father and his education was .66 in
Minneapolis, .70 in Taipei, and .86 in Sendai. Stevenson et al. (n. 1 above), p. 231. For evidence
that grades affect employment possibilities for Japanese high school graduates, see James E. Rosen-
baum and Takehiko Kariya, "From High School to Work: Market and Institutional Mechanisms in
Japan," AmericanJournal of Sociology94, no. 6 (May 1989): 1334-65.
SORENSEN
amount of education is a determinant of status independent of its contri-

bution to economic success.
Even economically successful persons find it difficult to attain high social
status without education. One Korean of my acquaintance is a director of
a highly successful construction company. He has a fancy house, fine clothes,
a chauffeured car, and deference from lower-level employees. He is also
going to night school to get a Ph.D. in economics. I have never inquired of
him directly what his motivations for getting a Ph.D. are when he already
has all the material attributes of success, but, when I mentioned this director's
situation to another Korean of my acquaintance, he smiled and remarked,
"Oh ho, of course! Otherwise people will talk behind his back. They will
say he makes all this money, but he is really only an uneducated sajangnom,"
a derogatory term for uneducated, coarse businessmen.
The theme that formal education is an essential qualification to be
taken seriously is widespread. Korean acquaintances have repeatedly ar-
gued that the democratization movement, so evident in Korea since 1987,
is especially timely because formal secondary and tertiary education has
become widespread so that people are now qualified to have a say in
government policy-showing the continued influence of the Confucian
notion that the uneducated masses should have no input in government
decision making. A more abstract notion of the value of education was
given to me by a Korean overseas student explaining to me why he wanted
a master's degree: "I want to become a complete human being."
Mencius's dictum that mental labor is superior to manual labor still
holds. The folkloric archetypes of ignorant peasants-the female Kapsuni
and the male Kaptori (the approximate equivalent of Daisy Mae and L'il
Abner in U.S. terms)-nowadays are applied to male and female factory
workers, who are termed "Kongsuni" and "Kongdori." The former first
syllable is now replaced by the syllable "kong" derived from the word for
factory, "kongjang."The shame of being classified a factory girl is such that
many of them spend almost their entire salary on clothes so as to look like
office girls or students when they are not in the factory itself. Though
vocational high schools are designed to train students for manual occupa-
tions-even highly technical ones with excellent employment pros-
pects-parents avoid sending their children to them if they can and have
continuously put pressure on the government to provide more academic
courses at them so that their children might after all make it into college.
Among high-status parents, in fact, failure to get children into good schools
is said to be a frequent cause of emigration to the United States and Canada.49
I have been told personally by several Korean Americans that this was the reason for their
"49
emigration. See also K'aenada t'uja imin hangny6ksujun kwa chaesan sangt'ae (The educational level
and property circumstances of capital-investing emigrants to Canada) (Seoul: Haewoe Kaebal Kong-
sa, 1986).
24 February 1994
Structural characteristics of the Korean family make parental pressure

more intense and effective than it would be in the United States. Unlike
the most familiar family types in the Euro-American world, Korean fami-
lies are corporate."5 This means that Korean families have a designated
head who has specific rights and duties, that they have clearly defined
boundaries so that a person belongs to one and only one corporate family
at any particular time, and that there is succession to family roles. This
latter characteristic means that, on the death of a family head, for ex-
ample, someone-normally the eldest son-succeeds to the headship
so that the family as a single corporate group can continue generation
after generation.
Korean parents expect to be cared for by their children in old age,
and filial piety (hyo)-the obligation to respect and obey parents while
young, care for them in old age, give them a good funeral, and worship
them after death-is the core of Korean ethics. Though modernization
has brought modifications to traditional ethics, the obligation to care for
parents in old age is still written into the civil code and falls especially
heavily on the eldest son, because it is he who is supposed to co-reside
with his parents and continue the family line. Since parents expect to be
economically and socially dependent on their eldest son in their old age,
and since the status not simply of their son but of themselves and of the
whole family line depends on this son's educational success, parents are
disinclined to allow considerations of self-actualization and personal incli-
nation to interfere with children's obligation to get ahead.
The corporate family system is not simply social capital. By making
the generations reciprocally dependent on each other, it assures parents
of payback in their old age and to their grandchildren of whatever invest-
ments they make in their children. Parents are thus more willing to make
heavy economic and other sacrifices to help their children-particularly
their eldest son-succeed than might otherwise be the case because they
themselves reap some of the benefit. Among rural families who often
have to board their children in the city for them to receive high school
education, it is common for a grandmother or older sister or even for a
mother (if sufficient female labor is left in the rural house) to move to town
to cook and clean for the children in school so that they can concentrate
exclusively on their studies. The economic sacrifices parents are willing
to make for their children's education are proverbial. One rural family I
studied in the late 1970s was spending well over 10 percent of its gross
50
Although the details of family systems vary, corporateness is a characteristic commonly found
among peasants around the world, including parts of Europe. For a general discussion of corpo-
rateness in Asian family systems, see Clark W. Sorensen, "Asian Families: Domestic Group Forma-
tion," in Asia's Cultural Mosaic, ed. Grant Evans (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1993), pp. 89-117.
SORENSEN
income on educational fees for public middle and high school for its
children. This proportion must have gone up considerably after the eldest
son began attending college-a proposition several times more expensive
than high school. It is commonly observed in rural villages, in fact, that
high-status families that, in the past, were large landowners have little land
today, since they have gradually sold it off to provide college education for
their children.51
Combined with the corporate organization of the family is what Kore-
ans often call a "clear role division" (ttury6thany6khalpun6p)between males
and females. In contemporary urban families fathers tend to work long
hours and are often absent from the home, but mothers (except in the
poorer classes where both mothers and fathers have to work) most often
remain at home. Mothers' role involves domestic labor, rearing of chil-
dren, and frequently home-based income-earning activity as well, but
family status reproduction is also a central concern.52 Within her areas
of responsibility-which include making sure her children succeed educa-
tionally-the Korean mother has autonomous power that she exercises,
if necessary, through what is known colloquially in Korean as "skirt wind"
(ch'imapparam).In Korean families, where the parenting style tends to be
more authoritarian than in contemporary Japanese families, "skirt wind"
is not motivation of children through guilt, as with the Jewish Mother
stereotype, but a more fearsome thing. One Korean dictionary defines it
as "the force of a woman on the rampage" (s6lch'iniiny6in Ui s6sdl).53
Likened to a glittering knife blade (sip'6r6nk' allal), "skirt wind," when it
is blowing, is difficult for a child (or husband, for that matter) to ignore.
Since they know that their success is not simply for themselves but for
their whole family, and since concepts of ethical performance centering on
setting their parents' minds at rest leave them few options but to obey
their parents, children usually acknowledge their heavy responsibility to
work hard on education.54 This responsibility seldom lies easy on them,
particularly if they are not academically talented. In a collection of essays
51
Many of the largest landowners lost a substantial proportion of their land during the land
reform of 1950-55. Former large landowners with whom I have talked sometimes mention that,
once they lost their predominant place in the village, they could no longer bear the shame of living
there. This has been an additional motivation for them to invest their resources in the education of
children rather than agriculture- something that, in any case, is a low-status activity. It is surprising
how frequently former large landowners have told me that at least one of their children is a college
professor. Although I have had no way of checking whether this is true in each individual case, quite
a few professors I have asked about their background have admitted to coming from a former
landed family.
"52Hanna Papanek, "Family Status Production: The 'Work' and 'Non-Work' of Women," Signs
4, no. 4 (1979): 775-81.
53 Hfi-sing Yi, Essensit kug6 saj6n (The essential dictionary of the national language), rev. ed.
(Seoul: Minjung S6gwan, 1986), p. 1891.
54 See Clark W. Sorensen, "Modernization and Filial Piety in Contemporary Korea," in The World
and I (Washington, D.C.: Washington Times, January 1990), pp. 640-51.
26 February1994
written by middle school students, collected by N. S. Kim and given the

suggestive title We Who Have No Place to Go, a student writes, "They say
Koreans have great zeal for education (kyoyungny6l),but I wish it came
from the spontaneous desire of students."55Much social pathology among
children is attributed to parental pressure over school. A recent survey
reveals that three-quarters of middle and high school students consider
running away from home or committing suicide, primarily because of
parental pressure over lack of success at school.56 Although it is not clear
that the adolescent suicide rate in Korea is higher than in other countries,
accounts of schoolwork-related suicides, even among middle school stu-
dents, make the newspapers often enough that it is a national topic of
discussion. Students consider drastic measures like these because, from
their middle school years on when they begin preparing for high school
and college entrance examinations, they often see no alternative road to
success except through education.
The Parent-Teacher Coalition

An essential element in the complex that motivates Korean students
is the coalition between parent and teacher. This coalition comes about
not because parents and teachers have intensive interaction-they do
not-but rather because they share the same goals and assumptions. As
in other Asian countries, teachers are much more highly respected in
Korea than, say, in the United States. A large proportion at all levels are
male, though, as Korea becomes more developed, female teachers are
becoming more and more common, especially in the elementary grades.
Because teachers' superior education is seen to make them qualified to
mold the character of their students as well as to give them knowledge,
parents are willing to delegate great authority to them. When children
begin elementary school, the teachers put a good deal of time and effort
into, among other things, teaching children the complicated respect lan-
guage (chondaemal),mastery of which is necessary to get on in the world.
Lessons in ethics and proper behavior (tod6k)continue throughout the
school years, for "school is a place where character is formed and correct
values are nurtured."57 At the same time, the teacher's word is law. Rather
than foster discussion, parents, teachers, and students all assume that the
teacher's proper role is to impart truth. It is a rare student that would
question a teacher's authority, whatever his or her private doubts.
In the elementary grades I would characterize the student-teacher
relationship as one of "warm authoritarianism"-demanding respect and
5 Nam-son Kim, ed., Kal kot omnfin uridiil: Uri nifn sih6mbonifnkigyeka anijanayo (We who have
no place to go: We aren't test-taking machines, are we?) (Seoul: Sagyej6l, 1988), p. 21.
56 An et al. (n. 33 above), pp. 54-56.
57 Kim, ed., p. 32.
SORENSEN
compliance from students but at the same time convincing them that they
care about them as human beings and have their best interests at heart.
Such authoritarianism is not punitive, though later on, in middle and
high school, less warm and more punitive forms are common. Almost half
of middle and high school students, for example, report having received
corporal punishment.58
As in other educational systems that depend on exams to sort students,
Korean parents and teachers unite against a common outside impedi-
ment-trying to get students through the examination hoops so that the
students may succeed. "Teaching to tests" is common, but, in addition to
skillfully imparting exam-relevant knowledge, teachers are also expected to
use their authority to push students on. Korean students perceive that their
future will be determined by their teacher's recommendations,59 and this
pressure can be extremely intense for students who are not doing well.
However cruel for those who have little academic potential or interest, how-
ever, the combined parent-teacher pressure keeps children in school (the
dropout rate is very low) and keeps them plugging away at their studies.
Mechanisms for Translating Zeal into Success
It has been argued so far that student, parents, and teachers are keenly
aware that acquiring a high level of education is the surest road to success
in contemporary South Korea. An intensely status-conscious people who
look down on those who do manual labor, Koreans value education as the
most reliable marker of high status. Yet, since there are not enough educa-
tional opportunities in South Korea to satisfy everybody's aspirations, quali-
fying and entrance examinations are used as the fairest means to limit access
to the secondary and tertiary education that alone can provide the status
and careers that most everybody desires. Because the corporate family system
makes status a family, rather than an individual, affair, parents and children
mutually depend on each other in this status quest. However, parents, more
sure of a payback than they would be in a noncorporate family system, are
also willing to make extraordinary commitments to their children, while the
children are made conscious that not only their personal, but their family's,
success is dependent on them. Middle-class mothers have the time, the incli-
nation, and the power to demand that their children succeed in school. And
teachers are given great authority by parents to exhort their children to
greater effort in school.
This proposition focuses not simply on social capital useful for pro-
moting educational success but also more on the mesh of values with real
58 An et al. (n. 33 above), p. 44.

59 Students tell me that "it's impossible to go against your teacher's recommendation," though
they can rarely specify why.
28
February 1994_
SUCCESS IN SOUTH KOREA
social and economic structures that reward educational success and on a

set of social institutions (corporate families, "warm authoritarian" teach-
ers, and schools as sources of lifelong identity) that envelop students and
provide them with an identity in relationship to the group at the same
time that they demand that the students take their responsibility to the
group seriously. What distinguishes South Korean students from those
in other countries is not high-quality instruction measured in terms of
individual attention to students, size of classes, training of teachers, and
so forth but rather students' assiduous attention to their studies that
follows from high motivation reinforced by social pressure to succeed.
The means by which these motivations and pressures are turned into
achievement are primarily hard work, memorization, and repeti-
tion-and, for the most ambitious, participation in extracurricular study
halls, use of private tutors, and attendance at cram schools.
The importance of hard study and extracurricular work can be in-
ferred from the social and educational indicators in the original IAEP
survey.60 It is clear that having educated parents is an advantage,6' but
the average educational level of South Korean parents is not yet high, so
the achievement level of their children cannot be accounted for this way.
South Korean students, more often than students in other countries in
the IAEP assessment, reported having fewer than 25 books at home, and
South Korean students less often had someone within their household
able to help them with their homework. In the 1960s, when the parents
of most middle school students of the 1990s would have attended middle
school, enrollment ratios in South Korea were only about 50 percent for
middle school. In other words, half of the parents of South Korean stu-
dents of the year 1990 would not have reached the educational level at
which their 13-year-old children are studying.
Korea ties with the former Soviet Union for the highest proportion
of students who spend 4 hours or more on mathematics homework each
week. However, although the proportion who reported studying more
than 2 hours per day on all homework in South Korea is high, it is not
among the highest countries on this item. This absence of correlation
between rank in amount of study time and rank in math and science in
South Korea is almost certainly a result of bias introduced by question-
naires insufficiently sensitive to the nuances of Korean academic practice.
The English word "homework" is quite broad, and includes virtually any
60 Data cited in this paragraph come from the IAEP summary table opposite p. 16 in both
Learning Science and Learning Mathematics(n. 4 above).
61 The International Assessment of Educational Progress did not directly survey educational
achievement of parents, but, as a partial measurement, asked students how many books they had at
home. There was a positive correlation between this measurement and student test scores in science
and math for all countries. See Learning Mathematicsand Learning Science (n. 4 above), p. 65, table 4.2.
SORENSEN
kind of preparatory work done at home for any kind of institution. The
nearest Korean term, and the one used to translate "homework" in the
IAEP questionnaires, is sukche, "problems given beforehand at school to
be written and brought in, or answered and brought in."62 This term,
while generally accurate, is much narrower in meaning than "homework,"
since it refers primarily to written assignments that are brought in and
excludes general study (kongbu)and the widespread study practice known
as yonsfip, "scholarly or artistic practice and habituation; making a new
habit through repeating a specific task."'6 "Study" (kongbu), not "home-
work" (sukche),is the task that most Koreans assume students are engaged
in at home.
The answers to IAEP questionnaires may also reflect underreporting
of extracurricular study activity by students who are aware that many
common studying practices in South Korea are technically illegal.64 The
"problem" of excessive study, excessive attendance of extracurricular cram
schools, and excessive use of tutors in South Korea has gradually grown
up through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in response to competitive pres-
sures for educational success in a system where economic growth has
made more and more education financially feasible for more and more
people. The 1968 abolition of entrance exams for middle school was
motivated in part by desires to ameliorate the "entrance examination hell."
This just moved the examination hell up a few years to high school
entrance examinations, however. By the early 1970s social critics were
bemoaning the influence of large amounts of studying on students' physi-
cal development, the emotional anxiety associated with entrance exams,
the distorting effect "teaching to exams" had on the educational system,
the deleterious effects of competition among students, and the "social
disease" of evaluating people on the basis of their school of graduation.
Parents and students responded to examination pressure by putting time
and resources into extracurricular study and tutors. Extracurricular study
fees-on top of regular school tuition and fees-strained family budgets.
Students were paying their regular school teachers extra fees to hold
classes beyond the regular hours, as students and parents failed to trust
the educational system itself, and examination cram schools (sih6mchunbi
hakkwan) proliferated in major cities.65
"62
Yi (n. 53 above), p. 1176.
63 Ibid., p. 1359.
64This was true through 1990, the time of the IAEP tests. The South Korean government has
recently announced measures to loosen regulations on extracurricular instruction. See "Hagw6n
kwaoe ch6nmy6n h6yong" (General permission for private academy extra-curricular instruction)
ChosOnllbo ( June 6, 1993), p. 1.
65 Republic of Korea, Ministry of Education, "Kodfing hakkyo mit taehak ii ipsi chedo kaes6n
pangan" (Plan to improve the high school and college entrance system) (1973), quoted in Son (n. 3
above), p. 748.
30
February 1994
The 1973 reform of the high school and college entrance examination
systems, in which high school entrance went to a lottery system similar
to middle school entrance (though entrance exams were not abolished),
was an attempt to deal with these problems. Although the new system-by
making it difficult for ambitious parents to concentrate high-ability chil-
dren into elite schools and by making serious efforts to equalize school
facilities and teaching staff-did make education somewhat more equal,
the reforms did little to ameliorate problems of extracurricular study and
fees and of examination cram schools. In 1980, 61 percent of the 3,288
students admitted to Seoul National University-the acme of the educa-
tional pyramid-had received extracurricular tutoring, and 14 percent
had suffered from nervous illness, character blocks, or nervous break-
downs.66 In the same year, a study by the Ministry of Education found
that tutoring fees nationally had reached the astounding annual amount
of 327 billion won (approximately $400 million), a sum equivalent to 30
percent of the education budget or 6 percent of the national budget.67
In Seoul's middle-class areas south of the Han River where pressure for
educational success is higher than for any other part of the country,
fully half of the middle and high school students surveyed in 1992 took
extracurricular or cram-school classes (particularly if they were doing
poorly), and parents spent an average of 280,000 won ($364) per month
on these lessons.68 The reasons for the extraordinary reliance of Korean
students on out-of-school study and tutoring, as analyzed by the Ministry
of Education, were many of the same socioeconomic variables given above
as motivating factors for Korean students: limitations in opportunities for
high school education, contradictions in the university entrance system,
lack of job opportunities, and the great differences in salary based on
education. It is significant, however, that the Ministry of Education also
cited weaknesses in school education itself, lack of sufficient government
investment in education, and parental lack of confidence in the educa-
tional system.
The Ministry of Education responded to this "vote of no-confidence"
in the educational system with its "Measures to Normalize Education and
Eliminate Extra-Curricular Study," announced in 1980.69 Included among
these measures were changes in the university entrance system-in-
cluding increasing admission quotas, relying more on in-university rather
66Son (n. 3 above), p. 756.

67 P'alsip y6ndaefiiHan'guk kyoyukkaehy6k(Korean educational reforms for the eighties) (Seoul:
Ministry of Education, 1983), pp. 30-31, quoted in Son, p. 756.
68 In rural areas, on the other hand, only 16 percent received out-of-school lessons. An et al.
(n. 33 above), pp. 45-46.
69 "Kyoyuk ch6ngsanghwa mit kway61lkwaoe haeso pangan," in Korean Educational
Reformsfor
the Eighties, pp. 30-31.
SORENSEN
than national entrance exams, modifying certain screening devices, and

reducing the difficulty of the University Entrance Preparatory Exam. The
heart of the 1980 reforms, however, comprised prohibitions on extracur-
ricular tutoring. Before 1980 extracurricular study took three basic forms:
(1) paying one's regular school teacher to hold after-hours classes, (2)
attending a separate cram school in the evening taught by well-educated
persons (some of whom were regular teachers), and (3) hiring a private
tutor. The most common and available tutors are students at the major
universities, who have proved their mettle by making it through the en-
trance process. Such tutoring by university students can be extremely
lucrative-enough to earn one's way through school if necessary-and
is known in Korea, as in Japan, by the German term for "work," Arbeit
(aruibait'i). The 1980 reforms forbade elementary, middle, and high
school teachers from doing extracurricular tutoring. It forbade university
students from doing Arbeitfor nonrelatives, and it made private academies
return fees after August 1, 1980, to those students who were currently
enrolled in school.
Both students and parents, hoping to be relieved from "examination
hell," reacted positively to these reforms.70 Pressures to get ahead through
education are such, however, that the government could not make the
reforms stick. It was impossible to police Arbeitwhen such arrangements
are made, as they always are, privately between a family and a university
student. As competition for admission to prestigious universities and good
high schools continues, moreover, schools cannot but respond to parents'
and students' anxiety about entrance examinations. Schools gradually
have set up programs of extracurricular "autonomous study" (chayul
haksip) and "supplementary classes" (poch'ungsu6p). "Autonomous study"
is optional study done in schools under the supervision of teachers but
without explicit lessons. It is normally done 1 hour before the regular
school day and sometimes after school as well, until nine o'clock or ten
o'clock at night. Many schools offer an additional hour of "supplementary
classes" (poch'ung su6p) for students who are not doing well. Although
teachers cannot directly receive fees for supervising "autonomous study,"
they can get extra fees for "supplementary classes." In addition to these
more or less public subterfuges, many other kinds of extracurricular
(kwawoe)and irregular (py6nch'ik)study are found. As In-su Son has writ-
ten, "Since competition between high schools begets more competition,
despite the fact that the authorities consider it illegal, irregular classes
(py6nch'ikj6ksubp) spread throughout the private schools, and infected
70Son (n. 3
above), p. 757.
32 February 1994
with irregular studies the public schools famous in former days that could
not stand to sit quietly by."71
Conclusions
The IAEP found that South Korean 9-year-olds and 13-year-olds did,
on average, better than any other country's students on tests of math and
science and that there was relatively little variation around the mean in
students' scores. South Korean children work harder and spend more time
on their studies than perhaps any other people in the world. Although
the amount of time South Korean students spend in school is at the high
end of the spectrum, even more important is the amount of time they
spend on academic work-not just homework, but also in practice and
extracurricular study-outside of the formal school curriculum. All of this
out-of-class work is not reflected in the IAEP reports, which are based
on simple questionnaires translated from English, because South Korean
students may do study and review that is not categorized as homework
at home and at school. They may also work with tutors at home. They
may attend "self-regulated study" and "supplementary study" sessions at
their school, both before and after the regular school day. They may
also attend separately established cram schools-particularly if they are
behind in their achievement. A simple question of how much "homework"
they do will not reveal all of this academic study. Although many of the
more striking practices are most characteristic of middle and high school
students, and particularly those in middle-class areas of big cities, pres-
sures to succeed in entrance examinations color the whole system and
have repercussions even in the elementary grades where examination
pressure is muted.
It would be rash to conclude that South Korean schools-despite high
class sizes and moderate levels of education for teachers-are doing by
themselvesa better job than the schools of other countries. There is no
doubt that teachers "teach to tests." South Korean students spend an
inordinate amount of time memorizing textbook material. But they also
practice problems by other than rote means, and they work hard to over-
come inadequacies in their schooling. This is encouraged by their parents.
One common Korean attitude was related to me by a Korean-American.
"I tell my children, sure, private schools [in the American context] are
good and all that, but the important thing is to study. I say to them that
if you learn even 75 percent of what the teacher tells you, no matter what
the quality of the school, you are going to be all right."
Ibid., p. 758.
"71
SORENSEN
Despite government tinkering with the high school and university

admission systems to mitigate the effects of competition, upward mobility
through schooling dominates the lives of South Korean parents and chil-
dren from middle school (seventh grade) on.72 Poor parents resent the
advantages of tutoring and other extracurricular help affluent parents
are able to provide their children. Affluent parents resent the economic
burden of tutoring and extracurricular lessons they feel they must provide
for their children but see no alternative-since they will have to depend on
their children in their old age-in South Korea's increasingly competitive
society, where education is virtually the only gateway to success and high
status. Children hate the "examination hell" they find themselves in, but
their parents leave them no alternative. To succeed, to discharge their
moral obligations to their parents, they must succeed educationally. They
try to meet their parents' expectations by studying hard and by using all
available resources, both inside and outside the formal school system, to
reach the all-important goal. Though many succeed, the cost in terms of
emotional turmoil, loss of self-esteem, and delinquent behavior for the
academically untalented is also high.
This article began with a criticism of the idea that Confucianism is
responsible for East Asian educational success. We have seen that children
are motivated to work for educational success in South Korea by prospects
for concrete success in the workaday world that have little to do with
Confucian ideology or with traditional Confucian notions of humanistic
education for moral behavior. The transformation of South Korean soci-
ety through modernization and industralization has been much too radical
for attitudes toward education to be mere continuations of "traditional"
attitudes that, in any case, would have been unlikely to foster achievement
in math and science. Nevertheless, there are two senses in which Confu-
cianism does remain relevant for understanding the modern Korean edu-
cational system. The most obvious sense is in the family structure. Corpo-
rate family organization with a strong family head, a clear division of
labor, and succession in the male line, combined with an ethic of filial
piety, gives rise to effective parental pressure to succeed educationally
and is an important element in motivating children to succeed-for the
sake of their family if not for themselves. This family structure,73 though
neither simply traditional nor a mechanical application of Confucian prin-
"72New plans to give universities more discretion in their admissions process were announced
by the Ministry of Education in June 1993. See "Taehak ipsich6ngw6n tan'gyej6k chayulhwa" (Step-
by-step move to self-regulation of university admissions and quotas), Chos6nIlbo ( June 10, 1992),
p. 1.
73This family structure is outlined in the revised civil code of 1960 (which has subsequently
also been revised). Some principles of present-day South Korean family organization go back 400
or 500 years, but others are innovations of the twentieth century that are explicitly designed to
promote "modernization."
34 February 1994.
ciples of family organization,74 has developed as a creative application of

Confucian principles to contemporary Korean conditions and is one area
where "Confucianism" lives in contemporary Korean society.
A second sense in which Confucianism is important for contemporary
South Korea is in the status structure. Regardless of whether Confucian-
ism inherently fosters a basically equalitarian or hierarchical view of hu-
man relations, as understood by most Koreans, it idealizes a hierarchical
society in which domination is legitimated by an education that is con-
ceived as morally transformative. This understanding of education as a
force that produces "princely men" (kunja) suitable to govern the "small
men" (soin) caught in their immediate material desires has been trans-
formed in the modern situation to a more general attitude-that only
education legitimizes high social status. It would be hard to justify the
salary differential between the educated and uneducated in contemporary
South Korean society solely on the basis of productivity or instrumental
need. What makes the salary and status differentials between the educated
and uneducated work in contemporary South Korean society is the legiti-
macy conferred by education itself. That is, so long as there are distinc-
tions between high status and low status, rich and poor, South Koreans feel
most comfortable justifying those differences on the basis of educational
attainment. The application of this justification is perhaps the most im-
portant legacy of Confucian culture for Korean education.
74 Consider that China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam-though all have "Confucian" family sys-
tems-vary greatly in their family structure. For more elaboration, see Sorensen (n. 50 above).

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Success and Education in South Korea

Author(s): Clark W. Sorensen

ComparativeEducation Review, vol. 38, no. 1.

with the establishment of vocational schools associated with the "move-

Comparative Education Review 11

practical activity necessary for entrepreneurship and investment. Even

short on knowledge and experience in running modern school systems.

12James S. Coleman, Foundationsof Social Theory(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

meaningless without taking into account historically conditioned notions

The Development of Modern Education in Korea

By the late nineteenth century, Korea, which had been closed to

educational system, business, and industry. By 1942, the colonial bureauc-

18Won-mo Dong, "Assimilation and Social Moblization in Korea," in KoreaunderJapaneseColonial

Comparative Education Review 15

Illiteracy was still widespread in Korea-the overall illiteracy rate in 1945

secondary education available were the most qualified. In an effort to

Son (n. 3 above), p. 740.

Comparative Education Review 17

schools) on the basis of school marks (s6ngj6k)and an admission exam.

Education and Equality

Comparative Education Review 19

modern society on the ashes of colonialism has required Koreans to jetti-

sures and to make the school-area/lottery system more acceptable to the

The Korean Zeal for Education

Koreans see "education fever" (kyoyungny6l)as a traditional character-

Comparative Education Review 21

developed countries of the world.40The fact that middle school education

40 Enrollment figures for 1990 were as follows: 100 percent in

incomeof high schoolgraduatesand threetimesthe incomeof primary

Given the fact that educational qualifications virtually determine one's

46 Son (n. 3 above), p. 755; Amsden, p. 230.

Comparative Education Review 23

amount of education is a determinant of status independent of its contri-

Structural characteristics of the Korean family make parental pressure

Comparative Education Review 25

written by middle school students, collected by N. S. Kim and given the

The Parent-Teacher Coalition

Comparative Education Review 27

58 An et al. (n. 33 above), p. 44.

social and economic structures that reward educational success and on a

Comparative Education Review 29

66Son (n. 3 above), p. 756.

Comparative Education Review 31

than national entrance exams, modifying certain screening devices, and

Comparative Education Review 33

Despite government tinkering with the high school and university

ciples of family organization,74 has developed as a creative application of

Comparative Education Review 35

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