The (Crazy) School System in Korea

Korean students are expected to choose their major right before entering high school. You think there’s too much pressure in America with all the “What are you majoring in?” questions? Well, in Korea, you need to decide by the time you’re finished with middle school.

            Why do Korean students have to choose so early? Well because high schools are divided into two main departments: natural sciences (이과) and liberal arts (문과). So even if you are not clear on which major you’ll choose by high school, you should at least know which side you’re better in. I would say that it’s easy to tell by the time you graduate middle school.

          What else is different about schools in Korea and schools in America? For one, instead of the students moving from class to class, the teachers do. But there is still passing time – I guess it’s “passing time” for the teachers who are moving – and this is actually called break time and it’s 10 minutes. The students can go to the restroom, chat with their friends, and rest their minds after studying. Now in America, the students move from class to class, hence we need that passing time and at least for my school, we only get 5 minutes. Not that it’s not enough time, but 10 minutes would be better. I mean 5 minutes to shuffle to your next class is hardly break time, your brain can’t settle down during that short amount of time.

          Another difference is that in Korean high schools, there is work make-up time (보충시간). It may vary from school to school, but at least for the school of my friend in Korea, students are to be at the school by 8 AM and from that time until 8:30 is the make-up time. 8:30 is when classes actually start. However, students are still to be there at 8 o’clock sharp, otherwise, it’s a tardy. I think this make-up time is a great idea and it would be nice to have American schools to have this because in middle school and high school, lots of students have make-up work to do and it’s stressful to only have before and after school as your options. But the one thing that I find weird is that all students are required to come at 8, even when they don’t have any make-up work to do and all the students do is talk with their friends.

          Of course, the key difference between Korean schools and American schools is that the students are required for independent study time at night (야간자습 – ya gahn ja seup or 야자 ya ja for short). It’s just as it sounds, students stay at school until 9~11 o’clock PM (depending on which school you go to) and during that “ya ja” time, you study on your own. I thought it was only the high schools that do ya ja but I recently heard from another Korean that she did ya ja in middle school! The thing about ya ja that I can’t nit pick about is that even without this ya ja time, students will still stay up late on their own to study anyway. This is not because of the stereotype that Asians are smart but because of the high competitions, expectations, and pressure in South Korea. So I can’t criticize anyone for the fact that Korean schools serve ya ja but I can rant about the insanity of it all. The majority of the Korean students do not end with ya ja, but go on to another academy. So by the time they’re released from ya ja, usually around 10 PM, they go straight to an academy and so they get home around midnight or later. Then they have to wake up early the next day for school again.

          But on the plus side, Korean students do not get a lot of homework. We American students get to have the fun of that. I guess it’s fair though, since they get homework during break. Oh man, I remember growing up and it would be summer vacation and the fellow Korean ah-jummas (아줌마s – old ladies) would tell me how they always had homework during break when they were in school. Still, overall, they get way less homework than us. But it evens out again because Korean students’ freedom is taken away by ya ja and we American students have our freedom taken away by homework, yay! Like I always tell my friend in Korea, if Korea has ya ja, America has homework.

          We American students have our own heavy load of stress, but it’s a difficult academic road for the Koreans for sure. It’s necessary that Korea pushes their students academically for the purpose of establishing great future leaders of the country, but every time I think of their school life, I am ever so grateful for living in America (for the most part).

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