The Korean Paradox

The popular TVXB\\DBSK\\Tohoshinki music group is reputed to have the world’s largest fan base.

The more important phenomenon of the “Miracle on the Han River” and Korea’s related remarkable educational successes are much less well known. When I first visited Korea in 1969 it was an extremely poor country, still recovering from a devastating tragic war. Within a period of about 35 years it transformed itself into one of the world’s wealthiest countries dominating in a number of key technological sectors.

In the most recent international tests of student achievement, Korean students showed outstanding performance ranking first in the world in both reading literacy and mathematics and third in |science in the 2009 PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) tests. Korea was second by one point in the mathematics and fourth in science in the 2007 TIMMS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science) tests.

How has Korea become such a top performing country in education? 

First, Korea’s top students are going into teaching, which for most countries such as the USA and Thailand is not the case. Not only do Korean teachers have good salaries and benefits, but teachers are highly respected and, for example, considered highly desirable as marriage partners. Second, with the lowest fertility rate, 1.13, among OECD countries, families can concentrate all their resources on normally educating just a single child. Also even more importantly nothing is valued more than education in Korea. Third, Korea has the world’s largest “shadow education” system in which students spend extensive time in special after-school tutoring or in coaching schools.

 An impressive aspect of Korea is its transformation into a dynamic knowledge economy. The nation has a major Brain 21 Project to produce high quality engineering and scientific talent to foster Korean technological innovation. Korea is the only society where I have seen book-vending machines, reflective of its reading culture.

Also contributing to Korean educational success, as is to be expected in a highly Confucian society, is a high level of motivation among its students and workers. In my many decades of teaching I have found Korean students to be among the most motivated and dedicated.

Despite such success and the outstanding performance of Korean students on international tests, Korean parents indicate considerable dissatisfaction with the Korean educational system. This is what I term “the Korean paradox.” The current narrow highly academic test-centric system places tremendous stress on children with relatively high rates of suicide among Korean youngsters.

Some parents are selecting as an alternative to send their children to the US or other Western countries to experience a more well-rounded and less stressful education.

What lessons might Thailand learn from the Miracle on the Han River and Korea’s impressive international educational performance? First, it is critically important to improve the status of teachers to attract the best people to this field. Second, the role of motivation needs to be stressed. Third, Thailand needs to have a better balance between the humanities, social sciences and engineering, scientific fields to foster stronger Thai R & D.

Despite these positive lessons, Thailand, which already has a large shadow education system (rongrian guet wicha), must carefully |monitor this system to avoid the type of excessive situation that now exists in Korea. In terms of the human happiness scale (what could me more important?), Thai students are in general probably much happier than their Korean counterparts.

The ideal situation is perhaps a Buddhist |middle path between the overly stressful but |successful Korean system and the current Thai system with far too many students not realising their intellectual and creative potential.

 

GERALD W FRY 

International Professor 

Department of Organisational Leadership, 

Policy, and Development 

College of Education and Human Development University of Minnesota

[email protected]