Children Dying Inside: A Critical Analysis of Education in South Korea

This book analyzes education in South Korea. It presents a brief history of Korea and East Asian education. It also explores the dynamic relationship between the public and private spheres of education in South Korea. A case study of Korean English Preparatory Academy (KEPA) is used to examine the financial, social, and psychological costs of education in South Korea, as well as analyze one particular private academy that is profiting off of "education fever," which is a phrase that labels Korean's obsession with education and social status. Education is big business in South Korea, but whose interest does education serve: society, individuals, or private corporations? Ultimately, I conclude that education in South Korea is driven by a cultural preoccupation with social status and class, as well as by free-market capitalists seeking profit, and only marginally with the private economic returns of a post-secondary degree, let alone the holistic development of the individual. Education in South Korea is not about skill based learning nor is it about individual student development, and to that extent, I examine in the conclusion whether the Korean system of education is just, and whether it should be a model for the rest of the world to follow.