Page 50 - IJPS-11-4

International Journal of
Population Studies Education fever in South Korea

truths without question. The primary outcome of initiation or “manager moms,” behind a successful graduate (Chung,
is instilling in the student the knowledge and values that 2016; Jang, 2021). The process of steering and sponsoring
society holds to be critical for the student’s successful their children’s initiation, in a chaotic “busy mother”
integration and participation in society. liminal phase, leads them to anticipate achieving social
prestige, at least as assessed by self.
The primary stakeholders in the students’ initiation
process are private tutoring academies and the students’ Korean mothers’ enthusiasm for their children’s
mothers. The academies act as agents for the students, education and early-career success is notoriously zealous,
or rather for the students’ paying mothers, ensuring the often referred to as chimatbaram (치맛바람), or the
successful initiation of their clients following an intensive swishing of a skirt (of a young obsessive woman). This
cramming ritual. They have been found to be proficient at term reflects mothers’ social engagement and
raising the students’ standardized scores in math, English, overprotection, which is not dictated by outside pressures
and other core subjects (Park et al., 2011). but is undertaken in any case as it is deemed helpful for
establishing the mother’s position in the family and
Besides its costliness in terms of tuition, supplies, community. This engagement ranges from volunteering to
and transportation, private tutoring also affects students’ clean the children’s classrooms, preparing lunch boxes for
outcomes. The academies rig the social initiation teachers on school field trips, to calling employers where
contract, corrupting the traditional Confucian rite of their grown-up children are applying to request
passage, by offering an alternative, more dependable, information about recruitment criteria and their children’s
and straightforward path to successful matriculation. prospects. The engagement aims to complement teachers’
Matriculation is degraded into a market commodity. efforts, attract attention to specific children, or help secure
Instead of facilitating a broad discovery of the external priority consideration for their children in upcoming
and the self for students’ wholesome initiation, private opportunities or competitions.
academies focus on preparing students for the standardized
tests of interest. The academies identify the subject areas Mothers engage in an undeclared but fierce competition
for discovery, conduct the instruction, and practice among themselves over who is more in their children’s
testing – all without the student’s input or creative effort. affairs, and who is more caring, active, or generous. This
Opportunities for well-rounded discovery are thus lost. shows itself in ostentatious ways, such as through the brand
names of clothes and bags that they or their children carry to
2.3. Assigning responsibility for children’s shadow school. To ensure that their children do not fall out of favor
education with their teachers (in the mothers’ perception), mothers
Children’s education in South Korea falls largely within continue to participate in time-consuming and unproductive
the sphere of influence of their mothers. Mothers serve activities, sacrificing their opportunities to work formally or
as the children’s caretakers, financiers of their capacity to develop their own capabilities. When mothers cannot
to be initiated, architects and arbiters of the modalities participate actively in their children’s affairs at school,
in the initiation process, and residual claimants on the perhaps due to financial difficulties, they experience a
outcome of initiation. The involvement of mothers may sense of guilt and self-blame over their perceived failure to
not radically affect the demanding nature of the children’s adequately provide for their children (Lee, 2014).
initiation regime – since this is dictated by social pressures These sentiments are widespread and are reflected even
– but it affects the type of knowledge children gain and the in aggregate national statistics. The full-time equivalent
meaning of the exercise and its outcome. employment rate for women aged 15 – 64 is 53.4% as of

Mothers hold the keys to their children’s initiation by 2021, near the bottom of the Organization for Economic
channeling physical resources, values, and sound-bite Co-operation and Development (OECD) rankings, and
information to them (Göransson et al., 2022). They are Korea’s lowest score in a near-monotonic decline since
also stakeholders in the chosen course and outcome of the beginning of the 1990s (OECD, 2023). This is not an
their children’s initiation, in terms of self-perceived social unskilled labor phenomenon. South Korea is the single
status and self-worth. The initiation process involving their worst performer among the OECD countries in terms of
avatars (children) has a transformational effect on them. the educated-female employment rate, and the third worst
A parallel, interconnected initiation process can thus be performer in terms of female employment in managerial
characterized for the mothers themselves, whereby they are positions (ILO, 2022). Career interruptions due to
initiated into the prevailing social and cultural fabric. They childcare are partly to blame.
are on a transformational path from being unaccomplished Even if mothers experience domestic violence or abuse
stay-at-home moms to becoming the entrepreneurial brains, from their husbands, their children’s welfare and lifetime

Volume 11 Issue 4 (2025) 44 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.2955