Page 54 - IJPS-11-4

International Journal of
Population Studies Education fever in South Korea

Figure 1. Indicators of the burden of shadow education on students and parents, 2000 – 2021. Note: Data from Statistics Korea (various years). Monetary
values are in nominal terms

that only adults deem valuable. The students’ opinions, comprehensive, multipronged reforms addressing the root
individuality, and diversity are trampled on, and they are causes and the positions of all actors are necessary.
molded to fit standardized social norms and knowledge. Transitioning to a state in which Korean children
We assert that the pervasiveness and endurance of are acknowledged as independent human beings and
the practice amounts to a violation of Article 6.2 of the empowered to use and develop their creativity and critical
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which South Korea thought will require serious societal and policy actions
has ratified. This article states that “States Parties shall (Kitamura et al., 2022). These actions include reforms
ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and of the public and private educational sectors, and public
development of the child” (UNICEF, 1989). Just as with campaigns targeting social norms, family roles, and
child labor, children’s sexual exploitation, trafficking, community and individual-level responses. Mapping
organ harvesting, child witchcraft, or the recruitment of out children’s own recourses is essential. Systemically
child soldiers in other contexts (Bales, 2004), the mental and rigorously addressing children’s anxieties and other
violence inflicted on Korean children stems from a deeply physical and mental side effects of accumulated stress is
rooted, complex social rite that deserves scrutiny by social warranted. Facilitating a stress-free, smooth, and level
scientists, including sociologists and anthropologists, school-to-work transition for youths and tackling the
and a response by policymakers. This is despite the fact exclusion of mothers from the formal labor market would
that children’s shadow schooling occurs subtly, in broad go far in mitigating some of the root causes.
daylight, in modern and safe classroom settings. In fact, the government embarked on educational
4.1. Policy responses reforms in the mid-2000s (Kim & Chang, 2010; Kim,
2016), cracking down on the special business rights of
For 10 years of their life, Korean students partake in a grueling private academies, reducing their legal operating hours,
regime, acting as blind studying machines, suspending updating the curriculum in public schools, and reforming
their aspirations, demands, and dreams of a free future. the university, corporate, and public-service admission
During this period, their independence, capacity for critical processes. Regulation of private tutoring has since wavered
and creative thought, and ability to protect themselves according to the focus and resolve of the administration
from external assaults become inhibited. This regime is in power, amid various political distractions. Families’
also grueling for the students’ mothers and teachers, who demand for tutoring has also proved to be inelastic, and
participate in the process due to peer and career pressures, families have responded to regulation by simply switching
respectively. To break the vicious, self-reinforcing cycle, from one type of tutoring to another (Choi & Choi, 2016).

Volume 11 Issue 4 (2025) 48 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.2955