April 8, 2025
SEOUL – South Korea is a country well known for cutthroat children’s competitions and surprisingly early education. Indeed, many Korean parents send their children to a private English academy when they are as young as 4. When the child turns 5 or 6, the parents want him or her to enter an advanced-level private English academy that requires an entrance exam. Young Korean kids are therefore obliged to take the notoriously difficult exam for private education.
The difficulty of the entrance exam for 5 or 6-year-old children to enter a prime English academy is said to be at the 10th grade level, and some of the questions are as difficult as the Suneung, demanding analogical and logical thinking. If so, the exam certainly does not fit 5 or 6-year-old children. Some experts point out that a child at that age needs healthy emotional development, social interactions and creative thinking, rather than inference or logical reasoning.
Recently, a professor of child psychiatry warned that such a forced early education would not only hamper children’s normal brain development but also make young children suffer from anxiety and depression. Those children may develop an aggressive temper, emotional disorder or even schizophrenia. According to the professor, Korean parents’ early education fever may cause children psychological trauma and eventually end up sending a significant number of them to child psychiatry clinics later. It means that early childhood education may unwittingly turn into child abuse if pushed to the extreme or if it goes wrong.
Presently, watching the daily factional feud of our politicians, we worry about the future of our country. Although they do not belong to the early education trend generation, our politicians do not seem capable of tolerating different opinions, different ideologies or different people. They look extremely aggressive and antagonistic toward others.
What, then, will happen when our younger generation with psychological issues due to the notorious early education fashion enters the political arena later? Since they are a product of intense competition, emotional disorder and brain abuse, the situation might be far worse than now. Then, the future of our country will undoubtedly be grim.
Still, however, the early education zeal is fashionable and prevalent in South Korea despite the astronomical tuition and fees. A YouTuber recently reported that approximately 1,200 children took the entrance exam to be admitted to an English academy in Daechi-dong, Seoul. The average monthly tuition for English academies is reportedly about 3 million won ($2,000), which is far more expensive than college tuition. In South Korea, therefore, parents must spend enormous amounts of money on their children’s private education.
To make matters worse, the massive costs of private education entail serious side effects. For example, the unbearable expenses for children’s early education have contributed to the low birth rate in South Korea. Indeed, in addition to the skyrocketing real estate prices, the high costs of private education have discouraged young Korean couples from having a baby. The lack of hope for a dream house and private education for children results in no children.
If early education fever aims at nurturing global citizens who can command English fluently, then it is understandable and even laudable. Disappointingly, however, the purpose is merely to make one’s child enter a prime university later. Some Korean parents think that if they do not jump into the competition beginning as early as 4 years old, they will lose the opportunity to make their child a prime university student later.
However, some statistics show that only 10 percent of children who succeed in entering competitive English academies are admitted to prime universities later. Experts say that those 10 percent can enter first-rate universities anyway, even without attending English academies. If that is true, Korean parents are unnecessarily spending astronomical amounts of money for their child’s early education.
Meanwhile, our public education has failed to provide students with an environment of creative thinking, group work or social interactions. Instead, it has only focused on teaching students how to get high scores on Suneung to enter prestigious universities.
Of course, some parents in other countries also send their children to private schools if they exhibit outstanding performance or talents in preschool or kindergarten. In the US, for example, rich parents send their children to private elementary, middle or high schools, expecting their children to later enter Ivy League universities relatively easily. But it is neither a national frenzy nor does it affect the whole nation.
In Korea, however, the private early education competition spree affects the whole country. The reason for the frenzy is no secret. Ultimately, everyone knows that graduates from prime universities occupy nearly all the important positions in society. That is why all parents want to send their child to a renowned private school for early preparation.
Meanwhile, our children are hopelessly deprived of a healthy, normal childhood. We need to worry about their future — and ours, too.
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.