Meet Donghwan Park: Months Away from the College Entrance Exam

Donghwan Park next to his book shelf
full of test preparation manuals

Donghwan Park wasn't always a stellar student with a voracious appetite for learning. In middle school, he says, he was just a regular kid. "I played many computer games," he admits. "I watched many animations."

Like many kids, he attended cram schools at night, but he never paid much attention. "I was like a pendulum on a clock. I was learning by inertia," he said.

It wasn't until he reached high school that he had an epiphany.  "I realized I had to change."  He cut his Starcraft CD in half and went on a study abroad program in America, where he was one of a handful of non-white students at a public high school in rural Indiana.

"I lived without video games for 10 months," he said. "It's really a hard habit to break. Sometimes your hands feel shaky."

He came back an English speaker with new confidence and new focus. He started his first year of high school staring straight ahead at a goal of getting into the best college possible. "Three years of high school determine the next 80 years of your life," he said.

Two years later, he has made great strides. He starts the school day at 7:30 in the morning. After his last class at 4 p.m., he stays at school or goes to the public library near his house to study until 10 p.m. or midnight.  Some nights, he goes to another late night study center, that's operated privately, to put in a few more hours. He has memorized whole books of English vocabulary words. Twice a week, he meets with a math tutor.

In S. Korea, it's hard to turn on the steam in the middle of the academic race. It's so competitive to get into top colleges that the best candidates typically have been the top achievers, the hardest workers, all along.

A particularly unforgiving aspect of the system is the way students are graded -- by rank rather than by score.  "In the United States, if I did my best, I could get an A-plus," he said. "Here I have to beat all my friends."

Reaching for the SKY: Competition for Korea's Top Universities

South Korea has more than 400 institutions of higher learning, up from just 19 at the close of World War II. But only three stand out in the aspirations of many young Korean students. The country's top schools are collectively known as SKY-- Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University.

Korea University

A degree from one of these schools is a life-long badge of honor, and prized jobs at Samsung or government agencies often overwhelmingly go to graduates of these top schools.

Seoul National is considered the best, by rankings and reputation, and Korea University and Yonsei University are second and third depending on whom you ask. (Yonsei enthusiasts will often tell you that the acronym is actually SYK).

Many children in Korea pin their hopes on attending these schools.

I visited an English class at Sindong Middle School in an affluent neighborhood in southern Seoul, during which the students stood up one at a time to give a short speech about where their lives would be 20 years from now. Their speeches went something like this:

First student: I was born in Seoul in 1995. I graduated from Sindong Middle School in 2011 and entered Seoul National University in 2014.

Study Abroad by the Numbers

More than 72,000 South Korean students were enrolled in American universities and colleges in 2009-2010, down from about 75,000 the year before, according to the latest numbers from the Washington DC-based Institute of International Education.  Only the giants of India and China sent more students American schools of higher education.

The number of Korean college students going overseas has grown dramatically over the past 20 years, from 24,000 in 1985 to 218,000 in 2007, according to government data. The largest share went to the United States, with China a close second.  Japan, England, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are also popular.

The high rate of study abroad is evident in almost any government office, university, or corporation here in Seoul, where you can almost count on finding an English answer to your question.

More and more frequently, students are studying abroad at younger ages for short-term intensive language programs.  Korea's Ministry of Education, Science and Technology reports that the number of primary or secondary students studying abroad to learn English grew from about 1,500 in 1998 to more than 27,000 in 2008.

College Entrance Exam: Hope it "sticks"

The approaching annual college entrance exam is inspiring a wave of consumerism in Korea.  Bakeries and department stores throughout Seoul are full of sweets and gifts for the nervous test takers.  The test is a major rite of passage in Korea and often viewed as a key gatekeeper for competitive colleges and jobs that are deemed crucial to attaining high status or a good pay check.

A Korean friend told me it's traditional to give "yeot" or taffy as a gift, because the sticky sweet is supposed to be good luck. My Korean teacher explained that's because the word for "to stick" and "to pass" is the same.

If at First You Don't Succeed, Study Study Again

Tens of thousands of Korean high school graduates delay college each year so they can retake the college entrance exam hoping that a better score will carry them to their choice schools.

I met a few such students recently in my own neighborhood in Seoul. I noticed four teenaged boys walking out of a large cram school at lunch time, and I asked them why they were there in the middle of the day, and not in high school. They explained the private academy is specially designed for “study-again students” or jae-soo sang, like them.  They "failed" the first time they took the test last fall, they said, because their scores weren't high enough for top colleges.  

From left: Hoon Lim-Tae, Ji Yong-Chang,
Sun Tae-Mu, Oh Dong-Kwoang

So for the past 10 months they have been engaged in around-the-clock test preparation hoping to gain 30 or 40 points on a 500-point exam. Along with more than 800 other students, they report to the seven-story building every day at 7 a.m. and stay there until 10 p.m., including Saturday. On Sunday, they study from 10 a.m. to 5:40 p.m. 

“Our week is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday, Friday," said Ji Yong-Chang,  laughing about his weekend-free year. 

Rules are strict: no dating, no drinking, no noise during self-study time. The goal is maximum focus. The school has a reputation for being “very severe,” Ji said.  That's why his family sought it out from his home town in Taean, southwest of Seoul. He lives in a dormitory down the street.