The Korean Hagwon System

I don’t usually like to write about my own experiences here, but I often get asked about my time teaching English in Korea. Teaching abroad is becoming a more and more popular job option for people in South Africa because of all of the benefits that it offers.  It is always quite conflicting for me to talk or write about this, because the hagwon system was so profitable to me, both financially and personally, however it is also quite a stressful system for the directors and the children that attend these.  I grew so much in myself and met amazing people in my two years in South Korea.  It was an incredible opportunity for me and I really lucked out with my school, my boss and my students, but my heart also broke for the young students who endlessly devote their lives to education.  I’ve written a bit about the experience, and my friend Youn Seo has also written about her side of attending hagwons and what the Korean education system is like.

To put this into context, “hagwons” are private schools, also known as academies.  Students in Korea go to their normal public school (which is paid for by the government) until about 15:30-17:00 depending on their age, and then go to private academies afterwards for extra lessons for a few hours.  I taught students until 23:00 and my director taught until 01:00 at times if the students were preparing for exams.  The reason for this? To learn English and to have a competitive advantage over others.  There is huge pressure for students to get into the best universities, so from a young age children attend academies to have an advantage over others and to get ahead of their work at the public schools.  This has now lead to most of the scholar population attending hagwons while those who can’t afford them fall behind at public school.  

To put it into perspective, South Korea is the size of Kwa-Zulu Natal, however has the same population as South Africa; so their whole population fits into the size of one of our provinces.  My kids used to laugh at me when I said Korea was small and always talked about ‘tiny, tiny Korea’ and ‘HUGE South Africa’.  Due to this overpopulation there is enormous pressure to excel and to get into the top three universities, termed SKY: Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University.  The whole schooling system is geared towards the university entrance exam called the SuNeung.  Children as young as elementary school feel the pressure of this exam, and I often had 12 year olds talking to me about it and saying that they were already preparing for it.  English that is taught in the public school system, however, does not seem to corroborate with this.  Teachers in the public school systems have to follow a guided set work that teaches the students more practical conversational English and skills.  This means that students were learning how to converse in things like, “What is your favourite food?” “My favourite food is pizza,” at public school, and were doing things such as adverbial phrases of time and place at their academies.  So depending on what kind of school you are placed in, you could be teaching very different things.  There is a huge juxtaposition to how English is taught, and some students could score 900/900 on a test but can’t hold a conversation in English.  So it is a system that is very complex, and because of the pressure for the Suneng exam English is taught in order to regurgitate it onto paper for a test.  So in a way I can see the merits of both of the approaches to teaching, but I do think that there needs to be a greater balance between the two.

Children also usually have academies on weekends (there are hagwons for all subjects, not just English), and have homework for each of them too.  Most students get very little sleep because they are up until early hours of the morning completing homework.  It seems strange that many Scandinavian countries are heading in the direction of eliminating homework, and that seems to be the echo in South Africa that students have too much.  I really think that our system here is far too easy, when I look back I can’t believe how little I worked at school.  My students couldn’t believe that I finished school at 14:30 and had the afternoons to play sport or do any extra-curricular activities of my choice.  When I look back I took so much of that for granted, that we had all of these options at a relatively low cost.  I think that many people in South Africa also take for granted how lucky they are to speak English, when you see what children in Asia endure to learn it and to have it as a resource.  So many westerners are also quick to judge Korean parents or ‘tiger moms’ for pushing their children to excel, and forget what a luxury it is to be a native English speaker.  Getting into the best universities doesn’t automatically guarantee you a job either, and a lot of hostility towards their previous (impeached) president Park Guen Hye had to do with the education system, and lack of opportunities for students after graduating.

The foreigners that choose to come and teach English are also a mixed bag.  Don’t ever trust anyone who says that their job is easy, because that means that they put no effort into it.  Anyone who cares about what they are doing will be putting their heart and soul into it.  It isn’t always easy to be dealing with students, parents and other teachers with a language barrier, and at times it can be quite exhausting.  I am the first person to admit that it’s a very lucrative and beneficial system for foreigners.  You get an amazing salary, your school pays for your rent and your flights, you have amazing healthcare, and at many schools you get a meal too.  It’s a great opportunity to save money, to travel, or to pay off student loans.  It was the first time in my life that I didn’t have to think twice about spending money, and I was afforded the opportunities to travel abroad in my holidays and pay for university courses that I was taking.  Like anything, though, there are people who take advantage of the system.  Foreigners often come and put no effort into their work, and blow all of their money on alcohol.  This is quite a cause of contention for citizens, because for the public school programme the government pays for the teachers’ salaries, which means that tax payers’ money is going into funding a very cushy lifestyle for teachers.  This is, of course, a generalisation.  There are lots of teachers who love what they are doing, and give it their all.  I just realised that as I started to spend more time there I understood more why some locals did not like the foreigners.  If it is something that you are considering doing, I would recommend doing the research before and making sure that your reasons are sound, as your actions affect the locals of the country.

                                                                           *****

I was 10 years old when I left South Korea and I began my life in North America. Since my time in my home country was cut short, so was my experience with the regular school and hagwon life of most Korean students of all ages.  However, I did get firsthand experience of what would be considered a brief amount of time compared to the students who progressed in the education ladder into college.

The education system and expectations to study in South Korea place huge pressure on every student and hagwons are a large part of this discussion.

“Hagwon” is an umbrella term for a lot of different things. It includes sport related activities, learning how to play an instrument (or two instruments), debating, math, languages, and on and on. You name it, there’s a hagwon for it. 

Children start attending hagwons as early as they enter school, or even earlier. My first hagwon experience was swimming. I was 4 years old when I started. I would come home from school, wait for the swim hagwon bus to pick me up in front of my house and off I went, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I would walk to piano hagwon after school, sit in a small room with a piano and practice my scales. The piano hagwon also ran an art hagwon which I attended twice a week, drawing with color pencils, crayons, molding clay, and learning origami.

Years later I picked up learning to play the violin because playing piano had become too common and I needed a different and unique instrument in my repertoire.

When you’re young, hagwons revolve around learning instruments, sports, art classes, and other non-academic activities that would be considered extra-curriculars. As you get older more academic hagwons get added to your schedule.

I started going to English hagwons when I started the first grade. Because my peers in kindergarten had already learned the alphabet before we started kindergarten, I was much too behind. English hagwons were only considered good if they had white English teachers. It was uncommon to see black teachers or even Korean American teachers. I learned as an adult that white teachers were preferred when it came to the hiring process.

My first day at English hagwon my teacher asked me what my English name was. When I told him I didn’t have one, he wrote down several girl names on the white board for me to pick: Sarah, Sally, Hannah, Mary, Laura, Jessica, Katie. I picked Jessica, my first year, then two years later I decided that I hated it and my new teacher wrote down some more names and I picked Kelly (I still go by Kelly to this day). English hagwon became a regular in my schedule, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I would hop on the ECC hagwon bus after school and then went to piano practice, if I didn’t have piano, I would go to my speed-reading class.

Hagwons for school subjects were popular and common. I went to hagwon for math (I was always weak in math), speed reading and English. Going to hagwon wasn’t really to fill in the weaknesses, but to get ahead. I remember learning fractions in hagwon a year prior to learning them in school. This was relatively common for most young students. If you weren’t ahead, you were already behind. I imagine this was difficult for students from families who couldn’t afford to send their kids to multiple hagwons because it was impossible to keep up with students who had already mastered fractions a year prior to getting to them in school. It was impossible to compete with students who had already learned the basics of the English language with a fluent Won-uh-min (Someone who speaks a language as their first language) teacher when they started learning the English Alphabet in school.

When I first moved to Canada at 10 years old, I was shocked that none of the other kids at school knew how to read music, most of the kids didn’t know how to swim, and none of them (with the exception of immigrant kids) knew how to speak a second language. For the first time I was 3 years ahead in math at my new Canadian school. I was also unpleasantly surprised how little English I actually spoke once I got to an English-speaking country. I had attended English hagwon after school every other day for four and a half years and I was barely able to pass my 5^th grade spelling test.

Even though I lived most of my life in North America, during the summers I went back to Korea to spend time with my family, and of course, go to hagwon. It was important for my parents that I was academically inclined. Especially because that’s why they had sent me abroad, because it is considered an advantage to be studying in an English-speaking country. When I was in high school I started going to SAT hagwons during the summers. The methods taught in these hagwons were effective and I truly believe I wouldn’t have gotten the score that I did if I didn’t spend time at SAT hagwon.

Life as an average Korean student is exceptionally stressful compared to the average Canadian or American student. As you get older you have to give up a lot of the extracurriculars you love but don’t necessarily excel in, because if you don’t excel, it’s not useful and if it’s not useful, you can drop it which frees up time for a different hagwon to get a head in a subject in school. I didn’t know anyone in school that didn’t have hagwon after school at least every other day when I was in Korea. It’s just part of that life.

When you’re older, unless you’re going to be a professional athlete, a professional musician, or professional artist, the sports, the instruments, and the drawing lessons were no longer a part of your life. All of your time and attention went into hagwons relating to school subjects or when you’re old enough, for Suhnoong (the Korean University entrance exam). Unlike the SATs in the States, Suhnoong happens once a year and this, and your high school grades, determine where you go to college which determines where you get a job, which determines your salary, your status, and your entire life. 

If you’re interested in living the English teacher life, from what I hear it’s a great experience. If you end up teaching children (which is a majority of the English teacher jobs available) make sure you’re there for the right reasons. Please care about the fact that these kids are there to learn. Please understand that if they aren’t learning at hagwon, it shows at school. If it shows at school, their parents are wondering why their child isn’t doing well even though they spend all this money sending them to expensive English hagwons. If students come to class and they’re cranky, it’s probably because they’ve already had three hagwons before ending up in your class and they’re tired. Just be understanding.

It’s not easy being a student in Korea.