The extreme pressure heaped by parents on children to perform well in exams to secure places at prestigious high school and universities is a recurrent theme in K-dramas, says the Financial Times’ Christian Davies.
SEOUL: “First! Children must play immediately. Second! Children must be healthy immediately. Third! Children must be happy immediately.”
Commandeering a school bus, he gives pupils the option of going to the academy as usual or to play on a mountain. They opt for the latter. But when he is arrested, it is Korean society that is put on trial.The extreme pressure heaped by parents on Korean children and teenagers to perform well in standardised academic tests - required to secure a handful of places at prestigious high schools and universities - is a recurrent theme in many television shows here.
In 2008, the Seoul authorities introduced maximum operating hours for the academies - from 5am to 10pm. But five years later, there were still reports of pupils being bussed out of Seoul at 10pm so as to study at off-site locations until 2am, before returning ahead of an early school start the next day.
Thoughtful and creative, he struggled with standardised tests. Having failed to get into one of the country’s three most prestigious universities, his mother had told him he was a “scumbag not worth the cost of the clothes he was wearing”.
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