education
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'One Nation' Dream: Do Younger South Koreans Want Reunification?
Olympic reconciliation, ongoing North Korea-U.S. hostility, yesterday a South Korean delegation to Pyongyang…. As usual, the Korean Peninsula is keeping observers on their toes. Amid all the intrigue, it’s easy to overlook the 50 million Koreans south of the demilitarized zone. How do they perceive North
Undocumented Workers: International Students As South Korea's Migrant Labor
One day in his elective class, Cương just couldn’t stay awake. Whenever the professor started talking, Cương’s eyelids started to feel heavy. His head dropped down to his desk, seemingly on its own. The professor noticed. After class, Cương, an international student from Vietnam, explained to her that
Sunshine Land: Where War is Actually a Game
On a crisp December Monday morning in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, city workers outfitted the students in Noh Min-hyun’s sixth-grade class with child-sized body armor, helmets, and orange pistol-shaped BB guns. Resembling mini riot cops, the kids, divided into two teams, skipped and giggled their way into the newly
KÉ Weekend Journalism School: 2018 Winter Curriculum
Korea Exposé invites you to join our journalism winter school! Whether you want to become a serious journalist, whether you want to write about social and cultural issues in English, or whether you just want to improve your English, all are welcome! YOU WILL GET: Valuable insights into how English-language
Sexist Books for Children
These books are for children, as young as three. How do they portray women and men in the workplace? Pretty conservatively. We visited Kyobo Bookstore in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, the biggest bookstore in the country. The portrayals of women in its top-selling “learning books” for children were disappointing,
Suneung: The Judgment Day
This year’s Suneung took place on Nov. 23, delayed a week after the earthquakes in Pohang. The test results are coming out today, on Dec. 12. A Twitter user wrote, displaying a dramatic mixture of different emotions, “F***~~~ The report cards are coming out~~~~~ F*** Suneung~
Is South Korea Ready for All Its International Students?
In August, Bernadette had dropped out of her summer classes and found herself repeatedly Googling ‘how to die painlessly.’ She was in her third year at Dongguk University in Seoul, far from her family and friends in her native Philippines. Having been in South Korea since 2014, she hadn’t
When We Don't Go to College
“If I don’t go to college, I don’t belong to a community.” As of 2016, nearly 70 percent of South Koreans had at least a bachelor’s degree. For most students, the ultimate goal of a high school education is admission to a
It Was Just Our Body. It Was Just Underwear
Editor’s Note: In July, online media outlet Dotface uploaded an interview with an elementary school teacher, titled “My Teacher is a Feminist.” In the interview, the teacher said, “Have you seen the schoolyards at elementary schools? They don’t belong to girls. Those that play soccer and run are
Education Blues Pt. 3: A Deported English Teacher
English education is arguably the holy grail of South Korea’s infamous education craze. The private sector market for English education, rife with private cram schools called hagwon, amounted to 61 trillion won (about 55 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014. Among these hagwon is a group of
Education Blues Pt. 2: Sex Education Without Sex
How can students prevent sexual assault while on a trip with their friends? Don’t go in the first place, said the Ministry of Education’s first standardized sex education curriculum in 2015. And to prevent sexual assault when home alone with a friend of the opposite sex? Don’t
Education Blues Pt. 1: South Korea Cracks Down on Elite Schools
I suffered through an existential crisis in my second year of high school. By this, I don’t mean over my existence, but over my school’s existence. That year, abolishing foreign-language high schools hit the headlines for weeks, like it has been lately. We’d fret about the future