
Suneung: The day silence falls over South Korea - onemoresoop
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46181240
======
qalmakka
Things like these should make any nation ashamed of itself. This kind of
pressure on a growing child can only destroy him or her, and it's no wonder
why kids are killing themselves. It's like planting a ticking bomb in their
heads and hoping it wouldn't explode if something goes wrong.

As a highly educated person myself, I can't deny that studying, learning and
improving yourselves are fundamental parts of the process of growing up and
becoming a useful member of society, but it can't be done at the expense of
someone's sanity, because it totally nullifies its value. Stuffing a kid of
knowledge like a pâté goose stops him or her from really enjoying probably
it's most critical years to the fullest, and I just can't really see this as a
positive thing.

~~~
dba7dba
How do you think S. Korea transformed from THE poorest nation on the planet
after 1953 end of Korean War to top 10 - 15 nation in a 65 year period?
Imagine, there are still people alive who were born in the poorest nation on
the planet, and now living in a nation that is ranked 15th in GDP. South
Korean passport is ranked 3rd most accepted, tied with Germany and France.

It wasn't because of natural resources or oil.

It wasn't any modern industry that just had to recover after the war such as
Germany or Japan did. South Korea had NO modern industry of any kind, higher
education institution, a modern workforce, effective government agencies, etc.
S. Korea was literally a hell hole of a nation in 1953.

After the WTF period Koreans went through from 1910 to 1953 (after having had
a 500 years long kingdom, the Chosun dynasty), South Korea just had to do what
was necessary to survive.

And only way they saw how was producing a workforce to be productive. And no,
Montessori method was not a viable option.

You don't have to be a highly educated non-Korean to see the education system
is not quite right or wrong. Many highly educated and even not so highly
educated people IN S. Korea know the question is valid to ask. Some want a
change. Many who immigrated out of S. Korea to US and other nations list 2
reasons for leaving the nation, 1) conscription army and 2) the college
entrance exam, the Suneung. But it was a system created at a time when there
was no time to debate, but to act quickly to produce a workforce, just to
survive as a nation. And it has delivered so far.

Yes the suicides are tragic. But consider this. Far more S. Koreans have died
(including newborn, young, old) from lack of basic medical care in South Korea
when only select few had access to modern medical care up until 1970's, 80's.
The nation and citizens couldn't pay for it, for lack of wealth, from due to
lack of skills needed by a modern workforce. But now that they can afford it,
a nation wide medical care system is in place. Without educating the workforce
(and yes the Suneung), they wouldn't have that luxury.

Easy for you to say they should be ashamed of that. I quite disagree.

~~~
progressiveweb
South Korea transformed from the poorest nation to the richest not because of
the trope that education was largely responsible and I don't discount that but
it's far fetched to suggest that as a single cause.

After all, without Park Chung Hee's military dictatorship, without essentially
enslaving 1/2 of the population as a glorified slave with the threat of
violence, without handing over the destiny of millions of Koreans to the hands
of the dozen family run corporate dynasties (aka chaebols), without the
massacre and denial of reparations and the censure, capture, torture and
killing of dissidents,

South Korea would not be as successful as it is.

Life in South Korea during the military dictatorship which lasted 2.5
generations, was just as hard if not oppressive like the North. If you read
about the Gwangju Massacre (Korea's Tianmen Square), it's pretty clear that
South Korea was virtually no different than North Korea in terms of political
freedom.

This is the miracle of the Asian tigers - when you don't have natural
commodity, the _people become that commodity_ , expendable, something to be
taken advantage of by people with capital.

~~~
tatrajim
May I polititely suggest that your assertion of equivalence between South
Korea and North Korea in terms of political freedom during the Park and Chun
years is overwrought nonsense. Just ask any South Korean who lived through
this period or any American peace corps volunteer like me who lived in the
countryside (near Gwangju in fact) in the 1970s under the Park regime and who
studied in graduate school in Seoul under the Chun regime in the 1980s. The
issues are complex and require long, nuanced elaboration, but in crude terms
Park was all but a fascist in name during his dictatorship and Chun was
largely a loutish thug. Park is remembered surprisingly fondly by his
generation, while Chun is reviled. And it is true that political dissidents
were brutally treated by both Park and Chun and that the 1980 Gwangju Massacre
was a horrible incident for which Chun later went to prison. However, North
Korea was much worse in its control, e.g. over all religious groups and
intellectuals. If you had a bad class background ("seongbun") you had nil
chance for any higher education or social advancement. And with the growing
cult of personality of Kim Il Sung from the mid-1960s, virtually no one could
hope to express openly any thoughts critical of Kim or the Worker's Party
official party line. In sum, life in the south under Park was by turns comic
and tiring (the whole nation was forced to arise at 6 am every day!) and under
Chun disspiriting and at the margin dangerous, but in the north under Kim,
little or no freedom of personal expression existed even between spouses. Just
check out the personal accounts of those who lived through it.

------
isostatic
"That's why we spend 12 years preparing for this one day. I know people who've
taken this exam up to five times."

OK, so it's not really "one day" then.

I don't understand why.

"Instead of pitying us, I wish foreigners would think how awesome we are."

Passing exams is a pointless activity. I'm more interested in results. Those
results can be measured in many ways - in power, in lives saved in surgery, in
money, in kindness, in criminals caught, in lines of code, in numbers of
citations in academic papers, in how many followers you have on Instagram.
Korea is a fairly successful country, but it's not leaps and bounds above
other countries that don't have this level of stress. It's not something I
want my country to aspire to.

~~~
akfanta
> I don't understand why.

It's because you don't live in a highly competitive society. People try
everything they can to squeeze extra points out of these exams. It's the only
way to get into good universities. Why do you have to go to good universities?
When thousands of people applying for one job, the company will try to find
the fastest way to filter out applicants, and your degree is the easiest way
for you to stand out. In an ultra competitive society, you do everything you
could to stand out, otherwise you won't stand a chance.

~~~
AstralStorm
And the results are somewhat good with formerly Japan and now South Korea
being one of the leaders in innovation. Albeit much less competitive China,
USA, France and Germany are still close enough.

The problem with Japanese and Korean style of achievement is that it can get
you to rest on your laurels and additionally it is anti-creative, strongly
promoting patterns, knowledge and effort over novel approaches.

All in all, few types, perhaps even none, of standardized tests allow novel
solutions.

~~~
wenc
> Albeit much less competitive China

I'm not sure about this. From what I've read, Chinese society is more
competitive, not less.

------
mismatchpair
Below is problem 33 of this year's English exam. For the English section of
the exam, there are a total of 45 questions; 17 listening comprehension
(around 25 minutes) and 28 reading comprehension questions (around 45
minutes). Imagine yourself (if you're non-Korean) trying to comprehend
something like this in a completely foreign language.

33\. Heritage is concerned with the ways in which very selective material
artefacts, mythologies, memories and traditions become resources for the
present. The contents, interpretations and representations of the resource are
selected according to the demands of the present; an imagined past provides
resources for a heritage that is to be passed onto an imagined future. It
follows too that the meanings and functions of memory and tradition are
defined in the present. Further, heritage is more concerned with meanings than
material artefacts. It is the former that give value, either cultural or
financial, to the latter and explain why they have been selected from the near
infinity of the past. In turn, they may later be discarded as the demands of
present societies change, or even, as is presently occurring in the former
Eastern Europe, when pasts have to be reinvented to reflect new presents. Thus
heritage is __________________. [3 points]

① about preserving universal cultural values

② a mirror reflecting the artefacts of the past

③ neither concerned with the present nor the future

④ as much about forgetting as remembering the past

⑤ a collection of memories and traditions of a society

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> trying to comprehend something like this in a completely foreign language

Forget that; I'm a native English speaker, with a college degree, and I have
no clue what they're looking for. Maybe 5? But that's only a guess.

~~~
sanxiyn
It is 4.

~~~
wenc
I guessed 4 as well. My take away from the passage was that despite what
people think, what is often represented as heritage can be selective in
nature. The clue was in the phrase "why they have been selected from the near
infinity of the past".

------
fhood
That sucks. And it makes me feel like maybe SATs aren't so bad. I feel like
scoring well on the SAT doesn't actually require preparation, just high
literacy and a willingness to think the questions through.

~~~
wenc
Getting a high/near-perfect score on the SAT does require preparation due to
time pressure. SAT candidates need to be able to arrive at the correct answer
almost instinctively (mostly via pattern-matching and some reasoning). This
entails practice.

The material tested in the US SATs is relatively unsophisticated compared to
the curricula of many East Asian countries. My understanding is that SATs test
for quickness of reasoning more than anything else. (SAT subject tests go into
more depth, but are still have nowhere near the coverage of East Asian exams)

~~~
fhood
> Getting a high/near-perfect score on the SAT does require preparation due to
> time pressure.

Sure, but it is completely possible to get a very high score with virtually no
practice. Time constraints are an issue, but not too huge of one, so long as
you are willing to trust your gut so to speak.

> The material tested in the US SATs is relatively unsophisticated compared to
> the curricula of many East Asian countries.

That is exactly why I think the SAT is superior.

~~~
wenc
> Sure, but it is completely possible to get a very high score with virtually
> no practice

Only if you are naturally highly intelligent. Folks of above average
intelligence (but not in the upper percentiles) tend to need to work at it
(many do and succeed).

> That is exactly why I think the SAT is superior.

Only if you are interested in "g" intelligence alone as a pure metric, in
which case psychometric instruments like the Advanced Raven Progressive
Matrices should also be admissible.

The SATs give you one metric of preparedness for college, arguably an
important one. But the East Asian exams give you another: grit. It's much
harder for a smart person to succeed at them without any effort. That said,
I'm not condoning them since I believe the East Asian focus on exams often
does go overboard and devolves into mismeasurement (i.e. how good you are at
taking tests).

But intelligence, measured in isolation, is not a good metric for college-
readiness especially in technical fields, where you need a certain measure of
grit to do well in the material. I've known stars in high school who struggled
when they had to apply themselves.... when you're used to things coming easily
to you all your life, it can be demoralizing to have to work at things.

~~~
naveen99
Maybe your fallen stars were secretly using grit before. Working harder than
necessary ahead of when it’s needed seems questionable. yagni .

~~~
wenc
Not sure about that. The high school stars in my example were the effortlessly
smart sort (high IQ, crammed before exams).

But to your other point about working hard only when it's needed, there is a
class of skills (so called "bicycle skills" [1]) that have to be learned in
advance, and cannot be picked up on the fly. Mastering those skills early in
life can lead to compound interest payoffs later on. So I don't agree with
YAGNI as a general rule.

Furthermore, even if the material you learn isn't going to be useful, it
doesn't mean that the process of learning them is necessarily wasted. On the
contrary, the process of acquiring mastery itself can pay dividends in the
form of meta-skills. Take learning to play the piano for instance. The blogger
"Ask a Korean" has this to say: [2]

 _" The point of learning the piano is NOT about acquiring the skill of
playing the piano so that the student can earn a living as a pianist. It is
about building the character of the person. Here is the thing about character
-- you can't build it by explicitly setting out to build it. Character is not
a skill like tying your shoelaces. If it must be put in terms of "skill",
character is a "meta-skill" \-- a foundational human skill that is necessary
to perfect any number of mechanical skills. And the only way to develop this
meta-skill is to develop at least one highly sophisticated mechanical skill,
such that the student may acquire the meta-skill in the course of building the
mechanical skill."_

[1] [https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/01/bicycle-
skills/](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/01/bicycle-skills/)

[2] [http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/05/confucianism-and-
kore...](http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/05/confucianism-and-korea-part-v-
what-can.html)

------
progressiveweb
Here's an example of the type of questions that kids in the "Free Korea"
faces: [https://external-
preview.redd.it/xL79rBC8VK4gI5lej7gFbU1priH...](https://external-
preview.redd.it/xL79rBC8VK4gI5lej7gFbU1priHRR9Vo2JNI_xHE83g.jpg?auto=webp&s=1ff5a38c025cb72429c40d3ebdb34b412c15cae2)

This is only the tip of the iceberg. It appears that in order to force
everybody on a normal distribution map, they've gone well past the original
purpose of the government exams, which was originally a neo-Confucian artifact
to promote egalitarianism-the idea that even peasants who pass the government
exams are able to improve their social standing after a long period of caste
society based on lineage.

This means students aren't tested even on rote memorization or any of the
necessary skills in the real world. Instead, they've become victim to the
billion dollar industry of extra-cirricular cram schools. Public schools have
become completely dependent on a widely unregulated cram schools because it's
become impossible to come out on top when everybody is getting specialized
help. You can't fault these parents either, these exams are insane and it
makes sense that there is demand for extra tutoring.

The biggest tragedy of this is that it's no longer egalitarian like in it's
tradition, it's about who has the money and can pay for their child's
education. Low middle class Korean families can't support the cost of raising
a child in this hyper education focused culture with very little prouductivity
other than elevating the truly gifted exam takers running the country with no
experience other than from books.

A big reason why in South Korea, you can commit horrible crimes and almost get
a slap on the wrist because of incompetent, unexperienced judges and
prosecutors who have mastered the art of climbing the Korean ladder, a giant
bureaucracy that permeates through every part of Korean culture. Neo-
confucianism is facing significant stress and young Koreans are undergoing
social change.

~~~
slededit
I'm not exactly used to answering these questions, but 5 seems the obvious
choice here - the others being clearly unrelated. Is this really an example of
the difficulty of this exam?

If my answer is wrong that would indeed be ironic... I'd love to be corrected.

