From home school straight to university ― at age 14

Koh Byeong-hyeon

DAEJEON ― A 14-year-old boy was recently admitted to the Information and Communications University (ICU), one of the country’s leading engineering schools, through home schooling.
Koh Byeong-hyeon of Goyang, Gyeonggi, recently was admitted to the university’s engineering department through an early admission process. More than four test-takers competed for each of the 37 seats of the department.
“I want to focus on studying information science and become a computer science researcher,” Koh said.
In an effort to educate academically gifted students in engineering and information technology, the university was established by groups that include the Information Ministry and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in Daejeon in 1998.
Following his father, Koh Gwang-yoon, now a professor of English literature at Yonsei University, Byeong-hyeon went to the United States when he was two years old. While he was in kindergarten, he showed a special interest in mathematics, according to Koh’s parents.
His mother started teaching him elementary-level mathematics, which led Koh to finish middle school math courses before he had even entered elementary school.
Koh came back to the country when he was a first grader and finished learning high school math by the time he graduated from elementary school. Koh did not apply to middle school and earned a high school diploma by passing a state exam in February last year through home schooling.
When he could not understand a math or physics question, Koh asked his parents and tried to solve the problem again and again until he finally got it. He tried to understand the principle of difficult questions instead of simply memorizing the way to get through them. He said the Internet was a good teacher.
He studied English by reading more than 1,000 English books and earned a perfect score on the Test of English for International Communication in April of last year. He even wrote a short English novel when he was a sixth grader.
While he was in fifth grade at Gaebong Elementary School, he also wrote a three-page report about an unsolved problem in mathematical number theory.
“The report was so logical and full of creative ideas,” said Lee Seung-cheol, a professor of mathematics at Yonsei University, who recommended Koh for ICU. “I thought it was written by a university junior majoring in mathematics or physics.”
Last year Koh earned gold medals at the Korea Physics Olympiad and silver at the Korean Mathematical Olympiad.
“It is uncomfortable for me to hear people call Byeong-hyeon a genius,” said Koh Gwang-yoon, Byeong-hyeon’s father. “He just enjoys concentrating for 12 to 14 hours once he starts studying and tries to wrestle with a problem until he solves it. That’s his talent.
“Byeong-hyeon also gets along well with his friends from elementary school and sometimes gets in trouble for playing computer games too long, just like other kids.”
ICU said it plans to help Byeong-hyeon finish undergraduate courses within three years and earn his master’s and doctoral degrees in one and a half years each. If he wants to study abroad for the degrees, the university will provide a full scholarship, according to the school.

By Shin Jin-ho JoongAng Ilbo [soejung@joongang.co.kr]