Hagwon, students skirt new rule
Published: 22 Aug. 2009, 06:21
Officials from the Gangnam District Office of Education make an unannounced visit on July 6 to an area cram school with its lights on after 10 p.m. The government banned the local cram schools from operating after 10 p.m. in an effort to help reduce the financial burden on parents who spend a fortune sending their children to study until late at night. [YONHAP]
It was 10 p.m., but the night was far from over for the student — who asked that his name not be used for this article — and a handful of other teenagers leaving the three-story hagwon in Gangnam. The students scurried to a secret place where they could avoid the eyes of “hagparazzi” — the bounty hunters who can receive cash rewards from the government for turning in hagwon, or cram schools, that operate after 10 p.m.
The secret hideaway is the flat where their teacher lives, located in a 20-story building just around the corner.
Here, they began another round of late-night cram sessions that didn’t wrap up until 12:30 a.m.
It’s a scene playing out across the county in the wake of a new rule adopted by the Education Ministry in July that bans hagwon from operating after 10 at night, a move aimed at easing the financial burdens of parents
who spend a fortune sending their kids to expensive private cram schools to give them a leg up in the competitive college entrance process.
The rule has led to a late-night game of hide-and-seek between hagwon and the everyday people looking to receive rewards of up to 2 million won ($1,699) for tipping education officials off to those academies breaking the law. The ministry has paid rewards totaling more than 100 million won to 223 tipsters over the past month alone.
But many hagwon have found relatively easy ways around the new regulations.
“Nothing has really changed except that we have to move from the hagwon to the teacher’s flat,” said Lee Yeong-jae, a senior at Seohyeon High School in Bundang, south of Seoul.
Parents are quick to jump onboard.
The new regulation, some say, does little to help them financially anyway.
“The hagwon my daughter goes to recently raised its monthly tuition, saying it needs extra money for renting a flat where the students will be studying after 10,” said one mother of a high school senior in Gangnam, who refused to be named.
With this year’s college entrance test less than 100 days away, it is “impossible” for her child to stop attending cram schools at the moment, she said.
One cram school director in Bundang said the new rule is poorly timed, since many high school seniors are desperate to prepare for the upcoming annual college entrance test, which falls on Nov. 12 this year.
“It’s the most important time for both students and for us,” said Kim Nam-joon, a director at Lykeon cram school in Bundang. “There’s a natural increase in the number of students at this time of year. Most of them are seniors who have only about three months left before the big exam.”
Some school teachers said the latest measure is doing little to ease the near-religious fervor of parents looking to get their kids into good schools.
Instead, they say the government must come up with more fundamental, long-term solutions.
“The government is focusing only on the shallow, short-term problems,” said one teacher at Daewon Foreign Language High School in eastern Seoul, who declined to be named.
*This article was written with the assistance of JoongAng Daily staff reporter Jung Ha-won
By Kim Dan-sung [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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