In theory, anyone who could pass state examinations had a chance of advancing their station in life.
Education is a big deal in Korea. Korean students are known to spend endless hours outside the classroom in tuition centers, supplementing their normal curriculum with extra-curriculars and test preparations. It’s not uncommon for many Korean students to be spending up to sixteen hours a day studying.
In the US where tuition centers and cram schools are rare for the average student, it’s hard for us to fathom the Korean obsession with education. When I was doing some research for my novel, The Last Days of the Morning Calm, a historical fiction book for teens, I came across an interesting history that may help explain the Korean psyche and attitude toward education.
In the Joseon period (roughly 1400-1900), one of the only ways for a Korean man to elevate himself in class – and therefore eventually from poverty – was to take the gwageo, or civil service examinations that were offered by the state. There were typically two types of examinations, military and literary, with heavy emphasis on the Chinese classics. In theory, anyone who could pass these state examinations had a chance of advancing their status. This merit-based system offered a way out of one’s station in life. In practice, though, only those who could afford the luxury of time to study and attend hakdangs, traditional schools,would have any real chance of passing the state examinations.
While the gwageo was only eligible for the male population with means, when the Christian missionaries came to Korea in the late 1800s, opportunities began to expand to a broader class of people, including the poor commoners and the other half of the population, the women. Women had few avenues to learn in a society that traditionally did not value educating women.
Missionaries were eager to teach the illiterate population in Korea, in keeping with the Protestant mission that an individual learns to read the Scripture for themselves, and they set up schools in Korea for just that purpose. One school, Ewha Hakdang, was founded by an American Methodist, Mary Scranton, in 1886. The school, dedicated to educating girls, was the first of its kind in Korea. With the modest beginning of an initial student body of one, the school grew in size, survived the colonial period, and is now Ewha Womans University, a thriving and highly rated school with a student body of roughly 20,000 women.
Education has enduring value in Korean culture. It’s no wonder. With a long history of abject poverty, the promise of literacy offered a way out of the dismal cycle and the hope for a better future. In this context, it makes sense that modern Korean students are compelled to pursue education as their ticket to a better future, with an even more competitive landscape driving hard work for today’s equivalent of the gwaguh. A look into Korea’s past helps us understand and perhaps empathize with the modern Korean obsession with education.