My last morning in Seoul for a few days started with breakfast delivered from Dunkin Doughnuts, of all places. We packed and left Cassaville for a trip to Yonsei University; Korea’s oldest and most prestigious campus. We had a talk from a Tae Lee, an American lecturer who has worked at the university for 15 years. She spoke about how Korean culture plays an essential role in academic success.

Now, I think I have touched upon this before but I’ll try to go into more detail. I have been fascinated by Korean culture, everyone is very respectful, polite, organised and friendly, but I don’t think that this is something that is taught, it just happens. Tae said that her son now goes to a Korean elementary school and he has just picked everything up from being around other people and now insists on doing things the Korean way. It is not taught, just passed on through action and routine that everyone practices. In a educational sense this is passed on through a clear underpinning notion that all Korean students share. They realise that achieving highly is essential for employment and future life, they believe in education. But it is not just students, this belief and expectation oozes out of society, wherever you are. This is the biggest difference I have noticed so far, it does not matter how rich or poor you are, where you live, what you do, everyone holds education with a very high status and therefore wants to achieve highly. I am not trying to suggest that as a British culture we do not care about education, we clearly do, I just think that as a nation we do not quite believe in education on the same widespread level as Korea does. Perhaps something to take note of, but you will struggle to change cultural understanding overnight.

Here are a few facts for you to ponder:

– 90% of Korean students enrol at a high school even though it is not compulsory
– 55.5% of university student graduate and share the view that a degree is essential for employment
– The government state it costs them $7,434 (USD) to put every child through education
– The average cost for families per student is $231,000 from birth to graduation
-75% of all students have some form of extra tuition after school hours, and I will talk about this is more detail later…