Childhood in today’s South Korea is no longer a sanctuary of play and wonder – it has become a training ground for survival in an academic war. The so-called “7-year-old exam” is now a growing trend, especially in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district. This exam, designed for preschoolers aiming to enter elite English academies, reflects a chilling reality: that even age seven is considered too late to start preparing for the country’s cutthroat education system. Hence, the emergence of the even earlier “4-year-old exam.”
There are now “elementary school pre-med tracks” and “special-purpose high school prep classes” for children barely out of kindergarten. Nearly 47.6 percent of South Korean children under six are enrolled in private “cram” schools, with one in four toddlers under two already attending such hagwons. Before they can even form full sentences, children are being groomed for South Korea’s famously brutal college entrance exam. This isn’t education; it borders on institutionalized child abuse, where preschool becomes the first battleground in a relentless academic arms race.
South Korea’s education system is often praised globally for its academic excellence. In the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), Korean students scored above the OECD average in every category. Among OECD countries, they ranked 1st to 2nd in mathematics, 1st to 7th in reading, and 2nd to 5th in science. Among all 81 participating countries, Korea ranked as high as 3rd in math, 2nd in reading, and 2nd in science.
But these accolades mask a much darker truth: severe burnout, rising anxiety, and a generation taught to measure their worth by their ranking. By middle school, students often study late into the night. By high school, it is common to sacrifice sleep, hobbies, and mental health in pursuit of a single number: the Suneung (College Scholastic Ability Test) score.
Koreans often refer to this phenomenon as “education fever,” but such a benign label masks the severity of its consequences. Like a real fever, it signals a deeper systemic illness – one that begins in early childhood and festers into adolescence. The pressure to perform academically is no longer confined to high school; it starts before children can even read and steadily erodes their mental health. South Korea now ranks 27th out of 36 OECD countries in child well-being, with alarmingly low scores in mental health and life satisfaction. What appears to be ambition is often exhaustion in disguise – children are caught in a relentless academic competition, shaped more by anxiety than aspiration.
A 2024 report by the National Assembly Research Service painted a grim picture. The percentage of elementary students getting sufficient sleep dropped from 56.68 percent in 2019 to just 51.95 percent in 2023, indicating chronic fatigue as a norm. Meanwhile, the proportion of first-year middle school students identified as at risk for suicide increased from 2.1 percent to 2.4 percent, and suicide attempts among all middle schoolers surged from 3.66 percent to 5.99 percent in just three years. These are not isolated figures – they are clear indicators that South Korea’s education system is inflicting real harm on children’s mental health.
The broader picture is even more alarming. South Korea has the highest suicide rate among OECD countries. The OECD average for age-standardized suicide rates is 10.7 per 100,000; South Korea’s rate is 24.8. The next highest, Lithuania, is far behind at 17.1. South Korea cannot pretend that this has nothing to do with its hyper-competitive society. It is difficult to argue that youth suicide rates are unrelated to academic pressure and the crushing weight of performance-based identity. These are not just individual tragedies; they are systemic red flags warning that the current model of education is doing deep and lasting damage.
Running parallel to South Korea’s youth mental health crisis is a deepening educational inequality, where wealth determines access and private education is seen as a lifeline. In 2024, average monthly spending on private education per child was 332,000 won (about $250), but this average conceals deep income-based disparities. Households earning over 8 million won (roughly $6,000) per month spent 676,000 won (around $510) on average, with 87.6 percent of their children enrolled in private education. In contrast, families earning under 3 million won (about $2,250) spent only 205,000 won (approximately $155), with just 58.1 percent participation.
According to the Ministry of Education’s 2024 survey on preschoolers, nearly half of all children under six are already enrolled in private education, with families spending an average of 1.54 million won (about $1,160) per month just on English lessons. This frenzy isn’t confined to toddlers. It reflects a broader societal pathology in which academic spending is equated with survival. Statistics Korea’s 2024 report showed that private education spending for K–12 students reached an all-time high of 30 trillion won (around $22.6 billion), despite a drop of 80,000 students from the previous year. Today, eight in ten students receive private education, averaging 590,000 won (about $445) per month per student – cementing a system where educational outcomes are tethered to household income.
South Korea is often praised for its commitment to education, spending 5.2 percent of its GDP on educational institutions in 2021, above the OECD average of 4.9 percent. Yet this figure tells only half the story. Despite high public investment, families are increasingly shouldering the burden through soaring private education costs. In 2007, the average monthly cost per student was 222,000 won (about $170). By 2022, it had surged by 84.7 percent to 410,000 won (around $310). Most striking is the acceleration since 2017: a 50.7 percent increase in just five years, even during the pandemic. The gap is widening not just between income groups, but between the promise of public education and the reality that parents face.
South Korea’s current system is unsustainable. It is turning childhood into a zero-sum game, normalizing a culture obsessed with rankings and comparative achievement – one that pushes some children to the edge of despair and, in the worst cases, to irreversible decisions. A complete paradigm shift is needed. Education should nurture curiosity, not suppress it. It should foster collaboration, not pit children against one another. It should be about discovering purpose, not securing prestige. The system that worships test scores must be dismantled and rebuilt as one that values joy, growth, and equity. Rather than offering superficial fixes like limiting hagwon hours or promoting vague slogans about “happiness education,” the Ministry of Education must make bold and structural changes – such as enforcing meaningful age-appropriate learning standards, capping early childhood academic testing, and redirecting funding to strengthen public education equity.