Graduating from a top university is the ultimate distinctive and distinguishing marker of prestige, societal recognition, high socioeconomic status, promising marriage prospects, and a path to a prestigious and respectable white-collar professional occupation.

To uphold the family honor and tradition, many children are expected to go to a top university and pursue a prestigious white collar professional occupation as their future career of choice.

[4] A strong investment in education, militant drive and passion to achieve academic success has helped the resource poor country rapidly grow its economy over the past 70 years from the effects of the Korean War.

There is a major cultural taboo attached to those who don't attend university; they face social prejudice and are seen as second-class citizens, resulting in fewer opportunities for employment, improvement of one's socioeconomic position, and prospects for marriage.

Various media outlets attribute the nation's high suicide rate on the nationwide anxiety around the country's college entrance exams, which determine the trajectory of students' entire lives and careers.

[40] Preparing students for competitive examinations was pronounced during the Joseon dynasty as a means of social mobility and selection of official positions, and remained a basic tenet in Korean education throughout its history.

Following the Korean War, the government of Syngman Rhee reversed many of these reforms after 1948, when only primary schools remained in most cases coeducational and, because of a lack of resources, education was compulsory only up to the sixth grade.

Therefore, a multitrack and single secondary school system prevailed, largely due to the fact that administrators did not want to divide institutions, and parents were not receptive to the idea of two entrance exams.

A rigorous and uniform national curriculum was established in the mid-1950s and there were significant efforts to make school accessible for everyone, especially in the context of Rhee's declaration of compulsory universal literacy and basic education.

Overall, the huge strides in educational development came at the cost of intense pressure among students, high suicide rates, and family financial struggles through investment in schooling and private tutoring.

Police estimated that there were 72 such organizations of varying orientation, having the change of curriculum and education system of South Korea people have been enriched in an imaginary way that makes them propel in all their studies.

Intense competition for places at the most prestigious universities—the sole gateway into elite circles—promoted, analogous to the Confucian system, a sterile emphasis on rote memorization in order to pass secondary school and college entrance examinations.

High school students are commonly expected to study increasingly long hours each year moving toward graduation, to become competitive and enter extremely attractive universities in Korea.

Accordingly, many high school students in their final year do not have any free time for holidays, birthdays or vacations before the CSATs (College Scholastic Ability Test, 수능, Suneung), which are university entrance exams held by the Ministry of Education.

This system of graduation solely based on attendance further devalues a South Korean student when being evaluated for university admission in Western countries, especially as many are phasing out entrance examinations.

[56] Similarly, scientific studies continue to demonstrate that rote memorization, as is central in South Korean education, is not indicative of intelligence and is of deeply declining value in the Information Age.

In the 1970s and 1980s, vocational education in South Korea was less than socially acceptable, yet also a pathway to succeed in obtaining a steady career with a decent income and an opportunity to elevate socioeconomic status.

According to a 2012 research report from The McKinsey Global Institute, the lifetime value of a college graduate's improved earnings no longer justifies the expense required to obtain the degree.

The purpose of the Meister schools is to reduce the country's shortage of vocational occupations such as auto mechanics, plumbers, welders, boilermakers, electricians, carpenters, millwrights, machinists and machine operators as many of these positions go unfilled.

[67] South Korea has also streamlined its small and medium-sized business sector along German lines to ease dependence on the large conglomerates ever since it began introducing Meister schools into its education system.

[69] Boosting employment for young people through high quality vocational education has become a top priority for the Park administration, since youth unemployment is roughly three times higher than average.

[73] The history of higher education in South Korea traces its roots back the 4th century AD, starting with the founding of Daehak (National Confucian Academy) in Goguryeo in 372 CE.

[78] In contrast to Canada and the United States, where grade point averages and percentages serve as primary indicators of eligibility, university admission in South Korea heavily relies on the results of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), which accounts for 60 percent of the evaluation criteria.

[79] In addition to the CSAT scores, universities also take volunteer experience, extra-curricular activities, letters of recommendation, school awards, portfolios into consideration when assessing a prospective applicant.

The controversy was viewed as representing a major crisis for South Korean education because a large number of teachers (1,500 by November 1989) had been dismissed, violence among union supporters, opponents, and police had occurred at several locations, and class disruptions had caused anxieties for families of students preparing for the college entrance examinations.

This school, unlike facilities such as Yuk Young Gong Won (1886), disregarded social statuses, welcoming more students into the institute and introducing the first Korean foreign language instructors into the field of English education.

South Korea's scarcity of natural resources is often cited as a reason for the rigorousness and fierce competition of its school systems; the academic pressure on its students is arguably the largest in the world.

Dominated by tiger moms, cram schools and highly authoritarian teachers, South Korean education produces ranks of overachieving students who pay a stiff price in health and happiness.

In June 2005, Conservative politician Jeon Yeo-ok openly opposed the nomination of the former president Roh Moo-hyun who did not graduate from a higher level institution, but passed the state-run judicial examinations.

In 2021, sociology professor at Seoul's Yonsei University, Lew Seok-choon, was indicted and charged with three counts of defamation for his remarks in his lectures stating that the comfort women weren't taken forcefully by the Japanese military and the work was "a form of prostitution".