Korea And The World

According to the PISA education ranking, Korean pupils perform significantly better than most OECD students in all categories tested (namely: math, reading, and science).Yet this success comes at a steep price: the Korean school system is often described as nothing short of brutal. Its students are among the least happy and most stressed worldwide. At the core of this system is the Suneung (수능) examination which determines university admissions. Because only a fraction of Suneung takers will ever be admitted to the best colleges, competition is fierce. Desperate to give their children an edge, parents invest in evening schools, private tutoring and bootcamps, fueling an entire industry now worth several billion dollars. For this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Steven Dhoedt, who co-directed Reach for the SKY, a documentary that premiered at the 2015 Busan International Film Festival and was selected for the DOK Leipzig festival in Germany. Reach for the SKY tells the story of several students, th