“IF YOU don’t have the ability then blame your parents,” wrote Jung Yoo-ra on social media in 2014, after being accepted into a prestigious university. Her mother, it turns out, had gone to great lengths to secure a spot for her, inducing Ehwa Women’s University to alter its admissions policy in a manner tailor-made for Ms Jung. Last month a court ruled that the nine people involved in this subterfuge had fundamentally shaken the “values of fairness that prop up our society”. Above all, the “feelings of emptiness and betrayal they caused in hardworking students” could not be excused.
University was once seen as a source of social mobility in South Korea. But so important is the right degree to a student’s prospects in life that rich families began spending heavily on coaching to improve their children’s chances, leaving poorer families behind. By 2007 over three-quarters of students were receiving some form of private tuition, spawning a maxim about the...Continue reading
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