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[quote]
How about most of the games that Koreans are really into?
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<p>That was TOTALLY a Starcraft reference! That nation's gone seriously mad over such an awesome game. I wonder how the Koreans are reacting to the news of Starcraft 2. I know I'm pretty excited about the sequel to the most balanced and awesome RTS I have ever played.</p>
<p>Actually, I meant SC, WoW, and to a lesser extent Quake... but yeah, mostly SC.</p>
<p>If I'm not mistaken, the SC2 news was mostly released here in Korea first...</p>
<p>3-4hrs of sleeping time is normal for college-bound asian kids, especially for the top 10%. i think it's pretty natural though, coz the university entrance exams alone determine whether one can pursue his higher education and they only happen once a year. but i also doubt a top college-bound american sleep better than this, when they have to struggle through all their classes and thousands of ECs.</p>
<p>12 hours of school??? dude..i'm sorry, but that's completely mad. </p>
<p>i'm really surprised that many east asians are obsessed with learning english. seriously...some of them would know mor english than a native speaker...</p>
<p>ok first of all why does everyone from Korea who had their education system in korea have to be so Nationalistic about everything and trying to defend everything Korea does... and how does weapons and computers have anything to do with education system of Korea (I am korean so dont call me racist). This is why everyone calls us the Irish of Asia since everyone just cant stand our nationalistic non-sense and is sick and tired about it. </p>
<p>There are problems with Korean education system its just too FOCUSED on FACTS people know what and how it works but never understand the WHY!!</p>
<p>Yes people study study study since our college system in korea is based on pure stats and nothing but stats</p>
<p>well, you get koreans/chinese/japanese students that study 10+ hours a day, and with that you get three nations (or, at least two for certain) that are growing intensely. eyes on china, which is bound to surpass our economic worth soon... asian students are smarter than us (asian americans being of "us") we can all agree, and their educational motivation can partly be one of the factors. we criticize their system and complain yet they seem to overshadow us in academics. in the end, it all comes down to opportunity costs and sacrifices.</p>
<p>Dk-blue_Falcon,</p>
<p>China still has around 35 to 50 years to go.</p>
<p>that can be argued though i am not qualified for such a deliberation=[ different reports project different years.</p>
<p>Dk-blue_Falcon:</p>
<p>"in [sic] the end, it all comes down to opportunity costs and sacrifices." --> Spot on.</p>
<p>i knew it, i knew them chinese were robots! I knew they Never Sleeped!
jkjk. and i only wrote chinese to emphasize a stupid lack of knowlege of asians.</p>
<p>Funny thread though.</p>
<p>as a korean who survived through both middle and high school in korea, i'd like to say the schedule the OP suggested is slightly exaggerated. i was one of the top students and still got 6~7 hours of sleep, never pulling an all-nighter even during exam times. plus, i never had after-school prep institution/academy/Hak-Won/tutoring (whatever you call it) stuff, and managed by studying alone.
but honestly, most kids sleep after midnight and keep unbalanced living/studying patterns so yeah i guess i am an exception. just want to point out, tho, school is from 7am to 4pm, not 6pm to 10pm (if the latter were true, lives would be miserable for korean public school students!). yet i agree that the educational system (the part where you go through hell for 12 years then suddenly chill in college) is seriously flawed. don't think it's 100% meaningless, still. i mean you DO become more disciplined and brainier than your american peers (before college)</p>
<p>my friends are in grade 12 in korea, and i know what their general schedule is like.
6 AM - 9 PM : school
9 PM - 2 AM : academy / tutor / study room, review / hw</p>
<p>and there is a famous motto in korea: "sleep in your grave (after you die)"
also, most korean high school students say "I almost forgot my parents' faces"
pretty much all they do in their houses/apartments is sleeping</p>
<p>this problem is due to the fact that the employers only employ those who graduated from very good universities, for example, SNU, Yonsei U, Korea U, etc
and the national university entrance exam is held only once in a year.
(not like SATs that are held 6-7 times in a year)
so every year after the exam, several students commit suicide.</p>
<p>imma korean and i went to korean high school in my freshman year lol but ****ttt once i came to US in my sophomore year...life became unbelievably lenient & easy..LMAO LOL...</p>
<p>Only the wehgos and the gwahakgos and minsago and crazy private schools like that actually have those schedules, and the kickA hard-core schedules like the one so disparagingly worded above apply ONLY to seniors. </p>
<p>I should know. I went to a wehgo - a foreign-language-highschool - all three years. My school bus would come at 6:25 a.m. sharp, and I would always miss it and take the subway instead. Classes started at 8 a.m. Classes ended at 4 p.m. Students had to stay at school until 10 p.m., just studying. I always kinda, left early though, snuck out the back door and stuff <em>cough</em> Aand I did just fine, I never did take the "sooneung" national college entry exam, but I got into Yonsei anyways.</p>
<p>Most of my classmates did stay behind at school to study, though. But then they would sleep at school and stuff. But then everyone would brag about how little they slept at night. Silly, a little sad.</p>
<p>In other schools it's not like this. One of my friends, an avid studybug in a non-private school, always complained that he couldn't study because of the noise his classmates made during recess and self-study time, running around in the hallways and jumping around on the tables. </p>
<p>Really, as someone has already pointed out, people tend to zoom in on an extremely fringe phenomenon and BLOAT it waay out of proportion. That kind of killer lifestyle occurs only during the third year of high school, just before college, for certain individuals. </p>
<p>Aaah, but it's true we're way overcharged. I certainly wouldn't tout or defend this education system.The people "up there" are trying to grapple with the situation (we dearly hope.) Aaah, but the Ministry of Education is the brunt of all godforsaken jokes. It's so entrenched, the competition; there is such a wide market for extracurricular "hakwons" and private tutors and things, feeding off this serious malfunction, livelihoods are put to risk when wrongs are righted; it's not about Koreans lacking resources or a sense that something is wrong with the system. Something should be done about this, something really should. But what? Too many knots here, for now.</p>
<p>I like school and all but that's just way to much for those children/students.</p>
<p>I'm a Korean, and yes, I am in fact one of the victims of this crappy system here.. It's a sad sad reality, especially when you're in ur senior year. Korean universities, unlike the ones in the states, only look at the figures. I think we sometimes do write personal statements but they're pretty much out of interest of the admissions officers (if it's not the computer making the decisions, that is). Number is all that matters here. And kids preparing for universities in the US think no differently from the ones who plan to go to the uni here.. so they take the same stupid approach. when u get to college u might see some brainless asian kids with really really high test scores (always exceptions tho).</p>
<p>khebnami,</p>
<p>An article I read on the subject suggested that the fact that most ministry officials are products of the system's successes (SKY grads) leads to a vicious circle of further entrenchment of the system.</p>