Why Korean parents spend so much on education: 교육열, explained

It’s 10:05 p.m. on a weeknight in Seoul. You’re walking past a block of buildings where every floor, from the second to the eighth, has a sign: math, English, essay writing, “medical school prep”, more math. The lights flick off one floor at a time. Then the doors open and a river of teenagers in padded jackets pours onto the pavement, clutching convenience-store triangle kimbap and staring at their phones. At the curb, a row of cars with hazard lights blinking waits like a pit crew. In each one, a parent who has already worked a full day is about to drive a child home, ask “how was class?”, and get the answer “fine”.

That scene is what Koreans call 교육열 (gyo-yuk-yeol). And the cars are where you see it most clearly.

The short version: 교육열 means “education fever”: the huge energy, money and worry Korean parents pour into their children’s schooling. It grew out of a thousand years of exam-based careers and became the main ladder out of poverty after the Korean War. Today it looks like hagwon (private cram schools), the tutoring district of Daechi-dong, a 10 p.m. hagwon curfew in Seoul, and about 27.5 trillion won a year in private education spending. It’s also shifting: spending fell in 2025, and since October 2026 it has been illegal for hagwon to give entrance tests to four-year-olds. Yes, that was a thing.

The word: 교육 + 열

교육 (gyo-yuk) is education. 열 (yeol) is heat, as in a fever or passion. The Standard Korean Language Dictionary defines 교육열 simply as 교육에 대한 열의, “zeal for education”.

What the dictionary misses is the tone. Said one way, it’s pride: this is the energy that turned a war-ruined country into one of the most educated on earth. Said another way, with a sigh, it’s a diagnosis: the reason a ten-year-old has a schedule like a CEO and the parents haven’t taken a holiday since the child was born.

Say / Mean: 우리 동네 교육열이 장난 아니야 (u-ri dong-ne gyo-yuk-yeo-ri jang-nan a-ni-ya) literally means “The education fever in our neighborhood is no joke.” In practice it means “Every kid here goes to three hagwon, the moms have a group chat that ranks the math teachers, and I’m already tired.” It can be a boast or a complaint. Usually it’s both.

Where the fever came from

A thousand years of exams

Long before the 수능, Korea had the 과거 (gwa-geo), the state civil service examinations. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, King Gwangjong of Goryeo introduced them in 958, and they ran for roughly a thousand years until the Gabo Reforms abolished them in 1894. In the Joseon dynasty, the main exams were held every three years, with extra special sittings in between.

The point of the 과거 was simple and revolutionary for its time: in principle, you got a government post by passing a test on Confucian classics, not only by being born into the right family. Pass, and your whole family’s status rose. The scholar-official became the ideal of success. If you’ve ever seen a historical drama where a young man in a wide horsehair hat says goodbye to his weeping mother before the exam, that’s the 과거. Swap the hat for a hoodie and it’s a modern Korean family.

After the war: education as the ladder

After liberation in 1945 and the Korean War, the old class order had collapsed and most families had very little. What they could invest in was their children’s heads. Schooling became the one ladder that seemed open to everyone.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture traces how the competition moved up the ages: in the 1960s private tutoring was mostly for getting into middle school, in the 1970s for high school, and from the 1980s for university. Each time the government flattened one exam, the race moved to the next one.

It got so intense that in 1980 the military-backed government simply banned private tutoring outright, as part of the “7.30 education reform”. The ban was loosened bit by bit over the next decade, and in April 2000 the Constitutional Court ruled it unconstitutional. You can ban tutoring; you can’t ban a parent’s anxiety.

The dragon from the ditch

There’s a proverb every Korean knows: 개천에서 용 난다 (gae-cheon-e-seo yong nan-da), “a dragon rises from a ditch”. It means someone from humble beginnings reaches the very top, usually through study. For decades it was the national success story.

The bitter modern joke, repeated endlessly in Korean comment sections, is that the ditch has dried up. These days, people say, the dragons all come from Gangnam. Which brings us to the money.

How much are we talking?

A lot. Korea’s official private education survey (run by the national statistics agency with the Ministry of Education, and published every March) covers primary, middle and high-school students. Here’s the 2025 survey, released on March 16, 2026:

What	2025 figure
Total spent on private education	about 27.5 trillion won
Share of students taking paid private classes	75.7%
Average per student, per month (all students)	458,000 won
Average per student who takes classes	604,000 won
High-school students who take classes	793,000 won a month

Three in four students are in paid tutoring, and the 458,000 won average includes the kids who take nothing.

And it starts early. In 2024 the Ministry of Education ran its first-ever trial survey of children under six (13,241 children; not yet official national statistics). It found that 47.6% of preschoolers were already in private education, rising to 81.2% of five-year-olds. So-called English kindergartens, which are legally hagwon for small children, averaged 1,545,000 won a month. That’s a monthly fee for a child who still needs help with their shoelaces.

Hagwon life and the legend of Daechi-dong

A 학원 (ha-gwon) is a private after-school academy. There are hagwon for everything: math, English, science, essay writing, coding, piano, taekwondo, swimming. Many Korean kids go to several, back to back, after school. Parents call the circuit 학원 뺑뺑이 (ha-gwon ppaeng-ppaeng-i), “the hagwon merry-go-round”.

The capital of this world is 대치동 (Dae-chi-dong), a neighborhood in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Streets around its main roads are lined with academy buildings, one stacked on top of another. In Korean, “Daechi-dong” isn’t just an address. It’s shorthand for top-tier hagwon, star instructors (일타강사, il-ta-gang-sa, “number-one lecturer”), and parents who will move house to get near them.

That moving has an ancient name too: 맹모삼천지교 (maeng-mo-sam-cheon-ji-gyo), the story of Mencius’ mother, who moved house three times to find the best environment for her son’s education. Mencius’ mother never had to deal with Gangnam rent.

A few things you’ll hear about the hagwon world:

• 대치동 라이딩 (“Daechi riding”): parents driving children from one hagwon to the next, eating dinner in the car. Some parents joke that they are no longer a mom or a dad but an unpaid chauffeur service with snacks.
• 선행학습 (seon-haeng-hak-seup), “learning ahead”: studying material years before school teaches it. Primary-schoolers doing middle-school math barely raises an eyebrow.
• The drama version: SKY Castle (JTBC, 2018–2019), about wealthy parents and the ruthless admissions coordinators they hire. Koreans laughed at it. Then a lot of them checked whether their own child was falling behind.

The 10 p.m. curfew

Yes, Korea has a curfew for cram schools. In Seoul, the city’s education ordinance allows hagwon classes for school students only between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. That’s why the doors fly open at ten and the car queue starts at 9:55. Other regions set their own limits, and some allow later hours for high schoolers.

In late 2025, a Seoul city council member proposed extending it to midnight for high schoolers, citing fairness with other regions. The hagwon industry association backed it, Seoul’s education office opposed it, and in December 2025 the council’s education committee shelved it. So 10 p.m. it is. After that, many students simply move to a 독서실 (dok-seo-sil), a paid silent study room. The curfew applies to hagwon. It doesn’t apply to willpower.

“The 4-year-old exam”

This one makes even Koreans wince. The nickname 4세 고시 (“the 4-year-old bar exam”, after the notoriously brutal 고시 state exams) meant the entrance tests some popular English kindergartens gave to children of about four. Its sibling, the 7세 고시, meant entrance tests for elite math and English hagwon taken before primary school.

The backlash grew, and in March 2026 the National Assembly amended the hagwon law to ban selection tests for young children. Since October 1, 2026, academies may not give preschoolers written, oral, interview or performance tests to decide admission or class placement. Fines run from 1 million won for a first offense to 3 million won for a third. The Ministry of Education plans a crackdown in December and January, peak season for preschool sign-ups, backed by rewards for whistleblowers.

Somewhere, a four-year-old is very relieved. Somewhere else, a parent is already asking a group chat what the “unofficial” level check is.

Goose dads and other birds

For some families, the fever goes international. A 기러기 아빠 (gi-reo-gi a-ppa), “goose dad”, is defined in the National Institute of Korean Language’s open dictionary as a father who sends his wife and children abroad for the children’s education and lives alone in Korea. Like a wild goose, he flies over to see them when he can.

Korean internet slang has extended the flock, half-joking: an 독수리 아빠 (eagle dad) can afford to fly out whenever he wants, while a 펭귄 아빠 (penguin dad) can’t afford to fly at all. It’s a joke about loneliness and money at the same time, which is very Korean.

SKY: the finish line

All of this points at a target. SKY is the nickname for Korea’s three most prestigious universities: Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University. For a lot of parents, getting into SKY (or, increasingly, any medical school) is the finish line that justifies everything before it.

Why? Partly jobs and networks: for decades, where you studied shaped where you worked. And partly 체면 (che-myeon), face. A child’s university is something parents are asked about at weddings, at church, at every family holiday. There’s a reason the suneung exam stops a whole country, and a reason your university class year shapes your sunbae-hoobae relationships for life.

The Bank of Korea put numbers on the “dried-up ditch” in a 2024 report. Students from Gangnam’s three wealthy districts made up just 4% of general high-school graduates in 2018, but 12% of the students entering Seoul National University. Its researchers estimated that most of the gap between Seoul and the rest of the country came from parents’ wealth and the private-education environment, not from students’ potential. In other words: the dragons have a Daechi-dong address.

Why parents keep paying

Ask Korean parents why they do it and you rarely hear “I want my child to be number one”. You hear 불안 (bul-an), anxiety: if everyone else’s child is learning ahead, yours falls behind. Nobody wants to be the one family that stopped.

There’s also love, and duty. Korean culture talks a lot about 효 (hyo), children’s duty to their parents. 교육열 is the flip side: parents’ sense of duty to give their children every chance, even at huge cost to themselves.

And there’s speed. Korean life runs on ppalli-ppalli, and education is no exception: earlier English, earlier math, earlier everything. Mom’s KakaoTalk at 10:15 p.m. reads, “Did you eat? Did you do the worksheet? Did the teacher say anything?” Three questions, in order of priority, and the first one is a decoy.

The cost nobody budgets for: babies

Korea has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, and education costs keep coming up as a reason. When young couples talk about not having children, or stopping at one, “we couldn’t afford the hagwon” is a common line.

The Bank of Korea’s 2024 report named overheated entrance competition as one cause of low fertility, and found that education, including private tutoring, was the biggest single spending item for the households it examined in 2023, at 22.5% of their consumer spending. A 2023 report from the Federation of Korean Industries (an employers’ group, so read it with that in mind) estimated that every 10,000-won rise in monthly tutoring spending per student was linked to a fall of about 0.012 in the fertility rate, and claimed about 26% of the drop between 2015 and 2022 came from rising tutoring costs. The exact numbers are debatable. The direction isn’t.

Is the fever breaking?

Some signs say it’s cooling, a little.

• Spending fell. The 2025 total of 27.5 trillion won was down 5.7% from 29.2 trillion in 2024, and participation dropped 4.3 percentage points. Fewer students explains part of it. But spending per participating student still rose 2.0%. Fewer kids, each one more expensive.
• The law is stepping in. The preschool test ban draws a legal line at age four, and Seoul’s 10 p.m. curfew held.
• Big ideas are on the table. The Bank of Korea proposed that top universities admit students in proportion to each region’s share of school-age students, to give the ditch its dragons back. It’s only a proposal, but a central bank writing about university admissions says a lot.

You also hear more parents say “I just want my kid to be happy”. Then they sign up for one more math hagwon, just in case. The fever is breaking slowly, with relapses.

If you live in Korea: what to say and what to avoid

Do:

• Praise effort, not ranking. “Your kid works so hard” lands well. So does “고생 많으시죠” (“You must have it so hard”) to a parent in the middle of exam season.
• Understand the schedule. If Korean friends with kids can’t meet on a weeknight, it’s probably the hagwon pickup. Suggest a weekend lunch instead.
• Say 수고했어 (su-go-hae-sseo, “you worked hard”) to a student finishing a big exam. Nothing else is needed.

Avoid:

1. Asking “Which university?” or “What was their score?” about someone’s child. Let parents offer it.
2. Comparing kids. Korea already has a word for “the perfect child of my mom’s friend”: 엄친아 (eom-chin-a), “mom’s friend’s son”. Every Korean has been compared to him. Don’t add to his legend.
3. Lecturing parents that it’s all too much. Most already agree. They just don’t want their child to pay for their principles.
4. Assuming every family is Daechi-dong. Plenty spend modestly and never see a level test.

So if you’re ever on a Seoul street at 10 p.m. and the hagwon doors burst open, look at the line of cars with their hazard lights on. That’s 교육열: tired, expensive, sometimes excessive, and underneath it all, a parent waiting in the dark to take their kid home.