hankyoreh

It is uncomfortable to ask our children whether they are happy. There is no way we can expect happiness from our children when they are being trained to compete with and defeat their friends almost as soon as they are out of the crib. Yet the Korea Pang Jung-hwan Foundation and Yonsei University Institute for Social Development Studies posed just this question to 6,410 young people. The results were as expected. Compared to the findings of surveys on children in 23 OECD member nations, their subjective happiness ratings put them at dead last by a substantial margin.
South Korea placed a full 34 points lower than the OECD average of 100, with a difference of more than 20 points from the next country up, Hungary. Given that this is the third straight year, it now seems that psychological anxieties and discontentment are becoming part of the constitution of this country’s children. In particular, children felt these anxieties despite placing among the very top in objective indicators such as educational opportunity and attainment, material conditions, health, and safety. This can only be the outcome of lives spent being driven around like racehorses. It stems from a structure that is rigidly organized with competition.
In other countries, there has generally been a proportional relationship between educational indices examining things like academic achievement and subjective happiness indices measuring satisfaction with school and home life. In the case of South Korea’s children, however, the relationship between the two has been precisely the inverse. This is almost certainly the result of their being driven to abandon things like human relationships and enter a murderous race for the best grades.
The results also tally with the findings of a study by the Korean Teachers’ and Education Workers’ Union (KTU, Jeon Gyo Jo), which found that 80 percent of children’s stress comes from attending afterschool academies and worries about grades. In addition, children selected money as the most important element in happiness the higher their grade level. And the children who selected money placed lower on happiness ratings. This means that as they get older, children are suffering from a severe sense of burden over grades, success, and money.
The problem is apparent. So, too, is the path toward a solution. The first step is to break away from the jungle-like competitiveness of education. The next is to reestablish the framework of education and life to promote family bonds and friendship and cooperation with friends. If the children who carry the future of South Korean society on their shoulders are unhappy, that society cannot be happy. There needs to be a profound awakening from adults.

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