hankyoreh

holding a microphone. (photo provided by Our School of Hope)

By Lee Jae-hoon, staff writer

On May 12, at an opening ceremony for Our School of Hope, 17-year-old Jeong Yun-seo burst into tears. She had also cried while hugging her friends on April 2 when she dropped out of the Seoul high school she had been attending. Her decision to drop out was agonizing. Until her first year of high school, Jeong had been a good enough student to receive awards for excellence in several subjects after taking national mock tests. This was the result of her attending evening cram schools and taking lessons from private tutors. She feared her good results would not last.

Jeong’s school did not appreciate her dream of becoming a pastry chef. Her teachers instead attempted to steer her toward a future they had drawn up for her based on her ‘specs’ as a student. When she entered her third year of high school, students were forced to pay fines for going into other classes’ rooms to visit friends.

Cut off from her friends and her ambitions, Jeong felt suffocated. It was then that she learned, via Twitter, that a friend her own age had dropped out of school and was holding a solo demonstration calling for the creation of “Our School of Hope.”

“I believe my dropping out of school was against what I really wanted. I‘m planning to put more effort into creating Our School of Hope because I hope younger students will not have the same problems I had.”

It took 73 days for the suggestion of one high-school dropout to bear fruit. On March 1, 17-year-old Choe Hun-min began a one-man protest at Gwanghwamun, in central Seoul, calling for an end to “education based on deadly university entrance exam competition.” Choe dropped out of high school and suggested the creation of Our School of Hope.

When news of Choe’s suggestion spread via conventional and social media, the response among his contemporaries was explosive. More than 100 of them showed up at meetings held twice in March. As of May 13, the group‘s online group had 1,352 members. The Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism has provided office space, two lecture rooms and one library.

At Saturday’s opening ceremony, five dropouts and 10 more who had followed them after Choe’s one-man protest, enrolled at the new school. The students declared that they would create a place of learning where the students were masters, a school without teachers, a school where students found their paths in life and learned through guidance from mentors, and a “community of learning and sharing.”

Several among the new students cited violence as their reason for leaving school. 17-year-old Choe In-heon, a former second-year student at a high school in south Chungcheong province, had been ostracized by his fellow students since middle school. He had been beaten every day, and even had money extorted from him. Then, his school, ignorant of his situation, had branded him an “aggressor.”

"I haven’t been going to school at all since last December,” said Choe. “I will study steadily at Our School of Hope and prepare to become a politician, if only to reform the absurd government, which cites web cartoons and video games as the causes of school violence.”

“Even when I was conducting the one-man demonstration, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to set up a school like this,” said Choi Hun-min, smiling. “But more students than I had expected sent me messages of sympathy which gave me a renewed sense of the serious situation in Korea‘s education system. We plan to gradually create the form of the school, starting with book discussions.”

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