hankyoreh

By Lee Se-young, staff reporter

On the map, the two schools are separated by less than 20 kilometers. They’re located on the northwestern and southeastern edges of Seoul, but lie on the same subway line just an hour apart. The social gulf between them, however, vastly overshadows their physical distance.

“S” High School is located in prime real estate in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district. Last year, a total of 35 students dropped out - less than 2% of the 1,820-person student body. The curious thing is why they left. 30 of the 35 dropped out because they were “traveling overseas.” In other words, they were going to study abroad.

S High accounts for the single largest share of Seoul students leaving for overseas study. The 30 students also outnumber the combined 29 total leaving school to study overseas from the 19 high schools in northwest Seoul’s Eunpyeong district.

Another high school, with a name that also starts with an “S,” is a newcomer to Eunpyeong, with five years of history. It has a student body of 931, with 41 leaving last year - a total of 4.4%. 32 of them, roughly four of five, left for “failure to adapt.” One did leave to study abroad, but it was for athletic training. The school ranks among the highest tier in Seoul for students “failing to adapt.”

A breakdown of the reasons for not adapting shows 22 of the students at Eunpyeong’s S High citing “academic reasons.”

“Most of them are children who lose their desire to study and are absent for a long time before they finally drop out,” said a school teacher on condition of anonymity.

“I think it’s more a product of the university entrance exam focus in the education than an issue with the particular school,” the source added.

Another “adaptation” issue is at work in the case of students who leave Gangnam‘s S High School.

“I think most of the ones who go to study overseas are really leaving because of academic stress and concerns about their future,” said one teacher there, adding that “around fifteen students leave to study abroad after the first semester each year.”

“In rare cases, they’re leaving for short-term study abroad because their parents are local trading company staff or public servants,” the teacher said. “Most of the time, they’re leaving for ‘early education’ with a guardian.”

Both are cases of students leaving because of a failure to adapt to South Korean schools, but their destinations are very different. The reason is economic. The location of Eunpyeong’s S High is a typical working class section of the Gangbuk region north of the Han River in Seoul, an area crowded with small apartments and multiplex housing. A “New Town” apartment complex sits across a ten-lane highway, but the “New Town kids” prefer “D” High, an autonomous private high school, or “J” High, which is located right in the middle of the complex.

“School choices have gotten a lot more polarized along income and home environment lines since the autonomous private high school arrived and the high school choice system was introduced,” said a source at S High.

Indeed, 215 of the students at S High, or 23.7%, are receiving tuition support, which is provided to students from low-income households: basic livelihood benefits recipients, single-parent families, and the “near-poverty” class. In total, 16.1% of Seoul high school students are drawing support.

Gangnam‘s S High also has a few students receiving support - 44 of them, or 2.4% of the student body. The school sits across the road from two of the famously affluent district’s most elite addresses: Tower Palace to the south, and Dogok Raemian Apartments to the west.

“When they first started the school choice system, there were students coming from Seocho and Songpa districts, and even from as far away as Nowon and Seongbuk,” said the school‘s vice principal, whose surname is Cha. “But because of the distance back and forth, it’s now over 95% children from Dogok and other Gangnam neighborhoods.”

Visitor to the school’s website will find a pop-up window announcing the highest rate of students earning Level 1 and 2 scores on the 2013 College Scholastic Ability Test among general high schools in standardized regions around the country.

The two “S Highs” typify a form of high school polarization that looks unlikely to go away any time soon.

“These students have it so rough at home and have such uncertain prospects for the future that it’s impossible for them to get motivated to study. They end up disappearing for long periods of time, before someone suggests dropping out and they leave,” said one Eunpyeong-area high school teacher.

“Every time I hear about one of those students working a part-time job without any hope for the future, it makes me question my job as a teacher,” the teacher admitted.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]