hankyoreh

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“Kids these days have to be Superman and Brainy Smurf all wrapped into one. But don’t worry. All your student has to do is sit back and relax. Meanwhile, we’ll put together programs such as [making them] English newspaper correspondents and making personal websites. We will also write your letters of recommendation from instructors. Thinking about participating in an essay contest? Ghostwriting is also available.”

The Hankyoreh sat in on an admissions information session of an overseas education consulting firm located in Gangnam earlier this month. Only an exclusive few were able to secure spots in the session.

At the session, the presenter introduced the company’s services, which ranged from the editing of school writing assignments to award management, from unlimited proofreading and editing of college admissions essays to participation in essay competitions (with ghostwriting services also offered), and more.

In particular, the firm promises parents that, even if their child’s GPA or SAT scores are low, they can “make the impossible possible” by whipping up a “narrative of [participation] in special activities.”

At an online info session held by another similar company, about 60 people were in virtual attendance. Perhaps because it was held shortly after Han Dong-hoon was appointed justice minister, at the briefing session that day, the splendid qualifications of Han’s daughter, who attends Chadwick International in Songdo, Incheon, were brought up.

Regarding the sponcon-reminiscent interviews in US media that praised the achievements of Han’s daughter, the consulting firm stressed sincerity, saying, “US admissions officials are not fools.” However, the firm charges a base fee of 5.5 million won (US$4,200) as the fee for its services of connecting students to weekend volunteer work experience.

The cost soared to 20 to 30 million won when one added on recommended programs such as participating in competitions, SAT prep, and college admission essay writing.

Normal consulting fees around 20M won annually can jump into hundreds of millions of won if you’re willing to pay

“The domestic consulting market for overseas education has lost its moral sense,” said Park Jong-kyeong, the president of Ziqzi Academy, during a meeting with the Hankyoreh on June 2.

Ziqzi Academy is an online platform that provides classes for students preparing to study in the US, including English writing and reading and preparing for US math competitions. Of the 200 students enrolled, 70%-80% attend international schools.

Park pointed to two problems with Korea’s overseas education consulting industry, the first being the prevalence of ghostwriting.

“School homework is done [for students] to manage their grades, and ghostwriting of college admission essay writing is also common,” Park said. “[Consulting] should be a way of guiding students’ career paths and providing them with the latest information on American universities that’s difficult to find in Korea, but, instead, it’s headed down a path of doing [the work] for [students] altogether.”

The other problem Park pointed to is the so-called “fake credentials” business that is tied to the work of such educational consulting firms.

Park showed the Hankyoreh an email he receives at least once a month. The email tells the recipient that if they refer students who want to publish papers with Ivy League faculty (with students to be listed as co-authors), the recipient will be given 20% of the profits as a commission. Even though the sender of the email changes each time, the substance remains practically the same.

“Why would an Ivy League professor write a paper with a Korean high school student?” Park asked. “It’s all a scam.”

Until last year, a 10-million-won service that collects multiple essays and publishes them as books had been a hot seller.

"I tend to think that there aren’t any extracurricular activities that can override [poor] academic performance such as school grades and SATs in the US admissions process,” Park says.

Attendees of the 2021 International Education & Emigration Fair held at Coex in Seoul receive consulting at a booth. (Yonhap News)

South Korea’s consulting market for studying abroad, which sprang up in the wake of the liberalization of overseas travel in 1989, has grown remarkably with the emergence of international schools in Korea since 2010.

These days, even those belonging to the middle class are interested in international schools. Park said that nowadays parents are intent on sending their children to international schools even if the parents themselves are only mid-level managers at large corporations.

Overseas education consulting firms have played into the anxiety of Korean students and their parents, who are not familiar with the American college entrance process, through fear-based marketing.

At the admissions aforementioned info session the Hankyoreh attended, the company emphasized that extracurricular activities related to majors are “absolutely necessary” and must be started “from the ninth grade,” when Korean students are in middle school.

However, one industry insider says this isn’t exactly the case.

“The only places where [extracurriculars] can make or break an admission decision is the handful of Ivy Leagues,” said Lee, the CEO of a study abroad consulting firm with over 20 years of experience. As for the rate of admission to an Ivy League school, Lee said that “around 1 in 10 Korean international students” make the cut.

At a time when most South Korean students are unable to matriculate, money is being poured into college entrance consulting designed to create the sort of extracurriculars that only Ivy League schools are concerned about. Lee views this phenomenon as a reflection of South Koreans being accustomed to hierarchies in higher education.

“With American universities, you need to base your decision on things like the specializations and quality of education rather than rankings, but South Korean parents say, ‘I’m sending my child to an Ivy League school or I’m not sending my child to college at all,’” they explained.

Privileged parents look overseas to perpetuate social status

Another issue is the lack of any commonly accepted “market rate” in the overseas education consulting industry. Park explained, “Consulting costs typically run to about 20 million won per year, although I’ve seen cases where they make 100 to 200 million because [the parents] are willing to pay more.”

It’s also impossible to determine the market’s scale. While some businesses bill themselves as overseas study “academics” or “consultants,” there are also many SAT schools and other academies that also employ personal consultants. Since cash-only transactions are commonplace, tax evasion is another concern.

This is why US college entrance consultants have characterized the South Korean overseas education consulting market as “inappropriate” and “dangerous.”

Lee Min-jeong (pseudonym) worked for seven years as a consultant with the Independent Educational Consultants Association in San Jose, California.

“In the US, you can have someone there giving you advice, but simply copying another person’s work is out of the question,” she explained. “If you get caught, that’s a big problem.”

Another businessperson, surnamed Lim, who ran an afterschool academy for over a decade in Cupertino, California, said, “Editing is based on the presumption that the student is the one providing all the ideas.”

Kris Kim, 50, has been operating the business SK Education Consulting in San Jose for 12 years.

“In South Korea, the commodification of college entrance consulting is a serious issue,” she said.

“I often travel to Korea on business, and the products are different each time I go. Sometimes it’s things like fencing that get recommended, and then the next time it’s competitions and after that, it’s establishing non-profits,” she added.

US editing only about making comments: “Student is responsible for all ideas”

How is educational consulting in the US different from that in Korea?

Lee, the consulting business CEO, said, “In ninth grade, there isn’t really very much to consult on. You’re just checking to see whether the student is working hard at school.”

“By 10th grade, you start advising [students] on which classes to take based on their interests and prospective major. Once they’re in their graduation year, you begin editing their college entrance essays, which amounts to making comments about which parts they should be improving or removing,” they added.

Similarly, Kris Kim said, “We read the college entrance essays and guide the students so that their own stories come through. Sometimes parents will ask if we could just write the whole thing, but that would be brushing aside the student’s voice and just making them into ‘clones.’”

“A well-written essay is one that is imbued with the student’s own message, rather than a collection of difficult and impressive words [along South Korean lines],” she suggested.

In the US, the average costs for college entrance consulting run typically run in the thousands of dollars per year. Rarely do they exceed US$10,000 annually; costs upwards of US$50,000 are almost unheard of.

Kim commented on the approach used by Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon’s sister-in-law, who operated her own college entrance business in San Jose.

“I think she viewed things too much along Korean lines,” she said of the aunt, a 49-year-old surnamed Jin.

“It looks like she kept marketing those fake extracurriculars because some of [the students] weren’t getting through without getting winnowed out. She’s basically teaching the students to use trickery, telling them it doesn’t matter how they do it as long as they get into their school,” she said.

Gyeonggi Province educational policy advisor Jeon Gyeong-won said, “Overseas universities are the different avenue that the privileged classes have turned to in order to reproduce their social status after the growing limits on outside help in Korea’s undergraduate screening have made it more difficult to matriculate at elite domestic schools.”

“We need to look at the larger trend, where they’re returning to Korea and using their parents’ pull to find jobs and present themselves as social leaders,” he suggested.

■How the Hankyoreh investigated the story

Between June 1 and 9, the Hankyoreh visited San Jose and other communities in and around California’s Silicon Valley to interview 22 students, student parents, and college entrance consultants.

For some of the Korean overseas study consulting businesses, the reporter passed themselves off as family members of a student enrolled at an international school. This approach was used because some of these businesses are unwilling to disclose details about consulting services and costs to anyone who is not a prospective customer.

Overseas study consulting businesses were chosen randomly from areas of Seoul where large numbers of them are based, including the Apgujeong neighborhood, the area surrounding Gangnam Station and the area’s thoroughfare.

By By Lee You-jin, staff reporter; Jang Ye-ji, staff reporter; Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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

■Editor’s note:

A student at an international school in Songdo, Incheon, the daughter of South Korean Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon has a flashy resume: according to it, she’s authored a scholarly article, been published, founded a volunteer organization, formulated a development plan for a mobile phone application, and participated in an art exhibit. But on the flip side are allegations of plagiarism and ghostwriting, which can be traced back to an industry based on the intellectual exploitation of young people from developing nations, including Kenya.

Han’s daughter utilized a predatory journal, one that muddies research ethics, and has exchanged resume-padding opportunities with the daughters of her 49-year-old aunt, a US college admissions expert surnamed Jin.

The Hankyoreh visited San Jose and other cities neighboring California’s Silicon Valley, where Jin worked, from June 1 through Thursday. This area is where Jin’s daughters — who were in a credential-building club with Han’s daughter — went to high school, and where Asian students engage in fierce competition with each other to get into prestigious US universities.

Those who had experienced US college admissions were enraged by the opportunities the daughters of Han and Jin had obtained through shortcuts, saying that even if everyone begins the race at different starting lines, they still all should follow its basic rules.

Through its three-part series “A League of Their Own: Toward Becoming Elite,” the Hankyoreh aims to shed light on and critique the “global resume-padding industry” that South Korean elites mobilize in order to hand down their academic credentials — a degree from a prestigious US university — to their children.