South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. This piqued my interest in exploring the reasons behind this phenomenon. Upon further findings online, I discovered that one of the reasons behind the high suicide rates was due to the competitive education system in South Korea. It was mentioned by an article online (http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/15/393939759/the-all-work-no-play-culture-of-south-korean-education) that the education system in South Korea is simply "All-work" and "No-play". Is it really such the case in South Korea? Let's find out more.

 

Very much like the education system in Singapore, South Korea also operates on the system whereby a child goes through kindergarten then primary school then secondary school then high school and eventually reaching tertiary education, whereby the child enters university. Both the Singapore and South Korean education systems are well known internationally for their academic rigor and intensity, yet suicide rates in Singapore are not even close to that of South Korea (7.4 vs 28.9 suicides per 100,000 people [1]). So really, what's going on with the students of South Korea? What is forcing so many of them to commit (or have committed) suicide? What is actually going on in their minds?

 

This summer, I got the opportunity to be part of South Korea's education system and to dwell deeper into this issue. I attended Hanyang International Summer School and was privileged to study at Hanyang University which is one of the top 5 [2]  universities in South Korea. This photo album will thus illustrate the various study/work-related experiences I had at Hanyang University. Is the Korean education system really the main propagator of the shockingly high suicide rates in the country? Or could there be other underlying reasons behind this creepy phenomenon? Is it really so stressful to study in South Korea's education institutes?

 

Take a look at my photos and be your own judge. 

 

 

Melvin. 27/7/2016. Seoul.

 

 

[1] Suicide rates Data by country. (n.d.). Retrieved July 27, 2016, from http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.MHSUICIDE?lang=en

[2] Ranking web of universities. (n.d.). Retrieved July 27, 2016, from http://www.webometrics.info/en/Asia/Republic Of Korea

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On a side note, many people (at least for many of my friends and family members) may have the impression that students who go on summer exchanges have it easy. Well, in my case, I can assure you I did not have it easy. I took 3 modules (Beginning Korean 1, Photo and Video Journalism, Mind-body Health) during my 1 month stint at Hanyang International Summer School. While the workload here isn't too heavy and all the modules I took were certainly fun, it was also very tiring at the same time. Starting school at 9am and ending school at 7pm for 4 weeks is certainly no joke. There were many moments when I struggled in school, especially for the module 'Beginning Korean 1'. Learning a new language isn't easy to begin with; and to to do it in less than 1 month just adds so much difficulty to it. Maybe I'm just not a language person to begin with...
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I titled this album 'Work' simply because I really had to do a lot of work here during my summer exchange. It isn't all just fun and games when you are on summer exchange. I can honestly tell that there were many struggles that I faced here while studying at Hanyang University, both physically, mentally and emotionally. They will be documented in my photo album below.

 

One thing I can say for sure - The stress here is real (at least that's how I feel).
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Anyway, on a light-hearted note, hopefully you will enjoy this photo album! :)