Question on Korean exams

I am writing a book about childhood and want to include a reference to the exam culture in Korea. This is what I have heard about the country:


...In Korea, university entrance exam day is a national event, with television news broadcasting live from school gates and special police patrols escorting students to testing stations. Korean mothers start praying for straight As 100 days before the exams, which is nothing compared to the superhuman swotting their children put in. Koreans pupils spur themselves on with a chilling mantra: "Sleep four hours and pass, sleep five hours and fail."...


Does that sound accurate? If anything is off target, I'd love to hear about it.


Many thanks!

it is quite accurate.


the exam culture here is INTENSE. Mothers don't sleep because their children aren't sleeping. Mothers go to pray at temple, at their church, at their shaman, to their ancestors. The mothers go nuts trying to prepare special, easy to digest and easy to eat "smart" foods - nutrient rich and designed to help give their kids lots of energy through the intensity.


AFTER school, students from as young as middle school are putting in "study hours" at hagwons, which are learning institutes where they get extra drill and kill in different subject areas they have studied at school. Their school education isn't enough to pass their exams - the attend hagwons for additional help. They get home from Hagwons past midnight and then study more only to get up early to go to school again.


It's not a pretty sight - people go crazy here during exam week - which is why a HUGE NUMBER of people are sending their children abroad - I think I just read recently that Korea, which has a relatively small population, sends the second most children abroad to study - this is to escape this intensity of exams. you should look at that culture too - young families split up - with fathers continuing to work here, while mothers and children go to another country (US, Canada, NZ) in order to get a less rigid, less strenuous western education.