@samuelszuchan: South Korea made a TV show about parents destroying their kids through academic obsession. It became the most watched cable show in the country's history. SKY Castle started with ratings of 1.7%. Its finale hit 23.78%, setting the record for highest viewership of any program in Korean cable history. Parents recognized what they were seeing. They discussed it over dinner. They posted about it online. Then they drove their kids to cram school the next morning. If the show had changed anything, you'd see it in the spending data. You don't. Private education spending in South Korea surged over 60% in the past decade, reaching nearly 29.2 trillion won, roughly 20 billion dollars, in 2024. Between 2020 and 2023, per student spending jumped 43.7%. Here's what makes it worse. The school age population shrank by 14.5% between 2020 and 2023. Total spending on private education rose 40% in the same period. Fewer kids, more money per kid. Credit card data from Shinhan Card showed the top 20% of earners increased private education spending by 29% compared to 2019. The bottom quintile increased by 15.8%. Everyone accelerated. The wealthiest accelerated hardest. South Korea is now the most expensive country in the world to raise a child. 275,000 dollars from birth to age 18, which is 7.8 times the country's GDP per capita. Families with teenagers in the top income quintile spend 18% of their monthly income on tutoring alone. Private education now accounts for 12% of household spending in Korea, more than what families spend on food. The system absorbed the critique and metabolized it into content. After SKY Castle came The Penthouse, Crash Course in Romance, Green Mothers' Club. Each one depicting the same machinery. Each one becoming a hit. Each one changing nothing.

Sam Szuchan

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Region: US

Sunday 10 May 2026 19:02:03 GMT