@samuelszuchan: Every time Korea reforms its national exam, the tutoring industry grows. The 2024 numbers prove it. In 2023, the Korean government targeted what they called “killer questions” on the Suneung, the single national test that determines university admissions. These questions drew on material outside the school curriculum and gave a structural advantage to students whose parents could afford specialized hagwon coaching. Police ran a 20-month investigation. By April 2025, 126 people had been booked, including public school teachers who had been writing test items for hagwons on the side. Some had received over a million dollars across multiple academies for their item-writing services. The corruption was real. Hagwon teachers immediately began analyzing the new test design, marketing themselves as the most reliable navigators of the changed landscape, and selling the uncertainty back to parents at higher prices. As one student in Daegu told a researcher: “When the curriculum changes, my hagwon teachers always analyze what the change means and predict how it will affect the test.” Reform creates uncertainty. Uncertainty drives demand for whoever promises to resolve it. The 2024 numbers came in higher than 2023. The industry hit $20 billion, the highest figure ever recorded. It grew 7.7 percent year-on-year while the school-age population shrank 14.5 percent over three years. Per-student monthly spending jumped 43.7 percent. The customer base is collapsing and the revenue keeps climbing. Thomas Kuhn argued that people don't weigh evidence on neutral terms. They weigh it inside a paradigm that decides what counts as evidence in the first place. Korea's paradigm is: one test sorts you for life, the top three universities control over half of senior positions, and your child's attendance at a hagwon isn't optional. Every reform just becomes new material for that paradigm to absorb.

Sam Szuchan

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Region: US

Wednesday 27 May 2026 14:46:00 GMT