Study Break Pt. 1: Gwangju Anti-Hakbeol Society Focuses on Forced Study
Written by Ana Traynin, Interview interpretation by Jo Nam-hee
Forced study picketing photos courtesy of Gwangju Anti-Hakbeol Society
On any given weeknight around 10 p.m., many Gwangju city bus stops are the scene of a sudden rush of teenagers in school uniforms, chatting with their classmates, checking their smartphones, and scrambling onto the bus to go home. These high school students are finishing their regular nighttime self-study sessions. If they attend private academies, hagwons, their evening hours may stretch even later. Hours of sleep are few and far between. This is just one slice of life in a “hakbeol” society.
Hakbeol, sometimes spelled hakbul, is a distinctly Korean term, which can be loosely defined as “educational background” or “credentials.” In a highly competitive atmosphere, credentials have come to be the biggest mark of status. Though this system has been in place for many years, there are those who believe that a credentials-based society maintains inequality and must be phased out.
Anyone passing by or going to the Gwangju Office of Education in Seo-gu this year, particularly during summer vacation, may have noticed the daily picketing campaigns against enforced nighttime self-study. While officially considered voluntary self-study time, the campaign organizers maintain that Gwangju high school students are forced to stay past regular school hours.
Gwangju Anti-Hakbeol Society local citizens’ group leads this campaign. Since its founding in 2011, the group has worked to raise awareness and solve the problems of hakbeol, with a particular focus on discrimination and students’ rights, from grade school to university. During their annual conference, the group decided on the “forced study” issue as the priority of this year’s campaigning.
The organization’s founder, 31-year-old Gwangju native Park Go Hyung Jun, said, “We don’t need many researchers, since we have gone through the education system. If you have gone to high school in Korea, you know the problem by heart.”
Park Go uses both his father’s and his mother’s surname to show his support of gender equality. Over the years, he has worked to grow Gwangju Anti-Hakbeol Society from a five-person team of like-minded friends and colleagues, to an official organization of 100 people and finally the current membership-based organization of 300 citizens. While a group with the same name operates in Seoul, each local chapter works within its own region.
Though the group receives local media attention and member support, Park Go explains that since the concept of hakbeol is not easily transparent and requires complicated case studies, it remains a minor campaign. Though some parents donate and are even actively vocal about the issue, many find themselves unable to escape the credentials phenomenon. Park Go says that hakbeol stems directly from Seoul National University, the number-one school in the country.
“Just to say ‘student of SNU,’ they get all the wealth, power and benefits of graduating from that university. Unlike other countries, Korea has put a lot of power into universities.”
This drive to attend prestigious universities is fueled by the desires of students, their parents, and ultimately, the whole 
society, leading to an increase in nighttime self-study and in cost of afterschool academies. Although official study time is defined as study during daylight hours, competition puts emphasis on prerequisites and English from an early age, leaving students with little choice but to attend extra study sessions.
“The students at the tertiary education level are studying material for university,” Park Go says. “It works like a pyramid, where to get into a good high school, middle school students are studying in advance, elementary school students are studying in advance. One example is, since Koreans are quite obsessed with English, they want to start it as early as possible.”
We will continue to explore student rights in Korea in the second part of our series, which will appear in next month’s issue.
http://www.antihakbul.org (Seoul)
https://www.facebook.com/antihakbul
Gwangju Sansu-dong 536-19
070-8234-1319