46 Asia The EconomistDecember 14th 2019
1S
outh korea’soverworked children are
well-known for finishing the school day
and heading straight to hagwon (cram-
school) classes to become musical virtuo-
sos or to gain an edge over their peers in
mathematics or English. In North Korea, by
contrast, school is typically followed by
compulsory labour in the fields.
In recent years, however, school days in
the North have come to resemble those in
the South—at least for a select few. Of 116 re-
cent North Korean defectors interviewed
by researchers at Seoul National University
this year, a third said they had received
some form of private education while in
the North. Some had worked as private tu-
tors themselves. Cho Jeong-ah of South Ko-
rea’s Institute of National Unification
thinks the survey shows that views about
education are changing among North Ko-
rean parents: it is increasingly seen as an
investment they can make in their chil-
dren’s future, rather than something to be
accepted from their all-wise rulers.
In theory, paying for education is illegal
in North Korea. One of the main purposes
of universal schooling is to batter into
young minds the godlike virtues of the Kim
dynasty and the infallibity of the commu-
nist regime. Only the state can be trusted to
do this properly, of course. But in practice
North Koreans have had to pay even for
state-provided education since the famine
of the 1990s, which devastated the provi-
sion of all sorts of public goods—not just
food distribution but free textbooks, heat-ed classrooms and wages for teachers.
Accounts abound of pupils compelled
to pay teachers to show up to work. If they
could not pay, they were forced to help the
teachers harvest crops or, in winter, bring
firewood to class. The first private tutors
were state-school teachers trying to make
ends meet. Since then, tutoring seems to
have evolved into a profession in the state’s
grey economy, with an average monthly
cost per subject of around 200 Chinese
yuan (the most widely used currency,
worth $30). The regime is apparently will-
ing to turn a blind eye to the informal hag-
won classes, so long as parents are not too
ostentatious about using them.
It probably helps that the biggest bene-
ficiaries of private tutoring are the children
of the elite. According to Thae Yong-ho, a
former North Korean diplomat who defect-
ed to the South, parents in Pyongyang and
provincial capitals use it to get their chil-
dren into the best secondary schools. One
of the perks of such schools is that pupils
are exempt from compulsory labour, al-
lowing them to study to get into universi-
ties. Music and foreign-language lessons
are popular at the hagwon, because these
might help children get jobs as diplomats
or professional musicians, and therefore
travel abroad. Chinese lessons are prized in
areas near China because the language
helps with cross-border business.
The accounts of defectors are probably
not representative. They are, after all, an
unusual group and private tutoring may be
much rarer than they suggest. Still, among
some parents, educational competition
may be nearly as all-consuming as it is in
the capitalist South. One North Korean re-
cently told a South Korean talk-show host
that she had made her daughter study with
a headlamp during power outages. Another
said that she used to wake up her nephew at
4.30 every morning in order to memorise
English words. 7SEOUL
Private tutors are illegal but thrivingCrammers in North KoreaReading not
weeding
Korea opportunitiesW
hen hiroko tsukihiinstructs her
pupils to write down “water” in kanji,
the ideograms derived from Chinese that
are used alongside Japan’s home-grown
syllabic scripts, they groan. Even for native
pupils steeped in the language, kanji take
hours to memorise. But Ms Tsukihi teaches
immigrant children who have recently ar-
rived in Toyohashi, a city in central Japan,
as part of a programme called Mirai (“the
future” in Japanese), which provides ten
weeks of intensive language classes for
middle-school pupils before integrating
them into local public schools. The city
launched the Mirai programme in 2018.
“The schools couldn’t support all the for-
eign students coming in,” says Ms Tsukihi.
In many parts of the country schools are
becoming a bit less homogenous. There are
currently 124,000 registered foreign-born
children of school age in Japan. Although
that is only just over 1% of pupils in the
school system, it marks a 30% rise from- A new visa scheme that went into ef-
fect in April, meant to lure blue-collar
workers into industries facing labour
shortages, is expected to bring more immi-
grants and their children. In the manufac-
turing hub of Toyohashi, labour-brokers
recruit thousands of Brazilians and Filipi-
nos to work in factories every year. Such
workers have 1,976 children in the local
schools, up from 1,352 five years ago.
The number who require remedial Japa-
nese lessons is rising fast. A government
survey found that there were about 51,000
in 2018, a 16% increase from 2016. Schools
are struggling. Japanese-language teachers
are in short supply. Volunteers help (they
make up more than half of all those teach-
ing Japanese to foreign pupils), but many
are elderly, and unlikely to keep working
for long.
Whether the immigrant children can
receive the education they need also de-
pends on where they live. In Toyohashi,
which has had a sizeable Brazilian commu-
nity since the early 1990s, officials help
families fill out documents and offer guid-
ance on the school system. In addition to
Mirai, Iwata Elementary School, where a
quarter of the pupils are foreign, provides
interpreters and 200-hour crash courses in
Japanese. “We have a long history of wel-
coming immigrant children. The system
already exists,” says Yasue Matsui, who
teaches foreign pupils there.
But in places with fewer immigrants,
TOYOHASHI
Schools are struggling to integrate
foreign pupilsEducating migrant children in JapanMuddled masses