The Korean Educational Development Institute in early 1995 estimated that families paid
17 trillion w4n (US$ 21 billion) on direct educational expenditure such as tuition, mandatory
fees, extracurricular activities sponsored by schools, transportation, and textbooks. By contrast,
total government public expenditure on education in 1994 amounted to 16.7 trillion w4n. That is,
the public paid 51 percent of the total direct cost of education. In addition, an estimated six
trillion w4n was spent on private tutoring. According to the KEDI study, when tutoring was
included, parents and students absorbed 69 percent of the costs of education.15
Expenses has only risen it recent years. Wealthier parents began sending children abroad
when the restrictions on overseas travel eased after the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Thousands of
families sent children to U.S. high schools where they would pay a Korean family in America an
average of two or three thousand U.S. dollars a month to watch over their child. A 1999 study
found that costs of education rose 2.5 times from 1988 and 1998, outstripping the increase in cost
of food, housing, health, transportation, utilities or any other major category of expenses.16
According to a report of the National Statistical Office in 1997, urban workers spent 9.8 percent
of their income on education up from 6.7 percent in 1987, while rural families devoted a smaller
proportion of their income to education. South Korea, in 1997, was 85 percent urban. The
magnitude of this expenditure can perhaps be understood by comparing it with Japan, where a
similar obsession with educational achievement had created the same reliance on expenditures on
private lessons and tutoring. In Japan, urban workers spent 5.4 percent of their income on
education up from 4.7 percent in 1987.17 The financial crisis of 1997-1998 may have slowed