For studies in English, Koreans learn to say goodbye to dad

AUCKLAND, New Zealand: On a sunny afternoon recently, half a dozen South Korean mothers came to pick up their children at the Remuera Primary School here, greeting one another warmly in a schoolyard filled with New Zealanders.

The mothers, members of the largest group of foreigners at the public school, were part of what are known in South Korea as "wild geese," families living separately, sometimes for years, to school their children in English-speaking countries like New Zealand and the United States. The mothers and children live overseas while the fathers live and work in South Korea, flying over to visit a couple of times a year.

Driven by a shared dissatisfaction with South Korea's rigid educational system, parents in rapidly expanding numbers are seeking to give their children an edge by helping them become fluent in English while sparing them, and themselves, the stress of South Korea's notorious educational pressure cooker.

More than 40,000 South Korean schoolchildren are believed to be living outside South Korea with their mothers in what experts say is an outgrowth of a new era of globalized education.

The phenomenon is the first time that South Korean parents' famous focus on education has split wives from husbands and children from fathers. It has also upended traditional migration patterns by which men went overseas temporarily while their wives and children stayed home, straining marriages and the Confucian ideal of the traditional Korean family. The cost of maintaining two households has stretched family budgets since most wives cannot work outside South Korea because of visa restrictions.

In 2006, 29,511 children from elementary through high school level left South Korea, nearly double the number in 2004 and almost seven times the figure in 2000, according to the Korean Educational Development Institute, a research group that tracks the figures for the Ministry of Education. The figures, the latest available, did not include children accompanying parents who left South Korea to work or emigrate, and who could also be partly motivated by educational goals.

South Koreans now make up the largest group of foreign students in the United States (more than 103,000) and the second largest in New Zealand after Chinese students, according to American and New Zealand government statistics. Yet, unlike other foreign students, South Koreans tend to go overseas starting in elementary school — in the belief that they will absorb English more easily at that age.

In New Zealand, there were 6,579 South Koreans in the country's elementary and secondary schools in 2007, accounting for 38 percent of all foreign students.

"We talked about coming here for two years before we finally did it," said Kim Soo-in, 39, who landed here 16 months ago with her two sons. "It was never a question of whether to do it, but when. We knew we had to do it at some point."

Wild geese fathers were initially relatively wealthy and tended to send their families to the United States. But in the last few years, more middle-class families have been heading to less expensive destinations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Now, there are also "eagle fathers," who visit their families several times a year because they have the time and money. Those with neither, who are stuck in South Korea, are known as "penguin fathers."

The national experience is considered enough of a social problem that an aide to South Korea's president recently singled out the plight of the penguin fathers.

President Lee Myung-bak said he would start to address the problem by hiring 10,000 English teachers. "This is unprecedented," he said. "Korea is actually the only country in the world undergoing such a phenomenon, which is very unfortunate."

South Korean students routinely score at the top in international academic tests. But unhappiness over education's financial and psychological costs is so widespread that it is often cited as a reason for the country's low birthrate, which, at 1.26 in 2007, was one of the world's lowest.

South Korean parents say that the schools are failing to teach not only English but also other skills crucial in an era of globalization, like creative thinking. That resonates among South Koreans, whose economy has slowed after decades of high growth and who believe they are increasingly being squeezed between the larger economies of Japan and China.

It could take years to see how well this wave of children will fare back in South Korea, especially since they are now going overseas at the elementary level. But earlier this decade, when the wild geese children tended to be high school students, many succeeded in plying their improved English scores to get into colleges in the United States or other English-speaking countries, education experts said. For others, their years overseas was a roundabout way to get into top South Korean colleges, like Yonsei University in Seoul, which increasingly offer courses or entire programs in English.

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