It would actually be interesting for you to make a video about Korean history- you know, what Koreans learn in school... I know a bit about the eras but not really the social aspects or mythological aspects

So true about the kids learning english at an earlier age. I helped teach at an English camp in Korea over the summer, and the 4-6 year old kids were better at speaking in English than the middle school to high school kids.

I'm from Brazil and asked my mom about punishment in school. When she attended elementary school (end of the 60's) punishment was something that educators was starting to left behind. So she saw other kids get punished with a paddle, but it was already shocking to her. Glad this is gone around here.

I'm a 16 year old (17 this month) in the United States, and the ages for foreign languages are getting younger here too. I started learning Spanish in school at 13 years old, and there was no push for languages AT ALL earlier. When I was 11, I tried to learn a language on my own and I was looked at as a weirdo for wanting to know one outside English. However, I know 6 year olds who already know basic Spanish, and they don't come from Spanish speaking families. They learned it all at school. It's kind of weird how the push for foreign languages changed that quickly, and even while I'm still in school myself (going into last year soon).

I really liked this video. It was very interesting.

Thanks for the interesting videos !

Thanks for covering this topic. I think the emergence of Korea is as one of the leading countries of the world in such a short period of time is one of the most interesting stories of modern history, Changes have happened so fast they occur in less than a generation. It was considered a third world county as late as the 80's and now is a top 12 country. ( I forget how they measure that.) I know that this is to be continued, but please plan more videos like this. You mentioned fatherhood in the Q&A and how that is changed. That is how fathers in the past have not been able to directly raise the children because of work obligations or fathers that were reprimanded by their mother for helping with the housework. And now with the TV shows The Return of Superman and Appa Odiga, you can see the difference in the way the fathers were raised and how they are raising their kids.

so excited for this seriies

you are so creative always new idea .. you are amazing keep the good work

And I think that Hangeul is pretty easy and its pronunciation also, because some sounds of portuguese (Brazilian language) are really similar. The hard thing about korean language is putting the words in sentences and learning the words..

Thanks for this super interesting video!!! Please make many more videos about this topic!:)

When they said beat I thought they said bit.

Very interesting comparisons between Old and New Korea. But some of you stories about school life were sad. I'm so sorry you had to endure such treatment HyunWoo. I'm glad to hear that schools no longer promote physical discipline like that. I understand the need for discipline in school, but it sounds like some teachers took their methods to the level of torture for their personal enjoyment. As someone that has tutored young children before, I could never imagine treating my students like that. Thank you for sharing your stories and helping us to view more of Korea in ways that we didn't know. Looking forward to part 2. ^_^ I actually just returned from my first trip ever to Korea, 2 weeks ago! It was my first international travel. I wish I could've met you guys while I was there. Maybe next time! (And there WILL BE a next time!) ^_^

When I was in school in the USA: Grade School, 1961-1967, about 30-32 in a classroom. (note: some older schools had desks manufactured to be bolted to the floors, and there were only 30 sets to a classroom. The seat was attached to the front of the desk behind it. Later these were replaced by single-unit chair-with-a-writing surface attached to it.) Junior High School, 1967 - 1970, about 30-32 students per classroom, excluding music/band (which had more). High School, 1970-1973 ... about 35 students per classroom, for most subjects. More would be in so-called physical education, band, music, and military science.

other than the topic....looking at Hyojin's expressions thru out the ep is amusing XD

Loved HyoJins shocking expressions,.

In the US, there are different tiers of Children's House. One tier is daycares, much like a children's house daycares take care of children ranging from newborn to 8. Often the daycares are also a joint preschool which is the next tier. Preschool take care of children ages 3-5 and prepare them for Kindergarten. The last tier is Kindergarten and that's for children ranging 5-6 and it's preparing children for elementary school. It's fascinating how our different branches of Child care is somewhat combined into one in Korea.

I wasn't fully paying attention and thought hyojin say "did you ever get BITTEN by a teacher before" .....I defiantly started listening then hahaha

혀진씨, 현우씨 감사합니다! 너무 재미있어요~ ^^

I teach the alphabet to my 3 and 4 year old students at the free kindergarten that's attached to my public elementary school. :) I love it. This was a really interesting video!!

I live in Brazil and here kids go actually to the school with the age of 2 years (not in korean age). The kids go to school and they actually start to learn things normally.

very informative video. I went to school in the 80's and back then there was a person called a "Dean" who would perform the corporal punishment.

In Mexico I was never hit by any teachers and never even heard of anyone getting hit. Once in middle school a male teacher spanked a boy about 13 and he got fired. Everyone called him a pedo though, it was more about that than it was about the spanking since he only spanked him once.

Corporal punishment was still allowed while I was in grade school in the mid 1980's, but the principle had to have parental consent.

Good video

Fyi in case no one mentioned, 어린이집 is Day Care in English. It's very common in Canada and USA and I'm sure many other places too!

It's actually amazing how similar the history and modern life of Koreans compare to westerners, I recognized and related to A LOT of this, I live in canada and many of what they talked about for the past and present happened here too

So weird that the sending your child/baby to a " child house " is recent. In the Netherlands if both parents work you can send your baby to such a place after a month or so. Elementary school also starts when we are 4 years old. Really interesting this ^^

haha, the last story is so funny.

I liked this video a lot ^^ In my parents generation, the teachers used to beat the kids too. I'd cry if that would happen now, haha.

The term "child house" is called day care in America. My children started day care when they were 3 months old.

Corporal punishments exist in Vietnam too. Teachers would carry thick rulers to hit students and then the students would jump them after school lol.

This was so interesting. Looking forward to part 2 (^-^) My dad went to school here in the US during the late 60s early 70s, he used to tell me he got beatings by a paddle in front of the class. Of course u can't do that now.

Such an interesting topic! I remember that when I was in elementary school (early 2000), when we had teacher-parent conferences, my mom would always tell my teacher that it was ok to hit me if I misbehaved or something. lol they never actually did but that really did keep me from getting into trouble hehehe I look forward to the next video! ^^

in the philippines english is a second language for everyone so its part of its official language. we learn it as soon as we join kindergarten from what i remember

"I still remember the song that I used to sing..nanana.." 현우 선생님..ㅋㅋㅋ

I was in elementary school during the 70's and 80's, there was definitely corporal punishment in my school. My 2nd grade teacher paddled us with a hair brush and our gym teacher had a thick yard stick he paddled kids with, he was the school's disciplinarian.

I live in Canada and I began to learn English at 9 year old and we don't have learn that much, because all my province is in French!

In Romania you start learning a foreign language (usually English or French) when you're in 2nd grade (8 years old) ^_^ and then when you are in middle school a 2nd foreign language is taught

Corporal punishment still existed when I was in primary/elementary school in Malaysia. I went to a Chinese school. Back then, the only restriction was that you couldn't beat students in public. Otherwise, most teachers were very liberal with the cane. I think I got off easy because I was a girl (& a good student, of course)! I was born in 95, so I guess you can say corporal punishment only died out fairly recently in my part of the world ._.

Wow, 60 people in a classroom! That's so much! The biggest class I've ever been in was 30 or 31 and that was really big. The smallest class I've ever been in was 10 people. It was in trait school. And the punishment really shocks me as well. Here in the Netherlands that's been illegal for 30 or 40 years I believe

This was really interesting. As far as corporal punishment goes here in Australia, it was common in my parents' and grandparents' generations, and mostly involved being hit with a stick on your hands, it wasn't ever as severe as Hyunwoo described I don't think. but by the time I started primary school (elementary school) in 1994 that had disappeared. Before reaching school age here in my generation you had a few options, when you were younger than 5 probably around 4 or so you could go to Kindergarten (I never did by the way) or even younger was day care which sounds like the 어린이 집. Babies can go there also. My sister went to one, I didn't though. I started with pre-school when I was 5, in 1993. The way the pre-school was structured was that they would have 2 groups: a morning group and an afternoon group, I was in the afternoon group. At pre-school you'd basically just play with other kids and do activities like painting, drawing etc. I think this has changed a bit now, I think they like to include some education in there too. There's also another level you can go to before actually starting school which was pretty much only present in private schools in my generation, it's called Preparatory School, that's much more like grade 1 than the pre-school I knew. In that you wear a uniform and everything, in preschool we didn't have uniforms. During primary school, because my mum worked until about 5pm, my sister and I would go to After School Care, at which you could play with other kids, they would give you afternoon tea, and they would have activities which were either games or craft activities. I always enjoyed going there, it was actually held at my primary school so we didn't have to go anywhere. Although some students from another school would come to ours as well. Also during this time they had a Before School Care at some schools, but I'm not sure how popular that was. I never went to one. Class sizes here (remember I also live in a fairly small area, which was a lot smaller then) were about 20-25 students. A large class was about 30 students. And that was fairly uncommon. Nowadays I think the classes are growing. Though I'm not sure of the average number. We also didn't have middle school, though a lot more are starting to have that here now. And by here, I mean the town I live in. I think that was common in larger cities. We started learning a foreign language in grade 5 when I was 10. I started learning Indonesian, which was common. A lot of other schools also taught Japanese. And some of the catholic schools taught Italian. Chinese mandarin is becoming a popular choice in primary schools these days also. A lot of places also teach Japanese still too.

you teacher was a taekwondo master WOOW :D

Hyojin's so pretty;;

When my mom was little and went to school in Puerto Rico they used to also hit children with bamboo sticks. Very Harshly. My mom told me one teacher hit her once and she told my grandma, and my grandma went the next day early in the morning and insulted the teacher very harshly. No other teacher hit her again. When I was little, not that long ago I graduated in 2011 from high school .In USA I never was hit and I never saw a teacher hit a student, ever. Then we moved to Puerto Rico when I was in third grade. It was the first time I saw a teacher hit a student. There was a kid that the teacher would always hit for everything. The teacher said out loud "you know your mother gave me permission to hit you. Then when I went to middle school. The students were the ones who hit the teachers. Like once the principal was fighting with a short girl, he was telling her really bad things, up till he hit her, she got crazy and beat him up. He got knocked out and also was bleeding. So yea now a days teachers in Puerto Rico don't hit students anymore becuase 1. They will get sued. 2. The students no matter what age will beat the living crap out of them or will fight with them verbally. I was one of them. Teachers use to abuse their power.

I was so heartbroken to hear that Hyunwoo was kicked by his teacher. I understand that he did something wrong. But he is so smart and kind, imagine him as a child! I cannot imagine Hyunwoo deserving such a mean punishment. On a side note, the United States also had corporal punishment decades ago. I think it is still allowed in Catholic schools, but with stricter guidelines than in the past.

wow

Wonderful and informative! I've seen in dramas that Korean teachers nowadays make the students do self-punishments (kneeling down with hands in the air), is that also slowly disappearing or was it to replace the corporal punishments?

in the US, classes are getting bigger. 30-35 a classroom. it used to be 20-25

In my mom's days getting hit by your teacher was common in both the states and Puerto Rico. My mom was born in New York, but her family moved to Puerto Rico when she was 14, so she didn't know much Spanish. She said the teachers there would pick on her more, because she didn't know the language much. I was born in Puerto Rico, but we moved to the states when I was almost 5 (in the 80s). I didn't experience any corporeal punishment; not even when I had to learn English, so I'm glad for that.

in 1988, in Australia, I was at university with overseas students from Korea, so I guess they were the first batch of students free to travel abroad for study. In 1989, I lived with students from Korea (I was invited, as one of a small handful of Australian students, to live in the Asian students' village, so I even lived with Korean students (it was an initiative to prevent complete separation of Asian and Australian students, to encourage integration of the two student populations. The students did tend to hang together, and some of them REALLY had a hard time living away from home. I think they must have hated Australia. My university was in rural Australia too; it must have been so hard for them. I didn't really pay very much attention. Their accents were so difficult to understand that we mostly just smiled at each other and just used hand gestures. The students from HongKong, Singapore and Malaysia integrated more readily than the students from Korea, which is not surprising because they had more prior exposure to English. I remember that the Korean students seemed a normal amount of rich, but many of the Singaporean and HongKong students were crazy rich.

I would never hit my students but for the record from experience, I taught in Thailand last year and the first week in my classroom I was given a cane... I've also seen students get hit on the palm with a ruler here in Taiwan at a government school, we don't do that at our buxiban.

No beating in school for me... I think in elementary school I had about 20~25 people in class? (1997~2001) and.. as for the next school (which would be for about 8 years) I had about 20~30 people in class.. (Although I did change schools 2 times so in the end I had a class of 14 people... I think you could compare it with Highschool years)

Maybe they should bring back a different type of physical punishment like running around a field a certain number of times or doing jumping jacks and push ups

Punishment in public school when I was young. Grade school .... a few whacks on the backside with a paddle, boys more than girls. Staying after school ("detention") was not common because the teachers wanted to go home. Jr High School ... boys paddled, girls NEVER struck. Girls might have to stay after school but usually were dismissed from "detention" after only a few minutes. High School: "Detention" was common. Suspension was employed but was stupid, because the type of kid who got suspended didn't care; it was a 3-day vacation from school.

That's really early when they learn english in korea. O.o I began to learn english volunteerly when I was about 4, but usually you start at grade 3 with learning english here and a 2nd foreign language at grade 6. It was already weird learning english at year of 4 and nobody is expecting that you can speak english when entering elementary school. Also writing isn't required.^^ Same for my parents. They began learning english about grade 5 or so, but I doesn't know if they were being punished...

In my elementary school in Korean some teachers still use corporal punishment.

Do South Korean students learn a lot about the era from 1961 until 1988, when the nation was under a military dictatorship?

Everything sounds very similar to the ways that the US has changed over the last 30-40 years.

school just like us.. you get hit so much in your school time :'(

Hyojin 씨, 영어로 "됐든" 어떻게 말해요? 가르쳐 줘서 고마워요! ^_^

60 mostly currently student number in Nowadays Philippine Public Elem and H.S school

Mashallah! You are both so fluent in English ( American version ) that I salute you.

I taught at a public middle school in Korea last year and I saw corporal punishment frequently (slapping, hitting with sticks)

That is crazy. In USA each classroom in high school is like 17 people lol. I remember my 9th grade math class had only like 12 people if that.

In Brazil we start learning English at school in 6th grade (11 years old)... but a lot of shools here start earlier and also the number of Bilingual schools has been on the rise...

Where is part 2 hehe?

I'm in the 3 grade of korea highschool right now and theres 39 students in one classroom and since we are a girlschool there isnt any hitting or but i guess about 2 to 3years ago when i was on middle school there was hitting

Interesting. I'm old (elementary school from the late 70's to the early 80s) and grew up in the U.S., but I don't recall being hit by a teacher ever. I think my older sister and brother did get hit with a paddle though.

in my dad's generation, he would get whacked on the back of the knuckles but during my time in schooling, there were no beatings alowed.

Lmao that math teacher hahah

Regarding teacher's punishments,tutto il mondo è paese, alias the world is the same wherever you go.

Please, talk about 북한!

at first i thought you guys were saying bitten not beaten, so i got really confused. who knew teachers were allowed to bite their students. lol

Geez, I don't know if it's a compliment in Korea as well, but you guys really look much younger than you actually are. I thought you were around my age (I am born 93) LOL.

I was in elementary at around 1996 or 97 and I remember less than twenty kids a class. Any more than that seems absurd. My entire grade has less than sixty people.

Hi I'm an Arabic girl and I just started learning Korean and I'm really interested in going to Korea and visit your coffee shop however I'm kinda scared or worried about how koreans will see me as a muslim girl wearing the hijab so my question to you is how is islam seen in korea and is there any places for muslim people to practice their religion in ?? Thank you so much for everything I love all of TTMIK staff 사랑해 ^_^

Omg! Here in Ukraine I had only 6 students in my class including me

私は日本と韓国が好きです

Lol in the US the classes are like 20 people 😂

"i did something wrong, so i was not surprised when i was punished." this mentality is gone with kids these days who are dumb as rocks. they do not comprehend that if they do something, there will come consequences. better to get hit a few times for doing bad in a test, than to flunk through school and realize the price you pay when you cannot feed your children and your wife becomes a prostitute. beating children turns from love to abuse, only if their best interest is not in your heart. Punishment must be harsh enough for kids to actively want to avoid it, if punishment is less painful than studying hard and doing your homework and doing well on your tests, than of course kids will never do those things, as punishment is a small price to pay compared to the joy of slacking off. Maybe it does not need to be physical, however it must be harsh enough for it to still be a REAL punishment...

I know this is a stupid question but I honestly do not know. Does every teenage Korean or most know English then?

I wish America had the same ideas about teaching languages earlier. All research says the earlier you expose a child to the language the better. Even exposure in the womb is good because the prosody is learned then and then before year 1 the sounds are learned. After age 1 it is significantly harder to get the correct sounds. Despite all this research though, we still insist on only starting in high school =.="

Got beaten at school , nothing wrong with that in my opinion , unless it goes crazy like punching or stuff like that

When he was talking about corporal punishments I had the exact same reactions the girl had :((( So sad !!! "MY WIFE AND I?" He looks like 20 !!!

Sorry but I laugh about the Taekwondo master : seems almost unreal. About English it's also the same in France in the upper-class society : parents run around all kind of schools and private teachers to make their children speak fluently in it. However French are still quite famous for being weak in languages, especially in English. So language learning methodology is an important topic of dissatisfaction in France.

almost everyone in asia has got corporal punishment in lthier school life time

kamsamda

the way korean punishment same as ours in the Philippines hitting in the palm but these day not allowed that think because you will get in jail if you do it.

suomi mainittu torilla tavataan

At my school the class size was 45 (this was in England about 5 years ago). But truancy was common so only about 30 people ever turned up. I would just go to work with my mother pre-school. Is this common elsewhere? I learned to read and write when I was 6, which was pretty late, but by the time I was 8 I had already read Lord Of The Rings. I'm amazed you have McDonald's in Korea, how does something that taste so horrible become so popular all over the world. We have it in England, France, Scotland and Hong Kong. I have been there twice and for me it tastes disgusting, It used to really annoy me in Asia when people would come up to me thinking I was American, especially seeing as the US had tried invading half the countries in Asia. I wanted my non-American moral superiority to be better respected. I hope you don't mind me saying but you mispronounce 'leisure' and also use 'maths' as a singular when it should be plural (but I do find many Koreans make this singular/plural confusion). I used to be an English teacher in France so I am a little strict, sorry.

I was shocked that a teacher will kick you on your chest! So, older korean movies that showed corporal punishments were real! In the 70's in the Philippines my siblings and I went to a catholic school and would get hit with a ruler on our fingers by the nuns who were also our teachers because my fingernails were a little dirty! Sometimes we (students) will clean the church like polish the pews! 8(

Orejas de burro en Mexico if you behave badly.

everything said about the punishement at school happens to me when i was primery and midle school i think the education system that have benn used in korea same as in it was in algeria . yeah do me a favore i like the girl in the show i am looking for korean wife do you think she will be please help me i want here number it is seriouce thanks