At 15, Hye Jin has only the slightest knowledge of the military governments that ruled South Korea until the 1980s. In a country where every teenager's existence seems centered on entering a top university, which can play a major role in determining one's future here, such conformity is to be expected.Īt the same time, hers is a generation coming of age in a fast-changing society. Some boys have taken this furtiveness further by carving holes in their desks, through which they look down at their phones.Ī new phone, a good university - goals shared, no doubt, with an equal degree of burning intensity by her peers - set the rhythm of Hye Jin's summer. In class, she looks straight ahead, holding a pen in her right hand, punching away messages with the left on her phone under her desk.

Hye Jin, who has had a mobile phone since the seventh grade, sends text messages without even glancing at the keypad. Good grades had earned her mother's promise to buy her a new model that was supposed to go on sale in a matter of days. 'I've been asking for a new phone forever - since last year!' Hye Jin said. But if getting into what is considered the third-best university in South Korea is her long-term ambition, there is also something closer at hand: a new mobile phone. Class 2008.' In Korea, the year you enter college is your class year. Summer school was mandatory, not for students who had fallen behind, but for those who, as she put it, 'have a chance of getting into good universities.' Not attending was never an option for Hye Jin, who is ranked 17th out of 430 students in the 10th grade at Young Hoon High School, in a working-class neighborhood here.Ī desktop calendar in her bedroom states in her bold, clear handwriting: 'Korea University Department of English Language Education. SEOUL - Just as she did during the school year, Jeong Hye Jin, 15, spent the long, sweltering summer commuting to her high school by day and to private classes in the evening.

High school dreams (2005)