hagwon

Like parents everywhere South Korean parents take the education of their children very seriously. In South Korea the educational system is more tightly state controlled, more totalitarian, actually, and this extends to the authorization of extracurricular tutors that appear for every subject, a very large business in South Korea in addition to formal state education. These tutorial schools are for math and science mostly, known as hagwons.

Here an American language instructor writes for Cato Institute about South Korea clamping down on private tutors like himself. One of the concerns of government is the schools not charge too much for their services.

Since the breakout artist Psy with the dance craze that he introduced, Gangnam Style, a new demand arose for dancers, a new demand for different type of hagwon has appeared and the number of dance K-pop hagwons is startling.

This is the study that South Korean children choose to cram.

This is where South Korean children choose to have their education money directed.

But not all of it is for study for career in dancing on stage. Most students are paying some few hundred dollars to cram to learn K-pop dancing just because they want to learn dancing. They're just having fun and learning to dance and that's all.

The schools come under criticism for turning out synchronized robots but that challenge misses a tremendous amount of intriguing variation.

And the thing that just kills me while watching is how expressed in another form this same synchronization is admired as with military precision in parades. Grown men practice for hours and prepare as long polishing and having absolutely every detail just so. The product is a type Sheltie-dog type of precision devoid of individuality or heartfelt humanity. This is not that. This is not bizarre jaw-rattling North Korean marching. This is its polar opposite. And there are more, dozens, scores, hundreds more studios uploaded to YouTube, endless videos of K-pop dancers and every single one of them, each team from every studio is fascinating to watch.

This is their education of their choice and their pouring their hearts into it as fanatics do.

I want to dance too.

They make me want to join them. My legs don't work anymore. I watch them with tremendous envy. I love them. Every single one.

If my daughter of my son said, "Dad, I want to go to South Korea to learn some K-pop dance." I'd go, "Here's 10,000 bucks try not to hurt yourself and have a great time."  It would be worth it to have this added to their life.

I think this will be Lia Kim at the front very first. Her's in one of several hundred such videos available on YouTube. I find them addictive.

Shit. After all that, SME.  Here, watch the f'n thing on YouTube. Now I'm cross.

But that reminds me. When the nattering nabobs of negativism proscribe cultural appropriation, the essence of cultural exchange, then this stands as counter example, and fine examples too, all the South Korean studios prefer American songs to interpret to set their dance moves. Heavily prefer American songs. And this song they're using for this video, you'll see if you click over, has me wondering, what in this song appeals to South Korean sense of music? When you consider their own cultural music. What elements in here are they really digging? They're showing us what they're picking up on by what they choose to interpret into dance. You'll notice a jaw dropping signal and robotic energy wear-downs to the beat. I must say, the whole thing altogether is brilliant.