On  a  wet  Wednesday  evening  in  Seoul,  six  government  employees  gathered  at  the  office  to  prepare  for  a  late-night  patrol .  The  mission  is  to  find  children  who  are  studying  after  10  p.  m.  and  stop  them. In  South  Korea,  it  has  come  to  this.  To  reduce  the  country's  addiction  to  private,  after-hours  tutoring  academies(called  hagwons),  the  authorities  have  begun  enforcing  a  curfew --even  rewarding  citizens  for  turning  in  violators. But  cramming is  deeply  anchored  in  Asia,  where  top  grades  have  long  been  prized  as  essential  for  professional  success.  Before  toothbrushes  or  printing  presses,  there  were  civil  service  exams  that  could  make  or  break  you.  Chinese  families  have  been  hiring  test  preparation  tutors  since  the  7th  century.  Nowadays  South  Korea  has  taken  this  competition  to  new  extremes.  In  2010,  74%  of  all  students  engaged  in  some  kind  of  private  after-school  instruction,  sometimes  called  shadow  education,  at  an  average  cost  of  KRW  2,  600  per  student  for  a  year.  There  are  more  private  instructors  in  South  Korea  than  school  teachers,  and  the  most  popular  of  them  make  millions  of  dollars  a  year  from  online  and  in-person  classes.  When  Singapore's  Education  Minister  was  asked  last  year  about  his  nation's  reliance  on  private  tutoring,  he  found  one  reason  for  hope,  "We  are  not  as  bad  as  the  Koreas.  " In  Seoul,  legions  of  students  who  failed  to  get  into  top  universities  spend  the  entire  year  after  high  school  attending  hagwons  to  improve  their  scores  on  university  admission  tests.  And  they  must  compete  even  to  do  this.  At  the  prestigious  Daesung  Institute,  admission  is  based  on  students'  test  scores.  Only  14%  of  applicants  are  accepted.  After  a  year  of  14-hour  days,  about  70%  gain  entry  to  one  of  the  nation's  top  three  universities. South  Koreans  are  not  alone  in  their  discontent.  Across Asia, reformers  are  pushing  to  make  schools  more  "American"--even  as  some  U.  S.  reformers  make  their  own  schools  more  "Asian".  In  China,  universities  have  begun  fashioning  new  entry  tests  to  target  students  with  talents  beyond  book  learning.  And  Taiwanese  officials  recently  announced  that  kids  will  no  longer  have  to  take  high-stress  exams  to  get  into  high  school.  In  South  Korea,  the  apogee  of  extreme  education,  gets  its  reforms  right,  it  could  be  a  model  for  other  societies. The  problem  is  not  that  South  Korea  kids  aren't  learning  enough  or  working  hard  enough,  but  that  they  aren't  working  smart.  When  I  visited  some  schools,  I  saw  classrooms  in  which  a  third  of  the  students  slept  while  the  teacher  continued  lecturing,  seemingly  undisturbed. The  government  has  repeatedly  tried  to  humanize  the  education  system,  but  after  each  attempt,  the  hagwons  come  back  stronger.  But  this  time,  its  reforms  are  targeting  not  just  the  dysfunctional  symptom  but  also  the  causes.  It  is  working  to  improve  normal  public  schools  by  putting  teachers  and  principals  through  rigorous evaluations--which  include  opinion  surveys  by  students,  parents  and  peer  teachers--and  requiring  additional  training  for  low-scoring  teachers.  At  the  same  time,  the  government  hopes  to  reduce  the  pressure  on  students.  Admissions  tests  for  high  schools  have  been  abolished.  Middle  schoolers  are  now  judged  on  the  basis  of  their  regular  grades  and  an  interview.  And  500  admissions  officers  have  been  appointed  to  the  country's  universities,  to  judge  applicants  not  only  on  their  test  scores  and  grades  but  also  other  abilities. What  can  be  concluded  from  the  passage?
Hagwons are the source of South Korea's educational problem. Students in South Korea don't learn efficiently. It is the teachers and headmasters who are to blame for the educational problem. Private tutoring is not common in Singapore.