Hagwon (학원)
'Hagwon' is the Korean word for "private school" or "academy." Private schools are generally a big part of Korean family life. Most school children from middle income families attend hagwon after finishing regular school, sometimes not finishing until 9 or 10pm at night. If you're wandering the streets of Seoul or Busan and see kids in uniforms just coming out of class, they're almost without a doubt just leaving their hagwons to go home where a pile of homework often awaits them to be handed in the next day. I've never seen kids spend such long hours in school until I came to Korea. Even some 5 year olds will spend 12 hours/day in a classroom.English hagwons are very common, and I used to teach in one. They run like a business so rather the focus being on teaching, the importance is the parents' satisfaction and the image of teaching. They also have math hagwons, science, art, taw kown...
