Korea's Worship of Your University Name

🏝️ Become a Islander!    / @hanafromkorea   Why does the name of your university follow you for the rest of your life? And why, thirty years after a song begged us to stop, are we rebuilding the same classroom thicker and harder for our own children? In 1994, Seo Taiji and Boys (서태지와 아이들) released "Classroom Idea" (교실 이데아), a song that pointed straight at Korea's exam competition. Korea's national college entrance exam, the Suneung (수능), was born around the same time. One became a song people still sing at the noraebang. The other only grew deeper roots. This video traces why, going back five hundred years to the Joseon civil service exam, through colonial rule and the Korean War, to the religion we live by today: meritocracy. Along the way it draws on Michael Sandel's "The Tyranny of Merit" and Daniel Markovits' "The Meritocracy Trap" to ask whether this is really only a Korean story, and lands on a line from James Baldwin about how education, once it opens your eyes, has to turn those eyes back on the society that raised you. I share my own path too: a father who got into a top university and chose never to force university names onto me, a non-linear life from a Hongdae club to magazine editing to a dive boat, and a sunset on a Thai island where two teenagers debated Brexit so freely it left her speechless. In the age of AI, the very "useless" things Korea taught us to mock may be the most human, and the hardest to replace. 📌 Chapters 00:00 Credentialism in Korea 00:45 The ‘Classroom Idea’ Generation: Where Are We Now? 04:24 “Work Hard and You’ll Make It”: Meritocracy as a Religion 06:41 Is This Really Only a Korean Disease? 09:47 Children Robbed of the Right to Fall 14:44 When People Who’ve Never Fallen Down Get to Design the World 17:02 People Who Never Ask Where You Went to University 20:02 A Beautiful Debate Under the Sunset 24:30 The Time of the So-Called ‘Useless’ 27:52 Is There Really No Other Way? 30:51 Even So, Resist 33:21 Welcome to Hana's island 🎞️ For more stories    • Beneath the Korean Culture   Talking about art and life. An island that reads the world, Hana's Island 📩 [email protected] #HanafromKorea #KoreanEducation #Credentialism #Meritocracy #koreanculture