Outside the country, well-educated Koreans know they're free to start small businesses. If they did that at home, they would have to worry about raising the ire of relatives. Your family and friends lose respect for you. But its different when we go overseas. Cheaper foreign education is also a lure.
Many wannabe emigrants gripe about hidden costs of educating their children in the Korean system.
They claim a typical family forks over thousands of dollars each year to cover the supplemental schooling often seen as necessary in Korea's competitive culture. Mothers also feel compelled to slip white envelopes containing cash to teachers to ensure that their child gets a little more attention than his or her classmates. The government hopes the nation's gradual economic turnaround will help stem the flow. But as La is finding, it's often hard to take the plunge and become a new passport holder in the first place. The government hopes that fewer and fewer of its citizens will take even that first step.