“I usually go to bed around 2 AM. I get 5 hours of sleep, 6 hours at most, which is a lot compared to other friends.”
Every morning at 7 AM, Kim Seo-yeon (16, pseudonym) opens her notebook of incorrect answers and eats breakfast. Her day doesn’t end until she goes through ‘classes (school) – classes (hagwon 1) – classes (hagwon 2) – self-study’. After leaving school at 4:30 PM, she attends classes at two top-tier hagwons specializing in school exams until 11 PM and does self-study from Monday to Friday every week. She gets home at 11:30 PM. She wants to jump into bed, but she can’t close her eyes until she finishes her school and hagwon homework.
Choi Seo-hee (14, pseudonym), a first-year middle school student, also falls asleep after doing her hagwon homework until midnight. Choi’s mother said, “It’s heartbreaking to see my child struggle to wake up every morning, shouting ‘just 5 more minutes, please’,” and added, “I reduced one hagwon to save time for commuting and eating, but I decided to have private lessons at home instead due to anxiety.”
Not only Kim and Choi, but many elementary, middle, and high school students in Korea are trapped in the cycle of excessive learning and lack of sleep, going around multiple hagwons after school. According to the ‘2024 Child Happiness Index’ released by ChildFund Korea on May 2, three days before Children’s Day, the average daily sleep time for children and adolescents aged 11-19 was 7 hours and 59 minutes, 15 minutes less than in 2021, and the average study time (excluding school classes) increased by 28 minutes to 2 hours and 55 minutes. The average daily exercise time was only 15 minutes.
Among the 10,140 people surveyed by the foundation, 1,902 (18.8%) were in a state of ‘insufficient sleep’, sleeping shorter than the recommended time. The average sleep time of children decreased as they got closer to college entrance exams: elementary school (lower grades 9 hours 39 minutes, upper grades 9 hours 5 minutes), middle school (7 hours 51 minutes), and high school (6 hours 32 minutes). In particular, 13.1% of all children said they suffered from insomnia as this lack of sleep continued. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of children and adolescents (under 20) suffering from insomnia also increased from 3,851 in 2020 to 4,008 in 2021 and 4,381 in 2022.
Among the children and adolescents who responded to the survey, 65.1% were found to study longer than the appropriate time. Study time was in the order of high school students (3 hours 33 minutes), middle school students (3 hours 12 minutes), and elementary school students (lower grades 2 hours 17 minutes, upper grades 2 hours 47 minutes). The child happiness index, calculated by the foundation based on children’s time use and survey responses, was only 45.3 points out of 100. Professor Lee Sung-hee of the Department of Child Social Welfare at Woosuk University said, “Long study hours and short sleep time mean that things that can be chosen other than studying are limited,” and added, “It’s natural to feel unhappy.”
