July and Aug. are the busiest months of the year for Korean students. Regardless of their age, students are preoccupied with the “Admissions Officer System.” This system selects students by in-depth interviews, essays and letters of self introduction, and their portfolios, rather than the standardized test scores. In order to create an original, attractive profile for colleges and specialized high schools, many Korean students spend their summer in various extracurricular activities.
The students’ efforts to create convincing portfolios are shown in many different ways. The traditional ways include participating in various competitions, Model United Nations, international conferences and debate tournaments.
Some students are also involved in international camps, volunteer works, and internship programs. Many students from the Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies (HAFS) visited various Southeast Asian countries in order to do service works including medical assistance, building housings for the homeless and teaching English for children. Camp Friendship is a volunteer camp that HAFS students attended to instruct Korean adoptees from ages 5 to 14 about Korean culture. Dahyung Son, a tenth grade student attending HAFS, said, “Through Camp Friendship, I truly recognized the reality of Korea as the ‘adoption exporting country’.”
Students of HAFS have completed various internship programs, including economic education internship in Hong Kong, tidal power energy creation internship in Kang-Hwa island, and local TED internships.
Extracurricular activities during vacation include other miscellaneous activities as well. In the National Youth Activation Summit for the 2013 Special Olympics Pyungchang, special education students and general education students discussed about the ways to promote Special Olympics in Korea. In addition, Lacrosse summer leagues is popular in HAFS. Some students even flew to Phuket to earn qualifications for scuba diving to create a ‘fresh’ sports experience and even to use it as a step to do creative volunteer works, such as cleaning up the contaminated ocean.
Korean students are extremely eager to achieve their goals. These students are using their time effectively to experience numerous activities and learn from them. Yet, it would also be their responsibilities to embody the core value of the extracurricular activities, instead of spending thousands of dollars for luxurious volunteer trips to foreign countries.
