Fulbright U.S. Education Center

Fulbright Korea’s U.S. Education Center (link to Korean home page)  ( Link to English home page)  is part of a global network of more than 400 “EducationUSA”  advising centers supported by the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.  Our activities in Korea place us at the cutting edge of the information revolution as it re-shapes academic advising.  Consider the following.

• South Korea has the most advanced and extensive digital networks in the world, both fixed (fiber optic) and mobile.  Such innovations as broadband internet, social networking and 3G mobile communication arrived in Korea years before they came to the U.S. , Europe and other parts of the world.
• Korea continues to send far more students to the U.S. on a per capita basis than any country in the world, and continues to rank near the top in absolute numbers.

All organizations in Korea are adapting to this rapidly changing media environment.  For example, the U.S. Embassy has launched a very popular internet cafe (Cafe USA) on Daum, one of Korea’s leading portals.  The current ambassador to Korea, Kathleen Stephens, a former Peace Corps volunteer here, authors a very popular blog which is published simultaneously in both Korean and English.  The Embassy public affairs office operates an information center blog and posts information to the web about the Embassy’s American Corners.

In relation to all of these efforts, the Fulbright Commission’s U.S. Education Center plays a unique role.  Fulbright Korea became involved with “student counseling” back in the 1960s, and its efforts expanded in parallel with the growing numbers of Korean students going to the U.S. for study abroad.  The purchase of the Fulbright Building, which was dedicated in January of 2000, augmented our ability to provide web-based advising and information services in the Korean language, to prospective Korean students and their parents, and in English, to U.S. colleges, universities and other educational organizations seeking to recruit Korean students.

• We encourage U.S. colleges, universities, and other educational organizations to “Partner with Fulbright Korea in Cyberspace,” by using our services to enhance their exchange activities with Korea.  As a binational commission, we have unequaled credibility in the Korean education sector.
• We offer high quality localization services to translate materials into Korean and adapt them to Korean user preferences.
• We maintain a technical support staff, alongside our educational advisers to support a growing array of web services.  We operate from the Fulbright Building in Mapo, which is owned by the Korean American Educational Commission.  This blog exists to support activities of the U.S. Education Center.  Jim Larson maintains a related blog on Korea’s Information Society which frequently touches on education issues.

In April of this year we are pleased to be hosting  a U.S. State-Department sponsored workshop on “Social, Mobile and Visual Media” with the theme of “Advising in the Digital Age.”  Fifteen advisors from other EducationUSA centers around the Asia region will join staff from the U.S. State Department and our Fulbright web team  in Seoul to explore cutting-edge issues that are transforming the nature of advising in the digital age.   More on this topic in later posts.

An article in The Korea Times today notes that many new service businesses are doing well in Korea.   In particular, it observes that foreign language institutes, primarily teaching English, saw sales increase by 25.2 percent in 2008.   Online English classes saw sales rise 38.1 percent.

As some of you who follow this blog already know, I author another blog called koreainformationsociety.com.   Quite frequently there are posts on that blog that I think might be of interest to people reading this one.  After all, education is one of the major pillars, arguably the most important one, in building an information society.  Education is at the heart of South Korea’s progress over the past three decades in building an information society.

Also, I realize that many university administrators and others in the U.S. education sector are interested in Korea’s rapidly evolving digital media environment.  This nation’s goal of becoming the world’s first ubiquitous society has definite implications for U.S. schools who currently and in the future will recruit Korean students.  The new category, Korea’s Information Society, should help to bolster the existing one on “Recruiting Korean Students.”

Comments and suggestions on this new category are welcome.

An online tutoring service started in the year 2000 was founded by a former tutor at a private education institute.  His inspiration for the company came while watching a home-shopping channel on television and he intended to help reduce the education inequality that is produced when nearly eight in ten students supplement public education with study in private cram schools, or hagwons.  As noted in a New York Times article by Choe Sang-Hun, Megastudy.net, the online tutoring service Mr. Son Joo-eun started, may be the perfect convergence of South Korean’s dual obsessions with educational credentials and the internet.  By tapping into those concerns, which increase during a recession, Megastudy has become South Korea’s fastest growing technology company, with sales expected to grow 22.5 percent this year to 245 billion won ($195 million) even as the country’s economy is expected to contract.

Online commercial services like Megastudy charge a relatively small fee, averaging 40,000 to 50,000 won ($30 to $40) for each course a student selects from thousands of online tutorials.   Megastudy competes with the government sponsored EBS, which offers similar tutorials for free.    However, it hires teachers with followings that rival those of pop stars.  Last year one Megastudy teacher generated 10 billion won (nearly $8 million) and pocketed 23 percent as his share.

With the country pouring billions of dollars into making the internet ten times faster by 2014, Mr. Son suggested that the world turn to South Korea for a glimpse of what education might look like in the future.  ”Offline schools will become supplemental to online education,” he predicted.  ”Students will go to school, perhaps once a week, for group activities like sports.”

There is an interesting report by Reuters today on the rapidly growing use of internet-based services that allow Korean students to talk with native-speakers of English.  The article notes that on any given day, students ranging from kids learning their alphabet to adults preparing for job interviews sign in on their Internet messengers, fire up their webcams and wait for English teachers to appear — from faraway continents.

Web English is one of the fastest growing segments in South Korea’s private English education industry, which is estimated at 15 trillion won ($13 billion) a year — almost half of the country’s annual education budget. About 150 to 200 companies are in the market offering phone and Web English tutoring.  KT Corp, South Korea’s dominant fixed-line and broadband operator, provides a service called “Hello ET” cooperating with a South Korean English education company. Internet portal SK Communications runs “Spicus” which includes a job interview drill on a video-chat platform. Applicants hand out their completed English resume before the drill. An interviewer stages a simulation interview through webcam, looking through resumes, and later provides feedback on logical speaking and communication skills.  In terms of cost, a three-times-a-week Web English course can be covered for about 100,000 won a month. ($1=1151.0 Won)

Dokdo is in the news again. (Click on the image at the left to see a more panoramic, full-size image.) References to the island as Japanese territory in newly published guidelines for middle school teachers in Japan provoked widespread anger and demonstrations in Korea. In fact, last night some of the participants in a candlelight vigil against the import of American beef apparently moved over in front of the Japanese Embassy to join the protest against Japan’s latest actions. Others took the message about Dokdo to international media and into cyberspace. According to the Korea Times, vocalist Kim Jang-hoon, 41, teamed up with a freelance Korean public relations expert Seo Kyoung-duk to publish a full-page ad in The New York Times. Headlined “Do You Know?” the ad stated that“For the last 2,000 years, the body of water between Korean and Japan has been called the `East Sea.’ Dokdo (two islands) located in the East Sea is a part of Korean territory. The Japanese government must acknowledge this fact.” The ad also prominently featured the address of a website devoted to Dokdo and related issues. http://www.forthenextgeneration.com/ There is a great deal of information about Dokdo on the internet and this site provides a good starting point for anyone interested in more information about the issue. The official web site of the Korean government, Korea.net, also carries a great deal of information on the Dokdo issue. Korea.net also includes a Cyber Dokdo History Hall.

It is now reasonably well-known around the world that South Korea is one of the most, if not THE most networked countries in the world.  It leads the world in broadband internet infrastructure.  That fact, together with a deep seated cultural respect for education, led to the establishment of Cyber-universities here.  Initially there were twelve such universities approved by the Ministry of Education, and at present count there are seventeen such institutions.  As with the other categories in this blog, we will provide basic information about Korea’s cyber-universities and invite your questions regarding them.